A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

They'd been stuck in the same place for a while, even as they heard the sounds of battle raging off in the distance. They were stuck. Stuck with the family that they'd just rescued, with the villagers that they'd been arguing with hours before, but now that they'd grown closer to, united by a common cause.

Despair fell over them now, a heavy, invisible curtain. It glazed their eyes over and made them long for warmth. It had frozen many of their limbs. They were left out in the cold snow, when their houses were only a distance away.

That was not to say that all of them were frozen. Some ran in a mad panic, saying that they needed to flee, to gather their things and leave.

No one stopped them, no one moved to say what was on everyone's mind.

"In the middle of winter, flee where?" If there had been a rational voice amongst the crowd, he would have raised that question. The Yarmdon came from their South – they'd burned everything in their path, and they'd only continue to do so. They would continue to march relentlessly south, and any who fled on foot would almost be certainly caught and butchered in a matter of days.

Then what to do? What was there even to think about? They'd been given sweet hope merely hours before, in their darkest moments, they'd been able to reunite with their children, children that might well have been killed otherwise. They'd found heart in against a common enemy. It had strengthened them, for a time.

But this… This was something different. This wasn't something untrained villagers could battle against. The Elite of the Yarmdon, capable of evading Lord Blackwell's men for so long, who were they, mere villagers, to dare to suppose that they had anything to offer that might even slow them?

Nila was thinking much the same thing, even as she turned around with desperateness, searching for the right words to speak to them.

'We're all going to die like this… Don't you see?' She thought to herself, her voice pitiful and tiny in her head. Her mother was almost assuredly at their house, she knew. It would be so easy just to run there now. What of herself, then? She'd made to run to the battlefield more than once, only to come back.

She couldn't arrive without help, and she knew she would be of little help by her lonesome. She knew Beam, she trusted in him. The tents would not be on fire if the enemy were not simply that powerful.

But what could she say, what might reach them when all else failed? The old man had turned away from her now, almost uncomfortable. None of them saw any merit in riling themselves up. None of them saw any merit in fleeing either. They'd already given up, they'd already lost hope.

"YGAMORRRRRRRRRRRR!" A bellow roared across the sky like thunder. The children flinched, and the adults cowered. They'd heard such terrifying roars more than once. Every time, it inspired a fresh wave of fear in their heart.

But this time, a cry came back.

"FOR THE STORMFRONT!!!" It roared, it managed to be equally as loud, a roar of raw emotion.

The villagers looked up, their eyes raised from the floor for the first time in a while. The slightest bit of light returned to them, as they dared to process the cry.

They'd wondered who it might be, raising such a shout. Was it that Captain that they'd seen, on more than one occasion? He'd certainly seemed to be a powerful man… But evidently, not powerful enough.

"TO THE LAST BREATH!" The voice shouted again, almost gleefully. The villagers listened. It was enough to bring tears unbidden to their eyes, as they stood there, on the precipice of death.

It was a feeling deep within their hearts, a slackening of their limbs, a surrendering to fear so that it would not consume the mind in the final moments. A decision to merely be still, like a rabbit in the jaws of the wolf. It was a comfortable instinct, the embrace of death. Even nature had her kindness, that it could allow one to go without kicking, without struggling.

Those words attacked that resolve in their heart.

"So they're not all dead... yet…" The same old man that Nila had been speaking to said, scratching his chin, but there was no hope in his voice.

They couldn't know that the boy who'd said such words was smiling. That he'd finally found some measure of peace in his wounded heart.

He was surrounded by nearly thirty Yarmdon by now. Every part of his body ached with wounds. He found that he liked that too. He'd begun to like the whole thing. He remembered as a child, before his family had been slain, he'd often dreamed of becoming a soldier. He'd done mock battles with his friends, and those were the very words that he'd screamed out.

"FOR THE STORMFRONT!" He said again.

His vocal cords ached to the point of tearing. He was not a loud boy by any means. Such a shout took all he had, but all he had was all that he wanted to give. He wanted to test himself as thoroughly as possible, if these were to be his final moments. He wanted to struggle as mightily as he could.

His blade somehow found more flesh, in what should have been an impenetrable defence, a sea of bodies.

Jok watched from a distance. He didn't have the words to describe what he was seeing. His strategy had been perfect. The camp was overwhelmed. Flames danced behind the lone boy as he did battle, it was Jok's victory, and Gorm's. Yet why was that boy smiling?

And there was a commander that found himself smiling too. A deep wound to his shoulder rendered his right hand all but useless, as he faced off against the fearsome Gorm, but hearing the cry of the boy, he could not help but smile as well, feeling the irony in it, understanding the humour of it, for he knew the boy. He knew he was like his master – that he felt no loyalty to country.

And yet he shouted the name of their cause anyway.