A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1589 - 1589: The Dragon's Wrath - Part 1

"Can you not keep your concentrations until the job is done?" Hendrick said, with just the slightest edge to his voice. "I still do see Oliver Patrick standing, with his head on his shoulders. And, the engagement to the right… It's not set to overwhelm in a single instant. Show me the finished product, if you so wish to bicker."

There they were, right in the heart of a murky swamp, a problem of the most impossible sort. If Oliver had tried to summon up the logical mind that he had once been so proud of seeing cultivated within the Academy, and seen to it that a path was built, the despair might have overwhelmed him.

There was nothing to grasp at, no straws to pull, nothing that the eyes could draw in that might give them any sort of option.

Now the entirety of their centre was pinned down. Verdant and Blackthorn were doing battle, seeing their men commanded. Their archers had been forced to retreat, but Nila and Yoreholder continued to lead them in peppering the enemy wherever they could. The two of them picked their targets carefully, and like birds of prey, continually felled leading man after leading man.

That seemed the only true advantage that they had – the speed with which they could pick off enemy leadership. But that was far from being enough.

The fifteen hundred strong cavalry had clashed with their as of yet untested men and plunged them straight into the heart of a melee. As they had expected, their recently trained peasants had crumbled easily under that charge. It had taken the stronger, more veteran men to see to it that their formation did not disintegrate entirely. They plugged the gaps wherever they could. Allowing for the most temporary, barest stability.

It was a situation where just hanging on was about all they could do. The veteran men, though far fewer in number than the rest, shouldered the burden nearly alone for a time. They held firm like rocks against that mighty crashing of cavalry, and for minutes and minutes on end, did they resist the shattering effects that sent fissures throughout the entirety of their ranks. Right on the edge of total disintegration did they so sit, but barely did they avoid it.

In avoiding it, the shouts of their officers were allowed to have their effect. Verdant gave orders, calm and steady, micro-managing their troops, and Jorah did much the same, to an even more precise degree, seeing people in terms of their tiny three or four-man groups, whilst Verdant governed the structure of the central army in its entirety.

It was the sort of management that required men to be on the front line. Volguard could have no part in it. His orders could not reach them quickly enough, or be reactive enough, for them to have any sort of significant effect on the corrosive destruction that was being wrecked on them.

All he could do was clench his fists, and pray that their men held, just through that first charge.

Then, little by little, the tide began to turn. In a spray of blood here, a peasant found his confidence, and dared to swing the mace that he'd trained with. With a look of surprise on his face, he crushed a man's helmet and his skull along with it, staining his unstained armour in red.

Then he tried again, dumbfounded, swinging at the ribs of another enemy. He saw him howl with pain, and he felt the crunch of ribs beneath his weapon, before the man fell down to the ground, his mouth bloody from the blood that he had coughed.

'Men can die so easily…' Was a stunned realization that more than a few of them quickly made. That first act of violence was like a Boundary Break in and of itself for the soldiery. All acknowledged it, and all knew the importance of an army's blooding. One had to sympathise with the peasantry, that their blooding came so harshly, when all other soldiers would have been handed a far easier battlefield to see themselves tested.

When the blood sprayed, little sparks began. A new peasant Sergeant found his fury, and bellowed it to his men. The same voice that had reassured them in training offered them reassurance on the battlefield. They followed his example, and started with their own weapons at the enemy. Without technique, full of fear, and anger, and nothing but brute strength, they just dared to lash out, overcoming that first hurdle. And by and large, they found their success in it.

From the shoulders of the veteran men that had prevented them from crumbling, there came the changing of the tide. It was a current that lent the newer men a greater efficacy in their efforts. Without it, they likely never would have managed to get a foot in the battle at all.

What had once seemed nothing more than a mud wall began to solidify, brick by brick, strength was found, and order was sown. A magnificently shifting sort of order, for those new men changed rapidly, as they dared to reach out and find their confidence, testing the daring techniques that they had so used in training on the battlefield itself.

"Good, good…" Volguard said in relief, seeing them hold. The left flank, under Oliver, was managing to hold as well, though they lost man after man, there seemed to be an equilibrium reached. Even if it did not scream an overwhelming victory, it did seem that, at the very least, they would be able to fight the cavalry to a draw, which, in any ordinary battlefield, would have been significant enough. On this battlefield, however, it was barely a drop in a mighty dark pond.

When the enemy bowmen made their way forward, the situation began to change again. The stability that they'd achieved was under immediate threat. It was as if they had gone through the efforts of building walls, only for the purpose of giving the enemy something to set fire to.

They sent out their first volley, and Volguard winced to watch it, as it fell upon ally and enemy alike. It was a cruel display of leadership to fire upon one's own men, but in the case of the battle that the enemy was fighting, Volguard found that he had to agree with their decision. Even more strongly now, for the binding that it put them in.