A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

Oliver briefly reflected on just how monstrous the power could be, when he used it properly.

Not that he even knew what 'properly' was in regards to it. It was still fleeting. Just as the power fed off fear, it was likely, somehow, Oliver's own fear of it that kept him from using it more often. Ingolsol, of course, scoffed his ridicule at such a notion. He knew more of power than he let on.

And now only a few men remained. Oliver didn't need power to deal with them. Not in that number. The tide of battle had already swept them away. There would be no reversing it, unless they pulled something drastic.

Of course, that was when the reinforcements began to arrive. They weren't quite there yet, but the evidence of a loud crash as several men ascended the ladders on the right all at once, and then the shouting that followed, that was more than enough to tell Oliver the sort of time limit that he was on.

Their speed had only managed to carry them so far. The bandits had underestimated what it would take to seize their walls. They had expected a siege done in the traditional manner, with soldiers running ladders in hand against the wall. Seeing no ladders even from across the field, they hadn't raised the alarm. They weren't organized men, after all.

If they didn't need to fight, they wouldn't, and most if not all of them believed that the reinforcements would be coming from the woods to crush them.

"DAMN IT ALL! WHERE ARE THOSE REINFORCEMENTS?" Screamed one of the battered men that was forced to continue standing his ground against Oliver. He meant not the men from below. He meant – like all of them – the allies that they expected from across the field.

"Shall I show you where they are?" Oliver asked. He feigned to the left. The same simple trick. Something that he'd been doing for a good while now. The simplest of feints, polished to the extremes of mastery. The flighty men reacted.

They didn't have the discipline not to. It threw their balance off, and by the time that Oliver dove towards their right, they still hadn't managed to realize it for the feint that it was, so quick was Oliver's speed.

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He tore open a man's side, before twisting and punching another. It was all in action now. Each action needed to have the most amount of effectiveness. The enemy was a still pond, in which Olvier wanted to create the largest of ripples.

With more than half their number gone, the momentum was all but irreversible for them. Just the falling for that feint was more than enough to finish it all off permanently now. Two more men fell, leaving a mere four drenched in their own man's blood, as the reinforcements began to flood towards the centre of the wall, rushing from both gate towers.

They were still a distance away. They could see the confrontation and even as the last straggling men called for help, there was nought that the new arrivals could do to go any faster.

One man tried a bow, but Oliver hadn't stood still for a single second and the arrow flew past him, just as lunged, using the fullest length of his sword, taking a leaf out of Blackthorn's book, with her lunging rapier style.

It was the slightest wound, compared to the others he had inflicted. Delicate, even. Just the smallest amount of blood came out as a result. Yet, it was even more fatal than the rest. He'd pierced the man's liver straight through, with all the precision of a surgeon.

Only three remained, and the struggles of the panicked dying man rendered their chances even lesser, as his failure broke up the line that they'd struggle to form and they were forced to back away from each other.

One after the other, like counting coins, Oliver dealt with the rest. Another sword to the gut. A slash straight through the shoulder, towards the sternum, and then a fist, dismantling the effort of a counter-attack, sending the axe that came his way wildly off course. A slash across the neck finished it all. Fifteen men, dead, added to the rest of the archers that had been on top of that wall.

Now the reinforcements were nearing. Not the ones from the woods, as they were all clambering for, but merely the men that had been making camp beneath, hardly believing that their wall could be breached.

When they saw the number of soldiers that had settled out of their gates hours ago, there'd been cause for concern, but when they'd taken hours to make a single move, they were forced to relax and reaffirm their trust in the plans that they'd already put in place.

Now there was no trust, only disbelief. They were forced to wade amongst the bodies of the dead in order to reach Oliver. Seeing such an amount of blood, they expected to the navy blue of the enemy's uniform, but they couldn't see a single man, neither dead nor alive.@@novelbin@@

Until they laid eyes on Oliver himself, when the curve of the wall revealed him, there seemed to be hardly any explanation for the death of their comrades.

Even given an explanation, that explanation hardly seemed satisfactory. A boy – an ununiformed boy at that, no trace of soldiery to him, apart from his sword – setting into a bunched-up group of burly field-tending men as though they were nothing more than corn for the harvest. A good amount of their number saw the final stages of Oliver's job, as he cut down six men by his lonesome.

Had they seen the full fifteen, their charges of reinforcement might have screeched to a complete halt.

Oliver looked left. Even with the wall in the wall, he thought he could sense twenty men on their way. He looked right. From there, he supposed there must have been thirty.

Even for him, those sorts of numbers would be difficult, bunched together as they were. It was one thing to butcher twenty-five men as single entities and another to riposte them when they were all a unified and charging force.

"SPEAR!" Came a loud voice, as a man hauled himself up over the side of the wall, landing heavily on the wood beside Oliver. A long spear was passed to him at his command.