A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

1047: The Sword and the Board – Part 1

1047: The Sword and the Board – Part 1

Firyr wasn’t ready to receive the strike head-on.

He was still dealing with the spears of the soldiers that surrounded him.

Heavy though his earlier strike might have been, it meant nothing with the time that he’d wasted delivering it. freeωebnovēl.c૦m

He had to pivot on his foot far faster than he had the capacity to do.

Chang’s mouth was already curling into a smile.

His experience knew a killing blow when he saw one.

He already understood the man in front of him, and with the seeds that he’d sown, he knew himself able to harvest his soul.

CLANG!

“What!?” Chang said, incredulous.

He wasn’t even able to follow what had happened.

One moment Firyr was slowly turning, and the next, Chang’s blade had bounced off something immovable, and been cast aside.

He looked around for the source of the attack – it couldn’t have been Firyr.

He was still facing the wrong way.

And yet… there was no one else.

Only the end of a spear shaft that he hadn’t been tracking, so thoroughly off route.

“Impossible,” he said, in his Verna tongue.

Even if the language was different, the confusion written on Chang’s face made him very much understood to Firyr.

“Impossible?” Firyr said.

“Maybe.”

It was an even more outlandish counter than the reckless Firyr was known to deliver in practice.

It was the sort of risky manoeuvre that should have never been tried out on the battlefield.

But he felt an impossible confidence flowing through him, as if he could do anything, and achieve anything.

The idea had come to him, and he’d been unable to refuse its trial.

Now, seeing the look on Chang’s face, he was glad that he hadn’t.

“There’s two sides to a spear, eh?” Firyr noted.

They were words that every spearman ought to have understood, but there were levels to such an understanding.

Firyr’s understanding then was superior to anything that he’d noted in the past.

Chang’s eyebrow twitched his incredulity.

It was the only thing that could keep the fear at bay – that mounting annoyance.

He tried to distract himself from the haunting liveliness of Firyr’s shadow, as it rose up from the ground, and seemed to shroud his body.

He told himself that it was a trick – he knew it to be, for none of the men mentioned it.

None seemed to see it, save for him.

None too seemed to see the golden flecks that touched Firyr’s eyes, as small as they were.

He brought down his glaive again, adjusting himself too quickly.

If he’d been calmer, he might have known that he ought to have found his footing first.

But in that moment, he needed to move.

He needed to cast off the chains of fear that threatened to bind him.

Against a foe of Firyr’s talent, there could be no room for it.

The Stormfront Commander stepped to the side of the slash.

He did not even bother to parry.

The weakness of that strike compared to the rest that Chang had thrown was evident.

Firyr almost felt disappointed seeing it.

There was a moment of helplessness, as Firyr stepped past the strike, and Chang was carried by the momentum of his own attack, unable to stop Firyr’s counter, even as he fixed him with both of his eyes.

The thrust came towards Chang’s chest.

He grunted, and he strained.

With the assistance of Amion, he crawled his way back from fear.

He had strong reasons not to die.

A wife, and a child.

The seeds that Chang had sown, and that he’d sworn to watch grow.

He pulled himself back straight in the saddle with enough suddenness to tear a muscle.

The glaive was there, ready to deflect the attack, but just barely.

Firyr’s thrust honed in with alarming speed, and Chang strained every muscle to stop the attack.

And then… there was nothing.

Nothing at all.

Not a single bit of weight fell upon Chang’s glaive.

There was not even a tap, to announce the spear’s arrival.

There was only a look of maliciousness in Firyr’s eyes.

A haunting look, that Chang could have only described as evil.

Then he lost to it.

To that Firyr.

His mouth hung open, and a cry caught in his throat.

He’d bitten so strongly on the feint that there was nothing left to be done.

He would have been in a better position if he’d tried not to block it at all.

The look in Firyr’s eyes seemed to state all that, beyond the language barrier.

THUD!

When Firyr’s true strike eventually came, there was nothing Chang was able to do to stop it.

It plunged in through the chest of Chang’s horse, finding the beast’s heart with pinpoint accuracy, and bringing it crashing down to the ground in an instant.

The surrounding Verna soldiers rushed in, finding their feet.

Their spears came for Firyr’s unprotected back and sides, but still, his smile did not falter.

They did not seem to realize that he had all the time in the world to deal with them.

That short span of momentums in which the horse fell felt like an eternity to Firyr now.

“So much time,” he said, feeling the weight of an eternity that he should not have grasped.

A knowledge from another entity that he barely had touched fingertips with.

His spear flashed, four separate times, and four men were sent dying to the floor.

Then, after a pause, the same spear gave one last merciful thrust, slaying Chang, as he lay trapped beneath his horse.

“COMMANDER FIRYR HAS SLAIN A VIOLET COMMANDANT!

SHOUT HIS VICTORY!” Oliver called, seizing upon the moment without the slightest hint of hesitation.

He felt Command animate him, and on the back of Firyr’s victory, he allowed it to animate all of his men.

Chapter 24 – The Sword and the Board

With the slaying of Chang, the battle shifted in an instant.

That small frontline transformed into a violent frenzy.

Firyr headed the arrowhead, and he pushed forward by several ranks, forcing a permanent deformation in the Verna ranks.

Now Verdant, Kaya and Karesh were allowed to loose their weapons on the enemy, and they did so without holding back.