A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor-Chapter 1048 The Sword and the Board - Part 2

1048: The Sword and the Board – Part 2

1048: The Sword and the Board – Part 2

“Is that it?” Samuel asked his Lord.

“Have we found our spark?”

“We have found it,” Karstly agreed with a smile.

“Then we shall move?” Samuel said, surprised by his own eagerness.

“Not yet,” Karstly said.

“The spark needs time to settle.

There is no reason for us to get involved quite yet.

Allow it to blaze into a fire.

Have you not noticed?

That young Captain still has his eyes set on complete victory.”

“Chang…” Amion said, saying the man’s name for the second time since his death.

He was stunned silent.

He ought to have been giving commands, but the words failed him, as did his thoughts.

The state of the battlefield eluded him.

A reality that he’d built up over the course of decades had shattered.

He’d watched Chang train thousands of times.

He’d seen the way he manhandled the other Scribe Soldiers in the temple.

He was less warrior, and more legend – especially to a young Amion.

Even when Amion had ascended to the Third Boundary, overtaking the man, he’d never once considered himself to be Chang’s stronger.

That would have been a foolish thought.

There was no one stronger than Chang.

Or at least there hadn’t been, until today.

The man who had slain Chang, despite his wounds, continued to cause trouble in the Verna ranks.

Amion found it difficult to look at him.

There was something very unsettling about the man’s combat style.

It was if he permanently came close to the line between life and death, and then avoided it, only by the narrowest margins.

It was if he delighted in that thrill of just barely living, where many would have died.

“My Lord Commandant…” Jericho said tentatively.

“Yours orders?”

“Orders..?” Amion said, the word sounding foreign to him.

“Orders for what, Jericho?”

“Our victory, Commandant!” Jericho said, sharper than he ordinarily would have.

“Victory..?

Chang is dead, Jericho.

There is no victory,” Amion said.

“You still live, Commandant,” Jericho said.

“I still live.

Chang might have been close to you, Commandant, but we have many others who can match his strength.

The battle is far from over.

We have the high ground.

We have the Scribe Soldiers.”

“The Scribe Soldiers..?

Indeed, we do have them… But then, Chang was a Scribe Soldier as well… What does that title even mean?” Amion said.

Jericho clenched his fist.

There in front of him was a man that he respected, and he was being forced to see him at his worst.

It was difficult for him not to grow angry.

Though his anger was not entirely with Amion, but more so with the enemy that had put him in such a state.

“Their victory means nothing, Commandant!

It is you that is allowing their victory over Chang to gain them the upper hand!” Jericho said.

“Look at how much we’re losing – how many lives.

It’s not just Chang, it’s all of us.”

“That is war, Jericho.

That is the game that we play.

Merchants deal in profit.

We deal in blood.

We gamble with our lives, and we overcome the odds,” Amion replied, the barest shadow of his old self showing.

It was an instinctual reply.

His eyes were still clouded over as he gave it.

“Then what do we have to lose in fighting, if we’re to die anyway, Commandant?” Jericho said.

“You were given the opportunity by Phalem, do you wish to give it away now, over one loss?”

Amion clenched his teeth, and rounded on his attendant.

“One loss, Jericho?

Do you have no feeling for death?

If your friend was cut down in front of you, after you sent him, glaive in hand, to send your foe, would you feel no shred of anything?”

“I would!” Jericho said.

There were tears in his eyes.

“Of course, I would, Commandant.

You forget that Chang was a friend of mine as well.”

That, finally, gave Amion pause.

Enough to look up, and glance around at their situation.

Already, three of their ranks were done, and the enemy was charging forward with increasing ferocity.

The momentum was against them, the tides were turning, and it was Amion who was at fault for it.

“Invaders,” he said, looking down upon them with dark eyes.

“They’ll take everything, Commandant, as you said they would.

We’ll lose everything, if they get through us.

You’re the one that said that.

This isn’t a battle we can afford to lose.

It isn’t just about our lives, it’s about everything that comes after,” Jericho said.

“…It would seem I was wrong,” Amion admitted.

“Who could expect it to be otherwise?

What is worse than losing a brother?” Jericho said.

“Not that,” Amion said.

“In what I said earlier.

It would seem war is not only a game in which we gamble with our lives – it is a game in which we gamble with the lives of all nearest us.

The more responsibility we are given in this damnable profession, the more lives we hold sway over. ƒгeeweɓn૦vel.com

Not merely of our own men, or our enemy, or the men in our army, but the lives of all the villagers and townsmen that we defend.”

“…It is so, Commandant,” Jericho said.

When Amion said something like that, Jericho would always be inclined to trust in him.

Despite his relative youth, at thirty, compared to some of the other Commandants, there was wisdom to Amion that Jericho believed in.

It was the wisdom of a young man that had spent so much time around the wise.

“We have lost the opportunity to cut off their momentum from the head of the charge,” Amion said, evaluating their position.

“Their victory over Chang was too cutting a blow.

Even if we fight to restore morale now, we can’t do so effectively.

There is only one route left open to us – we counterattack.

We put everything on the line, and we ended it now.”

Jericho’s hand went instinctively to the hilt of his sword.

“Who is our target, Commandant?”

With a long finger, Amion pointed.

“He who changed the flow of Chang’s battle.

Their Violet Commandant back there.

He thought himself to be cunning, in employing his Command when he did – but he has instead revealed in himself a fatal weakness.”