A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1843 - 1843: The Quietest Battlefield - Part 8

What he found before him was a vulnerable flank, in the midst of a charge. They had hardly turned to him, for why would they? They had one target alone, and they did not expect to be met so perfectly by the force of Oliver Patrick – at least not yet.

His eyes glowed a solid purple from the perfection of it all. His heart beat, feeling the incredible timing that Claudia so loved. That weight of responsibility, when there was someone else on the line that he had to defend – when there was another force relying on him.

His sword came with more than the strength of the Fourth Boundary. It came with the force of Claudia herself. Ten men deep they'd had their ranks, and Oliver alone shattered through five of them. Then he drove in deeper, keeping the same broadness of assault, until he was another five men deep, having displaced over twenty soldiers by himself.

With a gap like that, the mighty men of the Patrick army were not inclined to sit idle. Those peasants, for all their oddness, knew how to attack, if nothing else by now. They plunged into the ready wounds of defenceless enemies, already finding their morale shocked from the charge. They moved, inspired by their General's wordless Command, feeling the intensity of his own aggression, and finding that it fuelled him.

Jorah gave a signal of his own, and they pushed in. He had Firyr move forward, along with Lady Blackthorn herself, creating two more arrow heads just behind Oliver's. It was the remaining men that they'd hit, those just outside of the gap. With Blackthorn and Firyr's might combined, the flank was not only pierced through, it was entirely flattened. The men stampeded past it. It was a domino effect that sent ripples deep into the heart of a formation, some ten thousand men strong.

With Jorah's adjustments, the charge continued. Now when Oliver began to slow, he was pushed from the back, by Firyr and Blackthorn, and Jorah, Karesh and Kaya behind them, who led their men with that rapidness that they could sense was required. They continued to buckle what was in front of them, to the point that it seemed like their charge would never end, like there was nothing that could slow them.

A single attack from the flank, that was enough to crush the morale of most armies. That the men held for as long as they did was evidence of the Command that Tavar had won over them in the last weeks of marching and battling. They had a trust in him, and they were quite sure that despite how things looked, the dire situation would soon reverse itself. And yet, it was dragging on just a bit too long.

"Very well done, Hod," Tavar praised. "That is more like the dancing that I have grown fond of seeing on your board. You make use of that which you have, taking risks that others would dare not to, and had I been a lesser standard of opponent, you might have won in that single move. As it is, I will have you fight. I do believe our young General Patrick's charge should be coming to an end any second now…"

Tavar looked over. Blackthorn was continuing strongly and forcefully despite the men that he'd lost to arrow assault. He'd made his way into the second square of infantry, and looked set to tear them apart as well. But it was an effort with a very obvious time fuse. Though Oliver had managed to tear apart much of the ten thousand men that would serve as reinforcements, he could not stop their arrival entirely. They were destined to arrive, and then see Blackthorn trapped.

It was Blackthorn's very life that both Hod and the General himself had offered as the bargaining chip for their position. And it was a life that Tavar now had every reason to extinguish.

Oliver could not count the number of men that he'd slain. He was pushed, further and further, by a strength that was not his own. It mattered not the strength of the foe before him, Second Boundary or Third Boundary, he slew them all in a single blow. They become nothing more than the stepping stones to which he and his soldiers would push further. They had just slain a King, after all, how could mere men stand before them now? How could anyone without a crown on his head even dare to raise a weapon in their direction?

But Tavar was right. All things, all momentums, in front of such resistance – even if they had bulled through it so quickly initially – would soon come to an end. There were ten thousand men, after all. No matter how quickly Oliver ran through them, there were still more. After his second wind, thanks to the repositioning efforts of Jorah, that sent his strongest attackers just behind him, his steps were finally beginning to slow, and the enemy were finally able to mount lines in front of him for the sake of stopping him.

By that point, it was anger that Oliver felt at being stopped so. After slaughtering so many. There was an indignity, a strange arrogance, hardly his own, that seemed to swell at the way they stood there, presenting their confident expressions, and yet stinking with a dark cloud of fear.

He could hear Ingolsol's voice now, for the first time in a while. He had felt the Dark God stir with the beheading of a King, and he could almost hear the conversation that Ingolsol and Claudia had shed. Now, in such a lake of fear, where other men would already have long since broken, barely still held together by Tavar, Ingolsol swam, as the mightiest creature in the depths of the dark ocean. Where there existed such fear, Ingolsol could not stop. He could not resist the urge to subordinate. And, flying so fast, Oliver found that he could not either.

Eyes glowing gold, radiating Command, not for his men, but for the enemy before him. "YOU HAVE NOT THE STRENGTH TO STOP US!" He told them. "FLEE!"