A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1805 - 1805: Favour - Part 7

Verdant had rushed his men over at an all-out sprint, but one would never have thought it from how rapidly they still pushed their way through the enemy, towards their Lord's position.

For Tavar's men, it seemed as if they could go nowhere. There was no common ground to be had. They couldn't turn themselves to face the newcomers, for that would be to expose their backs to those soldiers that had already sunken straight into the depths of combat, and were ever so prepared to give their lives – their bloodthirstiness would not miss the slightest trace of weakness. And where Oliver had laid his attack, and where he and Gar now took advantage of the destruction that had incurred, there was a corruptive force of the most overwhelming sort eating them apart from the very centre.

Oliver had wished for a single explosive charge, but what he had been delivered was far above that. It didn't just make the battlefield equal, and give them a good chance of fighting the enemy back. It took what was a strong force of more than four thousand solidly trained troops, with their constant support of newcomers, and it enfeebled them, collapsed them, and ultimately left hundreds dead within the first minute of combat. In a handful of minutes, the enemy number had been halved, and not only were they struggling to find their formation, those well-experienced men were quite rightly beginning to route – but that disorganized routing only brought about their demise quicker.

With a cry of jubilation, Oliver rallied those troops that had come to his aid – those troops that he knew better than any other. Through them, his Command blossomed, and his own sense of his sword felt stronger. It had felt as if he was swimming in the dark before, but now, he was baptized entirely by light. He could see everything near them, and feel it, all corners where his loyal Patrick men now stood – it was his entirely, completely subordinate beneath him.

"LET NOT A SINGLE MAN ESCAPE!" Oliver shouted, both Ingolsol and Claudia urging him on. That was a sense of Command that saw his troops bellowing as one in their enthusiasm, but so was it too that which spread the fear of Ingolsol, reducing the enemy ever further, taking men that had already been terrified for how quickly they were falling, and making them manic.

The battlefield had been shifting all along without Oliver. Tavar had noted the excitement that was happening by the gate, and he'd taken his measures to see more troops placed there, to take advantage of what was to come – and at the head of them, he'd placed Germanicus, promising the King that he'd find his opportunity there, if he was patient enough. He'd be able to grasp his long-awaited moment for revenge.

But by the time those Treeant troops came, led by Germanicus, what they saw was a complete and overwhelming slaughter. Done with such a rapidity that even Tavar could not possibly have predicted it. Nor even truly Hod, who dared to glance down from the wall, and even more himself so that he might have a better position, and was surprised to see barely a few hundred of Tavar's men trying to route and rush towards the gates from which they had come.

Some indeed did manage it. Oliver's force was a triangular thing, rather than a complete encirclement of the enemy. The men that were nearest the gate did afford themselves the opportunity to make a full escape, provided they were faster than the likes of the bloodthirsty Blackthorn, or the eternally energetic Firyr.

For the thousand men that had arrived as reinforcements, it was difficult to see if even a single man amongst them had fallen. If anything, by some miracle, there were even more of their number than ought to be there – precisely a hundred more, if one were to count them properly.

And those hundred, beyond expectation, came just when they too were needed. With bows in hands, and quivers on their back, Nila ordered them up the tallest of the nearby buildings, and when those enemy did flee towards the gates, it was a hail of arrows that greeted them, culling their number still further.

Oliver's eyes widened when he saw the volley fall. All of it, he could not have predicted. That he'd get a single unit of reinforcements – he would have been thankful for all his days for that. But to have the entirety of the army that he had come to trust, and even Nila herself, having so swiftly dealt with the cavalry that Oliver had so feared letting loose. It was a miracle beyond miracles.

Three volleys Nila and her Yoreholder men managed to get off in rapid succession, thinning the retreating enemy down further. Oliver's men finally gave up their pursuit at his orders, leaving the final bits of the job to the archers, and they cheered the destruction that was caused.

When they saw King Germanicus' face beyond the gate, they were greeted by his horrified and rather confused look, and they cheered even more. Out of what was initially five thousand men, barely a hundred made their escape, with at least six thousand having been slain throughout the course of combat, if one were to include the reinforcements that had kept the enemy number inflated.

Oliver shook his head seeing it, feeling a weightlessness that he had never felt. He didn't think he had ever flown so high in his life. He'd been already convinced – though he wouldn't admit it to himself – that they were doomed, that he had made the wrong decision. He had been so confident initially in making it, but it was a feeling other than Oliver Patrick – it wasn't a product of his normal mind. Yet that thing, had it seen all this far? Had it had a sense for that which Oliver Patrick, as the man that expected so much from himself, could not? Or was it Hod that the praise went to, for seeing far enough ahead that he knew to give Oliver his reinforcements?