A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1811 - 1811: A Scramble for Victory - Part 6

It was a vice grip that Oliver found himself in. Germanicus had let his hammer swing down into a single hand to secure it, but Oliver could very well guess what would follow. And indeed it came, the hammer was allowed to fall to the floor, and a second hand joined the first, and came crushing for the back of Oliver's neck.

The strength that Germanicus possessed was an incomprehensible thing. Oliver had always made sure that he was as far away from it as possible, but now he was trapped entirely. That was the only real problem that Germanicus had – ensuring that the strength of his attacks was allowed to land. And it was the only area in which Oliver could declare that he bested him firmly, that of speed. As soon as it was a contest of brute force like this, there was surely no one in the kingdom that could equal the man.

Oliver's hand was trapped, and those fingers around the back of his neck wound themselves ever tighter. His vision blackened, and he had to curse himself for his lack of attention. He ought to have known never to grasp too much too quickly from a strong foe – there was no need to go beyond the wound he'd already inflicted, and see his sword run straight through. He needed to be quick. But he'd been almost sure that he could end the man's life there and then. There was a strange confidence that declared it to him.

"So this is it, is it?" King Germanicus sneered, lifting him off his feet. "This is what the mighty General Patrick comes down to, when he is finally caught? A sword be all you know then – as soon as your sword is taken from you, there's no worth to you after all."

A shout from the gate brought King Germanicus pause. It wasn't a quick kill for him by any means, but with the continual pressure he exerted, it was only a matter of time before he took Oliver Patrick's life. Already, Oliver's vision was nearly entirely black, and his resistance was starting to fade.

"KING GERMANICUS! I BID THAT YOU RETREAT!" Came Tavar's shout.

At the gate, he'd come, mobilizing the rest of his army altogether. He'd moved as swiftly as he could, bringing twenty thousand men with him, but there was only so much speed a man could muster. He was still a distance away from where he needed to be, and when he arrived, he saw that the situation was even worse than he had expected it to be.

Germanicus had seen half of his force already culled, and the Patrick men seemed to be giving no quarter – there was no weakness in their ranks to show for all the sacrifice of numbers that Germanicus had given. If anything, they were pushing forward even more mightily than before, having walked straight into the trap that was the poor footing of the corpse field.

"Retreat?" Germanicus said with a frown. "Does this old man not see who I grasp in my hand?"

"RETREAT!" Tavar said again. He pushed his horse forward at a gallop, and he brought all his five thousand strong cavalry with him, but they too were subject to the slowing effects of the corpse field – only Tavar chose to see his men go the long way around, instead of riding straight through it.

Before Tavar could go much further, however, there came that expected resistance, as the General had known it would. Hod would not be so inclined to let Tavar run free, not when he had abandoned his duties elsewhere.

From down the walls of the west, there came streaming hundreds of men – and at their head, there was a foe mighty enough to bring Tavar to a screeching halt, in the form of General Blackthorn.

Tavar tutted his frustration, as a row of spearmen formed up in front of him, cutting his wing off from advancing any further. A few hundred they were, but they were Blackthorn soldiers, and no cavalry was likely to merely pierce through them, not when General Blackthorn himself stood at their very head.

'Compliments, Hod, you moved this troublesome creature to the west with the greatest subtlety,' Tavar thought, managing to retain his calm, despite the growing desperateness of the situation. The man heaved a sigh, he would shout no more. Already, the dye had been cast, and what he had sought to prevent was instead destined to be.

The western wall was left sparse of soldiers, but that was the case for all the walls around Ernest by now. Hod had kept his hand subtle, and hidden, but he had anticipated that which Tavar was forced to do. By the presence that Oliver Patrick exerted, in seeing so many men slain, and in seeing Germanicus dragged towards him, Tavar was made to move with a similar obviousness, dragged out of the shadow and into the light by his own men.

More soldiers came streaming toward General Blackthorn's cause, from the northern walls, the southern walls and the eastern walls. The barest minimum of soldiers were left there guarding, against any sort of tactic that Tavar might have intended to employ, but Hod still managed to see a swarm of ten thousand men gathering in the city below.

That was something too that Tavar had to compliment Hod for – that he still had eight thousand free men to mobilize, after so many days of doing battle. Naturally, Tavar had nearly double his current forces waiting for him at other points around the wall, but it was hard to call them useful when he could not bring them to bear here and now, when it was timing that he needed as much as numbers.

Before his eyes, Tavar saw the battlefield swim into its own form. Another man might have wriggled there, and tried to exert the plan that he had attempted from the start. But Tavar knew, always, when it was that the board was set against him. The flow of battle had already been set entirely in a different direction, and no longer did he have the control to see it stopped. The only thing he could do was accept it, and allow the battlefield the sacrifice that it demanded from him.