A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

It was quickly impossible to deny – those were archers in the front. Five thousand of them, at least, was what a casual glance told Oliver. The Verna bows were different to what he saw in the Stormfront. Smaller. He hoped that meant they were likely to shoot a shorter distance, but that notion too was denied.

With the twanging of thousands of bowstrings, a cloud of arrows was sent up in the air.

"PULL LEFT!" Karstly said, reacting only now. He pitched his horse left, and the whole army began to wheel with him. It wasn't the most aggressive of direction changes. It couldn't be, not when they were pulling the likes of the carts. But with the distance between themselves and the enemy, it was enough to get them out of the worst of the arrow fire.

Screams rang out, as their rank flank was tickled by the furthest reaching of the arrows, but the men they lost to such a volley was far more minimal than they ought to have been allowed – and they hadn't even needed to kill their momentum for it.

Now they were turning again, pulling straight forward, closing the distance between themselves and the enemy as the Verna reloaded their bows.

"SHIELD INFANTRY TO THE FRONT!" Came a call from the Verna side, as a man in a plumed helmet raised a curved sword to direct his men, his odd exotic accent strangely musical even as he shouted.

The shield infantry began to pitch forward. They bore different shields to the Yarmdon. These shields were heavy, and they were square. They weren't shields that would be carried in a charge, but shields that were used exclusively for defensive manoeuvres.

"LOOOOOSEEE!" Another Verna man called, wearing a similar plumed helmet to his compatriot. He stood in charge of the bowmen, and he was eyeing General Karstly down from the length of the dusty mountain passageway.

'Goodluck dodging this, greenlander,' the man said, smirking a smile of white teeth, with every confidence that he'd finally managed to pin down the slippery fish that was his enemy for the day.

As the arrows took to the air once again, Karstly pulled the same manoeuvre, but he dared to do it more aggressively this time, pulling an even tighter turn than before. It seemed unnecessarily dangerous, especially for the wagons. Somehow, though, each of them pulled through it without a lick of a problem.

Oliver wondered if it was because the wagon drivers had expected the manoeuvre this time, and were less likely to bungle it, even if the angle was tighter.

Again the arrows merely clipped their sides, barely taking a hundred men with them. The Stormfront army wound its way like a snake, pushing the distance ever closer.

The men were truly bellowing now. They could start to make out the faces of their foes. Oliver too finally caught sight of his first Verna man – a man in a plumed blue helmet with a deep olive-coloured face, waving his sword as he barked commands at the retreating line of bowmen.

Everything about them was odd to him, from the way they dressed, to the way their language sounded as their shouts reached him. What remained the same, however, was the feel of the battlefield, and the probing want that enemy eyes always contained.

Steadying his heart, he pushed himself to settle even further, feeling the battlefield more intensely, drinking in every precise detail that he could.

It was messy, as far as strategy went, but then all true battles were. Karstly had kept them cleaner than any charge like this ought to have been. Now they were approaching the line of Verna infantry at an angle, as they veered back to the left, attempting to recover from the steep turn to the right that they'd done to dodge the arrows.

Oliver's eyebrows raised, as he finally recognized the position that they'd ended up in.

Those heavy Verna shields making their way to the front, and the spears that extended out in between them – those would be monstrous walls to breach head-on. Yet somehow, Karstly had managed to present their charge to that shield wall at an angle. Giving them that slight bit of life-saving leverage that they'd needed.

He'd managed to do all that, even while limiting the casualties that they sustained from arrow fire, and in such a narrow passageway all the same.

Oliver felt a sudden respect for the man. This was what a proper General was meant to look like. All these minute details that he'd taken care of in what could have been a straightforward charge, they were what separated the likes of a General from the likes of a Captain.

"ARROW HEAD!" Karstly said, issuing his final command before their impact. "ARROWHEAD AROUND COLONEL GORDRY!"

He seemed intent on making himself the very tip of that arrowhead, for his own position remained centralized, but just behind him, there was Colonel Gordry, and Gordry's men. The Colonel began to take his own point position in the arrowhead, and his men fanned out behind him – a messy mix of cavalry and infantry.

The arrowhead placed Oliver in its upper left. It wasn't the prime point position that he was used to, but it was a better position than he could otherwise have hoped for.

"STEADDDYYY!" Gordry shouted to them. "KEEP STEADY, MEN! SHOW THEM THE MIGHT OF THE BLACKTHORN FORCES!"

He'd seemingly forgotten that the Patricks were also amongst their number as he gave that shout, but it didn't matter. The Blackthorns responded excitedly enough to make up for the entirety of their numbers. They gave their unified bellow, radiating that aggression that was so typical of them.

Oliver's own heart was beating hard, even as the orders failed to stir him, the magnitude of the situation did. So many people. So many lives. So much pressure. It was a thrill like none that he'd ever experienced.

His eyes were aglow with purple and gold, and when he opened his mouth to give his own order, he reached for his men with all the force of his Command. "PATTRICCCKKK MEN! STRAIGHT THROUGH!! SHOW THEM THUNDER!" He howled. In the place of words, passion radiated.