Chapter 1790: Supposed Victories – Part 1
He turned, no longer afraid of the dark. He plunged straight through it, towards where he knew the doors of the church to be.
All the reasoning he’d had, all the potential goings wrong, he was able to cast them all aside. Rainheart would defend the Capital in his place, and Blackwell would do all that was necessary to claim Tiberius’ life, even if indeed it ant his own. That was the key to winning their civil war – he was certain of it.
A fierce look he had on his face as he resolved to make that happen. A man willing to use his own life as a bargaining chip. The Black blood in him stirred even more strongly from the fact. It delighted in the opportunity to show itself entirely, in service of a worthy master.
Chapter 11 – Supposed Victories
Hod had given Oliver his position, but Oliver still knew not what he might do with it.
As the battles raged so strongly on the walls, Oliver was there, in the centre of Ernest, lying dormant, with his thousand n behind him. He struggled to keep track of all that was happening from beneath the walls. It didn’t make for the easiest bit of viewing. He had to rely continually on the ssengers that were sent, in order to get a proper evaluation of what was going on.
So long had they remained motionless, that the n were even starting to get cold. They wanted to move, and perform so sort of attack, rely for the prospect of doing sothing that might get them warm again.
Oliver twisted his lips in impatience. Hod had told him to look for an opportunity, but where was one? Germanicus had yet to show himself, and the battle atop the walls seed even enough. Hod was going back and forth with Tavar in strategy, and General Blackthorn was keeping an eye on all four walls himself, sending troops whenever they were needed, and personally engaging whenever he was needed to.
They were managing quite fine without him. They even seed to have the minor edge over their enemy. For all the talk Hod had made of him not being Tavar’s equal, he certainly seed his equal on that day.
Oliver leaned forward against the neck of his horse, waiting, and waiting, ever impatiently. The cold was beginning to get to him as well. His n were looking at him, expecting so form of magic, for sothing to happen.
Gar was the worst for it, for he didn’t have the sense to try and hide the fact that he was looking. He just stared with all the impatience that Oliver himself was feeling.
At least Oliver didn’t have the Minister of Blades under his personal command any longer. Blackthorn had taken charge of him, in order to keep the walls in check. It was just Gar and Oliver, and a good mixture of peasant and Blackthorn soldiers. All the Patrick Commanders that Oliver was fond of using had been placed elsewhere.
A part of him knew he ought to delight in where he currently stood, for indeed, there was an incredible amount of opportunity. Hod had truly done him an honour in giving him the place he had. He’d allowed him to choose the next course of the battlefield. The trouble was, Oliver still knew not how.
Even if he wished to, he didn’t think he could control his sense for the battlefield. It had allowed him to produce enough magic that Hod himself relied on it, but Oliver could not, for he knew not from whence it ca, or what he had to do in order for sothing to happen.
It made him restless. Waiting, and waiting, and he began to doubt himself. He wondered whether he should not be interfering with the battlefield himself a little bit, so that he might get a sense for it, and so get a better sense for where he needed to be. From the distance he stood at, he couldn’t really feel the waves of it, and the current of battle as he usually would.
He reached for minor feelings within himself, just for sothing to pin his hopes of moving on. Sothing that he might believe in, just for the sake of doing sothing at all. But sothing told him not to. He tried to caution himself against that want, however difficult it might have been.
He tried to relax, even with the cold and shifting n. He didn’t want to make a decision that was motivated by sheer impatience. He tried to gather himself. He breathed in slowly, and quietly, and shifting himself in the saddle so that he might be comfortable, and so that he might wait there longer if he fancied.
He shifted well enough, with the idea in his head that he ought to be prepared to wait there for the entire day. For wasn’t that his purpose? He had only to move when it was certain that he could do sothing. If he moved, and achieved nothing, then he was reducing Hod’s strategy by his own hands.
“And yet it’s so difficult to find what to do, on a battlefield between those two…” Oliver said to himself, quietly enough that his words were lost to the breeze blowing through the town.
His mind was filled with little plans that he might enact. He imagined opening the gates, when the opportunity presented itself, and attacking Germanicus from below as he climbed his ladder. He imagined too, at tis, racing with his horse to the bottom of one of the stairwells, and coming up the wall with all the force of lightning, and tossing the enemy backward with all the might that he was capable of.
He thought such things, over and over, and he was prodded towards carrying out one of them. Yet, he knew that, the fact that he was able to produce such ideas in his head almost made for certain that he would not be able to use them. Anything he could logically derive Tavar would have seen through a good ti before. Like in the battle against the Erson’s, he wasn’t allowed the smallest little scrap of intention.
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