A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1576 - 1576: Where The Dragon Lies - Part 5

He held no particular love for Ser Patrick, from what his younger brother Tory had told him of the man from his time at the Academy. Hendrick Emerson was several years older, in late twenties by now, and had not had the opportunity to spy Oliver Patrick at the Academy himself. Of course, he had heard rumours, and what he heard didn't exactly thrill him. He did note the young man's achievements, however, but only with a certain degree of contempt, foreseeing an overly ambitious youth that had begun to get ahead of himself.

He'd attended the Academy himself with similar such minded youths, those that appealed to achievements above all else, and each one of them, without exception, was now dead, after having bitten off more than they could chew. Emerson preferred to take his life easier, more steadily. He performed his duties, and he performed them as well as could be expected, without exerting himself in his entirety. It was with such an attitude, that he once more assumed command, in his father's name.

"You will take with you Generals Tussle, and General Fritzer, and twenty thousand good men beneath them," King Emerson continued. "You will do this task with dignity, and without excessive risk. Take Ernest, and come at the Pendragon territory from the south, and this war will be as good as over. It is the aftermath that we will need to worry about."

"As you wish, my King," Hendrick said, standing now, and giving once last bow.

…

…

Flames arose from the city of Berth, beyond the wooden doors that they had seen knocked in and shattered.

Bodies littered the streets, as Blackwell's horse trotted down them. He would have been lying if he said there wasn't a single civilian involved with the dead that they'd seen inflicted. But, as he'd said when he'd ordered his men to make the charge, any man that still remained in the city, to resist their advances, was to be labelled an enemy.

He knew that Queen Asabel wouldn't like it when she heard. For her benefit, they'd sent warnings to each city that they planned to attack ,ordering the defenders to send away their weak and vulnerable under a curtain of peace, before the main army arrived, and saw their city put to the torch.

They listened, it seemed, but even with such warnings being sent, not everyone was inclined to take them seriously. Some civilians remained, under the delusion that they would be safe. They eyed the stone of the walls of Berth, and thought that, unlike the cities before it, it surely would be up to the task of seeing them well defended. Alas, they had been wrong.

With five thousand men, Blackwell had been able to calmly see it stormed, against three thousand defenders.

It was a victory worthy of note, given the difficulty in overcoming the defences, even if the enemy were numerically superior. He'd put to death the defender of the city himself, by his own sword.

And, he knew, to the north and to the south, in cities beyond the distance that his eyes could see, General Karstly was leading an assault of his own, as was the General Blackthorn, with five thousand men each to them.

It was a steady advance, a steady conquering, and still it was too slow for any of them to be truly satisfied by it. By now, they had heard that the High King was gathering his forces, and he knew soon enough the size of the army that would be confronting his rear.

Still, the Pendragon Capital loomed a great distance away, a giant shrouded in fog, as of yet out of reach, no matter how quickly they snatched up cities, and put them to the torch. By Blackwell's own calculations, they would not make it in time. So it was that he saw himself taking more and more risks.

His men could sense his tenseness. He saw that in the touchy way they engaged with those that had surrendered the city. The slightest little flinch of shadow, and spears would flash, with innocent men being put to the ground, their blood watering the cobbles. Blackwell would have seen them disciplined in different times, but he knew it to be the state of his own mind that had led them towards that.

He stroked his beard, in the centre of the city, looking upon the city that he had taken, and the city that he would quickly be leaving behind, with no use for it.

There was a temptation to see all that was there burned, so that it would not fall into the hands of the enemy when they eventually came for them. But to do so would be to ignore the grand plan – and hopeful plan, as it had now become – of controlling all the Pendragon lands under the Asabelian crown.

If they could not hold on to that hope, of securing that slightest little quarter of the Kingdom of the Stormfront for themselves, then their campaign would have no hope. And so, even though his instincts told him to crush all that he left behind him, so that it would not fall into the hands of the Emerson army that would almost certainly be approaching them soon enough, he had to stay his hand.

He would have his men camp in the city that, he thought, and by morning, it would be left behind. The flames that he had spread were only sufficient enough to storm one of the gates, leaving the repairs, for whoever were to capture it next, an easy thing to solve. It all went against his better nature. But it was a magnitude of problem that did not allow him to control all aspects of it, and so he had to caution himself continually against that discontent, and the rash action that was likely to come with it.

Thoughts of rash action, and seeing his twitchy soldiers fly into blind panics at the smallest of things, brought to mind thoughts of Oliver Patrick. If there was a part of their plan that worried him even more than the fact of the time limit that they were quickly running against, it would be Oliver Patrick.