A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor-Chapter 1001 - General Khan’s Head - Part 7

1001: General Khan’s Head – Part 7

1001: General Khan’s Head – Part 7

Just beyond Verdant, Blackthorn managed to achieve the same.

Hers was not a clattering blow of overwhelm, so much as a carefully poised strike, her thin rapier slipping through the tiniest cracks, with a speed and accuracy that even Oliver would have struggled to rival.

She found a soft spot beneath the man’s armpit, and ran her sword through the back of his lung.

Such accuracy she achieved on her galloping black horse – and she made it look easy.

Between the three of them, a hole was secured.

Then Firyr was there – the recently ascended Firyr – creating even more havoc.

He was the chisel into an already cracked rock, and the Blackthorn men speeding up behind him were the hammer.

The violence and aggression that the Blackthorns were famed for was quickly made evident.

Many of them streamed through the gap that had already been made, using their spears to target the enemy from the sides, where their shields were less effective, opening it up even wider, but others still ran straight at the shield wall itself.

Even with the apparent immovability of those heavy Verna shields for the typical soldier, the burly Blackthorn men were undeterred.

They slammed in with spear points first.

The points scratched lines across the smooth metal surfaces.

Some points managed to slip towards an arm, creating the slightest crack.

Others were effectively pinned in place.

Even when they couldn’t find flesh, the Blackthorn men didn’t stop their charge.

They ran down the length of their spears, until their shoulders were thundering against the shields, and then they were drawing their swords, and reaching down over the top.

There was a madness to those men.

The sort of madness that takes over an angry bull.

They never left formation, not even for a second.

It was as if to leave formation was a greater fear to them than death itself.

But even with such structure, they managed an aggressiveness that the best of Oliver’s men would have struggled to match.

They were very much the tools of an attacking General.

As their charge ploughed forward, the arrows continued.

Yorick’s men continued to hold up their corpse shields, in the hopes of catching all the arrows they could, but inevitably, some still strayed through, and men were caught mid charge, felled by stray arrows coming from the side.

Now too the shield wall behind them was closing in.

Step by step, they exerted their pressure.

They closed the gap slowly, not allowing the slightest of cracks to form between their shields.

They maintained their formation and their strength all the way, slowly but surely exerting their pressure, and putting a time limit on the Patrick forces’ attempt at escape.

The charge slowed just as quickly as Oliver had feared that it would.

He managed to breach the second line, but only barely.

Claudia’s power carried him, but even that to now was beginning to fade.

Soldiers were pressing in on all sides, suffocating them, and limiting their movement.

Verdant and Blackthorn were forced to fall in behind Oliver, making him the point of the arrowhead.

The harassment from the soldiers on their sides occupied them too much for them to dedicate all their efforts to the front.

Now even as Oliver cast a man aside on the second rank, there wasn’t enough space for his men to file in after him.

The Verna had the time they needed to quickly close the gap, and then Oliver was back in that same position that he’d started in, only now he lacked the momentum that he’d once had.

He was all but pinned in place.

If it wasn’t for the thunder of the approaching hooves, he might even have been inclined towards a slight degree of panic.

Even if he hadn’t known that he had allies approaching himself, the stirring of fear from the Verna, as they felt the presence of Lombard’s men behind them would have warned him.

“Aren’t you looking the wrong way?

Turn around,” Oliver said, his lips curling into a wolfish smile, and his eyes betraying golden flecks.

He said it with Ingolsol’s authority.

He grasped three hearts full of fear, and three men turned around as one, ever so slowly, their armour rattling as they went, and their shields dragging along the floor.

There they saw the one-armed Captain.

The aged Lombard, leading by the front, as he always did.

His men flew the flag of Blackwell, and they raised it high as they approached.

“Forward!” Lombard declared calmly, angling his sword straight towards where Oliver lay.

Forward he said, and forward his men went.

A hundred cavalry was what he led with, and he had two hundred spearmen streaming behind them, keeping pace remarkably well, all thanks to the encouragement shouted by the bearded Tolsey – or at least, in part.

The men in the third rank began to turn to meet the new threat.

They had no other choice but to do exactly that, but to do so only hastened their demise.

With a sweep of Oliver’s sword, he cut down the men that he had puppeteered, and before Lombard even hit the line, he’d done the same for the men in the third rank that had dared to turn their backs on him.

To the side he charged, widening the gap, supporting the efforts of Blackthorn.

Firyr and Verdant went to work on the other side, and the Blackthorn soldiers crept in like a tide of water into all the sections where cracks had appeared.

Bit by bit, the ranks of shield-wielding soldiers were torn apart.

When Lombard’s attack hit, he swung it to the right, at the last second of impact.

The Patrick men were already freed, for all intents and purposes, but Lombard knew that such opportunities to thin the enemy ranks would not come often.

He was a rare Captain who thought in terms of the entirety of the battlefield.

He knew that Lord Blackwell would have to fight General Khan sooner or later, and all those forty thousand men that he commanded.

If he could do war against even a hundred fewer of them, that might make all the difference.

“Widen it, Patrick!

Make use of your charge, and flatten what you can!” Lombard shouted to him.