A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

Spears came past the barricades as the Blackthorn men neared. The front line did not have weapons of their own to fight back with. Their job was simply to grab the barricades, and heft them with all their might. They needed no spears to occupy their hands for that.

As they grew closer still, even those Blackthorn men knew to feel fear. No one walked willingly towards death. Not when it was pointing towards them with such eagerness like those Verna spears were. They were desperate to claim Stormfront lives, and make up for the loss of Amion and his thousand-man battalion.

Nevertheless, forward they went, even as they came entirely into spear range. They put their shields out then, daring to trust them, but there was only so much good that a shield could do when there was no weapon to back it up. Besides, the plan had always been to discard those shields when they got nearer the barricades.

The first of the men fell to a spear. It managed to slip under his shield as he protected himself from another weapon, and then it ran through his liver, just clipping his rubs. The man snarled. He grabbed the spear shaft as if to fight back, but against such a blow, even a Blackthorn man wasn't to last long. He fell down to a shuddering knee, and then slipped onto his back.

The Blackthorn men began to slow. There was surely no reason to go straight into the points of the spears, was there? They could accomplish their mission without a loss of life, or so they thought.

"FORWARD!" Colonel Gordry bellowed, Command in his voice. His call to his men was like a whip on their backs. There was a certain type of person that made it to the rank of Colonel in the Blackthorn armies, and it was a person that Gordry very much embodied. Hard-willed and stern in his leadership, he wouldn't allow any quarter for his men.

It was not their place to decide whether they ought to proceed slowly or quickly. They were to do as they were told, as disciplined soldiers should.

Karstly nodded his approval, as Colonel Gordry caught his eye. The General noted the look on Gordry's face. 'A surprising weakness,' Karstly murmured to himself. He would not have expected Gordry to look so stricken to see his men going to the grave in such numbers. Was this not the same man that was ordering them forward?

They must have seemed fearless to the Verna, as they picked their way forward, through the bodies of other Blackthorn men that had been killed before them, walking willingly into the spears that sought to claim their lives. It was reckless – but they reached their objective nonetheless. The first of the Blackthorn hands managed to reach the barricades, and they grasped at the sides of them.

Such holds did not last long, however, as spears soon struck them down.

Even when they were struck down, there were more Blackthorn men to replace them. Now the second rank of Blackthorn men were able to reach the soldiers beyond the barricade, even as the front line was pierced in front of them. With the most unwavering discipline, they began their counterattack, sliding their spears past the shoulders of their fellow men, enacting justice on their behalf.

There the Stormfront longspear found its home. Though the Verna spears were long in their own right, they were no match for a people that did not keep shields regularly in their arsenal. The long spear of the Stormfronts was meant to be wielded with two hands. It was heavy, and its reach was unmatched.

"PULL!" Gordry bellowed when there were enough men on the barricade. There must have been barely, but he gave the order regardless, despite the weight of such equipment.

"Reckless," General Phalem said, hearing the order, and understanding it, despite the Stormfront language it was spoken in. "Far too reckless. Khan was right to send you my way. He trusted that I would see you bloodied against these rocks."

Yet the barricades shifted. With veins popping in their heads, the sturdy Blackthorn men raised the weighty wooden contraptions up from the ground.

They were not giants like the slaves that Greeves had recruited for Oliver. At least, not all of them were. Still, there was a reason the Blackthorns were famed for their physical might. The sheer arduousness of the training that they were put through made every man an abnormality of strength.

It did not matter their size, they could be trusted to perform feats that other soldiers would have called inhuman.

"OFF THE SIDE!" Gordry's command came again. The men had lifted the barricade up onto their shoulders, but the task was far from done with just that. The Verna spearmen were still fighting, and the arrows were still flying, and men were still dying.

The Blackthorn troops needed to be continually replaced, and more than once did that barricade crash back down to the ground again, after too many soldiers were slain to see it carried.

And still, it moved. All the way to the edge of the slopes, until there was enough leverage to topple it over the side. Through a river of corpses, the Blackthorn men had waded, and they'd done so willingly, accomplishing their task – or at least, the first part of it. There were still four more barricades to go on only that part of the slope.

"Forward," Karstly said again, his face showing no signs of distress.

"FORWARD!" Gordry bellowed, unflinching. The Blackthorn men under him went again. They cheered as the barricade fell and shattered on the slopes beneath him. They were a different sort of breed, those men. The sort of morale that they carried was strange enough to be called a sickness, and they relished it.

Even Karstly had to acknowledge that he had no other troops under his employ who would willingly go through such hell on but a single order of him.

"You would sacrifice so many men, just for a measly few barricades?" General Phalem said, frowning. He was certain that Karstly would have seen sense after the first, but the General ploughed on. It didn't make a lick of sense.

The onlookers of the Patrick and Lombard armies on the slopes below thought much the same as they looked up.