A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

"Ready?" Oliver asked them. They gave him respectful nods, as timid of their Lord as they were of the arrows still flying their way. "You," he said, pointing. "Bellow the command – let all our forces know what we intend to do. Tell them to charge."

The man hesitated, apparently surprised to be given such a role. Oliver gave him a nod of reassurance. With these slaves, he was finding that a certain degree of patience and near gentleness was the way to approach them.

Reassured, the man sucked in a deep breath to fill his lungs with air, and he angled his face up, like a wolf howling at the moon.

"CHAAAAAAAARGGGGGGGGEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"

The man shouted. Oliver grinned, but threw his shoulder into the pushing pole just as the rest of them did. The bellow had worked better than he had expected. It even caused a pause in the Macalister arrow fire, as they hesitated. Both big, and loud, those slaves that Greeves had found for him were something special.

They moved with a vigour. Oliver could never have expected that the cart would gain speed so fast. The men moved it so quickly together as to manhandle it. The back wheels even raised slightly at the initial push, but they soon settled again, and that force went to speed as the wheels began to turn, and they churned a path through the snow.

With each step, they went faster. The men were roaring now. He liked that about the slaves. They weren't afraid to be loud anymore. This was the time and place for a battle cry, if ever there was one. This was the very tightrope that spanned the chasm between earth and hell.

Both sides witnessed the charge with a tenseness. Verdant clenched his teeth, praying for his Lord. Nila held her bow ready, knowing that a man with oil was sure to come, she planned to aim for him the second that he did.

Talon alone remained at the height of calm, even as his two attendants stiffened, feeling the urge to do something in response to the aggression that was being sent their way.

"The second that battleram touches the gate, have the oil man pour it," Talon said, almost lazily. He was quite convinced, as well as he should be, that the battlerams would only last an instant.

One might have thought that he'd be more concerned about setting fire to a battleram so close to his own gates, but he knew well enough that the amount of oil he intended to use would do no more than scorch the very surface of his well-treated gates.

Nila drew back the bowstring, seeing movement. Jorah looked from her, back to the wall, and back to her again. He nervously wondered if she could possibly land such a shot. Even for her, it would be difficult. There were so many shieldmen in the vicinity, after all, and the lip of the wall itself only made the target harder to hit.

Oliver thudded forward. His plan was to play reactionary. He was looking up towards the wall for the oil man – or men, for he expected there to be at least two of them – and planning his disengagement for the moment he saw those oil jars beginning to fall.

He was putting his own fair share of strength into the pushing poles. Had the men to either side of him not been so focused on their own tasks, they might have seen the green-wood pole beginning to bend ever so slightly from where Oliver was driving his shoulder into it.

"Not yet…" He murmured to himself, daring to play risky, for the entire state of the battlefield hinged on this fact – they only had two battlerams, but it was the first that would really count. As soon as it landed, the gimmick would be up. The enemy would be well aware of the oil-laden state. He needed to get all he could out of it, but the risks were severe.

He could lose twenty-five men all in one go, to thoroughly horrific deaths. He himself would be included in that number.

He spied the oil man, and began to tense. "Shit…" He cursed. He still wasn't as close as he wanted to be. Another twenty paced, that was what he needed. If the oil man tossed it before they'd landed the battleram home, then they'd be forced to retreat early.

All of a sudden, there was a thwump, and the oil man stumbled backwards, an arrow through his neck.

The large pot of oil that he'd been carrying shattered on the wall and walkway alongside him, splattering more than a few men in that thick black liquid.

"My Lord…" Gadar said, his alarm evident. But General Talon had already seen it. His teeth slammed together, and irritation took over.

He turned his head more violently than he could have intended, and his gauntlets creaked from how tightly he clenched his fist. "That damnable little…" he cursed. The same girl had given him trouble twice. That same unknown element of Oliver Patrick, she was an impossible little thing. Even with the shield walls that General Talon had set up, she'd managed to sneak one through.

It was both evidence of her extreme skill, but also the lagging state of his men. The fact that it was even possible to land an arrow, despite all the shields he'd put in place around the gate, meant that his men had been slacking. They didn't understand the danger. The oil man too had left himself open, too focused on his job.

"They're still too damn green," General Talon sighed. "Oomly – grab another pot, and drench them. Don't make the same mistake that he did."

"Yes, General!" Oomly saluted quickly, and went stomping away to the oil store, picking a jar far larger than his predecessor. As Oomly was usually inclined to do, he once more went off the rails with the most straightforward of procedures.