A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor-Chapter 1193 Candles in the Wind - Part 1
1193: Candles in the Wind – Part 1
1193: Candles in the Wind – Part 1
“Gurhh…” the sword ran across Oliver’s chest, drawing blood.
It took all his efforts not to shout any louder than that.
He took the blow well enough, but a wound was a wound.
It didn’t matter how he tolerated it, the damage was what counted, and he’d allowed the blow to land strongly enough to break through chainmail… and yet, not strongly enough to go much further than his skin.
He looked to the Rogue Commandant’s feet, and saw one just of alignment.
His right foot.
The slightest stumble, the slightest step back, and yet, that was all that it required.
He was a cannon of a man, the perfect sort of creature for the ships that he commanded.
But cannons needed their base in order to be accurate, and Oliver had robbed him of it.
The man’s eyes knew fear then.
A creature that had evolved itself into such a defensive phenomena could not have done so without a sense for fear.
He found himself being stared down by the overwhelming eyes of a predator.
He had shown a shred of weakness, and now, there was no going back.
CLANG!
CLANG!
CLANG!
Oliver seized the momentum.
His sword pounded on the man’s armour, like a mason trying to chisel his way through stone.
It was not wounds that he was looking to deal, not straight away, it was the simple seizing of flow, preventing any sort of counterattack, forcing the man to step back, one step after the other.
Now no sword could come for him.
The stooped nature of the man’s defence was being robbed of him.
He was being made to stand more and more upright.
The turtle shell of his defence was being pried open, and soon enough, the soft flesh was visible beneath the cracks of his throat guard.
Oliver’s sword sped towards it.
A single, perfectly accurate shot, missing the strength of all his previous ones, and making up for it in sheer speed.
Straight through he ran it, just where it needed to be.
Blood ran, and the man fell, dead.
He didn’t have time to celebrate that victory.
It was the Rogue Commandant who was holding the order in that triangular formation.
As soon as he fell, the strings were cut, and the chariots had nothing more to bind them together.
They began to move with individualistic intentions, putting themselves in increasing danger, but also increasing the danger to Walter and Oliver.
“My Lord, I think it would be best to—” Verdant began to say, but Oliver was already moving.
It would have been greedy to overextend, and try to get too much out of their position when the chariot formation was already collapsing, and so he picked a careful retreat, and allowed the chariots to ensure their own destruction.
Chapter 16 – Candles in the Wind
Bit by bit, Oliver and his men sank their teeth into what remained of the enemy.
With the falling of that first Rogue Commandant their decline only increased.
The morale of the Patrick men and their new allies doubled, whilst the chariot formations began to grow more and more disorganized.
They made for easy pickings like that.
They were less an army, and more a herd of wildebeest, scattering in all directions.
They were still dangerous like that, but they lacked the danger of cunning that a man had.
With careful movements, they were picked off, one after the other.
Oliver saw more than a few chariots brought low by Blackthorn’s sword, and more than he cared to admit were brought down by Yoran as well.
The more they killed, the more risks Yoran seemed willing to take.
No longer did he stick so firmly to Blackthorn’s shadow.
He struck off on his own, with his men behind him, and targeted their fleeing foes from the back.
He seemed as if he was trying to compete with Yorick, and all the men that the other man had under them.
When Oliver slew his second Rogue Commandant, the deal seemed as good as done.
This man fell far more easily than the first.
Oliver was able to deal with him without securing any wounds of his own in return.
Such was the evidence of the new weakness to be found in their ever deteriorating formations.
As much as the progress of the culling might have pleased the Stormfront army, and those that were watching from atop General Rainheart’s walls, there was one man in particular who seemed to be losing life with every second man that he lost.
When the Rogue Commandants fell, it seemed to General Zilan that the day grew the slightest bit darker.
As if there were clouds brewing overhead.
Of course, the sky was still as clear as could be, with the sun beating down aggressively on them from overhead, but General Zilan’s blood still began to run cold despite it.
They had a victory – a steady one – brewing against the other half of the Stormfront army, where Captain Lombard was holding his ground, but inevitably losing against the encirclement that the chariots had managed to inflict on him.
That victory, however, paled in comparison to the utter slaughter that was being wrecked on the other side of the battlefield.
Now it was a game, it wasn’t even a battle.
The Stormfront men were hunting down their foes as if they were no better than wild animals.
Individual detachments of chariots were run down and herded, and there was naught that they could do about it.
The battlefield was littered with hundreds of wooden wrecks, with more than a few wheels having blown free from the bodies of the chariots, having rolled off to rest in the dry grasses that did what they could to survive on the harshness of the plains.
Zilan said not a word.
He just clutched his reins more tightly by the second.
Those were his prized possessions, those chariots.
He’d sent the entirety of what he had available away, in order to quash the annoying pest that had humiliated him the day before… and now he’d already lost nearly half of their number.
That wasn’t something that could be made up easily.
Not even if they had months in a nearby town.
