A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1712 - 1712: The Emperor - Part 6

It was against their natural instincts that they had to fight in following Hod. There were frowns, and there were strong enough emotions that some men even wondered about starting back in the opposite direction.

Swift bellows from Skullic were enough to correct them. If he had his own doubts, he kept them carefully concealed, and played the part of the certain and confident young General with miraculous finesse.

Further and further they went, and that feeling coiled around their heart. The day was increasing in its lightness with each moment that went on, as the sun arose higher into the sky, but with it, the magnitude of the shadow that they feared to be their enemy did increase.

If there had been the den of a mighty dragon just up ahead, Samuel could well believe it. Nothing could have evoked such a sense of dread other than that. A creature beyond human comprehension, and here they were, following the words of a single man straight towards it, when all of them wanted to flee in the opposite direction.

Skullic's bellows came more frequently. Karstly's own shouts did not accompany them. His eyes were glassy. Not out of a lack of attention, but quite the opposite. He was engaged in the deepest of thoughts, trying to piece the situation together in his head, and trying to see matters just as Hod saw them.

They scrambled their way up through that frozen hillside, having to lean heavily on the trees for support, to combat the harshness of the slope. When they were a distance up it, the trees broke into a clearing, and the slope itself fell into a small plateau.

Here was where Hod drew them to rest. "Have them halt," he ordered through Skullic and Karstly, seeing the men drawn up on that relatively flat plate.

The men did not do so gladly. They were gasping for breath from the quickness of their march and the cruelness of their ascent, but still they did not want to stay stationary where they were. Down – that was where they were wanted. The gravity of the slope pulled them with a hypnosis that was hardly at all possible to resist.

It took a good few minutes before that dizzying sensation began to fade, though the men still stumbled on their feet, and had to be corrected by their superior officers. The morale was in shambles. Doubt was plentiful, and such was the place of a General.

"FIND YOURSELVES, SOLDIERS!" Skullic barked at them, as if truly dismayed at the sight that he saw. "DO YOU COME HERE, EXPECTING YOUR OWN STRATEGY TO BE THE WINNER OF BATTLES? OR DO YOU TRUST IN THE JUDGEMENT OF YOUR GENERALS?"

He hit the heart of an issue. They were soldiers, and even the officers were the same. Even Samuel could be accused of the same thing. He might have men under his command, but at the end of the day, he was a subordinate, and for good reason. There was an ancient structure of command that they all trusted in, that formed the foundation of all their battles. There was a reason their General was the General, and not some other, more incompetent man. A soldier that could not trust in his General was the bad seed of a failed army.

Samuel straightened himself. The dizziness was already beginning to fade, as if whatever hold had been on him had been slapped away by a stronger hand. But with it, he heeded Skullic's wise counsel. Karstly, of all men, had seen something in Hod's instructions, to the point that he had chosen to obey. Samuel had never seen Karstly bested in the likes of strategy. For all Karstly's faults, Samuel could forgive, for he knew at the heart of him, there lay a genius to Karstly that none could understand. With such a talent, forgiveness as to flaws in character had to be made.

The soldiers found themselves as well. After another handful of minutes, it was frowns that replaced the previous unrest, as if they could hardly believe what they had been so frightened of. That ominous sensation had passed, as if fog had been parted, and suddenly, there was the feeling – quite naturally – that where they stood now was well and truly fine.

There was a question on all their lips as to what it was they'd just felt. What battlefield phenomena could possibly have invoked such an example of near mass psychosis? The men muttered amongst themselves, and the officers gave each other harsh looks, daring the other man to broach the issue that they themselves dared not.

"Well?" Karstly said to Hod. "You had better explain now. We've withdrawn as you said. Point us to that which we ought to fear."

The view from that plateau where they stood might have been one of the reasons that Hod had chosen it. Perhaps he'd known it to be there from the start, with how swiftly he'd angled them all towards it, with all the true intention of a master archer's arrow.

The depression in the trees in front of them, shortcut, and stunted compared to the rest of the forest, for the rock that they grew through, allowed them to look down into the valley that was the harshness of the Skreen. It allowed them to see the battlefield that they had fought on just a short while ago, strewn with the corpses of the men that they had slain. It allowed them to see the open doors that Skullic had left in his wake too, ever so invitingly.

Hod pointed down to towards the other side of the valley, that which they had all intended to run into, by Karstly and Skullic's natural instincts, and by their own, so that they might chase down those last few routing men.

Then, the forest did stir.

It was as if a giant had groaned, and the ground itself had come alive.

A flock of nesting birds took to the air. They were black in colour, but from that distance it was hard to tell whether they were crows, or jackdaws, or some other such darkly feathered creature.

For the hundreds of them that took to the sky, from such a vast area of the forest, it gave the mightiest of impressions as to the size of the creature that had stirred under it. Along the full length, for perhaps a mile and a half, different birds took to the air, and set the trees to shaking.