A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

"I would not be nearly as effective a weapon as I am now," Oliver said. It was not mere self-deprecation. He had other skills to rely on, or so he told himself.

He'd trained strategy for all those years, there was no reason that he needed to be at the front of every battle, even if that was what he often ended up doing, given the excessive advantage that the strength differential between him and his opponents gave him.

"…And if I was there, I would not have noticed this," Oliver continued after a moment. The bowing in the centre – it should have stopped moments before. The central pushing was excessive. Men, like metal, could not have their lines bowed infinitely. After a time, it would snap. Then why did these shield wielders still stand strong?

Why had their bending not even increased? They were standing rigid.

"URAHHH!" Firyr cried, joining the attack towards the middle, tossing men back.

That was the sort of attack that should have been catastrophic. It should have been a finishing blow. But nothing happened. This was not the stench of a checkmate. Three men were shifted from their positions, but from the lack of consequences, Firyr's efforts were made to look mundane, and expected.

"They're not moving," Claudia noted. She'd remained quiet, and she'd observed, speaking Oliver's conclusion even before he had.

That was a cutting fact. They had not moved at all. The centre had indeed bowed by a fraction, but it had gone no further than that. "It can't be… They moved back intentionally?" Oliver frowned. That didn't make a lick of sense. They'd certainly thrown men back, and they'd done damage… But was it really the damage necessary to move the men as far as they had, as quickly as they had?

"Now you see, Jericho," Amion continued. "There is more than one way to control might. Creating space, as General Khan does, is another way. But the sect of strategy to do it first was no doubt the Scribe Soldiers. To move with the momentum of the attack, in order to limit the damage and the positional losses that it incurs."

"…How strange," Jericho said. "For you to pull this here, Commandant. I haven't seen you make use of it before."

"There were never the conditions to properly make use of it. To bow one's centre is to create inherent disadvantage. More often than not, that is not a card that is necessary to play. However, we have the slopes, and we have the pressure from the rear in this engagement.

A bowed centre only makes us neutral – and as time passes, and we reform our ranks against the charge, we come back with the advantage. It is natural. It is the waves of the sea lapping on the sandy shore," Amion said.

"…Tsch," Gordry said, watching the scene in front of him. For a charge, it was awfully slow in its results. Was that merely the effects of the hill, or was it the effects of the exhaustion dealt to the troops? He would have supposed the Patrick men to be capable of breaching far further – but they'd hardly cleared the first rank.

"They're doing well enough," Samuel noted from nearby, watching the battle alongside Karstly and Gordry, after Karstly had pulled his Colonels to the front. "For three hundred men, anyway. It looks as if they'll go a distance further."

"…No," Karstly said. "I'm afraid I can't find the room to agree with you on that, Samuel. They've failed to create a spark. Indeed, they've been snuffed out entirely. Now there's a cunning Colonel that they face."

"Ah, well," Samuel said with a shrug. "I suppose it was worth a try. So what now, we recall the Patricks and try something else?"

"You're awfully quick to change your tune," Karstly noticed with the smallest amount of disgust. "…No. We do not withdraw them. If we're to make this battle quick, they're going to need to give us something, even if it means losing the entirety of their forces for it."

Gordry listened in, and pretended not to be appalled by what he was hearing from the General. He wasn't a fan of the young Patrick either. He disliked the youth's flagrant disregard for the disciplined application of the military order, but nor would he actively have left him to die a quick death. That was simply a waste of men, and it was something that he could hardly abide by.

Of course, this was not his battlefield, and there was little that he could say on that note. He sniffed, and looked back on his own men. Now there was a group worthy of the opening act of a battle. Even in exhaustion, they were ready. He was confident that they would have managed a far more impressive opening than what they were currently being forced to witness.

The stagnation continued. The Patrick men were trapped in place, and with them, the Lombard men were just behind, enduring the endless rain of arrows upon their shields.

"Forward, Captain?" Tolsey asked. They'd been forced to look at the backs of the Patrick men for far too long. Their own position felt almost pointless. They were merely extra targets for arrows.

"Forward where, Tolsey?" Lombard replied. "This road isn't wide enough for us to overtake them. It's either backwards, or nowhere."

He looked around long enough eyeing all the different barricades that barred the different paths around them, searching for an alternate route. But those paths were guarded by too steep a slope for anything to be made of them, and even if they'd made it past the slope, there were the barricades and the men that defended them to contend with.

There was nothing to be done, and Lombard was painfully aware of that fact.

"Patrick…" He murmured, seeing Oliver stand a distance from the line. He knew the state of Oliver's hand, but he hadn't expected it to affect the strength of the Patrick forces to such a degree. He wasn't even entirely sure that it had – it could well have been that the enemy was simply that strong, and that well positioned.

But when it was weakness and injury that they were building their attack off, it was hard to blame anything other than it.