A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1748 - 1748: A Long Slumber - Part 5

They rushed, intent on plunging their weapons into open backs. But a reckless creature stood in their way. Gar practically leapt over the wall of men, into a crowd of twenty, in order to see their backs covered.

He fell upon a soldier from above, and sent him crashing down the stairs after he had buried his sword in the man's chest.

Kaya came down the stairs after him, choosing a more sane route, in threading through their own men. But his fighting was still just as reckless. He took risks that he needed not to, buoyed by Oliver's Command. He ducked a blow, and punched a man with a dagger fist right in the stomach, before pushing him over the side of the stairs, down towards a terrifying fall.

Bit by bit, between the two of them, and with Nila's covering arrow fire, they thinned those numbers of escaped men, and saw order resorted.

When the number dwindled all the way down to five, the men started to run, seeing salvation in the open streets of Ernest, they attempted to run to the bottom of the stairs, in the hopes of losing their pursuers. After all, from the start, their goal had been to get down into the city. Even if just a single one of them managed it, they could cause a degree of chaos for a good while to come.

But there was none that could outrun Gar. He slashed at the hamstrings of fleeing men, and at their backs, and brought them down, one after the other. The second that they had shown their backs to him, they had only hastened their own demise.

At the top of the steps, the story was no different. The landing point that had seemed so unbreachable before was now all but shattered. Those Second Boundary men that had caused so much trouble were left butchered where they stood. The last few pockets of men were engulfed, and the rest were driven back towards the wall and towards their own ladders.

With Jorah keeping his head, he saw those inspired troops directed down the most efficient routes that he could see. He was having the stronger men dislodge the ladders even whilst fighting was still going on. He turned what was already an overwhelming charge into something that instead became an overwhelming victory – the sorts of which rippled down the entirety of the northern wall.

They threw down ladder after ladder, sending Tavar's reinforcements crashing down to the snowy ground. Such was their energy, that by the time all the men nearest to them were dealt with, the soldiers were still rushing around, looking for more to slay.

It seemed almost as if the degree of might that they'd used to crush the problem that they'd been faced with was too much. That they could have been successful with a far lesser degree. And that was a feeling that might have carried a mighty degree of truth. For even though Oliver found himself in the middle of a group of cheers men – and even though he was able to take command of the northern wall to such a degree that he was able to ensure total victory for it, to the point that not a single ladder or soldier anymore remained along its walkways, he was still as far away as he could possibly be from reinforcing General Blackthorn against the even larger problem that the man faced.

Helplessly, did Oliver watch.

He looked desperately along the full length of the northern wall for anything that he might use to try and bring an effect on the other side of the battlefield. He needed something, anything, to try and reach as far away as General Blackthorn was.

But all he had was his victory, and the elation of his men. They seemed to know not what a dire state the other side of the Battle board was in, and so he had them cheer, and celebrate that which they'd done.

"STATE YOUR VICTORY, MEN!" Oliver said, raising his sword up into the air, his desperateness lending his voice a new degree of command.

"""URAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"""

They bellowed, all those thousands of men along the northern wall, fresh from the victory that they had achieved, with fire still running through their veins.

Even those men that were too busy to look around and see what it was the northern wall had achieved could still hear those cries. Verdant on the east wore a smile, as he heard his Lord's shout, and the cries of the cheering men that followed. The troops under him allowed themselves to be buoyed, making life just the slightest bit easier. Though it was a Blackthorn Colonel that retained control of the eastern wall now – even he seemed to be enjoying the effects of the victory elsewhere.

The western wall was no different. Even those in the perilous situation of the increasingly dire southern wall could see the slightest ray of hope in the victory that was being achieved elsewhere.

Tavar listened. Tavar watched. And Tavar took in the state of battle to the very best of his degree. His was the impossible balanced calm of an old man in a tea shop. It wasn't arrogance, or conceit. It wasn't icy. It wasn't anything but who he was. The sort of greatness that was so easy to overlook.

He acknowledged Oliver's victory with a nod to himself. "I suppose that is the best you could do, given your current position, General Patrick," he said. "But if you had stopped to think for a while longer, could you have come up with the strategy that could best the two-pronged fork that I have given you? Or are you not quite at that level yet?"

Tavar considered it for a moment. "Mm. No. You ought to have been capable of this. Your battle with the Emersons, that required a solution far beyond the singular and the direct. A taking in of many directions at once. Grandness you might have shown me in your experience with Command, but this is not the light touch of strategy that caused such an effect on the war before now…"