A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor-Chapter 991 - Opposing Schools of Strategy - Part 4
991: Opposing Schools of Strategy – Part 4
991: Opposing Schools of Strategy – Part 4
Men parted to allow Inka and his group to continue their charge.
Their speed built, bit by bit.
They fell into an arrowhead of their own, targeting the exposed rear of the Patrick forces, as they did all they could to reposition themselves.
“Slaughter, Firyr, you and I,” Oliver said, “and all these men under us.
We’ve the need to spill blood enough for five hundred men, and we’ve only a handful of minutes to do it in.
Are you willing?”
“Willing?” Firyr laughed at the word.
“Willing and wanting, Captain.
I’m starving for a true kill.
These purple helms hardly feel worth stabbing.”
“What of the rest of you?” Oliver said, raising his voice to the final hundred belonging to Firyr.
They were some of his most bloodthirsty men, and they were without question his wildest.
“””URRRRAHHH!!””” His response came in the form of a unified cheer, with a mismatched collection of weapons, from swords, to axe, to spears, all getting thrust up high into the air.
“Very well,” Oliver replied.
“LEND ME YOUR MIGHT!
LET US CLEAR THE WAY!”
Command was in his voice now, and the men responded to it, reciprocating with an even louder shout.
They had been locked in position, fighting for the very place that they stood, surrounded on all sides.
They were all but chained in place.
Yet with Oliver’s shout, those chains broke.
They slashed out at the men around them, finding a sudden strength from somewhere.
Swords were raised, and spears were thrust out, and blood was spilled, followed by the sounds of groaning, and bodies hitting the floor, as men grasped at wounds that flesh had once covered.
Again, as one, they hit out.
THWUMP!
Their weapons fell, their might clear.
They stepped forward, clearing the space around them.
THWUMP!
Once more.
The hunger was in their eyes.
Men might have sworn that they could see the barest tint of golden flecks taint their eyes, but those same men were dead but a short moment later.
“PULL THE STRINGS!” Ingolsol called, finding his excitement.
This was a power that they’d spent years cultivating.
It was the mysterious force of Command.
An extension of oneself through the connections of their soldiers.
Ingolsol had tempted Oliver to it once, and now he reaped the joys of his efforts.
“WEDGE!” Oliver said.
That was all he needed to say.
With each blow of his mens weapons, they were more and more his.
It was a hundred men that he connected with now, and he did so directly, rather than through the proxy of Sergeants and Commanders as he usually did.
He made each one of them an extension of himself, and in each of their ears, he whispered of a power that he’d once seen.
The men twisted in the sudden space that they’d created.
They needed to fight on all fronts at once.
Only to their right, where the rest of their forces were beginning to build, did they have any stretch of freedom.
They turned themselves to face the enemy behind them, but they did so diagonally, so they could hold off the enemy to the left of them as well.
Strategically, it was a miserable way to meet an arrow headed attack, but they had no other choice.
It was might alone that they had to depend on, and it was might alone that they used with such ungodly efficiency.
“FIRYR!” Oliver said, keeping the man close.
The Syndran man was right on the edge of the Second Boundary, and he had been for the longest time.
He’d simply lacked the opportune moment to break through.
His attacking might, even for a First Boundary man was unparalleled.
Oliver timed himself to match the man, knowing how much stronger they would be if their blows were to land together.
The changing of their formation came just in time.
The Inka army that arrived to face them was a completely different Inka force than the one that they’d just ploughed their way through.
This was a force that had thought itself defeated, and now here it was, standing against the same foe that had bested it, and so soon.
They had crawled through the rivers of the underworld in order to have the chance to fight again, and the look in their eyes was different for it, as they drank in the emotions of their Rogue Commandant.
“NO MERCY!” Inka roared, waving his half-moon sword not just at his own troops, but at the ones around them.
“FROM ALL ANGLES!
ON THE ORDERS OF THE GENERAL!
TAKE THIS MAN’S HEAD, BEFORE HE CAN CAUSE ANY MORE TROUBLE!”
Inka would not have it.
He swore to himself he would not have it.
He would know no defeat.
He knew the power of an ever-victorious force.
They were armoured with the strength of legend.
As soon as that first defeat came, that legend would burst, and they would never be the same.
He would not have it.
Not only for himself, but for the people that he had sworn victory to.
He had worked hard to become a trusted Rogue Commandant of General Khan, and he was proud of that fact.
He longed to grasp glory for himself from the hands of the Stormfront Generals.
He dreamed of taking home General Blackwell’s head.
He’d had visions of it.
He was certain of it – beyond a certainty.
Icaron, the Sun God had Blessed him, and he’d Blessed him twice.
For a youth in his early twenties, Inka knew exactly what that meant – he was chosen beyond a doubt.
His Fragment spoke to him, and it told him so.
He put his heels to the sides of his borrowed horse.
He grasped his reins with enough tension to split them.
He put his will in the beast, just as he put his will in his men.
He told it what he wanted, and who to target.
He told it where to angle itself.
Straight at Oliver Patrick it came, as if it itself wanted to see him dead. freewёbn૦νeɭ.com
