A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor-Chapter 1006 - The Counterattack - Part 5

1006: The Counterattack – Part 5

1006: The Counterattack – Part 5

Oliver had heard cheers before.

From his men, more than not, as they saw his feats in battle, or their seized glory of their own, but never had their cheers sounded quite like this.

These cheers were almost rhythmic, almost musical.

One side would bellow his excitement, and another, as if to respond to him would respond in a different tone, a different meaning implied in the unit’s shouts.

There had been the stress in Oliver’s mind of careful consideration.

That which he’d been taught by Volguard, of strategy and the like.

Always, he kept part of his attention on his men, and he tried to keep part of his attention on the battlefield too, using Ingolsol’s awareness.

But now, he was swept up in something that didn’t allow for his own individual thought.

He was riding the current of the river.

Even if he’d wanted to stop and change direction he was unable to.

It was the picture that General Karstly had created, and there was an undeniable pull about it, and that pull was continually building, subordinating the entirety of those two thousand men to his will before they even knew what had happened.

Oliver didn’t feel a leader, he felt a soldier.

It was almost like there was the heat of the sun at his back, something greater than he shining down on him, urging him forward.

It was his first true glimpse of what a General’s Command could feel like, and it was a glimpse that made him feel far smaller than he’d felt before.

It wasn’t an unpleasant feeling, however.

Not the Command – that was far from unpleasant.

But nor too was the feeling that came with glimpsing new potentials.

Of realizing that he wasn’t nearly as advanced as he’d almost dared to believe.

There was excitement there, the sort of excitement that came with the realization that he could grow stronger still.

He gave into the Command, and he joined in the shouts himself, slashing at men with a power that went beyond his own.

It animated him, and made each blow feel more weighty.

He even threw strikes differently than he normally would.

It was neither the Style of Overwhelm, nor a style that attempted to imitate the chaoticness of a monster.

This was something else, a flourish in each movement that he normally was not prone to.

“Disgusting,” Ingolsol growled.

“This feeling disgusts me.”

Only Ingolsol gave his voice of dissent towards the sensation.

He hated to kneel to any other man, and Command was exactly that – it was what men kneel without tyranny.

It was a mutual acknowledgement of subordination, unspoken by words.

They breached another wall of shield wielders as if they were nothing.

They plunged three ranks deep in the span of an instant.

Blackthorn and Verdant were just as animated as Oliver, as were the men under them.

But it was Firyr that really seemed to be enjoying himself.

It was as if he’d spent the last week resting.

Though on foot, he was anywhere and everywhere, racing all over as far as his energy would carry him.

“Close up the front gap!” Came Jorah’s shout.

He too was demonstrating a combativeness that was often overlooked in him.

Of course, he was beneath Karesh and Kaya in one one-on-one combat, but not at all by much.

It was times like this, in the midst of a charge, when he made such a thing obvious.

His spear caught men with such force that it lifted them up off their feet.

In the face of such an overwhelming charge, the enemy ranks seemed almost silent.

They were moving, and their movements were evident from the dust clouds that they were creating, but none of them seemed willing to come forward.

A wall of spearmen came after they breached that shield wall.

Their long spears pointed out dangerously, warning off the cavalry.

They were exactly the sort of thing that should have stopped Karstly there and then – but even those his sword cut through.

Their points did not even manage to glance at his horse before he was through.

As soon as that gap was created, it only widened, as his other cavalrymen followed in after, attacking from the side.

Since breaching the shield wall, the enemy seemed almost silent.

Khan drew his men back, and created space.

He seemed to be a master of doing that.

With his men, he very much controlled his formations as if they were a maze that his enemies had to get through.

Then the archers came, as every instinct in every man screamed they would.

They sprang up from both the left and the right, tossing their volleys into the air.

They punched holes through the flanks of the charging Stormfront forces, felling man after man.

Even that, though, hardly seemed to matter.

Karstly merely continued to charge, ignoring the pattering.

Within the span of minutes, he’d already exited the formation that General Khan had worked so hard to construct, worming ever closer still.

“General…” Yadish said, breaking the silence, after General Khan had stood silent for a while.

He did not yet want to make assumptions, for General Khan often created the most complicated of battleboards, but it was his ability to wade through that complexity that brought him victory.

This did not look like victory for Yadish.

The enemy was too close.

He didn’t recall a single instance when General Khan had ever let the enemy come this close.

“Your worry betrays you, Yadish,” General Khan responded with quiet confidence.

“In the position of greatest danger, the true defence mounts itself.

Sometimes it is prudent to take a blow with the thickness of one’s head, rather than to run from that blow’s consequences.”

“…You mean to let him come?” Yadish said, thinking that he understood.

It was the only solution that made sense.

The way Khan had manoeuvred his forces, it seemed as if he’d given up on halting General Karstly’s path.

He’d drawn them back, to create more space, but there was only so much space he could create across the width of the passageway.

It wasn’t the same circumstances as the endless roadblocks that he was able to utilise along its length.