A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1613 - 1613: The Witch - Part 12

And then that mighty wall too was crushed, just like the hundreds of men before it. It was less like Oliver had used force against it, and more like he'd simply flown over it. The lead man certainly did not feel the impact that displaced his spear. All he saw was the spear point falling down into the earth, so severed, and then he saw white fill his vision, as that horse leapt, straight over his shield, its rear hooves kicking out as it went, slamming into the back of his head.

"Gar! Verdant!" Oliver said, collecting the last of his troops, and bringing them all together. The instant his horse had made the leap over the shield wall, it seemed defeated. Those bodyguards panickedly found themselves looking behind them, realizing that they had failed in their duty of protecting their General, and then when the rest of Oliver's wave did come, they swept entirely over them, drowning them in their might, as they too had once been drowned before, by the sheer numbers of their enemy.

Gar leapt, closer to Tussle than Oliver yet was. He tried a strike at Tussle's horse, to prevent his fleeing. Tussle's sword fell with a clang to block the blow, and he spat an insult with it. "You will not be besting me with such tactics, pup!" He snarled, his mustache making him look like an aged dog, when he pulled his lips back like he did.

From the other side, Verdant valiantly rammed forth with his spear, knowing that, lacking Gar's strength and speed, he did nothing more than open himself up to the crushing force of a counterattack, and General Tussle did not fail to deliver it.

"And be gone with you as well, Idris heir!" He declared, his sword falling, and digging deeply into Verdant's shoulder, felling him in an instant.

Oliver might have paused with worry had he not seen Verdant take a slight step back just before the blow fell. It was a nasty wound, robbing him of the ability for further combat, but it was not yet fatal. Knowing that, it didn't slow Oliver, yet in delivering it, the General Tussle had been slowed just enough.

Before Tussle could go any further, Oliver's sword found him, and came crashing down on his guard, full of all the rage and impatience that he had built up, waiting for the moment in which he could bring the battle properly to his enemy.

CLANG!

And Tussle caught the strike, turning to face him, just before it could land, the frustration was more than evident on the General's face, rising to the point of rage, for the fact that he'd been caught out as he had.

That he could stand and pose the resistance he did seemed almost unfair. To have staged the trap that Oliver, and to have waited as he had, for the opportunity to present itself, and to find the timing most swimmingly, to evaluate his men with his own Command, only to find such staunch resistance in the very General that he pointed towards – all he had managed to do was make the General sway in the saddle by the slight degree.

Such was the might of the dragon, Oliver did suppose. That he could shift the man at all came as a surprise to him. To command twenty thousand as Tussle and Fitzer did elevated them to a degree that the likes of he, and his own fledgling adoption of his troops' Command, could not hope to match.

There was no hint of panic from Oliver at that fact, though. For his was not the only Sword pointed at his enemy.

In a spray of blood, General Tussle's horse was cut out from underneath him. The hefty limb of its front leg went flying, along with a loud, sickening screech from the creature itself, as it was set to tumbling.

Mercilessly, with all the precision of a man as well practised in the sword as the Minister of Blades was, he had done his duty, and torn through, with no hint of shame, intruding on what some might have seen as Oliver's duel.

The surprise on General Tussle's face was Oliver's reward. The man had supposed he would get more of a chance to fight than he had, but the Minister had been merciless. He operated entirely on Oliver's intentions, without hesitation. When Oliver was casting his own strike, he was already diving into his. There was hardly an instant of hesitation.

Then Gar was there again, as the General was still falling, slashing at his thigh, his lips twisted upright in a wide grin, delighted to be able to land something against the man that had so harassed him.

Before him, Oliver did see the torturing of a dragon with its wing now pierced, incapable of flight. Tussle swung desperately in the direction of Gar, as he still fell through the air, trying to free up his legs from the stirrups. He needed his sword to land, to find any degree of flesh that he could, but Gar was far too swift and far too unpredictable. All General Tussle found was the empty air of where the young Sword had once been.

The wide looping blow would be his last. When the horse slammed down into the earth, shaking it from the impact, and littering the snow with its hot blood, Oliver found an opportunity of his own to slice across the General's exposed chest. The sword skidded through flesh, and then he felt it bite into bone, wounding the ribs. Even that, however, was not to be the finishing blow.

Tussle cut the stirrups away from his legs, and stumbled to his feet, in time to receive a strike from the Minister of Blades. From the way the Minister had raised his sword over his head, it seemed he'd intended to take the beheading blow from himself, but Tussle, even with his helm misplaced, and his hair matted with his horse's blood, refused to fall so easily. He grappled the Minister of Blades' sword away from him, and bulled forward with his shoulder to thrust the minister back.

But Gar was there, behind him, to mirror the wound Oliver had given Tussle on the front, sending it slicing instead across his back.