A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1666 - 1666: A Captured Capital - Part 1

"Or," Tavar said. "Both King Germanicus and I can attack together, and ensure that Ernest does indeed fall."

The Chief Strategist smiled. "I didn't think you would be the one to suggest such a thing yourself, General. Are you sure that General Patrick is a man that you have a fondness for? To drag such an army to his walls, and to an area that endears him enough that he would fight twenty thousand men to defend it… That seems a cruelty."

"It seems my duty, Lord Blake," Tavar said. "That is all it is. Nothing more, nothing less. I have sworn to do all that I can, and I shall."

"I like this plan," Germanicus said. "I don't know how to plan a siege. With Tavar, I can fight. Both Blackwell, and this General Patrick you speak so highly of."

"Indeed you can, but I suppose we shall see," Tavar said.

It had taken them a good many weeks of relentless battling, but they were finally outside the magnificent walls of their intended target – the Pendragon Capital of Hirosh.

More blood, and more corpses, and more shattered cities had General Blackwell seen secured, all to pave the road all the way to the gates of the Silver King's residence.

He'd had his scouts watching it for the entirety of the week, and as far as he knew, the royal family of the Pendragons still remained behind, with the intention of seeing him defeated.

He knew too that the defenders numbered as much as twenty thousand. The surrounding cities had been emptied of the defences for the sake of seeing their King secured. That they could summon up so many men after so much battling already went to show the quality of the armies that the Pendragons were capable of summoning.

It was an equal match for the numbers that Blackwell himself had kept. Karstly had taken five thousand for his excursion towards the Skreen, to free up General Skullic, and General Blackthorn had taken another five thousand men to reinforce Ernest.

With General Broadstone at his side, twenty thousand men had seemed a more than sufficient number for capturing Hirosh. That was, until, they stood right outside of its walls, and they were forced to behold its grandness.

It wasn't a single defensive wall that they had to overcome to see the city conquered – there were three of them, each fortified with giant gates of solid wood, ribbed with black steel, that would make it mightily difficult for any battering ram to get through.

They stood on a hill, looking down on the castle, and the moat that threaded around it. Already, there were thousands and thousands of archers standing atop its high white bricked walls, waiting for them to descend, and commit their men to all that awaited them.

There was another added pressure to their victory – and that was the presence of Queen Asabel, in a carriage, to the rear of their formation. The woman looked a ghost of her former self. She forced herself to look at all the destruction that she had caused, whenever she could. The burning buildings, and the mountains of corpses – she forced herself to look at it, and acknowledge that it was her hand that dealt such deaths.

General Blackwell had protested that she was not the sole cause of this war, but she would not hear of it. As Queen, she declared, it was her duty to take responsibility for it herself. It was a noble and respectable standard for her to hold herself to. It made the men that served her – Blackwell included – burn with a fiercer passion than the alliance that bound them ought to have allowed for. But it had a mighty effect on the woman herself.

And now they stood, prepared for their final battle, and the instant in which they would point their sword at the necks of those that Queen Asabel called kin. For the sake of justice, it was her own family, and the walls of her own childhood home that she would reduce to ruins, and she forced herself to look upon it, and be present for it.

After so many battles already fought, the men were beginning to accumulate a level of exhaustion that a General couldn't possibly ignore. They were forced to march endlessly, so as to outspeed the reinforcements that would soon enough come from the High King's crown. Blackwell had them fighting on the very edge of the nice. He pushed their strategies to the limit, taking an impossible number of risks and gambles in order to secure faster victories. That they had not succumbed to any major defeat because of that seemed almost a miracle, and Blackwell might have celebrated it as such, if he had not known to praise his Generals instead.

Karstly and Blackthorn – they were the sort of men he could simply let loose, and they would continually return with trophies beyond his expectations. To fight with them, and to command them was a thrill that Blackwell had to take measures to ensure did not overcome him. For Blackthorn especially – with the rivalry that they held. To stand in the position as the man's commander. It was a dangerous place to be.

Broadstone and Rainheart seemed to shine less when compared to the genius of their colleagues, but they were far from being weak. They were ever reliable, ever strong. The war would have been a far harsher effort if not for them.

The soldiers that they all commanded had been sharpened too, in the same way that they had been exhausted. They had become intensely accustomed to war and to battle. There was an efficiency to them now, reminiscent of the well oiled gears of a castle door.

The Pendragons had saved their finest General, in Pedidarius, exclusively for the defence of their Capital. Such was the man that Blackwell had fought his rather swift and overwhelming campaign against, for Pedidarius had seen the defence, as a whole, organized as well – though he did so from a great distance, on the fact that the Pendragon King would not allow him to leave.