A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

A stream of them slipped towards Tolsey. Kursak said nothing. It seemed the men were eyeing the soldiers that awaited beyond him, as they stood in clusters, with their spears facing forwards, and violence in their eyes.

One man, though, changed his course at the last second. He went for a surprise attack. He came thundering at Tolsey from the side, his axe swung from his hip, raising upwards in a vicious arc, aiming for Tolsey's head.

Kursak bellowed his dismay. "YOU DOG! THAT WAS MY KILL!"

But the young Yarmdon commander need not have worried. Inexperienced though Tolsey was, he was still a knight. Before that the man could even complete his strike, Tolsey's training had kicked in, as he sliced through the man's hand, and then cleaved down through his shoulder.

The wounds he left on the body of the giant were evidence of Claudia's blessing, a man that had stepped through the Second Boundary. They were vicious things. His blade drove all the way down straight through the clavicle and through rips and down towards the centre of the man's chest.

At the sight, Kursak put a hand to his belly and gave a hearty laugh, even as he saw the corpse of his comrade fall to the floor. He had no words of remorse for him, or even anger. Instead, he merely shook his head, thinking that was exactly what the man had deserved.

He had been a joker in life, after all, that very same man. He would cause all sorts of trouble at their encampment. He was like a monkey controlling the body of a man. Whenever there was an opportunity for mischief, he would be causing it. And now he had died causing mischief. Kursak had liked the man a great deal.

Yet he smiled at his passing. The man had died the exact same way as he had lived. A purer life was hard to imagine. He knew the Gods would rejoice at his return to their hall.

"A COMMANDER WOULD NOT BE THAT WEAK, AFTER ALL," Kursak shouted. He had to really force his shout to have any chance at matching Gorm. After a battle, his voice would be hoarse for days from the strain.

He glanced down the wall of the fort. Already Gorm's men were streaming up towards the centre of the fort, applying pressure. He could see it in the way they were fighting, that it was only a matter of time before the walls fell. There was the aggression to their movements that always came when they had the advantage.

That was something Gorm had taught him. To see the tide of battle in the body languages of the men – and the tide was certainly in his favour. Kursak realized that the battle would soon be over if he left it all to Gorm's men. He barked an order of his own, as his battalion continued to rush into his gap.

"MARCH TOWARDS THE CENTRE! DON'T LET GORM'S MEN STEAL ALL THE KILLS!" He shouted. This time, despite not knowing his language, Tolsey could guess what he was saying, for the flow of men that had been running behind Kursak towards the gap that he'd created, they now began to shift their direction towards the rest of the walls.

Some managed to leap over the trenches, whilst others fell in it, burning their feet on the still flickering flames. But unless a man slipped, those flames were no longer fatal. They were merely the hot breath of a demon, urging a man towards greater speed.

Seeing the tide of battle as he had, it urged Kursak towards greater urgency. If he didn't barrel through this commander with urgency, then he would be missing out on plenty of kills himself. And then when it came time to raid the rest of the village, he would have no leg to stand on in claiming his spoils, for his contributions would have been too minimal.

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He let the head of his axe rest in the muddy snow, as he marched forward, dragging it behind him, an intense look on his face. He would have liked to enjoy his duel with the yellow-haired man more, to delight in staining his beard red, but there was no time.

With the crunching of boots in the snow, and the grating of his axe against the frozen ground beneath it, Kursak stepped into range. He did not stop there either. There was a saying, amongst the Yarmdon. 'Glory is to be seized at a run'. It encouraged them forward and faster, onto the next thing, and then onto the next.

It was the greed that motivated a whole nation, and kept it as a stronghold of war for hundreds of years.

He allowed his strides to build into a jog, as he drew closer. A little strength in the shaft of his axe, and the head began to lift off the ground. The blonde-haired commander that he was facing off against did not move. Kursak felt his lips curl into a smile. They always did, when he had an opportunity to unleash his strongest strike.

He did not rush it. He allowed it to build in time with the building of speed in his legs. Only once he was on the very edge of his axe's range did he allow the strike to heft up past his waist. Then he twisted his hips through it, and angled his arms. He barely needed to keep his eyes on his opponent now.

He knew whatever stood in front of him, whatever was foolish enough to stand against his massive arc, all of it would perish and shatter.

There was another saying amongst the Yarmdon: 'Death arrives with the hunger of a crow.'

They saw the crows turn on themselves in the Northern Territories. They saw how when the cold truly began to grow, the crows changed, as though haunted by a demonic spirit. The bonds that they had forged soon shattered, as true hunger took over, and they sought each other's flesh.

So too did the Yarmdon see that on the battlefield. The same men for whom victory came again and again, with breathless ease. The men who possessed boundless talent, whose futures seemed brightest, who seemed as though they possessed all the invincibility of the Gods. They too would perish, just as quickly as the rest of them and just as suddenly.

One moment, Kursak had levelled his blow, feeling that sweet tension leaving his body, and the next, there was the face of a boy up next to his, and the blade of a sword levelled at his throat.

He saw the eyes of many within a single face. There was green and blue – the eyes of a boy. The strong eyes of a child that had learned to find meaning in struggle and in suffering. Then, he saw the eyes of gold. Those eyes… Those eyes that terrified him, even more than the Death Temples, with their horrifying Gods, and their horrifying servants.

This here was the gaze of all of them at once, a deep and overwhelming despair.

The boy's lips didn't move, but Kursak could swear he heard a voice cackling, a hearty laughter booming louder than even Gorm.

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