1183: A Passing Result – Part 6 1183: A Passing Result – Part 6 Naturally, it was Patrick n that Oliver found under him.
What he hadn’t expected, however, was for Colonel Yoran to be amongst that number, with a hundred n of his own.
Their feet hamred a rhythm against the floor.
It was as disorganized as their army had ever looked.
Their steps were heavy, and their armour weighed even heavier.
Panic set in, as if it was the most natural course of action.
As if they hadn’t seen any of the success that they had before.
“Run, damn you!” Colonel Yoran shouted.
It was his cries that offset it all.
He bulled his way through both Patrick n and Blackthorn n alike, trying to fight his way towards the front, as far away from the chariots as he could possibly get.
His driving divided their force into a second group of two.
The Yoran n panicked without their leader.
They began to run faster, and the distance between each man grew.
The five hundred man force that Oliver had gathered with him was scattered over a far greater area than it ought to have been – making it the most perfect target for those chariot n, as they began to turn.
The arrows thudded into the sandy dirt from a distance.
They left a wall that marked their range, warning Oliver’s n from coming any near them, limiting their retreating paths by a distance.
The cry of the chariots was endless.
It was almost mournful.
It had the sweeping whisper that the wind had.
It seed a sound that ought to have belonged more to a dock than to the battlefield.
There ought to have been no reason for it – but the groaning of wood made that ominous whispering anyway, as if the souls of the dead that those chariots had claid were reaching out their chains, trying to drag more pitiful souls down with them.
“ORDDDERRRR!” Verdant shouted, beating the control in the n before they could stray too far.
He took his horse, and he rounded them up.
His sword seed more like a herding stick than a weapon.
It was Yoran’s n that he targeted primarily.
As Yoran had driven them apart with his fierceso mount, Verdant used Casper to huddle them back together.
When words failed, actions like that were critical.
Oliver gave him a grateful nod.
Just as their army had split in two, the army of chariots had split in two as well.
Sohow, their parting seed far more purposeful.
They were like an arrow that so clever smith had manufactured for the exclusive purpose of separating once it had travelled a certain distance.
There were too many options at hand.
It was the sort of battlefield problem that ought to have been solved with a piece of pen and paper rather than a weapon.
A rchant with his abacus would have been more at ho there.
He would have seen all the colours of the Verna helts, and thought that he had stumbled upon a mound of jewels.
There was more blue than Oliver thought he had ever seen.
There hardly seed to be a chariot without a blue helt on it.
He was not to know it then, but he soon learned that the position of a chariot rider was a position of honour amongst the Verna.
One had to be of a particular rank or caliber in order to be considered for it.
The number of Violet plud n was especially frightening.
If they had been athysts instead, their wealth could have been used to buy several villagers.
Instead, they seed likely to carve a hole in any enemy formation that was foolish enough to present themselves in their path.
Rogue Commandants were just as plentiful.
Oliver spied five just in the roughly two hundred and fifty chariots that had been sent his way.
It should have been an unthinkable number.
They were each ant to be high enough ranking that they could command a thousand n under them, just as Amion had.
That they had such individual might amongst them only served to exemplify the threat.
It seed a spread forged in the night just for the express purpose of thrusting at Oliver’s heart in the morning.
As the arrows continued to land, falling short of their targets, they reminded the Stormfront n of the other threat that they faced, should they stray too far to the left in their fleeing.
It allowed the chariots a different path, sothing more direct, making use of the speed that they bore.
The closer they ca, the more the chariots began to spread out.
It was not a disorganized spreading, as the retreating Stormfront’s had been, but a careful fanning, thickening and widening their front row, preventing the most well-known tactic for dealing with chariots.
Oliver had already separated his n once, but the traditional strategy for dealing with chariots went further.
The best tactic for bringing a chariot down was to strike from the rear – and the best strategy in allowing that tactic to take place was to see the enemy surrounded.
Chariots had their weaknesses in changing direction, and so the most well-founded strategy was to make them turn in all directions at once.
To create an encirclent.
The fanning that they engaged in was too easy a counter to that.
It would force their encirclent to be wider than it had been before, and make it more ti costly to set up – but once more, they needed to begin their movents.
“I call for the head of a Rogue Commandant!” Yoran declared, whipping his sword at the air in front of him, despite the cold sweat that stained his face.
Through Ingolsol’s eyes, Oliver felt his fear keenly, yet there he was, his horse pawing at the ground in supposed eagerness.
It seed difficult to doubt his intentions to push himself forward, despite the uncertainty with which they were voiced.
“Then you can have it,” Oliver replied, searching for ways to put an end to the enemy’s rapid spreading.
If they were to conform entirely into a flat line, then the encirclent would grow as difficult as it could possibly get.
As he sat atop his boat, in those murky waters, he knew not where to cast his net, or whether he should use the traditional net at all.
It certainly seed to be the most sound of strategies… and yet, was that all that he had available to him?
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