A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

Then the thinking stopped. Northman pitched forward first, as was his privilege. His legs felt heavy in the initial first few strides. They always did when nervousness weighed them down. But he could feel his men at the back of him now, lending his strength. That too was his privilege – to tap into the spirits of nearly a hundred men and have them raise him up into a War God.

The three parties breached the trees at once, storming into the clearing. Even then, it took them a second to notice. Eyes seemed to comprehend, but there was a pause before screams came to vocalize that concern.

By then, Northman had already buried his sword in the back of a man as he leaned against the crates on the outside of his tent. A vicious kick of the bleeding body and he sent the canvas tent collapsing inwards, much to the screams of those inside as they wrestled for the entrance.

Northman's men were waiting in the doorway, killing any that tried to flee. A slave girl followed after the first burly two men, and she was showered in their blood as swords punched through them.

They'd all gone for swords in this attack. This close-quarters ambush work was not the place for a spear. In these tight gaps between tents a spear would only get in the way, Northman knew.

It was pure chaos now. Ironically, the more death was inflicted, the more alive the camp seemed to sound. Screams arose from all its corners now. Screams of the dying, screams of the terrified, the roars of the aggressors. The valiant struggle of those that tried to mount a resistance.

Northman buried his sword through the back of a man as he tried to flee. He felt the resistance of his ribs, then the soft snapping as they shattered.

He chased him around a large tent, bringing him low, only to run straight towards the outstretched spear of a defending bandit, screaming in indignation at the violence. Those weren't a soldier's eyes. Those eyes were aggression contorted entirely by fear. That didn't make him any less dangerous. It made him more so.

Cursing his own poor positioning, Northman was forced to raise his sword in the hopes that he could redirect the incoming point of the spear somewhere less important.

But the attack never came. The man's fleeting resistance was cut apart, rendered as insignificant as the life of a single flea amidst a massive ecosystem. Even in the dusky dark of the forest, Northman could swear that he saw the golden glow of Oliver's eyes. It was startling enough to shock him out of his own battle euphoria, as he looked up for the first time since charging the encampment.

After killing that man with all the ease of brushing aside a leaf, Oliver moved on to the next man. A resistance had begun to mount. Naturally, with the force of the three separate attacks driving the bandits and rounding them like sheep, their men were beginning to gather in the centre as they sought to escape immediate death.

There, it was less isolated pockets of one or two men by the side of the tent, and more larger gatherings, small groups of four and five, reaching into groups of ten towards the centre. There the effects of their surprise attack were starting to diminish, Northman saw.

Glancing around and looking at the corpses, they must have killed fifty men in the initial assault, and there were a good twenty more out of position and being run down by their soldiers. Northman's own men were streaming past him to do the same, running down their routed foes. They would fall, Northman had no doubt.
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It was the resistance gathering in the centre where the problem would lie. There were spears extended forming a frontline. A Stormfront man knew the strength of a spear-wielding front line. To charge that head-on was to invite an untimely death. That was where they'd start to find their casualties, Northman knew.

Or at the very least, that was where the crushing tide of their ambush would begin to slow down and they'd have to fight the enemy more carefully.

Yet, that was also where Oliver Patrick was charging straight towards.

His men streamed behind him like an arrow. Rofus, Amberlan and Gamrod amongst them – men that Northman knew well and had seen fight hundreds of times before. He'd never seen them fight quite like that, though.

It might have been a mere illusion. Perhaps a trick of the light, cast up by the raging fires that had caught the tents as they were engulfed in flame. It could have been, but with all Northman's experience, he still felt certain of what he saw. They were faster than everyone around them.

The three forces had entered together, yet Oliver's force rushed on towards the centre faster than any other – and every one of his men kept up with him, their legs lightening and their arms thunder, cutting down men left and right.

When Oliver reached the spear wall extended before him, Northman returned to his sprint, following his own men, intending to hit the wall from the side. A three-way attack, that would get the job done. From the looks of it, Sergeant Tommen looked to be on time as well.

He needn't have worried, though. For all the time he'd spent on the battlefield, learning and honing his craft, he was reminded that there existed forces and people far outside his estimation. He could have spent his whole life thinking about the existence of such things, the whys and the hows they came to be. That would have even been a noble response, when confronted with the preposterous.

Like a child, though, when he finally laid eyes on it up close, the only thing that struck him was awe and an infantile enthusiasm. A chill rippled across his skin, a strange energy exciting his old bones, urging him to do the same.

The spears neared him, yet Oliver did not slow. He sped up. Right before he hit the wall of spears, he glanced off to the right and made a motion with his head. The subtlest of actions, but it was enough. Eyes were distracted sideways – it was plausible, after all, that a force would be attacking them from the righthand side.