A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1801 - 1801: Favour - Part 3

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Nila received her order with a firm nod. She'd seen the cavalry enter the city, and had been loath to watch Oliver continue fighting without giving any sort of assistance. More than once, she had sent an arrow his way whenever she passed, but it was far too rare a thing for her liking. Her only consolation was that she had been stationed on the western wall for a good while, so she was at least able to keep the reinforcing archers from getting up to too much trouble.

Now she was being sent elsewhere, to play the part of the hunter, with a hundred good men under her.

"Go swiftly, Lady Felder, if that is the task that you have been given," Professor Yoreholder said, not in the least bit squeamish about the fact that she'd been left a hundred men lighter than she had been before. "General Patrick does not have the means to deal with those cavalrymen that have slipped through by his lonesome – you will be doing him a great favour if you manage to extinguish their threat."

"Right," Nila said, feeling resoluteness building up within her. Others might have protested at the fact that she had no horses to catch up with them. She only had the walls and her bows to track them down with. There was no chance she had of being as quick as they. But she feared it not. It was a problem that she well agreed she was best suited to solving. In her mind, it was as if she was hunting down a herd of wild cattle, and they were all currently clumped together, threatening to break off soon enough.

Besides, she had the advantage of the height of the walls – it was only a matter of positioning as to whether she could see them shot. Even if they hid behind their buildings, Nila declared that she would not let a single one go on to cause any more trouble.

She went dashing off, following the same pattern that she always had to for moving around atop those busy walls. She had to shoulder her way past her own allies to get to where she needed to go, so did the men that she led. It was something that they were accustomed to by now, but it didn't grow any easier. It was difficult to pass by fighting, without getting involved in it.

She led them up towards the northern wall, where the fighting currently seemed to be the busiest. She fired two shots as she went, whenever the cavalrymen came into range. With her black bow, both those arrows managed to find their marks, but it was a mere drop in the ocean when compared to the hundred foes that she still had to take down.

She kept them rushing forward. The cavalry didn't seem to realize that they were being pursued. They weren't taking the most direct route away from danger. Their efforts instead seemed to be more for diversion, and concealing themselves. They wanted to slip by the commanders that watched from above the walls, so that they might strike at one of the gates swiftly, without being spotted.

Those efforts at concealment were something that Nila saw through in an instant. All they served to do was slow them down.

She kept her men running, even when a group of cavalrymen came into range – the cavalry force had now split into three – and she took them all the way to the corner of the north wall and the eastern wall. There, they managed to place themselves ahead of an enemy that had disappeared behind the buildings, and there, Nila ordered her men to draw their bows, and stand ready.

She closed her eyes, imagining their movements, as she would a deer flitting through the trees, disappearing from sight now and again, and then, before they had yet revealed themselves, she gave the order. "FIRE!"

A storm of a hundred arrows came down on thirty cavalrymen. The cavalry ran straight into the storm, their momentum carrying them into further danger. The shock was evident from their cries. There was hardly a man that escaped damage, but still five of them managed – though injured – to continue lumbering forward.

Those five, in quick succession, Nila dealt with personally herself. They were far too big a target, and far too injured, for her to ever stand a chance at missing them.

With a third of those troublesome escapee cavalrymen dealt with, and with strange looks being given to her from her men, that went somewhere between fear and respect, she nodded to herself, and then proceeded on to deal with the next group.

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"Lord Idris," came the call, to a Verdant that was both busy in the midst of his own personal melee, and in the middle of commanding the men that he had been assigned. "You are needed elsewhere. You are to take three hundred men, and make your way down to the west gate."

Verdant speared the man in front of him, and only then, did he find chance to process what had been said. "The west gate?" He said, considering it. "That's where my Lord is doing battle?"

"It is, you have been ordered to assist him," the messenger said. "And with swiftness. You are to use the stairs, and cross down through the city. You are the furthest away of all his reinforcements, being on the eastern wall, so Minister Hod said you in particular should exercise speed."

"You need not tell me twice," Verdant said, delighted, feeling very much as if there were an exciting wind blowing.

He gathered his men with a speed that bordered on ridiculousness. To see three hundred men separated from combat so seamlessly, and for them to be all set to marching down the stairs within the span of a minute, certainly left the messenger stunned. They were giddy, if anything – that was how the man would have described them. As if they had been waiting the entirety of the siege for this moment, when they might fight under their General once more.