A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor-Chapter 872: Reaching - Part 3
Talon put his heel to his horse, and turned the reins off to the side, wheeling the creature into a charge.
'There it is again,' Oliver said, seeing it clearly. The General had needed to turn around to even approach the same speed, but now he was wheeling back around, attempting to charge Oliver down in a single instant.
It was an attack that the man had likely carried out thousands of times. It was not the actions of a duelist. It was a very different sort of martial art from what Oliver was used to. It was the sort of blow designed to fell whole legions of men, and put Commanders and Generals forever in the dust. It was the blow of a General, and Oliver was attempting to meet it with the swordsmanship of a soldier.
Something about that didn't feel quite right. With every action that General Talon took, it was as though there was a whole army at his back. Oliver couldn't feel that own strength supporting his blows. He didn't know how. He knew Command could flow from the General to all his troops, but the way Talon rode, it was as though the same was true for the opposite…
Oliver felt a sudden clatter in his mind, as a series of ideas lined up. He could have sworn that General Blackwell had said something along that same line in his first meeting with Oliver. At the very least, he ought to have strongly implied it – something about how a General was granted strength by his men, just in the same way a General granted his men strength.
He'd assumed that the reasoning behind that was obvious – that the soldiers were valuable battlefield pieces, and they could be utilised as such. But what if, by the virtues and Blessings of Command, it went more deeply? What if a man was enhanced by the very ideas that his men held of him? What if it could flow both ways?
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"You've understood," Claudia said, her voice finally reaching him. "Now look forward, and face him – not as a man, but as a Commander."
Oliver could almost sense the Command coming off Talon as a physical thing. It lent his aura a redness and weight. When Oliver looked in on it now, he could see it more completely than he had before, despite his lagging eyes.
Command as a physical thing, as physical as the very ground that he walked on… He'd never considered it to be so – he'd reasoned it to be immaterial, and light, but it was as real as real and as forceful as the current of a river, as General Talon showed him.
The blow came for him again. A huge swing of the General's glaive, in time with the horse's charge, their momentum matched, and in time with the ebb and flow of his relentless army. Oliver solidified his feet, daring to do what he'd done twice already, and failed.
"Facing a man head-on is a fool's way," Ingolsol spat. "If you've a brain, then use it, boy. Have you forgotten the realm of trickery?"
The instant before the blow landed, Oliver took a step back. He thought of Blackthorn, and all of the hours that they'd spent training together, relentlessly pursuing the art of the counterattack, to make up for the physical weaknesses inherent in the female body. He'd drilled it just as hard as she had, and he'd studied it just as hard as her.
Talon's blow flashed in front of Oliver, where he'd been just a second before. His weight fell onto his calves. It was less a step, and more a slide. It was a shift in placement made with elasticity in mind.
Just as the blow came to the final portion of its arc, Oliver finally saw through the trick – a sudden increase in acceleration, and force. A light twist, enough to overcome any parry. A brutally effective strike, more so for the intention of it. Once more Oliver recognized it to be the strike of a General, rather than a duelist.
It was a strike predicated on the condition that the enemy not see it more than once, and by now, Oliver had seen it three times.
He dove forward, hitting the attack at his weakest, using the recoil from his backstep, and counter attacking in full force. Against an ordinary man, he might have gone for the kill there and then, but Oliver knew against an opponent of this magnitude, he had to gain a few steps of advantage first.
"What!?" Talon all but shouted, as his glaive was blasted off course, as though hit by a sudden gust of wind.
The strike of Oliver's that had failed to shift it so many times before had completely overturned it this time, enough that merely containing the force of the counter was enough to imbalance Talon in his saddle.
Oliver did not have the mercy to stop his follow-up, as the General had, twice before. He took a step forward, utilising his style of Overwhelm, and he attempted to go for a strike on the man himself.
That proved to be too ambitious, however. The shaft of the glaive was put in Oliver's weapon's way in an instant. Oliver hit him with all the force he could muster, but that was hardly enough to push the man back. Oliver grit his teeth in annoyance.
He'd gained one step of advantage, but there was nothing to do with it… The second he took a step back, that advantage would be lost, and Talon would be on the attack again.
Then he could see a glimpse of black fur on the edge of his vision, and his grin widened with Ingolsol's viciousness. The purple specks in his eyes were dwarfed by gold.
Talon recognized his intent in an instant. "No!" The man shouted, throwing his glaive up in preparation for the strike. By then, however, it was too late. Oliver buried the tip of his sword straight through the horse's eye. As vicious as the attack was, there was mercy in the blow, killing the creature as quickly as he could afford to.
There was hardly a whinny. The horse spasmed, and its legs lost their strength. The creature collapsed to the ground. Talon only just managed to unhook his feet from the stirrups in time, but he came rolling.
