A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1808 - 1808: A Scramble for Victory - Part 3

In a world not afflicted by the winter of Oliver's, nor by the screams of the charging foe, a silver-haired Claudia knelt, and ran her hand through a stream, seeing glimpses of a battle in its water.

"I wonder if he's lonely without us," Claudia said. "He must feel awfully strange, bereft of our voices."

"I imagine he's enjoying the silence," Ingolsol replied, his arms folded, as he watched Claudia play. "If only we would be so lucky."

Claudia giggled. Her hair was tossed about by the strongest of winds, and Ingolsol's was no different. The wind had roared so loud in their ears all day that they could scarcely hear each other talk. The birds, however, delighted in it. Creatures of the highest majesty sat in the sky. Mighty blue-eyed crows, and screaming eagles, and owls that ought to have been waiting for the blanket of night. And then, beyond them all, beyond the sight of the clouds, there was the sense that something even more massive stirred – that it sat above them, hidden, and monstrous, and ever so full of feeling. A creature that needed the wind to stir merely to exist, but when indeed that wind did stir, it seemed quite certain that there was no other creature in the sky that could rival it.

"If that foolish boy could quiet that monster down," Ingolsol said. "He wouldn't be so foolish as to question why it was that he could not hear us."

"Yes, yes," Claudia said. "All things in time, dear Ingolsol. He has spent years covered in chains of his own making. It is only natural that he would not understand what was happening, when finally, he was allowed to fly again."

Ingolsol snorted. "For a creature that pursues power as he – respectably, I might add – he certainly seems startled when that power does indeed find him."

"He is not the only one that finds himself started," Claudia said, pointing once more to the stream, and towards a Germanicus that found himself increasingly frustrated as another arrow came his way, even more difficult to dodge than the last, slowing him to something that was more a job than it was a sprint.

Those Treeants had worked themselves up to such an excitement under the command of Germanicus. They were inspired by the rage of their King, and they found themselves with no more want than to see his wishes carried out. Yet, the reality that greeted them was a bumpy road. All the rushing rage they'd arrived with only carried them towards the field of corpses that were their slain comrades. There was no speed to be had then. Any that dared to only slipped on blood instead.

The very fact of their own allies' death brought their own plight to bear. Oliver and his Patrick army stood a distance away, simply watching them bumble, watching their charge be reduced down to a pitiful attempt at merely keeping their footing. It was slowed by nearly half the speed – and then their balance too was shattered from it. It gave Nila and her men every opportunity they needed to keep them showered with arrows.

Oliver shook his head with a smile. "If ever there was a blunder, Verdant, it looks very well like this."

"As you say, my Lord. King Germanicus is indeed a mighty man – but I have found it insulting, the whole way through, for it to be supposed that there could ever be a man to match you that has so little true battlefield experience."

"You are quite right – but not as an insult to I. But as an insult to these fine soldiers of ours. These veteran men, and these newcomers, that have already seen more blood than he. There is a line that genius can not cross. A line that only those who know the truth of struggle know to bear. And to those men, I declare that they bear witness. For today, a King will die."

His words reached the large majority of his men, for they had enough mettle to stand quietly even against that fierce charge. Enough mettle, and enough trust in their General.

The mightiest Sword in the Kingdom, that was what they'd called Germanicus to be. So mighty that the Treeants had elected him King, and declared none his equal. But those Patrick men, both knew and old, held to a belief stronger than that. Though he might have been called General, they still believed Oliver Patrick was the strongest Sword in the kingdom.

With his eyes sparkling with a colour that was between green and grey, and even blue, with flecks of swirling gold and of purple, Oliver Patrick held his sword upright, and he cast a magnificent shadow. It was as if then, for a creature such as he, that the victories he had snatched that day were not the hard-won things that they had made out to be. When he stood like that, with such an expression, such a presence, it almost seemed as if they had come easily. As if they had been the most natural things in the world. As if it were by rights that the winds of battle yielded to him, and held him aloft, in the most magnificent flight.

"I DO DECLARE, TODAY, A KING SHALL DIE!" Oliver said again, for the benefit of his men, with a Command that brought even the wind rushing through, sweeping past all of them, cold enough to chill them to the bone, and powerful enough to set their surcoats flying up from their armour. Though it might have chilled them, there was no doubt in their minds that such a wind was their ally. That nature itself was on their side.

Just before they neared the edge of that field of corpses that they had been made to cross, Oliver gave the order for his own men to charge.

Like dogs springing up from their haunches, they exploded, swifter than could have been imagined. They covered that distance off easy ground with a rapidness that the Treeant soldiers crossing the corpse field no doubt found envious, especially for the arrows they had to endure in their crossing. And before they could take a step off it, back onto solid ground, the Patrick army was right in front of them, with the swiftest, most crushing of charges.