A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1810 - 1810: A Scramble for Victory - Part 5

There he left the shadow of a creature far mightier than he, evident only for mere fractions of a moment at a time, and so easy to miss. But when a wound was indeed dealt to Germanicus, it fell by that creature's hand, not by Oliver Patrick's alone.

Germanicus found himself pressed up, still in his sea of corpses, and his men were faring no better. All that filled his ears were the cheers of those Patrick men. He'd been confident that none could match the savagery of his native Treeant comrades, and he'd always held to the certainty that, if the Treeant faction were ever pushed to a point where they were forced into rebellion, they would have no trouble taking over the realm.

And yet, once more, the reality he saw was different to that of his expectations. Outnumbered five to one, and those Patrick soldiers found no difficulty. Ferocity was their very blood. They fought like wild animals. They made even the likes of the Treeant soldiers look civilized. There was a euphoric nature to their activity, a blissfulness that sane men in the heart of combat ought not to have been able to conjure. They were genuinely happy to be where they were, and genuinely proud to fight under the name of the General that they called so relentlessly.

"FOR THE GENERAL PATRICK!" One man would shout, after a particularly energetic kill, and another would bellow, echoing it. Never had Germanicus seen such morale, even after all his days fighting in the siege. They were soldiers finally at last reunited with their master. These were the remnants of the fighting force that had taken on the massive Emerson force, and won, so heavily outnumbered. They were the fragments of a legend, and before Germanicus' very eyes, that legend was put back together, and he could see very well why they had made the realm tremble.

There was something to each of them. They were all filled with such an incredible amount of character that there seemed hardly any room left for command structure, or for hierarchy. Character needed blunting in the name of subordiance, and conformity, and discipline. Germanicus knew that as a truth, as the ruler of his forests, those creatures that he dominated could not be allowed to show all that they were – to do so was to infringe upon his domain as their ruler. There could never be a seamless hierarchy if each creature were to express themselves entirely.

Somehow, however, that Patrick army did. Each man seemed entirely himself. They were men, who, even on the individual soldiers' level, one almost felt the desire to know the story them. The scars that they carried, the struggle that they had endured – their fighting style very much bespoke of that. A deep, and long road of suffering, that they all drew strength from.

Then there were the Commanders that Oliver Patrick had under him. Each of them, for want of a better word, seemed insane in their own right. There was the woman who ought not have been on the battlefield at all, given her gender, and yet she fought with a frighteningly cold ruthlessness that hardly a man could emulate, and Germanicus' Treeants were already frightened of going near her. There was that lordling, who almost seemed like a General in his own right, for the orders he continually saw given, and the morale he saw bolstered, by invoking the name of his General. And then when he was set to fighting, he was like a bull, with strength far beyond what his Boundary would indicate, he sent men flying back with that spear of his. There was another that was loud-mouthed and reckless, and one had to wonder how he'd lived for as long as he had, and then there was another, who, contrary to the rest, almost seemed sane. Almost – if not for the strange precision in which he saw his soldiers controlled with.

And then, at the centre of them all, somehow binding them all together, and somehow allowing for them all to exist in the same fighting force, when they should really have been split across several armies, there was that creature Oliver Patrick, who so looked at Germanicus with that smile on his face. One of the utmost confidence, one that stepped into arrogance.

Germanicus swung, with all his might. He didn't care if he missed. Just to have the air alone rush along with his hammer ought to have been warning enough. Something that should have stripped the smile off Oliver's face, when he saw just how strong it was that Germanicus was clear to be.

Neatly, Oliver stepped back from the strike, allowing the warhammer to pass within a few centimetres of his face. It was a massive, mighty blow, the sort that would leave hardly anything of a man behind if it had connected. But that was the trouble – it didn't connect, and there was a springy speed to Oliver Patrick that was unable to let that opportunity slide. He turned what was a dodge into a sudden darting forward. He was in front of Germanicus before the man had even managed to control the momentum of his own strike entirely. That was a speed beyond the Fourth Boundary, Germanicus was sure of it.

"You wield a strength that is beyond you," Germanicus said accusingly, unable to do much more than that.

Oliver drove in his sword through Germanicus' chest. He missed the heart, thanks to Germanicus' last second twist, but his blade ran all the way through to the other side, inflicting a nasty wound regardless.

It was only a split second that Oliver had to free it again, before Germanicus was recovered, with his hammer ready to do more damage. But Germanicus wasn't inclined to let him off so easily. He reached out with his massive hand, and clamped Oliver's fingers around the handle of his sword, securing it in place, with his own flesh as the holding point.