A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

With the killing of that man, that Yarmdon commander, there had been such a swell of ecstasy that he'd hardly been able to contain himself. Panic hovered where that emotion arose, for Beam knew it did not belong to him. Ingolsol once more arose to the surface, and delighted.

"Despair…" He heard that word over and over as a whisper. He'd shouted it the moment Beam had claimed Kursak's life. The sweet shock that had been in the young man's eyes. The regret, and those faded dreams. Ingolsol had drunk them in greedily. He'd ached in irritation as they were forced to wait.

And now that same urging pushed him towards the other side of the battlefield, where the roars of an angry giant bellowed out once after the other.

"KURSAKKKK! YON VIG! KURSAAAAAAAAAAK!"

They came again and again, like the repeated gusts of a storming wind. Beam did not understand the language, but he read a challenge from it. There was a mighty man over there – he wanted to test his sword against him.

But as his feet moved in that direction, Beam felt a hand on his shoulder. His sword was already moving, even before his head turned back.

"Tolsey…" He realized, his blade stopping before the man's neck.

"Hold the position, boy," Tolsey said. "We will collapse on this side without you. They still have another commander in reserve. He's likely to join the fray now."

Before he could make out the meaning in Tolsey's words, Beam felt the same emotion that he'd been feeling all day. That dreadful emotion of uncertainty. It beat an irregular rhythm on a deep drum, one that purposefully was out of sync with his heart. All the regrets of the day that he'd failed to reconcile assaulted him. It was all he could do to keep from falling over.

Ingolsol's attack on his consciousness was relentless. It was only then that Beam properly noticed it, as he felt his feet stagger. He grasped at his chest. His heart hurt.

"Woah," Tolsey said, holding him up with an arm. Beam drew no comfort from the man's touch, for he could feel the same uncertainty in Tolsey that felt in himself. Yet you would not know it by looking at Tolsey's face – though his eyes were feverish, they seemed firm and resolute.

Beam was failing to reach such an even keel. The deep regrets of all that he had failed to do, all that he had failed to control, and then the net of darkened despair that Ingolsol demanded he rain down over everyone. And Claudia too – she was just as bad. She echoed his own expectations, that he serve as a shield for those in the village, that he repel their attack.

"Damn it…" He said, digging his fingernails into the flesh of his palm to calm himself. He thought that he'd sorted such thoughts out a long time ago. He wondered if it was as his master said. That the fragments of Ingolsol and Claudia in him, they were growing stronger just as he was. Perhaps that was why old conclusions no longer held the merit that he needed from them.

They were no longer enough to keep him in command of his own mind.

For now, he dared to ignore it, and merely focused harder on the scene in front of him. He put a hand on the frosty edge of one of the many stakes, and he leaned on it, gathering his breath. Then he squinted towards where Tolsey had pointed, towards that commander, lying in wait, with at least fifty men under his command.

With Kursak dead, there seemed to be nearly seventy more who were hovering near the fort with uncertainty. They'd come to a halt, just before crossing the trench, and were gazing in dismay at the headless corpse of their commander.

Beam smiled bitterly at that. He could feel their fear wafting off them. He felt it so strongly that he could almost see it. Like a hazy black smoke – but though hazy and unsure, he felt like he could grasp it, and crush it deep within his palm, using it as a rope to control their movements.

He was tempted to. He felt the power in it. But as he reached towards that power, he felt his sense of self shrinking. Fear assailed him, and suddenly, he stopped. He dared not let Ingolsol's hold grow on him any more. His senses returned to the physical things – the things that he had been able to track all his life.

"JOK! KURSAK VAL LEMIDEN! NIVAGARD! NIVAGARD!" Such words ran across the battlefield, accompanied by the clang of steel. With them, it was as though someone had thawed the icy shock that had frozen the Yarmdon in place. A voice called out to respond to it.

"NOVA!" Came the reply from Jok, but what he really meant was "about bloody time."

He began to give his orders immediately.

"FALL BACK!" He shouted. The men that had been hanging around without purpose near the edge of the trench fell back only too willingly, leaving the bodies of the dead behind. Even from a distance, Jok had seen Kursak fall. Even now, he could see where his body lay.

The scene had struck a bitterness in him. It was enough to wipe the smile off his face, the smile that usually came with the battle thrill. His eyes were on that boy that had appeared from nowhere. The boy that the enemy commander had evidently been trying to hide.

"To be able to kill Kursak in just one swing…" Jok found himself muttering. Even if was a surprise attack… No. Surprise attacks could not overcome an overwhelming difference in strength. If that boy had done the same attack on Gorm, then he would have been split in two before he could even begin to swing his sword.

Besides, Jok had felt it. He'd felt the boy's aura. It was a complicated thing, unveiled for even a moment. He wondered if the enemy felt it – if they knew its dark and twisted depths. If they did, he wondered why they were fighting alongside him.

Whatever the reason, Jok knew they were in trouble.

Gorm was locked in battle with that Stormfront commander, but he didn't look as though he was going to make his way past him anytime soon.

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It was clear to Jok that Gorm was evidently the stronger man, but the distance between them was not enough for the fight to be easy. The Stormfront commander was holding on with all the resilience of a weasel, Jok thought – and with a commander that favoured tricks and strategy rather than brute strength, that likely meant he was winning.