A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

Oliver narrowed his eyes, removing the plight of the kidnapped villages from his mind as he made a quick evaluation of the terrain. They'd put the backs of their camp up against a small ciff, about twenty feet high. It was unscalable, but it grew less steep towards each side. It would be possible to get around it if the bandits ran. They'd clearly intended it as a windbreak, or something of that sort.

To catch them all at once, it would likely be best to come at them from both sides, Oliver reasoned. Make it so their only retreat option was back towards the edge of the forest, where the rest of the soldiers would be stationed.

Even then, it seemed unlikely that they would kill every man. As long as they eliminated their capacity as a fighting force, though. He judged that would likely be enough.

Satisfied, he turned to run after the others.

They'd come back quicker than Sergeant Major Northman had assumed they would. He knew the boy had said an hour, but he doubted that they would get it done that quickly. Not with that mass of forest to search. He'd been content to leave them to it, allow the men to rest before they moved in to crush the foe.

Yet, here they were, less than an hour later, emerging from the trees with the hardened expressions of victorious men. Northman fancied that, after so long spent leading men, he could tell whether their mission had been a success or a failure just from the looks of their faces.

A good soldier wouldn't look gleeful about accomplishing a mission. That much was expected of them. There should be nearly no reaction to victory of that sort. But defeated men, they always came crawling back looking wounded, their tails between their legs. There was no hiding the shame of defeat.

"Well?" Northman said, as Oliver drew nearer.

"We found it," Oliver said. The table and map were still out behind the wagon, though they had a good few of their men out front now, keeping an eye on the fort. There wasn't really much to see, but it was still good to leave the pressure on while they could.

Northman accepted Oliver's words with a nod. He could hardly get over how strange it was to hear a boy speak with such authority when he was so young. And this wasn't the typical noble boy's authority – Northman had heard that too many times to count. The noble boy's authority was always based merely on weighty expectations. He couldn't fathom someone refusing him.

Oliver Patrick's was a different sort, though. He had the solidness of a man that had endured three campaigns. It wasn't just that, either. Of course one would expect a Patrick to walk with an aura of strength and have a sense of nobility and discipline to him – but one didn't expect a Patrick to have such a shrewd gaze.

The sort of gaze that looked through you and counted all that was going on inside you. The type of gaze that demanded you look away, even though you stood above him. Continue your journey on My Virtual Library Empire

Northman noted that he wasn't at all surprised by Patrick's success. He merely glanced at the map and followed Oliver's finger. "A hundred men, at least," Oliver told him. "Here. Their backs against a cliff. Their weaponry is poor, but there's innocents in there.

Women, kidnapped from the nearby villages from the look of them."

The Commander tutted at that information. "If there's women there, there'll be women in the fort as well… Looks like that task might get considerably bloody if they start holding hostages against us. Well, no matter. One step at a time. Anything to add to Ser Patrick's report, Sergeant Rofus?"

"Nothing much. Fifteen-minute run there, I'd say. Twenty if you want to keep the men fit before battle," Rofus said. "Oh, obviously that's ignoring the fact that we just dodged a fuckin' arrow the size of a battering ram with this one. A hundred men plumbing into our rear would have been a bad day."

There came murmurs of agreement from the other sergeants at that. Northman echoed them. Ideally, he should have been the one to root through this, as their Commander. He should have been able to ensure that they accomplished their task as straightforwardly as possible. But the difficulty of this, when compared to their previous missions, it was a large step up.

All the work lately had been getting harder, but this took the cake by a considerable degree. Northman couldn't tell what his General was thinking most of the time, but the only thing saving his pride on this mission was the acknowledgement that General Skullic likely expected something of this sort to happen. He hadn't expected Northman and his men to be able to do it alone.

"Fine," Northman said, "that'll do. How many men do we want to take? Seventy? Thirty out front?"

"I'd go seventy, aye" Rofus said. "With surprise on our side and with our men being better quality, we should trample them with seventy."

"Fifty," Oliver said firmly. "And we put the other fifty where they can be seen by those fort men."

"Your reasoning?" Northman asked.

"You have not tested me yet in battle, Commander," Oliver said respectfully. "But with an army at my back and the chaos in our favour, I am at my most effective. We can afford to leave twenty men behind. It would allow us to immediately commence an attack on the fort once we return and make camp there come dusk as you planned."

From anyone else, it would have been an outrageous statement. Enough to laugh at. No one was laughing then, though. They'd stopped laughing the moment he killed those archers. Then they'd started listening, the moment he'd mentioned the men waiting in the woods to ambush them.

They realized, for a certainty, that the boy they'd been gifted wasn't a mere gimmick. He wasn't the product of tall tales, nor merely the victim of politics, ending up where he was out of punishment. Of course, both things played a part in it – but they knew for a certainty that their General had stationed him there for a reason. The cunning General Skullic expected him to be useful.

Useful enough that he could save his men from casualties. Skullic hated incurring casualties on these small-scale skirmishes.