1069: The Top of the Mountain – Part 8 1069: The Top of the Mountain – Part 8 Still, he could find no evidence of it.
They behaved as if the situation they were in was entirely routine.
Each man found his place in his squadron as ranks were ford up.
They walked with the sa sort of absentminded diligence that one would expect from labourers performing the nial tasks of the day.
Samuel had an ill premonition watching them.
He would never have expected it before, but it seed that there was a point of emotionlessness that would be a negative for a soldier.
They did not even seem to sport the usual fear that even veteran n were surrounded in during tense monts, so extensive was their exhaustion.
There was no excitent, no thrill, no anger, no anything.
They were just tired, that was all that they felt.
Samuel couldn’t imagine an army worse off than that.
Not when they needed to overco a foe so nurically superior to them.
Even an army half traumatized by terror seed preferable.
But even as Samuel quibbled with his own thoughts, Karstly’s self confidence did not leave him for a second.
He waded through the sea of n, dragging his usual retinue with him.
He spared glances at the troops.
They might have seed like insignificant looks to others, but Samuel had been around Karstly long enough now to know what those looks really ant.
He was gathering his details, and he was setting all that information out in his head.
With all of it gathered, he still looked far from dissatisfied.
‘It would seem I am missing sothing once more,’ Samuel noted, his stomach swirling with nervousness.
‘And why am I so nervous now, when we have fought so many battles together in the past?’ He rembered the look that Karstly had given him just monts before, and he rembered what he’d said.
It was a question that was answered in an instant.
That look was the reason why.
Karstly was a man of lofty goals.
He didn’t define himself entirely by the whimsy that he seed to act with.
Even before he’d reached this campaign, and earned the title of General, he’d dread of battles as significant as this.
And Samuel could make no mistake – this was a significant battle.
It would form the second prong of their two pronged attack on the Verna coalition army.
“Gentlen,” Karstly’s voice rang out.
“The final battle awaits us.
Do your hearts stir with the desire for victory?” There was silence at his words.
The sardonic smile that Karstly wore did not seem to expect an affirmative response.
It seed as if he was almost mocking them preemptively for whatever excitent they might have felt.
“Ha, good,” Karstly said.
“This here is not a battle worth getting so excited about.
You have proved yourselves, n of mine.
You’ve already done enough.
What you find a top of these slopes will be as basic as a training drill.
You will thrust your spear, and you will be surprised to find it pierce not one man, but three.
There cos a ti in a man’s life when the efforts he has put into his skills finally bear fruit.
In your lives, this is that ti.
They quake with fear, those Verna foes, for they know that the Stormfront has arrived.
They know that the Gods have descended to give them their martial retribution.” Samuel felt a chill run up his forearm.
He looked around at his n.
Did they feel it too?
Or was it simply because he knew Karstly so well?
The man had hit upon sothing, as he did, very occasionally.
It was Karstly in his most gigantic, most devastating form.
When he was like that, he had enough charisma to persuade mountains to fall back down into the sea.
“We are a kingdom built on the sword.
None can best us.
Throughout all Stormfront history, the Verna has always outnumbered us.
Such things are not cause for alarm.
It would be more alarming if their numbers did not exceed ours so greatly.
For there would be no challenge.
The Stormfront man is a different man, and the Verna man chases different ideals.
They know no weapon as well as we, and so a training drill I declare it to be,” Karstly said.
Even those exhausted n were listening with sothing more than just curiosity.
There was the faintest of lights in their eyes, and all their eyes were pinned firmly on the General that roused them.
Or was that even what he attempted to do?
Perhaps if that was what it seed like, it wouldn’t have been so effective.
General Karstly assud form, at tis, in the pursuit of sothing that he seed to view as higher.
He approached those n with words that might have seed casual, and then he built his grand ideals in their minds off the back of it.
Now Samuel could feel it all the more strongly.
The Command of Karstly.
The chill up his forearm transford into goosebumps.
It was the most subtle of Commands that he felt from any leading man.
It was the flowing Command of a poet – or so it was said, but Samuel knew it to be the touch of a genius.
‘There is a man destined to conquer,’ Samuel had thought, when he had first t the young Karstly, and he had seen him dismantling the adepts of the Battle board.
Now he thought the sa thing again, as he roused his exhausted n out of the void of their tiredness, and he pointed their eyes towards a more exciting future.
“Already, we have ploughed through the best that they can offer.
We have shown General Khan what it ans to confront the Stormfront battalions – and he was forced to let us make our rry way south.
Now, we find ourselves in the sa position.
These good-hearted Verna n have outfitted this mountain with enough supplies and fortifications for us to turn away tens of thousands from it.
Now, I say, let us take those supplies for ourselves,” Karstly said, his sly smile growing wider.
“””AWOOOOO!””” The n cheered, though they knew hardly why they cheered.
They hadn’t felt this stirring of emotion earlier, but now it filled them with enough energy that they wished to sprint.
From Colonel, all the way down to re foot soldier, they all found themselves animated.
“If you are so eager, then we shall move with haste!” Karstly declared.
“Swift and devastating, n of the Stormfront!
SWIFT AND DEVASTATING!” He shouted that last part, and the n knew to shout it back.
Reviews
All reviews (0)