A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1711 - 1711: The Emperor - Part 5

"…You hesitate," Skullic said, as Karstly rode up to join him.

Karstly gave no reason as to why in that. Skullic eyed the forest as well. "Something tells me you were right to hesitate. Will we give pursuit regardless?"

"The threat is from behind," Karstly said, looking over his shoulder. "All points to that, no?"

"I am in agreement," Skullic said. "It's likely a large thing. Forward is our best option. My men will draw the gates to the Skreen closed, and we can crush whatever it is that appears against its walls."

Karstly nodded, but he did so without his usual smile. There was a tension that Samuel could not get on top of. Karstly and Skullic spoke a language that he didn't understand. They saw things that he and the ordinary soldiery did not see.

"Then, we shall make haste," Karstly said. "Let us keep ourselves together, General, and surround ourselves with our strongest guard."

"Due precautions," Skullic said. "I will agree then."

Then, into the shadows of the forest, where the enemy were already growing quiet, did they dare to step, disturbing the low-hanging branches of pine trees, dumping dustings of snow on their own heads as they went.

"WAIT!" Came a bellow from behind them – the same direction that Karstly had feared their attack would be in. Samuel felt his alarm rise. He wheeled his horse around, ready to fight. Much of the other men did the same. They felt their General's wariness, and hardly understood it, and so it was to the smallest of sounds that they did so jump.

But Samuel saw not the grand army, nor the grand threat that he was expecting. Indeed, he did not see a single sword, nor a single armoured man. There was only one figure, mounted, with no sign of weaponry, save against the weather, for the long fur coat that he wore, with a fur hood that obscured his face.

He cast that hood downwards as he got nearer, crossing the battlefield where Skullic and Karstly had left so many corpses littered. He rode not like a man with great experience or comfort on the back of a horse. Indeed, it seemed more as if the horse was the one doing the racing, and he was hanging on.

If Samuel had not recognized that face, Karstly gave a name for him. "…Minister Hod," he said, his eyebrows raising. That was true genuine surprise from the man – another rare emotion to be seen on Karstly's face.

"Minister!" Skullic called out, far more familiar with Hod than any of them were. "What brings you this far, and in the midst of battle?"

He shouted it almost casually, but that was not a casualness that Hod echoed.

"TURN YOUR ARMIES AROUND, NOW! SKULLIC, WITHDRAW YOUR MEN FROM THE SKREEN!" Hod shouted. "I PRAY TO ALL THE GODS THAT YOU HAVE YOUR INFANTRY READ – WE NEED TO MOVE, AND NOW!"

Skullic wasted no time. He gave the order, filling his lungs with it. "MEN OF THE SKULLIC ARMY! ABANDON THE CASTLE, AND JOIN ME HERE ON THE FIELD!"

He acted first, though he likely had just as many questions as Samuel and the rest of them did. "KARSTLY!" Hod said. "DO THE SAME! WITHDRAW THESE MEN FROM THE TREELINE!"

Karstly didn't understand. It was evident enough on his face. He looked towards the trees, and his eyebrow twitched. He had seemed so certain that the threat was due to come from Hod's direction, but Hod's orders pointed entirely the opposite way. It was not within Karstly's usual frame of action to trust the judgement of another man above his own. For a moment, Samuel almost feared that he would deny his request in his arrogance. He felt himself growing cold with terror from that prospect.

But the Gods must have shown mercy, for Karstly raised his hand, and gave the signal for a withdrawal. His men came with him, almost gladly. Minister Hod was no commander. His voice did not carry that weight of Command over ordinary troops. To them, he must have seemed a stranger and a mad man. But even if they knew not the identity of the man who rode on the back of that horse, they could hear strongly the warning that he bore, and the certainty that he gave that warning with.

Skullic's men streamed out of the open gates of the Skreen. There weren't an awful lot of them, for how long they had held Satorius' army at bay. Three thousand in total was what the reports had said, and indeed, it seemed to be three thousand at most that joined them on the field, rushing at a quick march to sit themselves in formation under Skullic's orders.

Even when they made it to trees, on the other side of the battlefield, and were stood eyeing the forest that Hod had labelled as so dangerous, the Minister did not seem inclined to let them rest. He impatiently waited for Skullic's men to fall into formation, and then, he pushed them again.

"We withdraw, now," Hod said. "It matters not where. We simply cannot stay here."

He looked to Karstly. "Any objections?" He pressed, supposing, quite rightly, that if there were to be a complaint, it would come from Karstly's side. Skullic knew him well enough to trust him.

"If you give me a name of our enemy, I will follow you," Karstly said.

"Then have it," Hod said. "His name is Tiberius, and he names himself Emperor."

With those words, Hod found his agreement in Karstly, though the man did look back towards that forest where Hod declared the danger to be, and he did so with the glassy eyes of a man that held a certain degree of longing. He clutched the hilt of his sword tightly, not entirely believing, but believing just enough that he would move.

The further away they moved, the more this sense of dread began to build up in Samuel and all the other men. It was as if they were moving against a river's current, in the most unnatural of all ways. That same river wanted to see them drowned for the impudence, and their lack of logic.