A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

Chapter 275: The Darkest of Nights - Part 11

That was the Stormfront soldier's turn to show their terror. Seeing fear in the eyes of the enemy, they attacked with renewed strength. They were accustomed to this kind of battle, the kind with traps and trickery. With explosives and fire claiming more lives than sword and spear.

This was the type of war that they had learned on the eastern front, where technologies were developed near daily, all for the purpose of seeing their enemies dead.

The Yarmdon men fell easier now. Beam wasn't sure whether it was because they'd grown weaker in their own fear, or whether the Stormfront men had grown stronger for it. All he knew was that morale was soaring. The men gave out mighty bellows that even matched the Yarmdon's own, as they began to advance forward with their spears, pushing the Yarmdon back towards the flaming trenching.

The wise went forward rather than back, even at the risk of the spear points. But they were dealt with soon enough. Lombard's men had faced a variety of opponents, and though few of them had ever faced the Yarmdon, they quickly adapted and compensated for the strength of their enemy.

Slowly but surely, the meat wall of fighting men that had been pushed up against the walls of the encampment was forced back. The other half of that Yarmdon wave could do nothing whilst the fires burned. They could only wait on the other side of the flame wall and listen, as their comrades gave out cries of agony.

A cheer erupted from the Stormfront men as they dealt with the last man. On that first wave, the casualties had been surprisingly few. They raised their spears high, celebrating a successful defence.

Lombard allowed them their moment, but the man was not smiling. He'd kept his normal grim look on his face throughout. Beam wondered if that meant that things were merely going according to expectations.

"Use the corpses and add to our fortification," Lombard said.

Tolsey looked at him in surprise, feeling a shiver. It was true he hadn't been fighting with the man for very long – but he never thought he'd hear an order such as that. Even if they were their enemy, their bodies were still to be respected, or so he was taught.

Sensing his hesitation, Lombard's pale blue eyes turned to him. Tolsey froze, suddenly realizing in that moment just who Lombard was. Just who the Captain that he'd idealized had truly been. He dipped his head, and nodded, relaying the order.

There was a man that prized victory above all else. Above his knighthood, above his title as a noble, above his honour as a warrior. He only had one goal – to bring home victory for his general. To that end, he would use any means necessary.

The corpses were shifted into place. The men understood the intention without him even saying anything. One, inspire anger in the enemy, and two, with the size of the corpses being what they were, they functioned as mighty effective sandbags.

Laying them down in between two stakes, forcing the enemy to step over them – it gave further advantage to the spear-wielding soldiers.

There'd been a change within the men, as a result of the first clash. They were cowered by the Yarmdon's battle cries, but now it was as though they'd been reborn. With fresh blood on their armour and their spears, their hesitation had been torn from them.

Their Captain had revealed the mortality of these new enemies, terrifying though they were, and it was back to business for the troops.

They started to see the strength in their position. It was a fort they had, after all. It was basically a siege that the enemy was forced to undergo. With the battlements to assist them, surely their numbers counted for more, they found themselves thinking.

And strange sort of thoughts they were. They weren't the sort the men would usually engage in. These thoughts were foreign and fleeting. They came and went, as though thought by someone else. They seemed to be there only as noise, as a mind that was always active sought to fill in the blanks. These men had been awoken, the first bit of resistance had been broken, and their minds were tamed.

They were men of the present moment, at least for now.

Beam watched, wondering just how useful he'd be. They'd already repelled fifty men – well, repelled was too nice a word for it, it had been a slaughter – and surely they could just do the same thing again and again? The enemy could no longer attack, could they, for fear of the oil?

"Ready yourself, boy, I will have need of you soon," Lombard told him, snapping him out of his thoughts. Seeing the surprised look that Beam shot him, he explained, whilst there was no one else within earshot. "We've no more oil. Not that it matters. They would not fall for the same tactic again."

Now that did surprise Beam. He had seen them use oil on the monsters day after day, so he'd begun to think that they had a somewhat limitless supply of it. Thinking about it like that, he suddenly realized that it was a miracle that they'd somehow managed to coat the whole trench in it.

The flames in front of them soon began to burn themselves out, dying down, once more revealing the enemy in front of them.

Even with fifty corpses returned to the soil, it was as though the army's number hadn't been reduced at all. Those first fifty that hadn't been able to make it past the wall of flame had now returned to the army's main number, and the Yarmdon force glowered at them from a distance, their anger more than palpable.

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When he saw the way in which the corpses of his comrades were being used, Gorm exploded.

"DOGS!" He roared, loud enough that Jok had to cover his ears as he stood next to him.

The young lieutenant wore a frown. "What did you expect would happen? They've built this fort long in advance. They'd be fools not to have anything prepared for it. I say we ignore the encampment, and burn the village to the ground. If they leave, they die."