A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1794 - 1794: Supposed Victories - Part 5

He was sure his men could feel the tension too, even if they did not entirely understand it. It affected their movements, the way they were. Oliver knew he would be called mad for suggesting it by any of his contemporaries, but he fancied that, there was meaning in even the way the men had their helmets fall to the floor. They had not tossed them particularly high, they were just patting them up and down in their hands mindlessly. It was not a skillful endeavour. But two had dropped them in quick succession, in the same set of moments that especially obvious moves had been presented by Tavar. It was as if some force unknown had set to make them defenseless.

"I'm definitely going mad," Oliver said to himself, but he was content for madness for now, if it meant that he had something to do.

He tried to put together Tavar's current position in his head. He wondered if Tavar was moving those catapults of his, trying to determine that they were mobile. Or whether he would simply have seen them well guarded, so that Oliver would have had to ride straight into a spear wall in order to do anything against them.

Both were options, but neither seemed quite right. For Tavar was trying to hide his intentions from Hod as well – or at the very least, from the messengers that continually ran to Oliver to update him on the movements of the battle. The trap, Oliver supposed, would have been something more reactive. In a detachment of cavalry placed conspicuously just out of range – but the second the gates had appeared to be opening, they would have rushed straight through.

Oliver ground his teeth together. It irritated him to such a degree. He almost felt insulted. He had no right to such emotions, especially when himself held such a low opinion of his own strategy, yet they came regardless. He searched for an option to provoke Tavar, and it was not long before one began to stir.

He saw the wrecked remains of the building where the boulder had crashed into, so deep into the city, and Oliver found in himself a growing sense of certainty.

There were a thousand different options as far as defence and concealment in the city. If he wished to hide men away in buildings, he would not find himself hard-pressed to do so.

The first foundations of an idea began to swirl, but the question still remained, quite how he would get it to work. There was a gate that seemed to point to Oliver's attention more than any other. That of the western gate, where the catapult had been fired from. Was it there that Tavar expected Oliver to dash?

It stank of danger. Even without knowing Tavar's trap, Oliver would have wanted to go there. But now knowing that a trap awaited him, he wanted to go there even more. It was reckless, and he had no true countermeasures yet in place, apart from the acknowledgement that the buildings around him were to his advantage. And still, he wanted to go there.

"Men!" He barked, turning to them, his fury lending his voice power. The soldiers straightened up in an instant, recognizing that something of a serious quality was coming. "We engage in foolishness. I beg you forgive me. You have been made to wait for many hours now, and as a reward for your patience, I give you a treacherous field to fight upon. Gather yourselves now – for if you fight as you normally might, we shall all perish here. I need not men of you now, I require heroes."

So it was he saw their tension heightened. They shuffled for different reasons now. They did not below in acquaintance with his command. But they did firm up. Their muscles tensed, their eyes widened. They gripped their spears with renewed enthusiasm. He stared them all down, all those thousand men, and he bid that they obey. He glared in particular at the Blackthorn men. They were men with a fierce loyalty to their General – but he needed even that stamped out. He needed a single unified cause. As if it were fire that came from his eyes, he melted them all down, and reforged them into a single weapon, for his purpose.

That was as far as Oliver's preparations went. There was no planning beyond that. There was just a gathering. A sense of majesty. That feeling in him stirred in indignation. By what right would any creature dare to lure it into a trap? If a trap be presented, then the creature would be there, ready and waiting, to crush it in its entirety. That was the forwardness that Oliver went forward with, and animated his men with. He saw an obstacle, and he chose not to avoid it, but to crush it in its entirety.

By quick march, he had them at the western gate, threading their way through the streets. Even the horses were eager now, neighing their indignation. They seemed angry beasts. Their feet clomped down on the cobble. The men passed the wreckage of that damaged building, and feeling on the Command of the General that road in front of them, they felt their anger growing, not knowing quite why. For them, the insult was that the enemy would dare to damage such an ancient city as Ernest – for Oliver, it was something else entirely.

Before that grand gate, Oliver drew himself to a halt. Three thick crossbeams secured it in place. The enemy had worked away at it for days with their battering ram, but for all the door's strength, and for the ditches that Hod had seen dug, they had struggled to make hardly a dent.

Now willingly, did Oliver raise his arm, and order the men to remove those crossbeams, one by one. That by itself was difficult work. It required ten men on each, and then the higher beams needed to use pulleys and ropes in order to see them hefted to the appropriate height. But those pulleys were a permanent fixture of the inner gate, and quickly were they operated, and that beam removed.