A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor-Chapter 1202 Candles in the Wind - Part 10
1202: Candles in the Wind – Part 10
1202: Candles in the Wind – Part 10
“The Gods care not for our promises,” Greeves spat.
“We can say all we want, we can put our hearts into it, and be determined as you like.
But the Gods will win in the end – they always pissin’ win.”
“Stand, Greeves,” Nila said.
She herself was crouched, with a knee on the ground, barely able to draw a breath from the smoke, but still she gave him those orders.
“Oliver trusted you – would you disappoint him?”
“I’m used to giving out disappointments, girl, it means nothing,” Greeves said.
“It was worth it, for a while… But now I’m too pissin’ tired.”
Where Greeves’ bloodied coat hung on the floor, the smoke of the fire began to lick at it, and did the slightest few flames creeping up from below.
As the two main leaders of the defence, they’d put themselves where the fighting was hardest, and it had worn on them as quickly as one might expect.
Nila just barely saw the instant when the green of his long coat began to catch fire.
Her reaction was far slower than it normally might have been, but she was not so exhausted as to miss it.
“Greeves!” She warned, stomping on the flames, and dragging him up out of the way.
Greeves gave a momentary look of surprise, stumbling from her pull, before he smiled to himself condescendingly.
“Why not?” He said.
“Why not just let it take me?
Ain’t I done enough, Nila?”
“No,” Nila said.
“You’ve never done enough.
Can you not hear them?
The ladders are being put against the wall already.
I need you.”
“You don’t need a man that’s already spent.”
“Then find a way to unspend yourself, and do it quick!” Nila said.
She could already see the silver sheen of a Yarmdon helmet popping up over the wall through the smoke.
Her arrow was being drawn back in the very same instant, but even as she launched it, killing the first man with a projectile through the eye, there were three more men landing on the deck. freewēbnoveℓ.com
“You’ve got to call the reinforcements,” Greeves said.
“You can’t defend this alone.”
“You’re right, I can’t,” Nila said, putting distance between herself and the enemy.
“But nor can I take the soldiers away from where they’re needed either.”
An axe came far too close to her.
They were learning to fear her bow.
They’d picked her out as the enemy Commander on the second day, and now they came for her head, as if she were a career soldier like the rest of them.
She managed to just barely get her arrow off before the other two were closing in on her.
She bit her lip.
Second Boundary she might have been, she still had her fatal weaknesses.
In this close, her bow was of little use.
She needed more space, but atop those tight walkways, there was hardly the slightest bit of space to space.
An axe came, and she ducked it.
Then a knee came, and she was right in its path.
She groaned as it caught her in the sternum, and she almost crumbled, but she couldn’t allow herself to.
She put a hand to the wood wall, and forced herself up.
‘Beam,’ she thought to herself.
‘Please… Please don’t let me fall.
Don’t let me fail.’
She begged him, as though he had the power to do something about it.
But no matter what her words to Greeves might have been, she was very much reaching the end of her rope as well.
They’d done well, in lasting for as long as they did, but the help that they’d called for still hadn’t come.
Hope was dying and with it their soldiers.
An axe came for her as she tried to recover.
She reached for an arrow from her quiver to stab the man with, but she was too slow and unpracticed in such an action.
She tried to twist herself, and put the blow to her shoulder, to at least spare her life so she could keep fighting, even at the injury it would cost her.
“Gurghh…” The man coughed blood mid-swing, a stupefied look on his face.
A knife had made its way through his throat from the back.
“Greeves!” Nila cried, too exhausted to be relieved with that final man remaining.
The man turned, his axe looking for Greeves instead.
Then it was Nila’s arrow that went to work.
She jabbed it into the side of his neck mercilessly, imitating Greeves in her approach.
The Yarmdon-dressed warrior fell to the floor in a crumple of chainmail and furs.
“I knew… you had more in you…” Nila said through ragged breaths.
“Not me,” Greeves said.
“I didn’t have a drop more left in me.
That bastard Oliver – the one he said to trust… Damn it all.
He always seems to win in the end.”
He pointed to the horizon, where beyond the smoke, the barest hint of golden banners could be seen.
Nila squinted.
Her first reaction was terror, given what the influx of soldiers had meant for them in previous days.
But then she dared to hope.
She started to make out the shape of a sigil threaded into the centre of those banners.
Something serpentine, and winged, with horrible fangs dangling from its mouth.
To another, it might have seemed a horrifying monster, but when Nila’s tired mind finally confirmed what it was, it shone with the light of a hero.
The golden banners of the Pendragon house, numbering in their tens and their twenties, heralding the arrival of nearly a thousand men.
It was the strangest emotion that entwined with Nila’s relief.
There was an odd feeling of familiarity.
It was hardly the Pendragon soldiers that she saw at all.
It was the hand and the influence that had pushed them towards their reinforcement decision.
In those returning men, she saw the presence of Oliver.
It made her all the more aware of the loneliness that she’d felt in his months away.
“Oliver…” She murmured, fighting back the tears that stung her eyes.
