A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1395 - 1395: Childish - Part 1

"Reckless is what I am," Oliver said. "Boldness is the requirement for the worst of mistakes – and if it be mistakes that you fear making with me, then let me make worse ones in your place, so that you could never fear exceeding them."

'A mistake?' Nila wanted to laugh at him. "You think yourself to be soooo clever, Oliver Patrick," she told him. Perhaps it was because he had spent so long trying to improve his strategy, but he must have thought that he needed to spell it out for her. She must have thought that she could not see ahead, towards what he was pointing to.

But even if she could see it, she could not deny his effect. He dragged her, kicking and screaming, to the forefront of what that fear was, and he held it there, ready to take it from her. As clever as he was, he'd realized his course of action, and Nila had realized it too.

She had only needed only to sit back, and allow it of him. But Nila Felder was not such a person. She was a huntress, through and through, when the beast of House Patrick had determined that it would pursue her, she had decided to hunt it in turn.

"You are the most stupid man I know, Oliver Patrick," she said, and with lightning speed, before he could take a step further, she stole the first kiss from him. She saw the shock in his eyes before she closed her own, and she delighted in it. Her heart beat with enough force to break her ribs. It was a wonderful, beautiful fright – a healthy fear. It dwarfed what had distorted her for so many weeks, and quashed it, ensuring that it would never show itself again.

"You're not so frightening after all," she told him, once they had parted.

He snorted at that, and kissed her again.

"Look here now, I'm telling you, it's done," Greeves said impatiently. "If we don't do something now, we're going to be caught up in a right mess. The messiest of all messes."

"Is this not your plan, merchant?" Verdant said sternly. "Why do you lay the blame at the doorstep of my Lord, and so early in the morning?"

"We're going up against bloomin' Ferdinand and the entirety of the Guild, did you think it would be easy, Lord Idris?" Greeves said. His irritation had made him impertent, but a quick narrowing of the eyes of Verdant was enough to remind him of his place.

"What of Harmon?" Oliver said. "Has his position here not been changing the playing field?"

"Well, his shop has been open for a little while," Greeves said. "And people are coming to see him. But just one man isn't enough to change the tide. Ferdinand is looking to crush us well and completely. The incident of Harmon's escape from Ernest put him in a bind, and put him at odds with the Guild for a time, but that is about the only advantage we have collected, and all it has done is buy us time."

"That sounds pretty good to me," Oliver said.

"Take this seriously, Patrick," Greeves growled. "You've been sitting there with a smile on your face all morning as if nothing could be better. How are you still smiling when you know what's to come, eh? They're going to make it difficult for any traders to come to the village. We're a stop on the way to Ernest. If the Guild makes it unprofitable for them to stop here, then they'll stop coming. It's that simple."

"And you were hoping, in the past, that with enough men like Harmon here, there would be enough traffic to counter any stops that they might put in place?" Verdant said. "And why have you not been proceeding with that part of the plan?"

Greeves scratched his chin. "Look, even I didn't think they'd go as far as they did in broad daylight. The Guild's roots run deeper than it did back in my day. I haven't tried to bother with them in a while, it wouldn't make sense to. But it looks like that Lord Ferdinand has been letting them have too long a leash. Their power is greater than I expected."

"How much greater?" Oliver said. "You're a pessimistic man. You usually expect the worst. You can't have been that far off in your calculations, could you?"

"I expected them to have one or two nobles under their thumb, with particularly hefty debts, but they had more," Greeves said. "They're using those nobles to keep the craftsmen in line. There's nothing we can do even to get a negotiation in place."

"And, you didn't think this might be a possibility beforehand? You did not think to warn us, before we committed to this line of action?" Verdant said.

"Come on, how am I meant to see that far ahead?" Greeves said. "I wanted to toy with Ernest a bit, not make all out war with them, Lord Idris. And that is where we are at. Trade is slowly drying up, and bit by bit, it's only going to get worse. We'll be unable to pay the maintenance fees with our taxes, and the merchants that have moved here to set up shop will quickly be looking to move elsewhere. I reckon we've got… two, or three weeks before it becomes irreparable."

"So Ferdinand's prediction wasn't so off, then," Oliver said. "That he would have us crushed within the month."

"Indeed," Greeves said. "Picking a fight with them, it probably wasn't the best method. If we're to do this, we're going to have to get serious. We need to tighten everything up. Make sure that our merchants know this is only temporary, before they start going. And we need to start trying to find some way around this taxation issue – the way that the Guild is preventing merchants from trading here. They have informants, lurking among the villagers, that'll tell them when any of the merchants are breaking the rules… if we root them out, we might be able to build up confidence."