A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor-Chapter 1040 A Cunning Foe - Part 6

1040: A Cunning Foe – Part 6

1040: A Cunning Foe – Part 6

“…A trap of that sort – I suppose it is not so bad,” Ingolsol noted, begrudging in his agreement.

It was a less upfront way than they usually handled things, but given the nature of the unease ripples that they’d managed to instil, after just a single order, even the Dark God was forced to acknowledge it.

The magnitude of the effect was more than could even be won by the sword.

The trouble was where to go from there.

As the Generals and Colonels at the bottom of the mountain had noted, it wasn’t an attack that the Patrick men had managed to transform into anything major.

Firyr had been able to bloody his spear properly, to complement the dried blood from the battle the day before, but that was about it.

Their morale was high, but their position was still very much the same.

Even knowing that, Oliver could not feel disheartened.

He’d been able to form a crack, and that was good enough for him.

There were still cards he had yet to play.

He nodded to himself, almost excited.

“This is winnable,” he said.

“Victory is only a short few sword strokes away… Even if my own sword is not involved in the conclusion.”

The arrows continued to come with a relentlessness, limiting any further options they might have had.

Lombard’s men continued to bear the brunt of their assault, whilst Oliver’s men in the back ranks – Lady Blackthorn included – were put in quite a similar position.

They were eager to make themselves known.

This might have been posited as a battle against a single Colonel, but now that Oliver sat back, in the strategist’s chair himself, he could see that the battlefield was far from being that simple.

One Colonel might have been in front of them, with his thousand men, but that didn’t take into account all the archers still firing from other battalions.

Nor did it take into account the free positions for further fire that might be made use of, when the enemy General decided to play that particularly annoying card.

There was the high path to their left, far out of reach, but so perfectly in range for archers, still unoccupied.

If men were to be moved there at a critical juncture in their battle, when the Patrick forces were entirely committed to the front, then the results would be devastating.

Any attacks that Oliver was to put forth had to take into account the possibility of that attack from the side.

It was not a single Colonel, it was the entire mountain itself.

From Rogue Commandant Amion, to the other Rogue Commandants on the other mountain passes, all the way to General Phalem at the very peak.

All of them were eyeing the Patrick men, looking for a fitting opportunity to dispatch them, whilst still keeping their own number of cards in reserve for the enemies that would likely follow after them.

In essence, it was a waiting game, one filled with a particular tension.

It wasn’t the sort of thing that Oliver would have ordinarily noticed.

For him, battles were relentless.

There were rarely moments of pause like this, for time to slow, and the position to be evaluated.

He could feel the Rogue Commandant to his rear, with his eyes bearing into his back, looking for the perfect opportunity to do something devious.

“We hold,” the Rogue Commandant said, though none had asked for further orders.

They had a cache of arrows that was endless, and their orders were to apply constant pressure.

General Phalem had said nothing else.

But the rear of those Stormfront troops looked so tempting.

They were all committed entirely to the slope now.

It wouldn’t be impossible to stage a rear assault.

The steepness of the slopes had within them a second factor that favoured the defenders, and served as a surprise for the attackers.

And that factor was what kept the rear Rogue Commandant eternally reaching for his sword with a twitchy hand, on the cusp of delivering an order that would be no doubt reckless, yet full of glory for that very recklessness.

These slopes to an attacker looked unscalable, for they knew they couldn’t get their men to climb them with any sort of swiftness.

But for a defender, they were just the right gradient, and just the right distance.

They could be slid down with a minimal risk of injury.

And there was the tactic that General Phalem had left for them.

It was a perfect natural fortress, at the height of defensiveness, with the perfect little mechanism installed for an eventual counterattack.

All of this, Oliver took in, as his men did their battle to the front, maintaining their equilibrium.

“Give the order,” General Phalem said.

“Tell them patience.

Our cards are not to be wasted here.

The Stormfront have committed too few cards.

They’re intent on feeling us out.

They’re expecting this to be a drawn-out battle.”

“Despite their obvious exhaustion, General?” Came the reply.

“I would have thought they’d favour a swift victory, given their state.”

“That’s a means of trickery that we will not be deceived by,” Phalem said firmly.

“Go, tell them, before they do anything reckless enough to compromise our position.”

So it was that the Verna Commandants barely managed to keep themselves from ushering a reckless move.

It was not only the Rogue Commandant to Oliver’s rear that had that option, but the Rogue Commandant to his left, so much higher than the others.

The slope there was steep, and its height was intimidating, but a courageous Commandant still wouldn’t fail to order his men down it, if he thought there to be a good chance of securing victory by it.

“Acknowledge your enemy’s ideas, but do not be taken in entirely by them,” Volguard would have said.

“Everything that exists for them, also exists as the seedbeds for your own strategies, should you twist them just right.

Everything can be turned, if a long enough lever is built to shift it.”

“My job, it would seem, is to make the most use I can, with the fewest amount of men,” Oliver decided.

He’d attempted to come up with strategies making use of their men in the rear, and Lombard’s men, but those strategies continually saw weaknesses in the avenue of counterattacks.