A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

Chapter 86  The Wounded - Part 1

"Up, are we?" Dominus asked, appearing beside him, offering a drink.

Beam forced himself to sit upright, despite the pain that racked his body. He groaned again despite himself, and accepted the drink, finding that he couldn't straighten one of his legs, from the dull ache that permeated throughout the thigh.

"Easy now, that was quite a wound you got yesterday. Push it too much and the stitches will tear," Dominus told him, seeing Beam try to move as he normally might.

"So it wasn't a dream, then?" Beam said, still half asleep. Nôv(el)B\\jnn

Dominus laughed. "Afraid not. You're going to be out of commission for a good while, it would seem."

"The tests though," Beam said, rubbing his eyes.

"Indeed. I will not be making any changes to our agreement, despite the circumstances. You have under three weeks in which to pass them," Dominus told him. It might have seemed like a harsh pronouncement to most, but Beam had expected it and he merely nodded grimly.

"It was my own weakness that got me in this state, after all," he said, not quite yet as bitter as Dominus had expected him to be.

Dominus nodded in acknowledgement at that. "Good. That's the mindset of a knight. Do not blame anyone for your misfortune, merely take responsibility for it and grasp power along with it."

"What do I do though..?" Beam said, more to himself than his master, as he puzzled through his situation, staring at the wound on his leg. It was really bad by now. The wound itself had grown purple and horribly swollen to an alarming degree. It almost made him worry about infection.

"It isn't infected," Dominus told him, noticing his look. "It's just swollen. The swelling should go down in a couple of days. The girl left you a jar of honey when she dropped you off," he said, producing a wooden jar from within the folds of his clothes and handing it to Beam.

Beam frowned at it. "They really shouldn't have… This will be important come winter. They'll suffer from the lack of it."

Dominus shrugged. "It was their decision. You can only acknowledge their kindness and move on. Any more and you'll be shaming them."

"I guess," Beam admitted grudgingly. "I need to help them with firewood too… Master, do you know any ways to make a wound heal faster?"

Dominus laughed at the question. "Sorry boy, the solution won't be so easy. Maybe if you'd spent the last ten years training yourself to be able to detect mana, you'd be able to give it a shot, but as you are now, that's a hopeless thought."

"It's really no good then?" Beam said bitterly, before attempting to move his leg a little bit. He winced from the pain. Just that slight bit of movement sent his leg into a spasm. Now that the leg had swollen as the body worked to repair it, he couldn't move it at all. "Well, I guess it's a good thing I sorted everything in town yesterday then."

"Mm, indeed," Dominus agreed. "Going to be a lazy few days for you, boy, so it seems. How are you going to make the best use of them?"

At his master's prompting, Beam considered it. Only then did his eyes fall upon the Battle board, and he recalled his continual failure in developing his strategy. Just yesterday, before the whole Goblin thing had happened, that had been the height of his worries. Now would be a good time to fix it.

"Do you mind… playing Battle with me today?" Beam asked, pointing at the board.

"All day?" The old knight asked, not bothering to hide his discontent. "What a troublesome boy… Hmm. No. I won't play all day. I'll play you for an hour now and an hour in the evening. The rest of the time you can spend playing by yourself."

"Okay," Beam agreed, knowing that it had been too much to ask in the first place. He tried to reach for the board from his spot, only for his leg to pin him in place.

Dominus sighed seeing him struggle and got the board in his stead.

"You set up the pieces. I'm making another drink," the old knight said, tending to the fire as he thrust a box full of pieces at Beam.

The board was made of 100 squares and each player had an 8 by 2 deployment zone, giving them access to 16 troops that they could choose from. And those troops were entirely down to choice – the composition of one's own army was part of strategy, after all.

There were four units, each with different strengths and weaknesses. There were bowmen, that could fire five squares in front of them. There were spearmen that were most effective at attacking 2 squares in front of them. There were swordsmen too, which were effective at attacking one square in front of them, making them a counter to the spearmen, as long as they got behind the 2 square effective range. Lastly, there were cavalry, which could move 4 squares forward per turn, whilst other units could only move twice and archers only once.

A player could have as many of each different piece as they wanted, leading to some interesting formations. And every turn, every piece could be moved. So if a player willed it, their entire army could move forward one square in a single turn.

One might think that their options were somewhat limited with such a small board and a small number of moves – but things turned out to be quite tactical. For, pieces could switch squares before the enemy army came into range and archers could continually pick pieces off from a distance. If anything, the small space and limited movement made things more interesting.

"Which pieces do you want, master?" Beam asked as he set things up.

"The usual," Dominus replied as he walked over with a fresh cup of tea. Dominus preferred a balanced approach in his battle. He would field 6 archer units, a front line of 6 spearmen, and then 4 cavalry units to fill in the rest. He tended to avoid swords units, stating that he wasn't a skilful enough player to get his swordsmen into good enough positions to be effective. For the lesser player, the spearmen were far easier to use.