A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor-Chapter 1199 Candles in the Wind - Part 7

1199: Candles in the Wind – Part 7

1199: Candles in the Wind – Part 7 ƒгeeweɓn૦vel.com

Oliver could not have said quite how long he’d lost consciousness for, only that it had been too long.

He awoke to a sense of defeat that sat heavy within the air.

He saw Verdant lying beneath his horse, covered in his own blood.

He saw the beautiful Lady Blackthorn, with her hair scattered around her in a cloud, half of it cut shorter, and the rest of it stained with the same scarlet blood that contaminated them all.

Oliver groaned.

Somehow, he was still mounted.

He’d been resting against Walter’s neck, halfway out of the saddle.

One of his feet was unhooked from the stirrups.

The other had just barely managed to hold him on.

In response to his groan, his faithful horse gave a concerned whinny in reply.

Oliver tried to reach his hand forward to pat his neck in order to reassure the beast, but that only brought forth more groans out of him.

His ribs were in a state.

If they were not broken, they were bruised beyond belief.

The chain mail that had once protected them had been torn to shreds.

The cuts weren’t monstrously deep, but they were deep enough, and more alarming for the fact that there must have been nearly twenty of them.

The deep gauges in his gauntlets told of the ferocity of Zilan’s strikes.

Even though Oliver was certain he’d never taken a head on hit, not without Dominus’ sword in the way, they’d still all left their mark on him, and robbed him of his consciousness.

About the only thing, remarkably, still in a near perfect state, was that very sword of Dominus’.

There was not even a chip along its edge, nor a roll.

Oliver had to wonder at that, but he could not wonder too hard before his head began to pound.

He looked around the field of battle, beyond the bodies of his friends.

The path that General Zilan had taken could not have been more obvious.

Straight through the encirclement of chariots, he’d driven himself through.

“Gods…” Oliver murmured.

He didn’t yet feel emotion and the sight.

He didn’t have the wits to.

All he had was a distinct lack of comprehension.

There had been three hundred or so men still fighting there when he had last looked.

And now there was not a single one still standing.

It was a pile of corpses, made all the most menacing for the fact that they were so concentrated.

In the centre of it all, Zilan stood, having dismounted from his horse.

He worked, a dagger in hand, hacking at the neck of one of those corpses.

He made it look like difficult work.

Or perhaps it was more the fact that his knife worked with such hate.

It was less the slashing of a warrior, and more the hacking of a butcher.

Oliver had the vague thought that Zilan could have performed the task much faster if he’d wished to.

He seemed to be taking a strange pleasure in the action.

Then that head was being raised up in the air.

Zilan could not hold it by the hair, for it had none, and so instead he’d speared it on the end of his knife.

Cold blue eyes stared at the world around it.

The same expression that the man had worn in life, he’d worn in death.

He’d greeted his defeated head on, and he had not even blinked to look away from it.

When understanding finally came, Oliver could not find the intelligence to breathe.

His gasp was stuck in his throat like a stone.

He choked on it.

He tried to swallow it to clear it out of the way, but that only made the blockage all the worse.

He needed to look anywhere else at all, but he could not tear his eyes away.

He could not believe the terrible reality.

Captain Lombard.

A man who had been as close to a guardian as Dominus Patrick himself once had been.

Eternally loyal in Oliver’s corner.

A protector, and at times, a teacher.

A man that Oliver had seen as being close to invincible.

Even in losing an arm, Lombard had returned to the battlefield.

He seemed as if he’d spend the rest of his days there.

His understanding of all that was military was such that he could take risks, and still return unscathed.

After seeing it so many times, Oliver was sure there was nothing that could swallow him.

That was, until he’d been placed under Oliver’s command, and he’d been shackled by the chains of a youth less experienced than him.

And he’d been forced straight into the path of a General of the calibre of Zilan, empowered by all the Command offered by an army of thousands of men.

The pain in his limbs, across his chest, and in his legs, it was all forgotten.

That was a stabbing straight through his ribs, sharper than Zilan’s blade had ever been.

It clawed at his heart, and tore pieces from his mind.

Oliver could feel his sanity slipping.

He’d known loss before, grave losses, and he’d survived them.

And still, somewhere along the line, he’d supposed that he’d grown strong enough never to know such losses again.

His strength, however, was far from where it needed to be.

That was made painfully obvious by the head that was mounted up in the air.

It seemed to be aimed towards Oliver, but he knew that it could not have been.

Zilan would not have left him if he thought he was still alive.

That hefted head was for the benefit of the soldiers doing war behind Olivers, for Rainheart’s troops, attempting to glean what victory they could from whilst General Zilan was still away.

Oliver saw his own fraction of men hovering beyond the chariots, uncertainty evident in them.

That, more than anything, gave him a sense of timing.

If they had not been quick enough to lead the infantry in before Zilan had arrived, then barely a handful of minutes must have passed, and that handful of minutes was still more than sufficient to deal such a cutting blow.

In terms of the battlefield, it was a weighty thing.

But for Oliver… It weighed heavier.

“The battlefield be damned,” he said, in a voice far more strained than his normal one.

His eyes were stretched as wide as they could be stretched.

They were bloodshot beyond measure.