A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

They were not alone. They did not fly by their own winds. They flew, on their wings of grandness, by a wind breathed by their General. And he, in turn, flew upon that mighty wind that had begun to stir even before his birth. That wind that had brought about a tempest on the very night that he was born. That wind which had robbed Persephone of life, and robbed Dominus of his intended goal of revenge. That wind that had seen the entire Emerson army dismantled before it.

With a stretching of mighty wings, and the roaring of gathering fire in his throat, General Patrick took to the sky, with more certainty than he had ever felt. With that feeling of elation that he had feared, and mistrusted, and even despised, for how it towered over the suffering that he had once known.

His stormy eyes, tainted by gold, and tainted by purple, made their will known, in a magnificent display of Command. It radiated out of him. The connections that he had served, he reestablished. Different to before, with more strength to them. With the strength of his comrades flowing towards him, just as he had flown towards them. They lent their own winds to him, giving him more loft, in the same way that he had done for them.

Then, once more, the Patrick army was a single entity. Singular, but still filled with that same dangerous freedom. A single body, made of many shifting little currents, beyond even that of a river. The depth of movement that could only be found in the stirring air itself.

That was enough – for them to know, and be reminded. They were men of the Patrick army. That was the belief that they had flown out on, and that was the belief that they turned around upon. They were not soldiers to turn and flee for the newness of tension that had been acquired. They were Tigers, with claws and teeth sufficient to tear apart the bricks of any wall that might stand in their way.

"FORWARD," Oliver demanded. One of his signalmen found him his horse. The beast was pawing at the ground in its impatience, and Oliver saw it swiftly mounted. All the pieces of the battlefield, they were placed, like chisels to the soft cement of old and decaying bricks. And with the hammer blow of his own voice, he drove them through all at once.

There was no audible sound that ought to have been heard, yet it rang in all their ears regardless, from soldiers, all the way to Generals and Minister Hod. The sound of breaking glass, as finally, that great wall that Tavar had erected was overcome all at once, from half-a-dozen different places.

Verdant made it through to the other side, and began to loop. Then Blackthorn made it through, and turned to do the same, looking to attack General Tavar and his contingent from the other side. Then Firyr joined Verdant, and Jorah came swooping behind Captain Blackthorn, with Judas, Karesh and Kaya not far off the rest.

A hail of arrows from Nila prevented the obvious retreating move from Tavar just for a second. The General tutted. In that moment where timing was everything, that single half-a-beat that he needed to wait seemed like everything.

The tide of men saw General Blackthorn freed, and those Blackthorn soldiers that had been with him. Men died in their hundreds and their thousands from the single manoeuvre, but it was not the many depths where the real issues lay, it was in the problem of position. Twenty thousand men Tavar still had in his command, but now the large bulk of that force lay behind the enemy, without the speed to catch up and position themselves between the charging Ernest army, and General Tavar.

With his heels to his horse, and the dozen men that had gathered up as his bodyguard, Oliver drove through as well, even more swiftly than the rest, as a thinner bodied arrow.

It was archers that Tavar had to use, merely to slow down the force of that which was reaching him. But General Blackthorn was growing with bloodlust. Archers only seemed to make the man's glaive land all the more heavily, and the Minister of Blades beside him did not seem inclined to give in to any mercy now either. The man was a Sword of the highest sort, and now he aimed to do what all Swords were trained to do – and that was to slay the head of a General.

There was Gar too, so easily overlooked, for his inability to command men. He had held back, along with his General, and he had waited for that moment which he knew would come, when he would be able to charge forward, at Oliver's side, and secure Tavar's head for himself. He rushed at a sprint, alongside Oliver's white horse, snarling along with the beast.

All weapons that they had were pointed in a single direction, in a single moment of swiftness, when what now remained only a mere four thousand men, were able to get the better of the bulk that was twenty thousand.

Tavar drew back, he was forced to. He had a gambit to make, and that was to flee towards the inner city, even if it meant leaving his men behind in the process. He had the superior mobility in his cavalry. If he could flee towards the Emersons, there would at least be enough chaos to consider a counterattack.

But more arrows fell, this time by Hod's command, through the will of Professor Yoreholder. They cut Tavar off mid-charge, as he was forced to turn from an arrow that seemed very intent on claiming his life.

Another volley came from Nila, and once more, was he forced to move – straight into the direction of a charging Oliver Patrick and Gar.

That too, Tavar turned from, like a bear being attacked by dogs, he turned to and fro, looking for any opportunity to escape. From straight on, there was Oliver. From the left, there were Blackthorn and Jorah. From the right, Verdant and Firyr. Tavar turned away from them all, upwards, in the direction of General Blackthorn, supposing that, of all the places on the battlefield, it was General Blackthorn that stood most thinly surrounded by soldiers, and if ever there was a place to break through, it would be there.