A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1876 - 1876: Fighting the Void - Part 8

Blackwell collided with that front line of enemy soldiers with a great deal of force. His own horse was as heavily armoured as one of Tiberius' heavy cavalry. At the sort of speed that it was going at, few things could stand in its way. Thickly muscled, and prone to quickly tiring, it was a beast built and bred for those sorts of explosive charges. A leaner bodied horse likely would not have been able to stand up to the charge of such a fearsome collision.

The General brought his glaive to flashing in the same motion. Another spell of perfect timing. He broke through past three men at once. Straight through the line he drove, slashing all the while. He managed three different strikes, in rapid succession, felling man after man, before he burst out straight through the other side, and had to continue down to the bottom of the hill again before he could turn around. Risky, that turn was, when Tiberius' arrows greeted him, but Blackwell was turning again, up the hill, ready to attack the enemy from the back, just as his own infantry came crashing down upon him.

His position as spectator when the full weight of his infantry hit was second to none. He saw the moment in which those heavy infantrymen had their momentum reversed. He saw some carried off their feet, and others set to slipping in the snow. And then there was the follow up to that, when the first row had their balance unsettled, those heavy men were set to tumbling into those soldiers that were behind them.

"URAHHHH!" Blackwell cried out involuntarily, as he rejoined the fray himself from the rear. They'd unsettled two thousand or so men in a single charge. It was the exact sort of grabbing that they needed if they wanted to put Tiberius on the back foot. They needed repeatedly high advantages just in order to keep level with him. Unbalancing them – that seemed to be the weakness that Blackwell had immediately uncovered in those well armoured troops, and soon enough, that understanding was reflected in the arms of any men that were close enough to see it, and sharp enough to understand it.

Karstly's charge was no less effective. He found himself even more in the position of unbalancing. He was unable to get the speed of Blackwell, but from the start, his want had been to set those men to rolling, rather than simply to slay them. In a single lurch forward, he and his men, in something was more of a push than a proper charge, had them losing their footing, and tumbling down the hill.

It was a messy line now that those allied forces held, after two of their Generals had chosen to charge forward, rather than risk the same position that Skullic had, in giving away the hill top to those seemingly immoveable enemies. Whilst Karstly and Blackwell sallied forth, it was left to Skullic and Broadstone to continue to repel those enemies in front of them.

They too, in that regard, did not fare quite as poorly as Skullic had earlier. As unfair as it had been, Skullics efforts had served as a more than appropriate way of sounding out their enemy. Now they knew the magnitude of the creatures that they did face, the Generals took the necessary measures to ensure that they were treated with the respect that they deserved. In doing so, neither of them yielded a step. They kept the same placement as before, steadily holding the enemy at bay, and even threatening to overturn them.

WOOOOOOOOOOOOSSSSHHHH!

And then the storm of Tiberius' arrows began, falling on them all, no matter their placement. They bothered Karstly in his position at the centre of the hill, just as they bothered Blackwell and his men, he had all but made their way nearly to the bottom of the hill by now, carried on by the slope.

"Gods… Were arrows ever this loud?" An infantryman complained, as he used the corpse of one of those well armoured soldiers to see himself protected against arrow assault. It was a temporary, dangerous measure, but trapped in the middle of the hill after following the cries of Blackwell, it was about the only measure that they had.

"...Those are whistling arrows, aren't they?" Came the murmur from the man to the side of him, sharing the same corpse and using it as a shield. Now that the first man stopped to listen, he had to admit that there seemed some truth in that. It was a frightening and sharp noise. It dug right into the ears, and rattled around inside their helmets. It made a man want to cower continually, just as they were doing there and then.

It robbed them of their ability to hear the shouted commands of their officers, as they tried to regather their men amidst the chaos. Nor did they want to look up for direction when those arrows were most certainly still in the sky, ready to fall on them just as they had fallen on their allies that lay dead around them.

Only when there was something approaching silence again – save for the noise of the battlefield – did they dare to look up. And when they did so, as one, they frowned. The distortion of noise that those whistling arrows had been presented had been replaced by an impossible distortion of vision. Their very eyes were playing tricks on them. They looked, expecting to find the reassuring surcoats of their Blackwell allies, and if they were lucky, even the great man himself, on the back of his giant horse. They certainly didn't expect a creature with hair so blonde that it seemed white. With eyes so robbed of light that they seemed to drink in all the warmth near him. With a smile so malicious that it seemed likely to follow them into their dreams. Nor the pile of men, wearing the same surcoats as they, all laying together in their stillness, covered in arrow wounds, and in sword wounds.