A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

"Hm…" Blackwell watched the display, with a growing sense of disconcertment. For the number of men that Tiberius had sent, the effort needed to repel them, even for their advantageous position on the hill, was far exceeding what it normally ought to have been. Once more, it did seem that expensive plate armour that was to blame for that. And yet, what followed along with the plate armour, that strange will of the men, in pushing themselves forward, straight into the heart of danger, that could not have been the simple advantage of superior equipment.

Willingly, did that front row go to their deaths. It was not just heroic. It was worse than that – far more frightening than that. The Stormfront men knew their heroics, and they respected it. The lone knight that would hold up the rear for his retreating comrades, even if it meant his own certain death. That was the sort of story that ought to have been written of, and then sung of. It was to be respected. But these men of Tiberius, they did those same noble feats, without any of the heart in it. They did it as if they feared not death – and when the instant did come that they were to die, they uttered not a single cry. They fell wordlessly, and they always fell into the enemy.

They were a force that fought not for individual glory, or chivalry, but apparently, only to die in the most effective way possible. They feared it not. That front row that gave themselves to Skullic's spear points allowed for the next line to soon enough saunter past them – even if it meant trampling over the bodies of still living men – and have their swords reach along the full length of those spears, slaying the men at the end of them.

Within the span of a short few minutes of battle, Tiberius had given away more than a hundred men, as if they mattered not to him. And they were a hundred men equipped as well as most knights were likely to be. They weren't a resource to be squandered so lightly. But for a man like Tiberius, a self-professed Emperor, even the rich resources of men of a knightly standard seemed something that he could toss away as freely as a penny on the street.

In return, in those same short few minutes of battle, it did seem that Tiberius had immediately achieved something that ought to have been far more difficult to win. He'd broken Skullic's line, and he'd already secured a foothold, where there ought to have been none.

Once a group of those titanic armoured soldiers planted themselves, they did not seem want to move. Tiberius' banners proceeded up the hill, the most obvious trackings of the progress of the infantry. And then, when they made it there, they were lofted high, with a good deal of pride.

"""URAHHHHHHH!""" Came the cries from the rest of Tiberius' men. A whole army, at once, in the same instant, without direction, bellowed the same cry of victory. A cry that rippled across the battlefield, and sent the first tendrils of strong fear into the hearts of those that awaited.

The visual effect of so easily shifting all his banners to the top of the hill in just a single instant, and with a mere thousand men – that was not something that did much for the morale of Blackwell's men, nor even for Blackwell himself. He had to fight to hold back the want to command. "What are you doing Skullic?" He growled under his breath. "What in the name of the Gods are you doing?"

Skullic moved frantically on horseback. He came to the front lines himself, and began to slay those well-armoured men, in an attempt to slow the tide of them, in the hopes that he might rebuild his line in the process.

"ALLOW THEM THREE STEPS BACK!" He shouted to his Colonels, unbelievably having to give the order for his front line of spearmen to retreat, lest he lose the lot of them, from the puncture wound that had already been inflicted to his formation's centre. He and his bodyguard themselves covered the retreat, bloodying their swords in the process.

His heart beat with franticness. He did not feel as if he was on steady ground. He searched with a desperateness for that feeling of something solid that he might cling to, that he might get to build his plans for the battle around. But he found it not. Not even from his sword that he had so often relied on when he found his direction on the battlefield to be lacking. Here, his sword came down, and it only filled him with more doubt. These should have been mere infantry. The sorts of men that he, as a man of the Fourth Boundary, should have crumbled with an effortlessness that bordered very well on the lines of contempt. But each man that he slew, even if he did so with a single blow, he found his sword to stick. He found, rather than gaining time, he was losing it. He targeted the joints in the armour, making sure the weapon wouldn't stick on the thickness of the plate metal, but still he was slow, so unbelievably slow. He searched with a desperateness to start some kind of fire that they all might warm themselves by, but it was as if every bit of tinder that he reached for was wet. His usual spark could find no place to light.

"Damn fool," Karstly muttered to himself, watching the display. He was the General nearest to Skullic. If he wished to reinforce him, there was no man better placed on the field to do so. Yet there were still five thousand men under Skullic's command. To charge in by Karstly's own want, with men of his own, would be to run allied man into allied man. There wasn't enough space for any kind of manoeuvre.

Instead, Karstly exerted the pressure of his gaze elsewhere, with pointed glares towards General Blackwell, the meaning behind his look clear. Blackwell made a point of not meeting his eyes, but in time, he would have to, Karstly was sure.

"What has him so tangled?" Samuel said, not understanding what had caused such a mess already on their left flank under Skullic.