A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor-Chapter 1026 The Lonely Mountain - Part 2

1026: The Lonely Mountain – Part 2

1026: The Lonely Mountain – Part 2

Karstly snapped his fingers at that.

“Aha!

Indeed.

We’ve already begun the weaving of a beautiful poem.

The stories of our victory will be sung for decades to come, even by those who hold no love for the battlefield.

Indeed, you are quite right, we ought to continue with where we left off.”

“With exhaustion?” Samuel said, not at all following. freewёbnoνel.com

“Exactly,” Karstly replied.

“We shall push the weary, and we will create opportunity out of their overcoming.

Find Lombard, and find the Patricks.

The story of the battle with Khan still lacks its ending.

We will use the momentum that we’ve already built.”

So it was, in short order, on another one of Khastly’s whims, that Oliver found himself at the head of the formation, just beside the General himself, with Lombard to his other side.

Again, they were to be utilised, but in what way, Oliver knew not.

He gripped the hilt of his sword as often as he could, trying to accustom himself to the feel of it in his left hand.

It was not a blade that was meant to be wielded with a single hand, given the space on its hilt, but it was more than light enough to be done anyway.

‘I just need the most basic of strikes,’ Oliver told himself.

He wished he’d had a chance to practise it before battle, but of course, with the eyes of so many men, there was little chance of that.

And so it was in his mind that he ran his simulations, continually assuring himself that it would be fine.

Even if it was unfamiliar, it was not as if it was entirely removed from all that he’d trained.

“Are you rested?” Lombard asked Oliver, giving him an odd look.

“As rested as I can be,” Oliver said.

“…But your hand bothers you?” Lombard said.

“Have you sprained it.”

The question came after barely five minutes of being beside Oliver.

They’d exchanged pleasantries, but they’d done no more than that.

It was not the sort of thing that Lombard should have been able to conclude so quickly.

“So you intended to hide it,” Lombard said, drawing his conclusion from the time it took Oliver to reply.

“You are not as subtle as you think you are.

The bandage is obvious enough, even with your sleeve pulled down over it.”

“Patrick,” came Karstly’s sudden interruption.

“How reduced do you suppose your fighting strength to be?

You, personally, I mean.”

“My strength?” Oliver said.

“What with your hand and all,” Karstly said.

He asked it without truly looking in Oliver’s direction, as if he was only giving him a fraction of his attention.

Lombard raised an eyebrow pointedly, as if to cement his earlier point.

There was no hiding it, it seemed.

Oliver’s cheek twitched in an effort to contain himself.

He supposed he could only be glad that they’d opted to bandage it at all.

At least then Lombard had been unable to conclude the true extent of the damages that he’d suffered.

“I do not think it will be reduced by much,” Oliver said.

“You think, or you hope?” Karstly asked, sparing him but a single glance.

“Hope it is then.

A vicious sprain it must be.

You’re rather adept at hiding pain, it would seem.

So skilled to the point that it becomes obvious.”

Whatever exactly that meant was beyond Oliver.

He opened his mouth to protest.

“Relax, my little Captain,” Karstly said.

“You’ve already stolen a main role for yourself in your battle with Khan.

You have exhausted yourself, and your men, and injured yourself in the process.

Your injury only makes you more useful to me, not less.”

Now even Lombard was wearing his doubt on his face.

It would have been an understatement to call Karstly a strange man.

“I do delight in that look,” Karstly smiled.

“Would that I had more time with the two of you, your reactions would make my day so much more pleasant.”

“Your strangeness would infect them within the course of a week, General,” Samuel said.

“They’d be swept up in your rhythm in short order.

They’d lose even the room for exasperation.”

“Somehow, from these two, I quite doubt that,” Karstly said.

“They’re a rather individualistic pairing.

But I suppose I shall admit to my strangeness – but only to a degree.

I will not wear all your accusations so easily, Samuel.”

“Wear them or not, my Lord, I fear they are true all the same,” Samuel said.

“Well, that is the nature of belief, isn’t it, attendant of mine?

You are so very sure of yourself, and I imagine that feeling for you holds a considerable amount of weight.

However, for me, it means very little, if nothing at all.

If your words do not sing with reason, I lack interest.

I shall tell you what does interest me though,” Karstly said, smiling, as he reached up and pointed a long gloved finger at the mountain top ahead of them.

“Claiming that from the hands of the weak.”

“…I have to admit, my Lord, lacking sleep as I am, it grows increasingly difficult for me to keep up with you.

You’ll have to forgive my lack of a riposte,” Samuel said.

“That would not change even if you had slept a week,” Karstly replied.

“But that is part of your charm.

Now, silence, if you would.

All of you.

Allow me to concentrate.

Quite how should I open this act – that is the decision I must make.”

The General put an index finger to either side of his head, and closed his eyes in an expression of concentration.

‘He’s strange…’ Oliver could say that for a certainty now.

The General seemed to have given up any pretences, and was now acting as he likely normally did.

This was General Karstly in the flesh, as eccentric as they came, as this was his style of battling.

The way he spoke of what needed to be done was unfamiliar to Oliver.

He used terms that were ill-suited to strategy.

He spoke of poetry, rather than advantage.

It wasn’t the sort of manner of speaking that Professor Volguard or General Skullic had ever fallen towards when they’d discussed matters of the battlefield with Oliver.

In fact, he had a sneaking suspicion that this was likely a perspective entirely born out of Karstly’s own eccentricities.