A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1672 - 1672: A Captured Capital - Part 7

From atop the walls, Captain Kamly heard the call, and he gave a cry of his own. "PUT STRENGTH IN YOUR ARMS, MEN!" He said. "THIS WILL BE THE LAST BATTLE THAT YOU FIGHT!"

Broadstone shifted his army ready into position. What awaited what should have been the most perfect of flank-side engagements, was instead a spear wall of such tightness that water itself would have struggled to get through. When it came to the art of defence, few could equal Broadstone. That was just as true in the open field of battle as it was inside the castles that he was known so well for defending.

The cavalry rippled down the hill. Thousands of them. Broadstone and Blackwell both had remarked on the lack of horsemen that they had seen throughout their campaign. Though it was mostly sieges that they engaged in, so they had both dismissed it as the enemy ridding themselves of unnecessary mouths to feed, in the form of those extra few thousand beasts.

Now a different sort of intention was revealed. A plan spanning weeks, and months. A plan that had sacrificed cities, and towns, and the heads of great Generals. A plan that had been built, exclusively for the purpose of landing a single fatal attack on Blackwell himself.

The man could feel it. His mouth was open like a dog's, and saliva flew through the air behind him as he rode. Pedidarius had managed to get a handle on him. He had read General Blackwell as if he were a book. He had seen through his personality, through his strategy, and he had guessed, at every stage, what it was he might do. He had known from the start that he would be unlikely to beat Blackwell if he tried to match him head on – he had known especially that his chances were increasingly dismal when General Karstly and General Blackthorn were present. He had awaited all his time for the perfect opportunity, and now, as if the very Gods themselves were on his side, he had elected to take it.

The world could not have felt more momentous, with the winds howling the way they were, the snow falling, the night coming. Pedidarius must have felt as if he operated with the exclusive blessing of those beings that watched from above. It was a feeling that Blackwell himself knew well, and had Blackwell been any other man, he might have fallen victim to it.

But Blackwell was haunted by something that he would much rather have tossed aside if he could have. It was to the point that he felt like he was two people in the same body. That old lineage of House Black was not an easy thing to keep under control. It kept his face tight, and strained to hold it in – but when he let it loose, it mattered no longer. All the predictions of his enemy, all that they had supposed him to be, he was something else entirely. He was a different man that they were fighting. A ghost of the past. Such was the man that General Pedidarius was forced to meet.

"Don't be prey to the winds, men!" Blackwell shouted. It was madness that he spoke – and though he hated to admit it, likely only Blackthorn would have understood what he meant. For it was with the voice of House Black that he spoke with. Yet with Command in his voice, even that became a mighty battle cry, and for the fact that they did not understand it, the resonance he achieved with his men seemed to be all the higher.

There was blood in the air. They moved like hungry beasts, sensing something underwater, the slightest little drop of iron-red. They seemed to realize what their General had done, what it was that he had predicted, and the upper hand that it had snatched, and they moved with all the assured confidence and elevated arrogance of men that had chosen to fight under the winning side.

"BE A CASTLE WALL, SOLDIERS!" General Broadstone bellowed to his men. It was difficult to count the number of cavalrymen coming his way, given the darkness, but he made assumptions that they were nearing over ten thousand of them – and it was spear points that would meet them.

Those cavalry men had come galloping forward with the intention of catching them off guard, but even now that they found a fully formed spear wall in front of them, ready to take them on and skewer them, they could hardly slow, with so many of their comrades rushing on behind.

It was a noble Captain amongst their order who took the leader. He ducked his head low to his horse, and gathered himself, with sword in hand, to cut straight through the ranks of spearmen. "WE'LL TEAR THEM STRAIGHT THROUGH!" He declared, and his men echoed that sentiment behind him.

When the two sides collided, it was a nasty mess that the Captain made, despite the length of the enemy spears that he had to fight past. Still, his horse was taken from him in the process, even if he had a hole cleaved through the Broadstone ranks for it.

He gave that opening to his men, and landed with a roll, sword in hand, amidst Broadstone's number to see that hole widened even further. But before his allies could take advantage of it, Broadstone was there, in person, on the back of his own horse, swinging a glaive down, and ending a valiant struggle as contemptuous as a toddler might stamp an insect. The hole was more than blockaded by his presence. Any that attempted to swim through that gap were met with their demise by the hands of the General personally instead.

Blackwell watched in glee. It was like seeing a river pound of the solid stone of a newly reinforced embankment. They didn't have a chance. The cavalry could make no ground going forward, and so they were forced sideways instead. It didn't matter where they went, not truly. It didn't even matter if they failed to break through, by Blackwell's eyes. The only job that Broadstone had needed to do was slow them, and he had achieved that mightily.