A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor-Chapter 840: A Cutting Blow - Part 7

"It’s so clumsy though," he bemoaned. It was a reckless, barbaric endeavour. Volguard would have twisted his face in disgust seeing Oliver resort to it. He sighed. It was all they had. They couldn’t wait any longer.

They needed to attack the gates. At the very least, they still had their barricades up. They’d be able to have their men moving more freely amongst the arrow storms than they otherwise would have. It was about all the preparation that Oliver could do.

"Four hundred and fifty men…" he murmured to himself, imagining their numbers against his. Even overcoming the gate, they wouldn’t be able to do all that much. It would be a brutal battle to fight, but he was all but forced to plunge into it anyway.

A sudden knocking made him raise his head. Of course, there was no door to knock on. Instead, the guest was knocking on one of the tent poles near the door.

"Hm?" He murmured to himself. Guests at this time of night were unexpected. Morning was not awfully far off. A mere couple of hours. He didn’t plan to do much in the way of sleep.

He supposed it was Verdant. The priest had seemed worried, after all. "Come in," Oliver said eventually, though he was exactly in the best state to be receiving visitors.

The flap stirred, and his expectations were once again turned on their head. The shining black hair and pale skin. That was most certainly Lasha Blackthorn. She dipped her head politely to him, as one would a superior officer. Oliver did his best to hide his surprise at her arrival.

"Blackthorn," he said evenly. "Should you not be sleeping?"

"I could not," she replied, and then after a beat added, "I could say the same for you."

"Are you quite alright?" He asked. "You seemed to be of a poor temper earlier. Have you recovered?"

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She winced from the insensitivity of his question. It was painfully direct, even for a man like Oliver. "No," she responded, rather quickly, with the same amount of straightforwardness, not dancing around the issue. She piped up, suddenly, and rather passionately, with another question, seemingly designed to catch Oliver off guard. "Oliver, am I useless?" She asked.

He staggered a fraction in his stool, raising his eyebrow. He didn’t think he’d have to deal with a problem of this sort so early in the morning. For her to ask that question… Oliver wondered just how much more he’d been failing than he realized.

"I do not consider you to be so. Why do you ask?" Oliver said, keeping his voice level.

"You do not seem to have much use for me," Blackthorn replied.

"We haven’t engaged in proper combat yet. Is that not only natural?" Oliver said. "There are many that have been denied the chance at true combat that you were given at the very start of this mission. You proved your worth well enough there. It was your first time fighting men to the death, but you did not hold anyone back."

"I was… granted it," Lasha said carefully, "but since then, I can not even do the most simple of things. I am only there watching, alongside you. I have no mind for ideas. You never ask me for them."

"If you had an idea, I would prefer it if you’d share it with me, rather than have it go unspoken. I did not think it would have been polite of me to put you on the spot in front of so many men," Oliver said. "Well, what is this idea?"

"As I said, I’ve no mind for them, and I thought you already knew that, because you haven’t asked," Lasha said.

Oliver’s frown deepened. It felt very much like they were dancing around an issue, but he didn’t know what.

"You’ve been direct, Blackthorn, which I appreciate, given the time of day – or night, even. Why not be direct in this as well? I don’t know quite what you’re asking of me," Oliver said.

Blackthorn clenched her fist in what could only have been frustration. Her eyebrows furrowed ever so slightly, but the intensity of the emotion was enough to make her shake. "Like I said, I’m useless. You can not ask of me things like you can of Verdant. You don’t ask me to lead like you do your retainer Jorah.

You seem to have a role for everyone but me – and that Lady Felder girl, she’s always helping you."

"Yet, as soon as we went to the matter of battle training, you proved your worth immediately. You overturned Jorah, and my other two retainers in an instant. They’re gifted enough, but your worth as a Sword overturned them. Do you dispute that?" Oliver said.

"I don’t," Blackthorn said, "but even then, Felder overturned me in an instant. She can do everything that I can do, and she can do it better."

It sounded almost childish. If Oliver hadn’t been carefully watching Blackthorn’s face, he would have been hard-pressed to tell just how serious she was. This matter was quite clearly one that was deeply affecting her, and so he handled it with the most delicate hands that he could. He supposed, that on the battlefield, a person’s fuse was going to be shorter than it otherwise was.

He’d put their encampment in a psychologically challenging location after all, which only will have added to the battlefield stress.

"If you fought Nila one-on-one, do you truly believe you would not beat her?" Oliver asked.

"Nila…" Lady Blackthorn noted. "You’re very close to her… In a duel, I suppose I would beat her, as a swordsman will always beat an archer if they get close."

"Indeed," Oliver said, nodding. "Archers have their place and swordsmen have their place. You know that as well as I do. It should not surprise you that, if given range, and you are competently distracted, you’ll find yourself falling to an adept archer, and make no mistake, Nila Felder is a most competent archer."