A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1738 - 1738: An Iron Curtain - Part 8

Several of his ribs were broken, but General Blackthorn felt it not. He shrugged off the arms of the men that were trying to help him to his feet, and with a bellow, he ran forward again.

Germanicus stood to meet him, waiting contentedly, sitting in his fury, demonstrating his might as the ruler of the forest ought to. It hardly seemed as if he just wanted to kill his foe – he sought instead for all the forest to see just why it was they should yield to him.

The glaive came for Germanicus' chest, intending to slice him in two. Blackthorn had started the strike from all the way back behind his shoulder. He landed it at a run, and then he twisted his hip through it. Any other General in the country would have been brought to their knees by it. None ought allow General Blackthorn that degree of time, or that degree of space to put that power into his strike.

Yet, King Germanicus took it, and he took it unflinchingly. His hammer held the glaive in place, stopping it did. Blackthorn was unwilling to let it end there. He twisted further, pushing down against Germanicus' guard, growling his fury, his rage, allowing entirely the Black blood to take over him, he yielded to it, and then, he added his own fury to that ancient ancestry. A young Princess that he had sworn, with a degree of hesitation, to serve – and the Queen that she had come to be. The greatness that he had seen in her. A cause beyond himself. An insult beyond him. Reason so far beyond himself, that Blackthorn was able to find more.

His hip twisted, as did his shoulder, and he forced the guard of King Germanicus down.

King Germanicus' eyes widened in sudden surprise. He'd allowed himself to be in a poor position – but then, he was the sort of man that could always allow himself to be in a poor position. He gritted his teeth, and had to steady his stance to resist Blackthorn's pushing. A test of strength is what it had turned into, rather than true combat, but Germanicus was unwilling to yield even in that. He strained, and in return, Blackthorn strained more, and continued to force him backwards.

More did King Germanicus' stance widen, till he found a position that a normal person would deem as no longer entirely disadvantageous, and only then, was he able to bring to a halt that sharp gleaming steel of Blackthorn's blade that had longed to sink into his shoulder.

But General Blackthorn was even more animalistic and feral than those creatures that Germanicus' had encountered in the forest. He abandoned his glaive readily, and seize control of Germanicus' left leg in a tackle instead.

The motion was swift, and it was sudden. The wideness of Germanicus' stance that had kept him so well routed before instead became his undoing, as Blackthorn pitched him all the way to one side, with a prowess in unarmed combat that few soldiers could match.

Oliver had heard stories of Blackthorn challenging his troops in wrestling, for hours on end. He would have them line up to fight him, and he'd go through a hundred men in the span of an hour. If it took any more than that before one of them was capable of exhausting him and grounding him, apparently Blackthorn was set to punishing them all.

It was that maddening discipline – if it could be even called that, for it seemed more like a true love of combat – that so perfected the techniques that Blackthorn utilised. An opportunity had been presented, and with all the efficiency that came with something that had been practised a thousand times over, he had the better of Germanicus, and managed to shift him, despite the man's far superior weight and strength.

Germanicus tried to route himself down, by grabbing a hold of Blackthorn's neck with his free hand. But Blackthorn had control of his leg still as compensation, and he forced Germanicus backwards one hobbling step, and then another, until Germanicus was flat against the very walls that he had climbed up.

With a motion from Tavar, the men at the bottom of the wall that had been in such a rush to see the walls clambered instead came together, to make a sort of landing platform. And it wasn't a moment too soon, for Blackthorn, with a bullish vigour pushed Germanicus right through a set a pair of crenellated squares, and when King Germanicus tried to grasp back and grab for the brick with his hand, Blackthorn slammed his gauntleted fist down heavily on those fingers, forcing him to let go.

Without even a sound, Germanicus fell. It was just a grim look of rage that he wore on his face, as he hurtled that great distance that needed such long ladders to span.

He reached out a hand on the way down, to break his fall, and he found the helmet of a comrade, and gave himself an extra bit of brief resistance from it, before he clattered into the other men that had been positioned there to break his fall.

He set them all crashing to the ground for the daring that they'd needed to support him. But Germanicus himself was back on his feet a second later, glaring back up at the top of the wall, and at General Blackthorn that peered over at him, mildly annoyed – but not exactly surprised – that such a fall hadn't killed him.

The men that had served as Germanicus' pillows groaned as they stood up as well. They seemed far dizzier and more shaken by the experience than even King Germanicus himself – yet standing they were, and apparently unharmed. All except for one man, that did not even twitch as he lay that on the floor. That was the very same man that Germanicus had reached out with a hand to grab. His neck was twisted at a rather unsensible angle, and the cause of death seemed certain enough. One life, apparently, had been offered for another.