A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor-Chapter 854: The Strength of Resolve - Part 8

"One! Two! Three!" Jorah gave the signal soon after confirming that the men were in position. They moved as one, as they needed to, hefting those heavy wooden shields up out of the ground, and locking them together. Jorah kept a careful eye on every one of them. He needed to.

The slightest gap could lose them a man to arrow fire, and they needed every man that they could get.

Elsewhere, the same image was replicated, as those barricades that Oliver had painstakingly set up became mobile walls of men, as easily shifted as they had been made to be. Now the army would finally have the opportunity to position themselves in the places that they'd been dedicated.

Jorah's group was made up of all central-bound men, and so that was where he steered them, with a stake in hand, as he marched behind the front row of shield men, ducking his head.

"Steady," he murmured, cautioning them against moving too quickly. Speed was a killer of allied men in a situation like this. They gained nothing from it. Slow and steady was the way to go.

Even as they moved, Nila continually darted backwards, timing her arrow attacks to perfection, and securing a kill every time she dared to show her face. Jorah wasn't quite certain, but he had the distinct impression that there was a certain intensity to the girl today, as though she was trying to make up for something.

"In position! Stake them down!" Jorah said, calling a halt when they finally arrived where they needed to be. The men gratefully lowered the shields, using the ground to support their weight. They weren't the type of instruments that one would wish to carry for a while.

Soon enough, they were staked down, and to the right of them, another central group joined them, staking their own shields down, adding to the long row of walls.

Little by little, that grand hill-side snake of barricades unwound itself, and became a single flat wall behind which the armies of Oliver Patrick were set to gather, a mere short distance way from the wall, but not yet close enough that oil attacks could reach them.

"Quite something," Gadar remarked, seeing the process happen for himself. He'd seen barricades set up in his time, but none quite like this, and he'd certainly never seen a barricade shifted so suddenly in the heart of battle.

"Indeed," Talon said, wearing a satisfied smile. "This is youth, Gadar. These lively innovations."

"Still, it seems doubtful that it will do him any good," Gadar commented.

"Ah, yes, but we must praise what is good all the same," Talon said. "Oomly, your time might be soon set to come."

"Already?" The giant man asked from Talon's left. "I doesn't think they can break through the gate, my Lord."

Neither Gadar nor Talon made any move to explain it to him. It was a pointless endeavour, and not one that Oomly would ever appreciate. He found such things tiresome, just as the people explaining them to him did. When the time came that he was needed, Talon merely needed only release him like an arrow from his bow, and Oomly would cause the same degree of havoc that he always did.

As the last of the barricades set themselves into position on the right flank, Oliver prepared himself to give the order to charge.

A gap had been left in the wall of shields, just a little off from the centre, to allow Oliver and his battlerams a clean run at the gate.

"Right," he said, gathering the attention of his men. "The second we get near, expect oil to be thrown on us. We don't need to run the ram all the way to the gate – we just need to give it enough speed so that it can make it there on its own, and then we get out."

The ex-slaves nodded grimly. They seemed to understand just how dangerous this mission of theirs was. They might have thought it to be a task dumped on them, merely by virtue of their low standing, if Oliver hadn't volunteered himself to be a part of the cart-running teams.

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To him – and to everyone else, who had protested – his positioning made sense. He could ward off any weakly made counterattack with ease, and he would also be there to lead the men.

His heart was thumping. He wondered what the chances of them bringing the cart close unburned were. The only real hope they had was that the enemy would expect the to get closer than they intended to. After all, they thought that it was the battle ram that was set to do the damage, and not the whole pile of oil jars beneath it.

"Are your shields ready to be detached?" He said, getting the men to perform the last of their checks. Their shields had been half fastened to their pushing poles as they made it up the hill, but now they would have need of them if they were to make a quick getaway.

The men showed him that they were.

"Good. Now everyone on the first cart," Oliver said. "We'll leave the second cart where it stands for now."

Again, this was a part of their plan. Alone, twelve slave men had been able to send these battlerams rather swiftly up the hill. On the flat lip that encircled the edge of the fort walls, they'd have been able to put a significant amount of force in.

Oliver wasn't so optimistic as to think doubling the men would double the quickness of the cart, especially given how tight it would be on some of those pushing poles, but he knew well enough that it would help.

The men settled into their positions quickly enough. There were no traces of surprise, for this was an order that they had known would soon come. Oliver had taken great care to tell them as much as he could in advance, to keep their anxiety as low as he could, and to extend the realm of the known.

Oliver took his position near the front, between two burly men that were already beginning to smell of sweat beneath their ragged uniforms.