A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

"…They were the words of a combatant, honoured foe. Do not take my meaning to be truth. There was potential in you, even if today was not the day to see it. Consider my taunting to be me taking you as seriously as I could. May your God Icaron find a place of peace for you in the afterlife," Karstly said. They were quiet words.

Only Samuel managed to overhear them, but he pretended that he did not. This was not the side of General Karstly that the world yet needed to see. They needed to see what came after, and Karstly did not leave them waiting long.

He leaned down from his saddle to grasp the helmet of the slain man, with its long golden plume. "Speak it, Samuel," he said.

"GENERAL KARSTLY HAS SLAIN GENERAL PHALEM! VICTORY BELONGS TO THE STORMFRONT!"

"""URAHHHHH!""" The Stormfront men bellowed, their morale sky rocketing to even higher degrees, as if they were draining every drop of energy that the Verna men were had previously been fighting with.

The Stormfronters continued with even more blood thirst. Men grew reckless as they tried to snatch the heads of important foes for themselves in the battle's closing stages. They might have had an even easier time doing so, had the Verna men not understood the reality of their situation.

They felt the despair of their General's death, and that weakened them. But they could not let go of the battle entirely. To do so was to die. There was to be no surrender here, on that mountain top. Still thousands of them remained, and they knew the Stormfront would kill them to the last man. They didn't have the supplies to do otherwise.

The cornered enemy showed the last of their teeth. They stood their ground with the reckless determination required of those that still wished to live. But, even that was not enough. The morale of the Stormfront troops was overwhelming. They were animated by a different spirit than the mere want to hold on to life. Theirs was a state of intoxication.

They hardly felt their wounds. They pressed forward, their manner invincible.

For a man like Karstly, this might have been the part of the battle when he took his foot from the flanks of his horse, and allowed his charge to ease up a deal. He might have been satisfied with the great head that he'd struck from the enemy General's shoulders, and allowed himself a few minutes to catch his breath.

However, Karstly's eyes were already pointed forwards. Not just to the foes that remained, but to the future that awaited them beyond this battle. It had been a long road to this point, and still that road was far from ending. They had a mission to carry out. Karstly did not forget the reason for which they sought to hold this hill.

He rose up his hand, and began to deliver more orders, as precise as those that had opened the battle. He knew that he had to minimize the losses of their men as much as he could in these closing stages, for so far behind enemy lines, the value of each man would be immense.

"HOLD TO ME!" Karstly told them. "WE SPEAR THROUGH THE MIDDLE! DO NOT WASTE ENERGY ON FOOLISH GAMES! WE END THIS QUICKLY!"

The men responded to that shout with the same enthusiasm as they'd mustered before. Talk of victory was more than enough for those motivated men. One would never have thought that they were the same army that had been so exhausted after travelling for two days without a shred of rest. They looked a lively bunch.

The remaining Rogue Commandants did what they could to charge General Karstly, but in doing so, they only hurried their own demise. His charge through their centre provoked them, as there was naught they could do when his blade came for them. One by one, those proud men fell, as did the last pillars of enemy resistance. Karstly sniffed out stability like a bloodhound.

He was always there when his men were just beginning to feel their rushing momentum slow, and his sword would open the way again for them.

Oliver watched, drinking it all in. It was the first true battle that he'd seen a General in. Karstly wasn't just a man, he was the army itself. It all happened according to his pace. The very mood of his soldiers was determined by the man. He controlled it all.

And, if he was accomplished enough – as Karstly was – he inflicted the same on the enemy. A General didn't just seem like a leader of men. He seemed more like a conqueror, or a King, finding new subjects to inflict his will upon.

"So that is what it is that I am missing…" Oliver said. Even the word 'that' seemed to be too narrow a term, as broad as it was. There was so much to Karstly, and what he'd done in that battle. Too much for Oliver's mere human eyes to take in. The slightest little shift in Karstly's body position would bring about a change in his men.

His Command was so vast, and his connections so plentiful, his men took orders even without words. It was a sensation that Oliver himself had hit upon before, but he had never wielded it quite like Karstly.

The man tore those remaining Verna men apart. Without General Phalem, they were made to look like infants. With it, Oliver saw yet another level to the art of warfare that he had previously not considered. He saw an even wider gap, when the gap between Phalem and Karstly should have already been the widest it could be.

One by one, the Verna flags fell, bearing Phalem's sigil of a bull's head with a ring through its nose. And in its place, there were Stormfront men, of their many different coloured surcoats, from the black of the Blackthorns, to the silver that Karstly himself seemed to favour.

Mercy was delivered. Had it been left any longer, the Verna men would have ceased to be the soldiers that they were, and they would have had to be recognized as prisoners. Karstly's methods were thorough. He didn't allow a man to stray from the pack, nor throw down his weapons. He didn't need to inflict that sort of guilt on his men, in cutting down an enemy that had already given up.

He took care of it all with the same immense grasp of strategy that had caused Phalem to lose his head.