A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor-Chapter 839: A Cutting Blow - Part 6
A tower of cards was what their position had been, Oliver realized. When he entered this battle with so few men against so many, it had been momentum that had carried them for so long. With so few men, they needed momentum just to fight back against despair, and dare to hope. Now, their hopes had been dashed.
"We killed fifty of theirs," Amberlain had pointed out. "And another five today. We’ve still killed twice as many of them than they have us."
"A bit of basic mathematics, and you’d see why that doesn’t work in our favour," replied Rofus, unusually grim, his usual cheerfulness gone.
They looked into the flames, and smelled the scent of burning flesh, watching as the smoke drifted skywards, fighting against the light sprinkling of downfalling snow. It was hard to say what those men were seeing in those flames, but Oliver could guess that it was not an image of victory.
How could they pull it back from this? Oliver did not know.
When the bodies began to lose their form, and the men began to disperse, Northman came to offer a quiet word to Oliver.
"You needn’t look so grim, Commander," Northman said, almost fatherly in his tone. "They expected this from this mission. Our General himself did. He sent us a raven, all but apologizing. Our families will be well looked after in the event of our deaths. We can charge towards it, as comfortable as any man could be."
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"What of victory?" Oliver said. "I would much rather we charge towards that."
"So would we all," Northman said. "A single mistake doesn’t pull the carpet out yet. It doesn’t erase everything that we’ve built up. We can come back from this, can’t we?"
Oliver wasn’t sure. He still didn’t have a way past the gates. Losing men on top of that… It was too much.
"You don’t need to give me an answer now," Northman said, "but I have every faith that you’ll find the answer that we need to snatch victory back for ourselves. No one’s blaming you for what happened. Looking at the battlefield, not one of us saw a problem with how you’d positioned those men."
"I understand, Northman. Thank you for the sentiment," Oliver said, doing his best to offer a strained smile.
Northman looked doubtful, but he seemed to realize that his words were not having their intended effect. He bowed his head, and eventually moved away.
The others had the sense to leave him to his quiet after that. They gave him nods, and caught his attention, trying to offer him something, if only company, but he refused it all. He spent his time with the dead, even after the others had long departed.
He stood watch, as the wooden frames collapsed in on themselves, and the flames greedily devoured all of them. He continued to watch, even as those same flames disappeared, and all that remained were red-hot embers.
"It’s only a few hours off dawn, my Lord," Verdant said. "Will you not sleep?"
He’d stood vigil with Oliver, but had respectfully kept his distance. The soldiers had murmured that it was more like he was morning for the Commander than he was for the dead.
"I will return to my tent," Oliver said finally. He offered no promise of sleep. He was unsure whether he would that night. Verdant seemed to take that from his tone, for he hesitated to agree, and a look of pain flashed on his face. It took him a long moment before he was able to bring himself to nod.
Oliver pushed his way inside of a space that was far too large for one man. It was warm. Far too warm for that weather. The men had kept it warm with a small fire in the centre. A portable bit of metal with a half-attempt at a chimney to give the smoke some sort of direction.
He moved past it, towards the large war table, and the map placed across it. There, he took his seat, and stared, looking for anything that he might use.
To take a fort like this, what did they need? The hill prevented battering rams. The gates wouldn’t fall easily to such means. The archers were somewhat dealt with by means of the wooden shields and the barricades, but what did it even mean to make it to a wall? They would never have the time to set up ladders to storm them. There were hundreds of men atop that wall, after all.
And, as soon as they dedicated any of their numbers to the wall, the gates would simply open of their own accord, and the enemy would come streaming out to attack the base of their ladders.
Oliver scowled. He wanted the enemy to open the gates, but only when the timing was right for them. As they were now, with a mere hundred and twenty men, he was beginning to doubt whether they could last in a head-on battle. He was even more doubtful of that now that he’d confirmed that there was at least one Second Boundary soldier amongst them, likely multiple.
"It isn’t enough…" He murmured to himself in frustration. The land was too clean, too well protected against tactics. The work the Macalister men had done cutting back the trees saved them a great deal of heartache. The hill too was a real headache, when they could not even think to use a battle ram.
"Unless we just do it?" Oliver asked himself. Did they really have any other choice? It would be a nightmare trying to get a battle ram up to the gates, and once it was there, it would have no momentum, but what other choice did they have? Did momentum even really matter, when they had men as strong as the likes of Judas and Verdant and the ex-slaves?
Even from a short range, as long as they were protected, Oliver supposed that they might be able to do enough to affect the gate.
