A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

Only when there were barely a few hundred remaining, having run as far as the hills on the edge of the plains, was General Rainheart satisfied. They were too scattered at that point to have been worth the chase, and so he left them to their business, and showed him their backs, and he rode towards the next battlefield, stopping beside Oliver and his men as he did so.

"I do not believe we have had the pleasure, Captain Patrick. Or perhaps I ought to be calling you Colonel now?" General Rainheart said.

Oliver found him a more intense man that he'd supposed him to be from a distance. His white hair and long beard had given him a grandfatherly look, but up close in the flesh, the aura of overwhelming bloodlust – combined with the scent of actual blood splattered all over him – made him quite the intimidating man indeed.

"I do not have the honour of claiming such a title. And, as you can see, my numbers have returned to being merely that of a Captain," Oliver said.

The General narrowed his eyes, apparently unsure what to make of the sombreness in Oliver's tone.

"Regardless. You fight under me now that we have taken to the field. I can assume from the fact of your presence here that you remain ready to fight?" General Rainheart said.

"I am," Oliver said.

"Good," Rainheart said. "Then we make haste. If you are expecting praise for your earlier achievement, then I shall have to disappoint you. As unexpected as it was, until we seize complete victory, we can sing no songs of celebration."

"I understand, General."

…

…

When they made it to Khan's battlefield, with all those five thousand men belonging to Rainheart, the adrenaline of their rushing was quickly brought to a dampen.

No doubt the men had thought they would see a sure place where their help would be needed, and they would dive straight in, without further thousand, but as they looked, it was impossible to tell where amongst that fray that had their place.

The fact of General Rainheart's halting right on the battlefield's edge told the lesser men that he was of the same opinion.

Against a hundred thousand men General Blackwell and General Karstly might have been battling, but it would have been hard to say quite where they were losing.

Especially not now that General Broadstone had dared to open the castle gates, and he was bringing his own army of five thousand to bear, following in the path that General Blackwell had beat through the siege weapons, stopping any from taking advantage of the castle's momentary defencelessness.

The front of the battlefield was a sight to behold, with how deep General Blackwell had managed to worm himself, after matching a charge of nearly a hundred thousand men with only five thousand of his own. That alone would have been cause for celebration. It was a nail that was waiting for the right hammer to strike it in further.

However, on the very other end of the battlefield, where Karstly fought, there was a threat even more monstrous.

Even as they watched, Karstly's blows landed down upon General Harme's guard. He beat a rhythm through the steel. General Harme's arm wavered beneath the assault, but it did not break. Not quite yet.

That alone would have been cause for celebration enough, but General Karstly's retainers to either side of him were cutting a path as steadily as if they were dealing with wood rather than men. They seemed to be a cut above the Rogue Commandants that ought to have been their equal. At every turn, their swords secured the deeper cuts, and they went forward all the faster.

As Karstly slowly pushed Harme back, his retainers pushed Harme's bodyguard back even faster. Within moments of their arrival, they saw General Harme nearly surrounded.

"…He has good quality Swords under him," Oliver heard General Rainheart mutter to his attendant from a distance away.

Both the quality of his Swords, in the title given to those leadership-snubbing retainers, and the quality of sword as in the steel that Karstly wielded were put to the test. Just as General Rainheart had done before him, he secured cuts across the shoulder of the General that was his enemy. His sword was swift, and it was crafty.

He used more than a few feints to impose his will on Harme, and steadily, those cuts were mounting up.

It was impatience that rushed Harme to a hurried end. He could likely already see the dark doors of death looming ever closer to him, and he didn't stop to think that the sudden dropping of General Karstly's guard, revealing his open side, might have been too good to be true. Too good or not, it was the only opportunity that had been revealed to Harme for the entirety of their exchange.

He put everything had had into the blow. He swung with enough shoulder that his half-moon sword likely would have bit in deep enough to sever spine.

But that sword never reached. Nor did the hand even complete the swing, before it was cut off at the wrist. In his focus on the Karstly's side, as the man himself had dictated, the Verna General had neglected to see just how well positioned Karstly's sword was for a strike at the wrist.

It was a mercy that the Stormfront man did not gloat, despite the humiliating trap that he'd laid down to secure his victory. He went for General Harme's head as if he was sick of the sight of him. The sword slashed, cutting through throat, and spine, but it didn't have the reach to cut it off entirely. The little bit of skin and muscle that remained kept it hanging, as it dangled at the man's back.

The corpse fell forward in a spray of blood, dragging the head with it. Karstly seized hold of the body before the horse could pull it away. Then, with a disgusted frown on his face, he cut away the last of the skin. Somehow, Oliver thought even that was calculated from Karstly. He'd left the skin on so he wouldn't need to stoop to pick up the cleaved head.

He wanted to hold it aloft himself, as he did now.