A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1797 - 1797: Supposed Victories - Part 8

From one passing of the calvary, Oliver found himself to have lost nearly three hundred men. Far from what he would have desired, when he had more foes to fight than just they. The worst still was that the cavalry had made it past his line – they'd streamed right past, against Oliver's will.

He found himself panicking, ever so quietly. He couldn't allow his men to see it, but there was indeed the slightest worming of doubt in him now. He'd been ever so certain when he'd ridden over that he could best the foes that stood in their way. But what of that hundred-strong cavalry contingent that was set to riding away, deeper into the city? And what of his men that were struggling to gather themselves.

It was messy, messy to the highest degree. It needed to be perfect, and clinical, but already they'd made their mistakes, and perfection seemed unlikely to achieve. As Oliver's heart wavered, seeing that he might well have cost them the entirety of the siege, on one rash decision, his men fought on.

It was with the greatest effort that he steadied himself. 'Damn it,' he told himself. 'Damn it. What were we so certain about? This is a mess…'

And yet, he had nothing to cling to but that certainty. A mess he had caused, and he had not the tools to clean it up. His own cavalry were disorganized as a result of the charge. They were doing all they could to plug in gaps, to allow the Patrick men to reform ranks. Even if they were to go chasing after those hundred that had escaped deeper into the city, what could they achieve from it? The city was a maze. The cavalrymen could hide anywhere they pleased. All they needed was a handful to survive, and the sabotage that they could inflict would be catastrophic.

There was nothing to be done for it. It was out of Oliver's hands. He saw not the solution to that problem, he only saw the fight that was still raging in front of him. The enemy had let that hundred-strong portion of their soldiery gallop into the city, but that was not without its costs. It hastened the degree to which an equilibrium was reached – and now indeed that it was, and the charge had lost its benefits, and an all out chaotic melee began to emerge, it was very much the territory of the Patrick soldiers.

Those men that had seemed so defenceless before, against those cavalrymen that were quite clearly of an elite class, managed to dig in their heels. Lone men, all of a sudden, became the mightiest of problems. Heroes, Oliver had begged them to be, for that was indeed what was required of them – but for them to find heroism, of the truest most spectacular sort, in the moment when it was required, across the lot of them, that was a thing of magic. A blessing of the Gods.

A peasant spearman found himself surrounded by three circling cavalrymen. Every one of their number found themselves outnumbered to a degree. These were the same men, who, barely a couple of weeks before, when the siege had first begun, had been frightened at the mere prospect of blood. And now this man stood his ground, with his spear tucked behind him, a wary expression on his face, keeping track of them as best he could, even when they threaded behind his back.

When their training had first begun, those peasant men had walked stooped. Their entire presentation radiated subordinance. They subordinated themselves seemingly not just to the nobility, but to the entire world itself. It had been a great effort to teach the men the strange pride that was necessary for the martial – a pride that wasn't arrogant, but willful.

To stand as that man did, waiting, he seemed a different creature entirely. None could point at him and call him a peasant. They couldn't call him a martial master either, for he had not the firmness of training behind him. Yet he had a wildness, more natural than was created. His spear was behind him like the wing of a crane, and a good portion of his weight was on just a single leg. When the moment demanded it, when his life hung in the balance, and he knew death to be right around the corner, yet he willed himself to squeeze as much as he could out of his last few moments, that was indeed the pose he adopted. Something that he had never tried before, even in training. But then, those Patrick men often did things they did not understand in that same little training stage.

There was something about that environment that Oliver had seen set up. Though he didn't seem to have done it intentionally. He merely played in his duels with Gar, and he had made it seem like the most fun thing in the world. When the men's bodies had started to adjust to the rigours of training, they had started to copy their new General in that. They had started to take risks, and not fight with such a terrified strictness. They had trained as if they had faith in something else, a belief in something that would guide their blows when their minds could not. It was a faith in Oliver Patrick, his legend, and his certainty that they would achieve that grand degree of strength. And so they had stopped trying. They had played, and more often than not, they were surprised by their own movements in sparring.

When the moment demanded it of them, the peasant men in particular were able to remember that. They had that belief in their General, even now that he was starting to lose belief in himself. With each victory that he had achieved over Germanicus, and atop the walls, that belief had only strengthened. What they had learned in training had only grown more profound. There was certainty in it now, that what they had been taught was strength, and truth, and magic – that it could overpower any foe, in the same way that Oliver now overpowered him. Great Generals turned to him for assistance, young man that he was, and it turned the belief of the peasantry into what was a quiet boiling mania.