A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

He pulled himself to a halt, his cavalry drawing up after him, a frown sat on his face. The enemy's position could not have been weaker, but Tiberius' instincts told him that he would be a fool to draw near them.

Once more, he studied them, looking for understanding, looking at the effects that they had on Blake's soldiers. Again, he saw no forwardness, nor even a sturdiness. But there was a viciousness. With every clash of every sword, there was this fury that seemed to wish to dismantle everything that it came into contact with.

It didn't even do so consciously. Oliver said no more to those men after rallying them. The effect that they were having on the forces of Tiberius' formations were entirely organic. They ground away at them, breaking them open, turning the solid lines that had once been there into these sections of soldiers that weren't near bound together well enough. Gaps in their ranks, staggers in their formation. Far too many squadrons at once. A single charge, Tiberius knew, and multiple squadrons of men would fall at once.

Before he could even finish that thought, there was a break.

Straight out of the edge of the encirclement, there pierced a woman with her rapier, and a dispatchment of three hundred men behind her, roaring their loyalty. She found the first of those weakened squadrons, and smashed through them, hardly slowing. Then she was on to the next. The brutal efficiency was enough to tell Tiberius that she'd seen the same as he – the weaknesses that had been present.

Five squadrons were shattered together, and then those three hundred men were retreating. It looked an organized display, a thing of genius, to be able to unleash a tactical charge like that, and retreat again, completely unmolested. Tiberius, however, saw past that. The strength of the tactic was in the weaknesses that had already been created, and it was not only her part of the encirclement in which that was happening.

All over, all that came in contact with Oliver's men found themselves in one way or another ground down. Tiredness accumulated and was exploited. "THEY'RE NAKERED! BREAK THEM!" Came the shout of a rough man, as he pinned those exhausted frontline troops down, with another three hundred men at his back, seeing them shattered. "They've overextended," said another man, more measured, and he adjusted the positioning of those already tightly placed men, and began and envelopment of the High King's soldiers that had overstepped, cutting off a few hundred from their allies, and leading them to a precise slaughter in the process.

The weaknesses were manifest as if they were preordained, the most natural thing in the world. The course of the fighting, whatever it was, acted only to favour Oliver Patrick and his men more.

Tiberius might even have wagered that his own charges had benefitted his enemy – that his presence there had somehow worked in their favour. He narrowed his eyes. "Frustrating…" He muttered, knowing for sure now that what he dealt with was not the elements of Claudia that he was used to.

There was a wager building up in his mind, as he began to understand, just a little more, what sort of man Oliver Patrick was.

More pressure than Oliver had felt in all his life.

Not just the pressure of command, and the weight of his responsibility. But this pressure bearing down, right on the heart of his being, threatening to see him ground to dust.

His breaths came in the shortest of gasps. His decisions came as temporary little fragments. His understanding of the battlefield before him was never a flat and solid thing. It was a series of images that changed with each passing moment, as if he had not a single true thought on what he beheld.

He was there, right at the centre of their formation, unable to push Nelson out towards the edges, to make his sword do good work where there was flesh to be found.

He was made to stand there, where he felt least comfortable. Away from his men, as if he was a man of standing to be protected. Hod was there at his shoulder, acknowledging the world around them grimly.

"Stand still," was the only sharp set of words that Hod had for him. He bid Oliver not to move. He seemed to see something that Oliver could not – something that gave him a glint in his eye. It was as if he feared it would break if Oliver would move it, and the man was desperate enough to keep it going that he kept his hands held on Oliver's reins, preventing him from moving off without him.

It was well that he did. Even Oliver knew that his mind was hardly all there. Surprise hit him more than once, when he properly took in the fighting going on around him. He would nod, as if out of a daze, realizing what it was that they were doing, and then he would forget again.

Verdant fought by the front, as did the rest of the Patrick men. Not even Fitzer, or Prince Hendrick sat as far back as Oliver. The two of them had been complicit in Hod's capture of the General. They'd ridden off we dangerous looks on their faces.

"There was some wisdom in those words," Prince Hendrick had said, his expression fierce. "I believe it as true for a Prince as for a soldier. Our duty is not to rule, or seek long lives – it is to live for our people, and then, if necessary, die for them."

The impulses for all those men around Oliver, the ones that his own speech had fed them, was not for the grandness of victory, but truthfully just that fiery death. They all sought to burn through every last scrap of resource that they had, so they might shine as brightly as they could before they left.

They were angry enough too. There was enough emotion there, enough fear and enough sadness, to keep them burning like torches for a good while. Thousands of different wills, flaring without discipline or order. A swirling mass of dangerous chaos that wore down whatever it touched.