A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1577 - 1577: War at the Gates - Part 1

It had been necessary to give him command of the rear. A position mighty enough that it would seem as if he was giving the young General the highest of honours. It also gave him the chance to attempt to train those peasants of his. However, he didn't know how much he trusted the young man to retreat.

When he'd first given him the post, he'd been quite certain that, above everything else, Oliver Patrick would value the lives of his men. He wouldn't risk them for mere stone, if he judged that the city to be indefensible – and according to all reports, with an army of twenty thousand Emerson men marching, it was. Yet, increasingly, now that Blackwell had worries gathering about him like flies, he worried that Oliver would choose rashness in that as well.

He clenched his teeth at the thought. "He better not," he muttered to himself aloud, drawing strange looks from his attendants. 'If he did…' Blackwell continued to think to himself. 'If he went and got himself killed, he's condemning us all. Surely, despite his pride… surely, he'll know to put his men first, as he always has before?'

The General found that the only thing he could do was put together the smallest pieces of trust towards that end. Logic didn't do much to spare the unease in his heart. He just wanted to go faster, to move his men more aggressively, at the risk of exhausting them, capturing more cities, with an increasing haste.

'Even then, the Emersons will catch us in the rear,' Blackwell knew. There was a span of a week missing. If they had a single extra week, they'd be able to go all the way. If, however, they were caught before that span of a week, the Emerson army would slow them further, and the other armies of the High King would begin to gather.

In the Skreen, Skullic had already begun his defence, and had cheerfully sent Blackwell a message that declared he would be holing up for a month, and waiting out the winter, for warmer times.

Blackwell wondered if he dared to hope that Oliver could hold out that long, before his retreat. A contradiction. A childish little notion – and yet, he did wonder. If they had just that week longer, their position would be far more terrifying than it currently was. They'd be given stability, a perch for all the gathered birds of Queen Asabel's Generals to gather upon. 'A week… Oh, Gods, dare I hope? Dare I hope that the fool doesn't do anything beyond keeping his life?'

When the enemy armies of the Emerson came, they did so to clear skies. The snow had been quiet for a number of days, and the winter sun had shone off the glistening white, like the spotlight to some grand stage. The wind did not even blow. The birds did not tweet. The whole world waited, in prolonged silence, for what it was to come.

They were an army of red. The colour of the Emerson House. The colour of Prince Hendrick's hair. The colour of the surcoats of his immediate retainers, and now, the colour of the entire army, as the deep red setting sun shone down on them.

The gates of hell could have opened, it would have seemed a less demonic sight. For the waiting lambs of the coming slaughter, who watched from the walls of Ernest, and dared to call themselves now Patrick men, they could not have seemed more terrifying.

The Gods themselves were against them with such a sight. The enemy began on the horizon, with three terrifying horsemen. Mighty men, it was easy to tell, from the grandness of their armours, and the sheer presence with which they dominated the space in which they stood. Then, from behind them, there came their demons. A line of more calvary, then foot soldiers, with spears in hands, and archers, with an endless supply of arrows in quivers on their back.

They came, enough of them to blot out the horizon, and still more came after them. Hundreds and hundreds, thousands upon thousands, a number that seemed to continue beyond what was possible. If the soldiers of the Patrick army had been told that such a number was beyond a hundred thousand, they would have well believed it. It was far too large, far too despair invoking.

Seeing such an army, it was obvious to them already – they were defeated. There was no way they could match it. For all they had learned in their few weeks of training, there was naught to be done.

There had come a certain bliss in their sparring, in their running, and in their drilling, as they dared to believe that perhaps, they too had access to that magic that seemed to swirl around hero's, that sinful little thing that men continually lusted after, that fire that changed the hardest of steel, that which their General called progress.

They could see the changes in their bodies, and in their movements. Surprise had been their only emotion throughout it all. Surprise, and the elation that went with it, when they performed feats beyond their own understandings, things that would not have been possible for them had they tried to do it.

The world had seemed to increase in its colour. The breath of the air was sharper, fresher, stinging the lungs. They had the fearful and excited looks of youths, just experiencing the world for the first time ,before the years set in, before they assumed that they could have known it all.

Their steps were light from that fear, and fast from that excitement. They hardly seemed to leave a mark in the snow any longer. They dared not to. They dared not even think of the problem that approached them. They certainly no longer dared to speak of it. They had trusted in the warmth of the moment, in the hopes that it would bring them salvation, that something would change. They dared not attack the look of the grand dragon that they were to face, for its golden eyes would most assuredly pin them in place. A casual swat from its claws and they would all perish. The flames bellowed from its mouth would set them all to burning.