A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1590 - 1590: The Dragon's Wrath - Part 2

The only card that he had to play to counter those three thousand men were two hundred of his own cavalry. A reckless, suicidal charge. If they dared to stay long enough to end up in a melee, even if it be against archers, they would quickly find themselves overwhelmed.

Volguard almost felt sinful giving the order, especially to the Commander that led them. He knew Commander Yorick well by now. He found him to be a mild, and pleasant man. A strangely normal soldier amongst the mighty odd Patrick men. Where the others seemed to have something that set them apart from the masses, Yorick had nothing, and he stood out more for it. His were simply the efforts of a normal man, trying to do his duty to his Lord, and trying to fight the fears of the battlefield that the ordinary man ought to have.

Quietly, Volguard found a kinship in Yorick that he could not find in the rest of them. He was a quintessential lower-noble, in many senses of the term, a position that Volguard had started his own career in. He was not the sort of man that the order for a suicidal charge should be given. He didn't have that strange magical fire, that was both a blessing, and curse. He was constant, and he was steady, and he ought to have been placed somewhere that complimented that fact.

"Forgive me, Yorick…" Volguard murmured to himself, before speaking his order to his signalmen and seeing the flags raised.

He saw Yorick's helmeted head turn in his direction, to see that raised flag. It seemed a magnificent thing to Volguard, the way he was able to press his heels to his horse, and raise his arm, barking a command to his men to follow, after only the most minor of hesitations.

All around him, Yorick could no doubt see the blood that was being spilled. He was not a part of the melee, and so, in his detachment, he likely knew better than anyone else how hopeless their situation was. And Volguard knew he felt his fear strongly. Yet there he was, able to act, able to pull himself and his men into action, charging past terror, and then into the belly of the beast, to plunge into the soft flank of those cavalrymen, with the threat of the infantry that came behind.

Seeing it, Volguard was convinced that was heroism. A normal man, doing things beyond himself. That was Volguard's sort of heroism, something that he could understand. The other feats, from the likes of Oliver Patrick and his men, he put down to them being almost a different species than he. From them, there was the sense of destiny, that it ought to happen, that they hardly had a will in whether it happened or not.

Yorick allowed himself to be reduced to a Battle board piece. From both sides of the battlefield, into both flanks, Volguard drove in the cavalry, sandwiching them between. As far as the usage of men, for a mere two hundred, they could hardly have been more effective.

That constant harassment from the archers had a halt put to it. In the same instant as the cavalry charge, Volguard had seen orders given to his own archers, under Yoreholder and Nila, to separate from the battle they were engaged in, and to move forward – and they did so unmolested. They were able to creep close, straight into arrow range, and loose their volleys.

The centre of the enemy archer formation was a ripe target for their picking, away from where they were likely to hit their own cavalry. For as few men as they had, and as far away as most of Volguard's pieces were, it was a mightily effective bit of strategy, enough so that the two Generals had to acknowledge it.

"This looks messy, gentlemen," Hendrick said, eyeing the two of them. "I thought you said this was a route without risks."

"I will acknowledge that whoever it is that commands them from the rear is a man of significant strategic skill," Fritzer said. "Yet he does not have the pieces. These are merely the flounderings of an already dead man. There is nowhere he can go from here, nothing for him to snatch. His cavalry will be slaughtered."

The meat grinder that approached in the form of the enemy infantry certainly seemed to point to that fact. Yorick could no doubt see them, and indeed, he could be caught, occasionally, looking towards them, judging the instant in which they might hit. But Volguard gave him no orders to disengage. He could not. They were a crucial buttress upon which the last of their formation rested.

For their efforts, the central army, under Verdant and Blackthorn, was beginning to find its stride. With the cavalryman having lost all momentum, they were surrounded, and butchered, man after man. Nila and Yoreholder had already done the damage they needed, in picking off their officers, and the enemy were having a hard time regathering themselves. The lack of leadership was made particularly evident when more and more isolated groups began to form. It seemed only a matter of time before the cavalry unit was squashed in its entirety.

Oliver could sense it, even if he did not look towards it. He fought as if he was staring at the ground. He saw nothing with his eyes beyond the man in front of him. He dared not. If he ever met eyes with the entirety of the dragon, that would be it.

He moved like a tiny stream, steadily wearing away at a massive rock. He could feel that his position was weakening bit by bit, that he was losing far too many of the Minister of Blades' men, and that, though matters in the center were proceeding positively, they simply didn't have enough time to have a conclusion set.

All the gathering poisons bore on his flesh with a weight that purpled him to the colour of Dominus' skin. They made him sluggish. They forced him to move slowly, with a steadiness of breath, lest he wear himself out in a single instance. It seemed not a prospect of victory any longer – it hadn't been that from the start. It was simply a question of endurance, of stubbornness, and how long he could stand still.