A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

Beam nodded in reply. "Hopefully."

With Dominus gone, he finished tying the blocks of wood to the end of his sword and he stood up.

There were only two small pieces tied there now, towards the very end of it, but with the length of his blade, those pieces grew much heavier. He began to do his practice swings with those blocks of wood on the end.

This was another part of his experimentation, as he sought to find the style that would complement his newfound power most. He knew that if the enemy felt the slightest inclination of fear, then things would begin to work in his favour.

He was working on his style of trickery, to surprise the opponent and catch them off guard, and now, to compliment that, he decided that it might be worth working on his strength.

His logic was thus: if he struck strongly and managed to buckle the enemy in a single blow, what was more likely to create fear than that? He thought it to be a good attempt at an overwhelming display of might – to trick the enemy into thinking that the gap between his skill and theirs was bigger than it actually was.

So far, this was the best method he had come up with for increasing the strength of his strikes. But it was far from perfect. As he swung the blade up and down, the wood blocks shifted, threatening to fall off. Not only that, the new unbalance of the sword made it feel more like he was wielding an axe.

He figured it would be better to keep the balance of the sword the same, whilst increasing the weight of it overall, to make it more applicable to his own swordsmanship, but he wasn't quite sure how.

With a lack of ideas, this is what he had settled on for the time being, in the hopes that experimenting with it a little more might lead him to something better.

After finishing up with that, he went through and lifted the stones all the way from one to five, managing to lift the fifth and heaviest one ten times quite comfortably. That has been his routine for the last couple of days.

Even though Dominus had given Beam complete freedom to choose his own training, Beam was reluctant to abandon the methods that Dominus had taught him entirely. At the very least, even if he didn't aim to actively progress in them, he wanted to keep them at a baseline level whilst he worked on everything else.

With that, he completed the first of the things he required of himself in the morning. After that, he jogged towards the village with the sack of goblin heads in his head. Though there was a bit of green blood leaking out of them, he figured they were at least a lot less inconspicuous than hauling the entire corpses.

He tended to go into the village daily now. Since the soldiers had come, such a thing seemed far more worthwhile. Beam could go into the town, collect his money from Greeves and at the same time he could also collect information. It fascinated him to have a trained army so close and whenever he got the opportunity, he would look towards the encampment to see what they were up to.

He did that very thing now, just as he came out the treeline. He slowed from a run down towards a walk and looked towards where the soldiers were camped.

There was a ring of twenty tents, all of them round, with pointed reviews. They were made from a waxed canvas material that made them seem shiny when they were wet and they were covered in broad stripes, alternating between blue and white.

In the centre of that ring of twenty tents was another tent, bigger than the rest, which Beam could only guess served as Lombard's own personality quarters.

Aside from just soldiers and tents, there were the supplies and servants that they had brought with them. Beam guessed that there weren't many servants, for he only saw a few tents – of considerably poorer quality than the rest.

He also saw ten horses tied closer to the centre of the camp, with five wagons to go with them and big towers of boxed supplies.

As Beam watched, he saw the soldiers currently on duty guarding. They marched around the camp at regular intervals, looking off toward the horizon, over the vast plains, searching for any sign of the Yarmdon raiders. But of course, as of yet, there were none.

Only a few men stood guard around the camp, keeping an eye on its perimeter. Other soldiers patrolled the perimeter of the village itself, with the main focus being towards the west and towards the forest. Beam had seen them practicing the signals one day that warned of attack.

It seemed that the plan was to blow a loud horn – such a thing could be heard from miles away. There was also a signal fire that they planned to light, just in case for whatever reason, the horn didn't work. There were several such signal fires scattered throughout the forest – fires that of course the soldiers had built.

They were patrolling the mountains quite regularly, sending parties of ten men deep within it at regular points in a day.

Those that were not patrolling were training and Beam saw Captain Lombard leading them often. He would bark commands, forcing them to engage in mock battles, continually practicing their group coordination skills.

That's exactly what they were doing that morning, as Beam looked out towards the camp. Before he knew it, his walking had slowed to a complete halt and he was staring off towards the camp a distance away, just in time to see an officer bark a command, causing the whole army to drop back into a menacing looking spear wall.

"Hm…" Beam mused to himself, wondering what the captain was up to. He did not have to wonder such a thing for long, for a party of eleven soon broke from the forest's treeline as Beam stood watch. They chose a different route to the one the hunters used – one that led more directly to their camp.