A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

They'd managed to get a few hundred men up, and given time, they would have managed to bring a few hundred more. But now that the enemy had retreated entirely, all the way to the mountaintop, all the barricades that they'd set up were next to useless. It was just as easy to send the men the long way around.

"Hmm… What do we have here, I wonder?" Karstly said. "Three thousand, do you suppose, Samuel?"

"Indeed, that seems an appropriate estimate, my Lord," Samuel said. "I would reason that we lost perhaps three hundred or four hundred men advancing to this position. Not the most weighty of losses, all things considered."

He spoke those words within earshot of Gordry, and the man had to grimace, even as he agreed. "I must admit that I regret my earlier words, General. I was too impassioned, even for a soldier. I will take any punishment that you see fit."

"Then I will sentence you to the same reaction in future," Karstly said with a smile. "For one, it entertained me, and for two, as I have remarked before, I have more use for men, and all their unpredictability than I do for the lifeless husks that you Blackthorn men call soldiers."

At that, Gordry struggled to contain the flash of anger that rose to his eyes.

"Haha, you are too entertaining, Colonel. The lightest of insults towards your order, and your loyalty rises to the surface like an angry sea dragon. The General Blackthorn had cultivated a loyal man in you, it would seem," Karstly said.

By now, even Gordry could realize that he was being toyed with. Though he struggled to smile, he attempted it anyway, as if to demonstrate that even he could manage some degree of good humour. "There is no denying that we are in a rather favourable position now, General – at least compared to what we were. I do not doubt the decisions that brought us here any longer.

Though I still look towards that mountain peak, and I see nearly nine thousand men to our three thousand. Are those odds as favourable as we can make them?"

"We need them no more favourable than that," Karstly said. "We have already won, good Gordry. Would you fear this same enemy that we bested with the odds against us, now that we have them on the even flat plane of the mountaintop?"

"I wouldn't fear any such men," Gordry sat hotly, as was his custom. "But fear or not, I wonder whether we can snatch victory, outnumbered so staunchly. Do we not wait for the rest of our army to gather and hit them with our fullest force? Lombard and Patrick's men are marching up the slope as we speak."

"Tell them to halt, in the middle of the mountain," Karstly said, speaking the command both to Samuel and Gordry. "We need not ask any more of them. They have performed their duty most appreciably. They have already laid the seeds of our victory, and we have seen them grow into fruit trees heavy with ripe load. We had only merely need reach out our hand and pick them."

"Your confidence, my Lord… I fear it might be the wrong thing to be inflicting on our newer men. They do not know the foundation of it. Would it not be better to give them more concrete facts?" Samuel said.

"No," Gordry spoke up on the General's behalf. "It is a soldier's job to obey. I lost myself to my disbelief earlier, but I will lose myself no longer. If you say that we will best them with the three thousand men that we have with us, then I will not doubt that conclusion, General."

"Very good. You spoke earlier of the heads that you wished to take, and the victories you wished to snatch, in order to match the Patrick boy. It would seem that you've been granted quite the favourable opportunity, no?" Karstly said, wearing a smile, as if it was someone else that had granted that opportunity. He made it seem like it was a rare stroke of random fortune.

"Indeed I have, General," Gordry agreed. "We Blackthorns shall fight with a strength exceeding our number tenfold. We will not lose to any single man."

He saluted and made to leave with that impassioned comment having been said.

"…He doesn't seem to realize that he's already fulfilled his duty, just as the Patrick Captain did," Samuel noted.

"Indeed," Karstly said. "But who am I to tell him, when he already has so much energy? These soldiers of ours think too simply. They look at the plume of the head that they have cut off, and count their contribution with it. They don't see the strategic worth of smaller actions that do not directly yield such heads."

"You will need to reward them handsomely for this…" Samuel said. "Do not forget that too is the duty of a General."

Karstly raised an eyebrow at the man. "Do I look a decade younger to you? Does my choice seem to be without meaning? This is not a mere battle. This is another seed that will be sown for the future. This is the birth of an army that is exclusively mine.

I would not waste that future out of mere pettiness."

His eyes shone with fierce determination, enough that even Samuel, who knew him so well, found the look more than a little disconcerting.

He struggled to reach for a reply, but he found that he did not need to. The men who had taken the long way around were already beginning to arrive. The last of the Verna archers had been dispatched as well. This was it. All that was to be done was for the army to form up.

Samuel had thought the moment might have felt more momentous than it was. There was so much tension in the air, after all. They had fought Khan, and they had emerged victorious through their escape, but there had been no air of finality to it. This here, this moment, finally had such an air. When they finished here, they would be allowed to rest.

There should have been more weight to it – or at least, the other men around him should have been feeling that weight.