A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1438 - 1438: Muddy Greatness - Part 7

With them charging Firyr from the front, and Firyr meeting them head on, Verdant pulled off the flank. Firyr had somehow managed to turn all those men into a united mass, which made their culling all the easier. With the strength that Verdant was famed for, he used the spear shaft, rather than its point, and bowled over all the men that he could.

Blackthorn rushed past him, to finish off the downed men, as if they had planned it all in advance.

Oliver blanched at the spectacle. They'd somehow managed to turn it into what seemed to be a real honest to goodness battle. They were all Second Boundary men – for the most part – that they were taking down, and they were doing so with an impossible swiftness.

Lasha made it clear, whenever she was forced to face off an enemy, one on one, that she was levels above the competition that were supposed to be of the same level as her. She hardly needed to set up any of her attacks. She could simply overwhelm the enemies with the slightest twitch of her shoulder in a feint, and then, with her speedy thrust, right up the middle. They were all powerless to stop her.

In that tournament format, Lasha's style seemed far more suited than most could hope to be. She always fought at a distance regardless, using the point of her rapier to secure wounds on her enemy. Now, needing only to deliver a scratch, she fought further away, and was practically untouchable.

Oliver dared to look around for a second – despite the risk of missing the action – to see if he could spy General Blackthorn, wondering what the man's reaction to his daughter's performance might have been. It didn't take long to find him. Queen Asabel's group had brought a small platform with that they set up just behind the crowd, so that they might peer over them. General Blackthorn stood next to her, his arms folded, and his mouth in a tight and stern line – but his eyes were aglow with interest.

The unity that had been created in the mutual hatred of Firyr quickly descended back into the chaos that the free-for-all was meant to be about. Men finding struggle in advancing in a line began to turn on each other, in realizing that their enemies were standing practically shoulder to shoulder. Once that chaos descended, Firyr himself was finally allowed to go to work.

He was reckless in his advancements, and loud in announcing his coming. He didn't manage to secure a single surprise attack on any foe. He preferred to attack them from the front, and given that he'd only recently broken through to the Second Boundary, those attacks from the front weren't nearly as easy for them as they had been for Verdant and Blackthorn.

He had to ward away their blows for a few steps, looking for advantage, though he did it all with a giant smile on his face, as if he could not be happier. Then he would surprise them, by recklessly exposing his torso to strikes, when everyone else was fighting at range, unwilling to let the slightest scratch through. That small delay was all Firyr ever really needed. His spear would sneak out, just the right amount, and tore through a man's sturdy chainmail, giving him a shallow wound across his shoulder.

The Captain – who happened to be a Karstly man, from the surcoat that he wore – cursed loudly as the Blackwell referees dove into the action, stopping it, and he threw his plumed helmet down into the mud with an angry stomp.

Firyr only laughed at him, which made matters even worse than they already were. It took five men, in the end, to restrain the Captain enough that he could be dragged from the field. But by then, naturally, there were other enemies full of hatred charging Firyr's way.

By the end of it, Firyr had only managed to secure three targets for himself, but by Oliver's eyes, that was impressive enough, given how much he'd highlighted himself, and given that all his foes were of the Second Boundary. Verdant and Blackthorn however, made that achievement seem far lesser. They took out more than fifteen men between them, and even had enough time to spare in looking after Commander Yorick, who had valiantly managed to hold his ground, winning duels against two enemies himself.

When the bell finally rang, signalling the round to be over, likely none were more relieved than the Commander of the Patrick cavalry. He sank to his knees with a deep sigh.

'Good for you, Yorick. You were worried about shaming yourself, but you've only gone and made it through a round, with Commanders and Captains as your enemy,' Oliver thought to himself, praising his Commander from a distance.

By now, the antics of the Patrick men were not going unnoticed. There was a continuous mutter of conversation about them, no matter where one stood on the plains. Some even dared to suggest that the tournament had been rigged somehow, and opponents bribed, so that the hometown army could secure itself a better advantage. Few seemed to believe that so many Patrick men and Commanders could make it through so continuously on sheer strength alone.

But then clever points were raised, about the achievements of the Patrick army in the campaign against the Verna, and those points were allowed to stew for a while, before, like all clever comments, when most are fuelled on pure excitement, they were ignored, in favour of more interesting stories.

"So far, so good, I do declare," Oliver said, nodding his satisfaction. He would have been fine with half of what his men had achieved. He'd hoped the tournament to be more for their enjoyment more than anything else, after all. But he had to admit, it did come with a large degree of pleasure to see his men win so continuously.

"That'll be that done for the day then, won't it?" Greeves said, sniffing. "We've culled through most of the entrants, and we've narrowed down the number remaining to just a few hundred. It's all going according to plan, I reckon. We've filtered the shit, and the matches that remain, we can afford to keep them in suspense."