A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1614 - 1614: The Fingers of Man - Part 1

"TUSSSLE!" Fitzer shouted, desperately trying to mobilize his troops, seeing his comrade, and his rival, tossed about between the enemy like a bear being baited by a group of knights. There was naught to be done, but he had to try anyway.

Atop the walls of Solgrim, Prince Hendrick felt his blood running cold. He prayed desperately to all the Gods that he knew the names of, his fingers clenched in prayer, yet the Gods greeted him with nothing but silence – silence and the play of one of his Generals being sent to the grave.

He saw General Patrick take those quiet steps forward on his horse, until he stood right by General Tussle's side. He saw the moment in which General Tussle's head turned, realizing that there was a more desperate threat to his side than what now came from the Minister of Blades and from Gar. He desperately raised his sword up to guard himself, and only then – as if by some strange bit of honour, despite the mismatched nature of their duel – did Oliver begin his swinging.

He feinted to General Tussle's stomach. It was such a convincing strike that Prince Hendrick flinched away from itself, desperately willing Tussle to guard himself there, before the sword could bite through his plate metal and through his chainmail and see himself gutted. Whether it was him that the General listened to, or his own instincts, the sword found itself lowered to protect that which was threatened – only to find that Oliver's blade was still paused high above, with different intentions.

To be so powerless to what was in front of them, neither Fitzer nor Prince Hendrick had felt it before – an emotion to that degree. To command an army of twenty thousand, and still lack the tools to deal with the crushing blow that so swept towards them, as the most vicious of checkmates.

For some reason, it was General Tussle's words that rang in Prince Hendrick's head, as he saw Oliver's blade sweeping in its perfect arc, to claim the man's life. "A tactic, my Prince. A tactic – it will see them trapped in place. It is that which becomes unavoidable."

When Tussle's head was cleaved from his shoulders, severed so perfectly, so mercilessly, so overwhelmingly, without there having been any obvious recourse for a counterattack, it was upon that which Prince Hendrick wondered. Was it simply a tactic that they had stumbled into, and had neglected to see, or was it something far more horrifying?

Never had a head fallen with a louder plop than General Tussle's did then. It wasn't the weight of one man's head, it was the weight of thousands. It crunched in through the icy snow, red from his own blood, and bounced, rolling between the feet of the headless corpse, before the corpse too collapsed along after it.

And so did three hundred men bellow the might of their victory. Oliver felt a rush of the likes of which he'd never felt before. His roar was less man, and more beast.

"URAHHHHHHHHHHHH!" He shouted, throwing his sword arm into the air.

"URAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" His men echoed along with him, thrusting their own weapons into the air along with it. Amongst them, a wounded Verdant, having lost his spear, thrust a banner that he had salvaged into the air, bearing the tattered sigil of the beast of House Patrick.

It was that banner, as much as Oliver Patrick and his white horse, that Prince Hendrick and General Fitzer found their gazes drawn to. With that roar to animate it, the beast seemed to come to life. It was a horrifying thing. For three hundred men to be turned into such a perfectly placed weapon – a poison of just the right dose to see one their highest killed.

Fear was the only emotion it could bring, as those cheers echoed, and saw the battlefield as frozen as the landscape around it. No Emerson man wanted to come near. The obstacle of their own General's death was too large a thing to jump over. The striking blow to their morale was immense. For as high as their morale had risen when the General had come marching out of the gates of Solgrim, it fell just as low the instant the General was cut down. The troops stirred, as if to rout. Troops in their tens of thousands, facing down a mere three hundred – and yet their thoughts were to running.

The Patrick men continued to roar, their glares pointed outwards after a time, at the soldiers around them, warning them back from a distance, making them step back even from afar. Fitzer could feel it with all his years of experience. The mighty Emerson army that he'd sewn together was about to shatter.

There was a feeling that the Gods were against them. That they stood against something mightier than man. But it was that fear more than anything. Inhuman it was, impossibly dark and worming. Fitzer felt it just as strongly as they. It was only duty that kept him on his horse, and facing forward, trying to think logically, attempting to process that death of a man that he had once deemed mighty enough to name as a rival.

The cold mind of logic was about the only thing that could possibly see his hands moved, and his strategic brain set to thinking again. He heard that roaring in his ears, and he felt the fear that came along with it,but so too could his eyes not fail to see the mass of his own army that was still gathered, waiting to be reorganized. A part of him, illogically, pointed out that if one General had been slain, then he could well be next.

It took a good amount of reassurance from his logical mind to assure himself that such a thing wasn't the case. It had been a single isolated explosion that had bound the Patrick men closely enough together to thrust as far as Tussle. It was Tussle's underestimation in stepping too close that had allowed for it. It was a trap that could only be sprung once… and yet the psychological elements of the fear that it cultivated remained nonetheless.