A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

Chapter 315: The Strings of Fate - Part 14

"Find your spot, find your group, and attack when your heart beats the fastest," Beam said. One last order, this one finally spoken directly to them. He could do nothing for these people, he realized. There were limits to his abilities. He could feel the extra reach that his competence gave him, and he could also feel the crushing dismay of all that was outside of his reach.

His heart was stone as he thought of such things now. He did not curse himself for the lack of competency as he had in the past. Of course, he desired it – but here in the moment, he could do no more than struggle. In fact, anything more than that, and he would die. He felt that within him. He'd learned that that night.

To continually seek evolution and progress, just as he had in his battle with the Hobgoblin – it would get him killed.

His words did not contain a shred of defeatism. They were hardened words. The words that a man spoke to his family as he left for a hard day's work. It was not a pleasant task, it was not a task that any man would want to carry out, and the conditions were far from favourable, but all they could do was fight anyway.

Greeves found his breath catching in his throat as he heard what the boy had to say. He was sure there had to be more – some brilliant plan, some bit of moment, some spark of genius. Something… He'd felt it in his chest earlier, the boy had led them right up to the gates of it, he'd danced around a brilliant and genius solution… and yet, where was it?

Did it merely end here, with the dark?

The solution he gave them was merely 'fight?'

Fight? Fight how? For what? On your own terms? Where do you want us to fight, boy?

But Beam had no words for them. He'd already turned away. He was no leader. He didn't have the training for it. He didn't have the patience. He didn't have the ability.

Not yet. There were two paths he knew now: the path of struggle, and the path of the sword.

He used these new instincts that the Gods had chosen to bestow on him, that all his training had afforded him, and he took steps towards where he felt he would be most effective. He moved out to meet his enemy.

Nila watched his shadow go, as surprised as Greeves. She suddenly felt awfully lonely. A shiver passed up her back. The dark was oppressive and suffocating… But… it was hers. Her eyes lit up. She'd spent many years in the dark, hunting.

She knew it better than anyone there. She had her own sort of instincts to rely on. Those things that one couldn't put into words, the knowledge of where the prey was likely to be, and where she was likely to have her best chance at a shot.

In the dark, everything was possible. "I'm going for the Golden Bull," she said to Greeves before she left.

"The Golden Bull..?" He had to repeat it again before he understood, but by the time he'd turned to her, she was already gone. "Shit… So that's it," he muttered, his smile suddenly returning, but not without a sheen of sweat to accompany it on his forehead.

"Alright, listen up, dogs, I'll explain it for those of you that are hard of understanding," Greeves said. His voice wasn't as loud as it had been earlier, but with the darkness, it still rang out violently, enough to disturb the ear. "The boy's plan is simple. He's going for the General's head.

Each of you are arrows – with two hundred and fifty of you, in this darkness and this chaos, one of us should be capable of killing the Golden Bull."

Nila had sensed it, before even realizing it. The conditions had been set up perfectly for them. Both she and Beam had clocked it, through different instincts. The moment Jok set foot with his warband into the village, he became a target to be hunted.

Only Greeves was capable of putting their thoughts and their reasoning together. He had only a merchant's instincts to go on, after all. If it was not put into words for him, he would not understand those battlefield instincts.

'The boy must have sensed it… There's no strength in unity for these villagers now… Not here, in chaos. Uniting them in a single cause wouldn't make them stronger, it would just make them easier to deal with.' Greeves thought to himself, as he attempted to rationalize the boy's movements.

"Here's your road to victory, for those of you hard of understanding: go for the damn head. There's but a single person in between you and survival – the survival of your family. Their little welp of a commander. Slay him, and the boy will bury the rest," Greeves said.

"What of that other man, the loud one who was fighting earlier?" An old man asked, his words stabbing at that which Greeves had neglected to consider. For a moment, the merchant fumbled, wondering why he hadn't considered something so obviously… But then he realized he had.

At some point, he'd started relying on that same feeling that Nila and Beam had embraced, though he hardly understood it. He'd felt it in the air, just like when h felt the worth of a commodity going up – the battle was here, in this moment. Their entire army was here. There were but a few stragglers left with Gorm. If they won here, they won it all.

"He's but a single man. Their army lies here. We take off the head of this snake and the boy will bury the rest. Those of you that have seen it, you understand. Some blades swing more sharply than others. All he needs is opportunity.

You can buy him that," Greeves said.

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"But how, damn it? What do you expect us to do? You think we can slay this man ourselves? Charging as a group is one thing, but this… This is beyond us," a man muttered. Greeves' couldn't see the face in the crowd, but he could already feel his heart giving the man a name.

'Coward.' He tutted. The same word he'd given all beneath him for many long years. To think there would come a time when he would need to beseech such cowards, when he would need to understand them in such a way that he could make them stronger, rather than crush them.