A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1710 - 1710: The Emperor - Part 4

The bodyguard snarled and blocked the strike. Just from that first exchange of blows, Samuel knew he could not match him. But then, he didn't have to. All around him the battlefield was erupting in chaos. Karstly's cavalry went beyond him, and tore through the ranks of infantry, flattening them into nothing. Karstly's own infantry came next, to clean up the stragglers, and to converge on the point that Karstly was fighting.

The sound of steel on steel rang out, as Karstly's sword crashed against General Satorius's guard.

"The dishonour of this, Karstly!" General Satorius shouted in that high voice of his. "Could you not challenge me to proper battle?"

"Perhaps in the next life," Karstly said, scoring a wound across the General's chest. It wasn't a deep wound, but the casualness with which it inflicted bespoke of just how much of an advantage Karstly had in the melee. The little General Satorius could not hide his alarm. He feigned a charge, rushing forward, and then he did as Karstly had done earlier, and attempted to wheel his horse around.

The lack of hesitation with which Karstly threw his sword after the man bordered on madness. If there was one thing every would-be soldier at the Academy was taught, it was not to toss their weapon away. General Karstly left himself unarmed with the sort of dead-eyed emotionless expression that another man would make himself tea.

The blade buried itself deep into the rear leg of General Satorius's horse, and brought the man crashing down to the ground in a storm of kicking hooves and squeals. He landed harshly, his feet all tangled up in the stirrups, and his horse's heavy weight crushing and spasming atop him.

Karstly leaned out over the side of his saddle, and plucked the sword from the struggling beast.

"W-wait—" General Satorius tried to say, holding a hand up, in an attempt to slow down the killing blow. Karstly's response was a simple thrust through the man's neck, ending his struggling. It was as if his eyes were directed elsewhere. He spared what should have been the grandest target on the entire battlefield hardly a second thought. He didn't even pause to watch the man die before moving on to the next problem – or in this case, returning to it.

With a sword to the back, Karstly cut down the honourable Fourth Boundary bodyguard that he had left Samuel with.

"My thanks," Samuel grunted, having been pushed further and further onto the back foot for the full extent of their exchanges. A Fourth Boundary man was no easy thing to keep busy for any extended period of time.

Given the time to breathe, Samuel was allowed to take in the state of the battlefield. Like a wave, the Karstly men had crushed the numerically superior enemy. The command chain was already shattered, with the death of General Satorius, and a good number of his officers. The back line was completely destroyed, and already, Karstly's cavalry were making their way towards those archers that had been so busy besieging the Skreen's gates.

By now, however, those archers to – and the other infantry of the frontline – had their due opportunity to note the threat that had gobbled up their rear, and they were beginning to disperse. Not as to the instructions of high ranking men, but as to the base command that all men in close to death felt – that was, the fear.

It was a full scale rout that they were witnessing, of some three thousand plus men.

The gates to the Skreen swung open with it. Skullic had responded with an impossible speed in arming his own cavalry, to see the relief that Karstly had brought duly taken advantage of. The General himself led them. They were only three hundred in number, but they were well enough placed that they could rush after those routing bowmen, and make them pay for the irritating barrage of attacks that they had peppered the walls of the Skreen with for so long.

After them Skullic and his men went, butchering those fleeing foot soldiers from the rear. They drank deeply in the blood of those troublesome foes.

Karstly herded his own men together, and gave the order for the chase. The fleeing men bumbling their way towards the same forest path – a path that Karstly had noted in advance, from the maps that he had been given. He knew well enough the choke point that it led to. Fleeing there, as they were, they were practically sealing their own demise.

By their own instincts, the enemy presented the perfect opportunity to wipe them out in their entirety. Something about that seemed to compel Karstly, more than just a normal army would. He always moved so casually, even when he had secured victory. But these piddling little mice that were left over, and scurrying away – as Samuel saw them – Karstly eyed them with a fixation. To the point that it was almost panic. When he spoke his orders to Samuel, he did so with a great degree of urgency.

"Those men must not be allowed to live," Karstly said harshly, as if they were a part of some grand picture that only he could see. As if there was something more dangerous than the battle that they had already fought and sought to put an end to.

Samuel had no questions for him. To see Karstly in such a state set his own heart pounding perilously close to fear. He could not recall the last time he'd seen such a degree of urgency from the man.

"FORM UP FOR THE PURSUIT! CAVALRY WITH US, TO THE FRONT!" Samuel said, calling back together the cavalry that had lost their formation in their chase, and bringing them into solid formation for the sake of pursuit. He did the same with the infantry.

Skullic was already about to disappear into the forest ahead of them, but Karstly shouted to him, and called him back.

"TOGETHER, SKULLIC!" Karstly shouted.

Skullic had pushed his mount all the way to a gallop. To hear that from Karstly, and to bring the order into fruition, he had to pull harshly on the reins of the beast, mistreating it far more than he would otherwise be inclined to. The two of them came to a skidding halt right on the edge of the forest, and the rest of Skullic's men slowed down with him.