A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

Chapter 303: The Strings of Fate - Part 2

But Gorm took a step in, far faster than he had before. His axe shot out again, viciously fast. An overwhelming attack, without the slightest shred of exertion upon his face. It became clear to Lombard then, that the giant had been holding back.

"Of course you had…" Lombard murmured, a wry smile on his face. "That will come back to bite you, though."

Gorm did not care what the man had to say. He saw past the smile. He knew it to be bravado by now. They was nothing more the man could do. After all, he'd failed to bring his blade back in time – that parry had cost him far too much. And now, his hand flew through the air, and a river of blood ran from where Gorm had severed it.

'Credit to the man,' Gorm thought. 'He did not even flinch.'

He glanced at the stream of blood. It would have made sense, in an odd sort of way, for the man's blood to be darker than what Gorm was used to. Or at least, in the eyes of the Northern giant, it would have. The trickster was of a fundamentally different makeup than he was used to. To the very end, he did not understand them.

But even as he looked, and Lombard's blood pooled on the floor, it was the same deep red that he was familiar with. It flowed just as smoothly as the rest of them. The sand in the hourglass that ran out, signifying the end of life.

Blood was being spilled aplenty on that battlefield, as the corpses began to pile up. Beam's sword claimed another life, as the Yarmdon pressed in around him. He could feel the heat of the tents burning at his back, and somewhere off in the distance, he could hear a cheer resounding out.

He might have wondered if that cheer had signified Lombard's death, but Beam had long since passed away from the state of mind where one might think freely. He navigated a different plane of reality to the normal man. He hardly saw the world around him. Each man looked the same as the rest – he couldn't distinguish patterns.

Even as the world gave way to simplicity, and his body too reduced itself to simplicity, the pain, of all things, did not dull. The body seemed unable, or unwilling, to dampen that sensation. He felt the full weight of it, his only tether to an otherwise slipping reality.

He felt his legs stumble for the first time, and he took a knee, landing on his shoulder in the slippy snow. An axe thudded into the ground next to keep, carving a wound across his cheek. Beam did not see the man that held the weapon, but he thrust his sword out towards where he thought he was anyway. Again, his sword came back red, and again, he took another life.

Even on the ground as he was, the Yarmdon were hesitant. They formed a circle around him, as Beam struggled back to his feet, doing what he could to keep his balance. The boy was so exhausted by now, that he could not even control his jaw. A trail of spittle left his mouth, as he fiercely concentrated on merely enduring.

"Balheim…" One of the men muttered, as he kept his distance. He'd been in battle with the boy for over ten minutes now. He'd seen him last, even as they pressed in on him with an increasing number of men, even as they smothered him with their shields. A foreign boy, half their size, he endured more than any man he'd seen before.

His murmurings drew attention, for he was not the only one to have thought so. Stay connected with m-v l|e'm,p| y- r

The boy waved his sword at them as they tried to take a step forward, forcing them to keep their distance, somehow still clinging to that feeling of battle that he had developed, even as his movements grew simpler and simpler, more and more animalistic.

It was like a flag was being waved at them, scorning the destiny that all the Yarmdon sought. As though their Gods, who they knew favoured the hardy and the brutal, it was as if they'd possessed the enemy, and disregarded their own.

The legend of Balheim, one of their God's favoured. He that had hefted a whole tree trunk on his shoulders whilst drunk, and walked for a mile with it, merely because the battlefield hadn't contained anyone worthy enough for him to challenge.

He always went where the fighting was thickest. The hero of over a hundred battles. A man, who, legend said, once held off an army by his lonesome. After his allies were crushed and slaughtered within the opening turns of battle, for a full day and a full night, he continued to war on, defending a mountain pass.

Eventually, when the weather turned, a thousand men were forced to retreat, turned away by a single man.

Only in his hundredth year, did the man finally fall. It took until then for the Gods' favour to finally leave him, and he died a mighty death, upon the field of battle, as he choked the life from the enemy commander with his bare hands, and the commander's bodyguard pierced him with nearly twenty spears.

Beam was no Balheim, though, despite his struggling. His wounds were piling up, and he was giving more and more ground. He was more like a wounded tiger, that refused to stop struggling until its heart stopped beating.

And now with a noise to their left side, Beam's resistance became a rock. A ruthless boulder that trapped those thirty-something men in place, as they were hit by a wave that should not have been there.

"RETREAT!" Jok gave the order. His voice was raised, but his heart was calm. They'd already won the battle, he knew that. Even if he left his men there, the villagers would only last for as long as they held the momentum. As soon as Jok chose to send reinforcements, and peppered them with arrows, they would be flattened.