A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

Hod, for his part, saw just one man moved more carefully than the rest. For a stirring General Blackthorn, bellowing his rage, as he ordered his trapped men to break through and come to reinforce him, he saw the Minister of Blades positioned so that he might be of more help. Man after man that Minister did slay, until his back was pressed firmly against the General's defending him from the rear, much to Blackthorn's delight.

"Finally, you fool," Blackthorn growled. "Now we've got everything we need to take the old man's head."

"If you suppose that to be the case, then I will not speak my doubts," the Minister replied, throwing himself entirely into his sword instead, working where he could to see the enemy pushed back, and to prevent the encirclement from growing quite as harshly as it had before.

Even if Blackthorn's efforts were not to bear fruit, there was a mighty change beginning to stir, in that centre, where the rest of the Ernest army saw itself based. Each of Oliver's groups of men, though hesitant at first, sprang outwards. It was the natural course of action for all of them. They stumbled under the weighty burden of their new command, with no man to follow, and like Verdant, the only obvious course of action for them was to rush outwards, and to attack that wall that Tavar had put in their way.

Blackthorn received her made with a distasteful twist of her lips. "Hate this," she said, quite angrily, for Oliver had forced her into a position of high command without any hint of preparation, and then he had told her to do exactly as she wished, as if that wasn't the most dangerous thing in the world. She twirled her rapier as she looked at them, wondering exactly what she was going to do with five hundred men. The only thing she thought she knew how to do really well was slay the man in front of her.

"...We're going to kill some Captains," she decided. It was the sort of order that Oliver usually gave her, and she hated sitting in one place. In her head, she imagined sweeping around the encirclement lightly, stabbing in, and then coming out, as if all five hundred men were a rapier in and of themselves. She didn't know if that was an effective military tactic, or whether she could even get it to work at all, but she had to admit, in considering it, she did begin to feel the slightest hint of excitement. And in looking towards her target, she did feel sharper.

A Captain embedded deep on the other side of the encirclement, a good distance away from Verdant. Unmoving, and simply watching, the man looked at them from beneath his helmet. He thought himself to be safe, hidden behind lines of men, but to Blackthorn, he seemed all the more tempting a target for it.

"There," she said, practically growling as she picked the man out. A dangerous target, for true. "We'll stab in, then stab out again, and kill another," she declared to them. "There's five hundred of you, but I'm not going to keep watch of all of you. If you can't keep up, I'll leave you behind."

So she declared, in that cruelly cold way that she often had. It wasn't exactly the sort of thing that a soldier wanted to hear, and said by another man, it might have led more to hatred than anything else. But Lady Blackthorn by this point had something of a reputation. They'd seen her do her work atop the walls, and all knew that whatever wall she fought upon, it was her unit that was likely to have spilled the most blood by the end of the day.

There was a pride to those men that fought under her. Like the Blackthorn elite under her father, who had pride in the brutality and harshness of their training and fighting. There were both Blackthorn men and Patrick men under her, and, for different reasons, it was pride that they swayed towards, when Blackthorn declared their task for the day. A firmness of heart followed her callousness, as they resolved to themselves that they would be no burden to the little Blackthorn Lady, so fierce, despite the intense otherworldly nature of her beauty.

"""AWOOOOOOO!""" They declared. First one man, who in a fit of intensity, pumped his hand in the air, feeling his aggressive resolve swell out of him. It was a cry quickly echoed by those around him – for that was the right reaction, which the battlefield itself guided them towards. It was overwhelming aggression and intensity that they needed to march forward with, and nothing else.

Blackthorn looked behind her, almost jumping like a cat, surprised to hear such an intense burst of morale. None of her soldiers ever cried out like that for. Those cries were reserved for the General. She never expected, nor did she want them for herself. Yet looking at their eyes, she could see the starved look in them – a look she understood, for that was the emotion that she felt on the battlefield. She felt as if her heart was being mirrored a thousand times over, and she put a hand to her chest in confusion, wondering about the pounding excitement that now dwelled there.

She raised a hand, tentatively, and they echoed her again, with overwhelming force, like a giant in their own right, a weapon of such magnitude, something that belonged exclusively to her. The rapier in her hand suddenly seemed tiny in comparison to it. They were sharper, and lengthier and more well balanced than any weapon was likely to be. They were that which could turn the tide of the battlefield entirely by their lonesome.

With them at her back, Blackthorn turned, feeling far larger, and far more at home than she had ever felt on the battlefield. That overwhelming feeling of acceptance. She had never felt that from any but Oliver, and their closest friends. Five hundred men who respected her enough to shout as such. Five hundred men who bound themselves entirely to her will, and no other. Blackthorn smiled. She found she liked the feeling.

"PIERCE THROUGH!" She shouted, her voice swelling with a power that she now knew to be Command. She knew exactly the response that would follow, and the shouts that did come sent her flying forward with more speed than she had ever been privileged to wield.