A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1877 - 1877: Fighting the Void - Part 9

They were nothing, they were nobodies. A pair of footsoldiers who had given up even their hopes of making it to Sergeant. They were fine with that now. Five years ago, they might have had more ambition, but now they knew their place, and there was contentment in that. They were happy to simply warm their hands by the fires of greatness, and to be a part of that grand vision that their General painted out of them. There was pride in that, but there was hardly recognition – they weren't the sorts of men that those of high rank would stop to stare at.

So why was it that such a man, so rich that he could wear jewels even on his banners, and so powerful that he could dare to call himself Emperor, spared such a degree of attention just for them? Why did he stare at them, terrifyingly, as if they were the only two men in the world, as if their suffering was his interest entirely.

If they'd had the strength of heart to look over their shoulder, they would have found what they already knew to be true from looking in front of them. They were surrounded entirely. By barely a hundred men, but that was a hundred men too many for the likes of them. Their location put them a third of the way from the bottom of the hill, well within the reach of where their allies ought to be, and yet, there was not a single ally forthcoming. They could barely even hear the shouts that went on behind them. All there was now, was a perfectly quiet isolation, and the promise of the most extreme of barbarisms.

One of them wanted to speak, to mutter something courageous to his comrade. It was a sick thought to have, but he was glad that the man was there with him, to endure it together, as they'd endured so many battlefields before. If he was the good brother in arms that he professed himself to be, he would have wished his comrade to be anywhere else. But the fear made him weaker than he would like to be. He was afraid, so terribly afraid. A child scared of demons in the dark. An infant that shook with talks of goblins. He'd found it now – the sort of goblin that could frighten even highly trained grown men, and he dared not even speak his name.

A wound decorated Blackwell's side. It ran deep, just below the ribs. Any deeper, and he wouldn't have been able to ignore it. Even now, it was bleeding strongly enough that he knew he'd lose his strength of balance if he let it run out any longer. He had not the liberty to see it dressed, however. He was fortunate to even retain his life.

Still, in his head, he was putting the pieces together. It was as if another reality had run into his, and supplanted all that he knew was in front of him, and replaced it by something else. He'd made sure to check Tiberius' position before he'd committed to the charge. He had not made that mistake. So then, why was it that the Emperor had arrived as quickly as he had? Why was he able to mount the charge on Blackwell's flank that he had.

He still didn't understand it. Only the quickness of his decision to retreat had saved them all from being slain in the same instant, but he was not foolish enough to ignore the fact that the price had not been cheap. He'd lost half his soldiers, and almost his very life in the process.

He was a weaker man that made it to the top of the hill than the confident General that had gone barrelling down it. His instincts had warned him of something incomprehensible, should he make a decision that walked too keenly the lines of conventional strategy. It seemed that the starting instinct had been a wiser one than his anxious want to see something done, so that they might avoid the fearful fate of strangulation.

And still they were all left wondering exactly what it was that had happened. Blackwell had made his calculations as adeptly as he could. He'd made sure to factor in the fullest range of Emperor Tiberius' movements in the process, and yet, the man had still managed to be there at his back, more swiftly than any man was likely to be.

"A trick of some sort?" Blackwell had to wonder, as he looked down upon the remaining men that he'd had to leave. Two in particular seemed to have captured Tiberius' attention, and the man was taking all the time he wished in dealing with them. He seemed to be making a sport of it.

Looking down the rest of the line of his army, at least, Blackwell was allowed some small measure of relief in seeing that Tiberius' strangeness had not affected them yet. Karstly continued to push forward with his men, sending those heavily armoured soldiers toppling, and Broadstone and Skullic were holding their positions solidly.

It was only Blackwell who Tiberius had chosen to target. He'd gone straight for the head of the army with his first personal charge, and he had come rather near to claiming it. The wound to Blackwell's side was not something that he could so easily ignore, and the great number of men that he'd lost was something even less likely to be ignored.

For all the beating of his heart, his face remained stern, and calm, and his eyes calculating. He didn't understand how it was that he'd been caught, unless he simply assumed an unnatural speed. But that was his only job at the moment – to understand. To look at that which was in front of him, and draw some conclusions that could actually be used for future strategy.

He looked more closely at the armour on Tiberius' horses, and that of the rest of his cavalry, and wondered if they had perhaps not been tricked – that those were lightly armoured cavalry at best, made to look like the real thing, so that they could move more swiftly.