A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

Still, he could find no evidence of it. They behaved as if the situation they were in was entirely routine. Each man found his place in his squadron as ranks were formed up. They walked with the same sort of absentminded diligence that one would expect from labourers performing the menial tasks of the day. Samuel had an ill premonition watching them.

He would never have expected it before, but it seemed that there was a point of emotionlessness that would be a negative for a soldier.

They did not even seem to sport the usual fear that even veteran men were surrounded in during tense moments, so extensive was their exhaustion. There was no excitement, no thrill, no anger, no anything. They were just tired, that was all that they felt. Samuel couldn't imagine an army worse off than that. Not when they needed to overcome a foe so numerically superior to them.

Even an army half traumatized by terror seemed preferable.

But even as Samuel quibbled with his own thoughts, Karstly's self confidence did not leave him for a second. He waded through the sea of men, dragging his usual retinue with him. He spared glances at the troops. They might have seemed like insignificant looks to others, but Samuel had been around Karstly long enough now to know what those looks really meant.

He was gathering his details, and he was setting all that information out in his head. With all of it gathered, he still looked far from dissatisfied.

'It would seem I am missing something once more,' Samuel noted, his stomach swirling with nervousness. 'And why am I so nervous now, when we have fought so many battles together in the past?'

He remembered the look that Karstly had given him just moments before, and he remembered what he'd said. It was a question that was answered in an instant. That look was the reason why. Karstly was a man of lofty goals. He didn't define himself entirely by the whimsy that he seemed to act with.

Even before he'd reached this campaign, and earned the title of General, he'd dreamed of battles as significant as this. And Samuel could make no mistake – this was a significant battle. It would form the second prong of their two pronged attack on the Verna coalition army.

"Gentlemen," Karstly's voice rang out. "The final battle awaits us. Do your hearts stir with the desire for victory?"

There was silence at his words. The sardonic smile that Karstly wore did not seem to expect an affirmative response. It seemed as if he was almost mocking them preemptively for whatever excitement they might have felt.

"Ha, good," Karstly said. "This here is not a battle worth getting so excited about. You have proved yourselves, men of mine. You've already done enough. What you find a top of these slopes will be as basic as a training drill. You will thrust your spear, and you will be surprised to find it pierce not one man, but three.

There comes a time in a man's life when the efforts he has put into his skills finally bear fruit. In your lives, this is that time. They quake with fear, those Verna foes, for they know that the Stormfront has arrived. They know that the Gods have descended to give them their martial retribution."

Samuel felt a chill run up his forearm. He looked around at his men. Did they feel it too? Or was it simply because he knew Karstly so well? The man had hit upon something, as he did, very occasionally. It was Karstly in his most gigantic, most devastating form.

When he was like that, he had enough charisma to persuade mountains to fall back down into the sea.

"We are a kingdom built on the sword. None can best us. Throughout all Stormfront history, the Verna has always outnumbered us. Such things are not cause for alarm. It would be more alarming if their numbers did not exceed ours so greatly. For there would be no challenge.

The Stormfront man is a different man, and the Verna man chases different ideals. They know no weapon as well as we, and so a training drill I declare it to be," Karstly said.

Even those exhausted men were listening with something more than just curiosity. There was the faintest of lights in their eyes, and all their eyes were pinned firmly on the General that roused them. Or was that even what he attempted to do? Perhaps if that was what it seemed like, it wouldn't have been so effective.

General Karstly assumed form, at times, in the pursuit of something that he seemed to view as higher. He approached those men with words that might have seemed casual, and then he built his grand ideals in their minds off the back of it.

Now Samuel could feel it all the more strongly. The Command of Karstly. The chill up his forearm transformed into goosebumps. It was the most subtle of Commands that he felt from any leading man. It was the flowing Command of a poet – or so it was said, but Samuel knew it to be the touch of a genius.

'There is a man destined to conquer,' Samuel had thought, when he had first met the young Karstly, and he had seen him dismantling the adepts of the Battle board. Now he thought the same thing again, as he roused his exhausted men out of the void of their tiredness, and he pointed their eyes towards a more exciting future.

"Already, we have ploughed through the best that they can offer. We have shown General Khan what it means to confront the Stormfront battalions – and he was forced to let us make our merry way south. Now, we find ourselves in the same position. These good-hearted Verna men have outfitted this mountain with enough supplies and fortifications for us to turn away tens of thousands from it.

Now, I say, let us take those supplies for ourselves," Karstly said, his sly smile growing wider.

"""AWOOOOO!"""

The men cheered, though they knew hardly why they cheered. They hadn't felt this stirring of emotion earlier, but now it filled them with enough energy that they wished to sprint. From Colonel, all the way down to mere foot soldier, they all found themselves animated.

"If you are so eager, then we shall move with haste!" Karstly declared. "Swift and devastating, men of the Stormfront! SWIFT AND DEVASTATING!"

He shouted that last part, and the men knew to shout it back.