A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

Now it was an impenetrable blackness that they faced. They knew something was there, of course. Something… But that something didn't feel like the villagers. It felt considerably darker than that. It was easy to let the imagination play tricks on them.

Even their young commander found himself unnerved. He felt a gnawing in the pit of his stomach. A feeling that he'd felt several times before. The emotion stirred an old memory that he hadn't thought about in a while. An old Yarmdon coming-of-age ritual, that he'd been forced to undergo in his fourteenth year.
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Alone, in the wilderness, with nothing but a weapon of his choosing – for the task, he chose a spear – he had to bring back the pelt of a Grey Bear. Bigger than the brown bears that inhabited the Black Mountains, they were terrifying foes, even for those of Yarmdon descent.

It was in the moment where he'd finally succeeded in tracking down one of those bears that Jok had felt this primal instinct. As he'd gazed into the blackness of the cave, he'd felt that deadly presence. He'd heard the rising and falling of the beast's chest, he could almost feel the heat of its breath.

And then he took that emotion, and he gripped his spear tighter, slaughtering the bear all the same. Few returned from that test and none – not at that age – came back with the pelt of a Grey Bear. They'd had to settle for weaker animals, cementing their position in society.

Jok would never have allowed that for himself. From the moment he left the womb, he knew he had been destined for greatness. Now, as the fear came, even greater than what he felt outside of that bear's cave, once again, he reminded the world of his worth.

"Burn it," he gave the order with a stern voice, a voice filled with strength. It unfroze the nerves of his men at the front. They held a torch to the low-thatched roof only too gladly. It quickly caught fire, as Jok lit up the darkness that Beam had created.

The whole Yarmdon army had been set on fighting that single order. The slightest of movements, the slightest of changes to the battlefield position, they were all having far more significant effects than Beam was thinking of as he gave the orders.

Those first few men that he had utilised – by Greeves' orders – came back to the square after having completed their task. Now the whole village was cloaked in darkness, including the centre.

The eyes began to adjust, it was their night vision that they went off. They could just barely make out the shapes of each other, and the shapes of the houses around them. But if a man was to crouch, and remain still, it'd be nearly impossible to notice him.

Beam found himself remaining similarly as still, albeit unintentionally. His thoughts and his speech were coming to him deliriously, as though he was trying to awake from a dream. His body didn't have the energy to recover in one fell swoop, so it operated in a different mechanism, the minimal mechanism, that was all that it could do.

Without looking towards it, he could hear the fire crackling off into the distance, two hundred metres out from the village centre. The first of the houses had been set fire to, and it cast light all around it, light mixed with shadows, but still, light nonetheless.

The Yarmdon boots beat against the road, crunching down into the snow. They found themselves unconsciously walking lightly on their feet, as they would when they were tracking prey, but from the weight of the men, and the sheer number of them, that did nothing to mask their approach.

And they were indeed approaching. The villagers could feel that. Their hearts thudded against their ribcage. Those that hadn't wanted to fight were rendered no choice. The woman that had spoken up tearfully early to protest against Beam now began to quieten her crying, even as she buried her head deeper into her hands.

There was something about the darkness that made them all want to move quietly, that made them want to lower their voices. The darkness was vague and it was obscuring, it was the perfect place for the weak to attack, and it was the perfect place for the weak to exist.

It empowered those that were hungrier, and more desperate. Some found themselves moving slightly, to see if the people next to them would notice. They didn't – how could they? Subtle movements were virtually undetectable. The night vision that their eyes afforded them was a mere haze.

Such a thing was an emboldening prospect. It was the domain of the criminal. Greeves' men delighted in it. They felt comfortable in it. It afforded them far more opportunities than the light did.

They held their breaths, not daring to speak. Beam still had yet to give a single other order. There were various plans that they could take. They could have some of the men hide inside of the houses as the Yarmdon approached, and attack them from their positions of stealth.

Such a thing was being immediately countered by Jok, though, as he burned down every house in his path.

The darkness was a temporary measure. With every step that they took, the small advantage that the darkness afforded them was being snatched away. But no matter how hard a man looked, they could find no better ways to go about it. There were no other real tactics they could employ.

Had they had bows, they could have shot arrows. Had they had oil, they could have tossed pots amongst the enemy, and forced them to fight amongst their own flames.

Along that line of thought, Beam found himself raising his head again. It was never about total victory, not for them. They were the weak. It was merely about evening the playing field enough that miracles could happen.

In that sense, the flames too were to their benefit. All kinds of chaos were to their benefit. If the villagers had the morale to keep from running, through sheer numbers and through sheer chaos of the environment, they could seize their victory.

But that seemed unlikely. Beam couldn't snatch any more ideas from his tired mind. He could only merely acknowledge the situation and give one last order.