A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1524 - 1524: A Tiger - Part 3

He gestured to Gar as he said that. "There be a comrade of a difficult sort. What man here would make a servant out of him? What man could dare to claim capacity in commanding him? Not I. I am no experienced General, capable of moulding the most difficult of men. You see how I operate – with heavy hands, I had to clumsily threaten him for loyalty. I had to bargain, and put my own freedom on the line. Reckless, and the results seem hardly to be worthwhile, for I do not have the capacity to make proper use of him… And yet, gentlemen, I have been compelled to try anyway."

"It is one thing to grow one's strength, for the sake of simple position," Oliver said. "If it were for position, the stray dogs, and the Sword Gar, the chaos that they invite has no strength to offer us that will overcome the instability that they inflict... But this is not for position, gentlemen. The resources that we must gather are not for mere position. Our purpose is a weightier one. The weightiest we as Stormfront men can carry. A burden that our ancestors entrust upon us, for the very heart of our country. Indeed, our purpose is one of war."

Hod felt the hairs upon his hands stand up. He gulped, despite the lack of salvia in his mouth. His following of the Gods' lines, of the natural flow of things, had always allowed him to be sure, at least to some degree, of where he stood. He liked to think it meant that nothing could catch him entirely off guard, and yet this had.

He looked at Oliver Patrick, and saw that he did not yet have the competence to overcome the boulder that had been set in front of him. He still did not. Yet he had done something in his speech, he'd made up for his lack of might with something else, a superior sort of flow, and when it was he arrived at the problem again, the weighty boulder – the weightiest of all of them – was shifted.

When the people heard his declaration of war, they were not resistant to it. They were coiled up in the puppet strings of another man. They stirred, empowered, men and women alike, peasant and noble, those that had every reason to be loyal to the passions of Oliver, alongside those that had not even been close enough to share a conversation with him, or call his name. They knew not what war he spoke of, and they were still moved by the very idea of it.

Lord Blackwell ceased his fighting, and he stood, forced to wait, with a disgruntled expression on his face. Oliver Patrick had found his opportunity to make his own will known, and he'd snatched upon it, as greedy as the God of Power himself.

"We carry the heart of the First King with us," Oliver said. "We are an angry, warring nation. It is the heart of a warrior that we were founded upon. And we who gather here, in celebration of combat, and of strength, we hold to the old ideals. We war to defend them. That which encroaches on the old ways, that which mars out honour, and makes us weaker, we spit on."

"That which poisons the foundations our ancestors have made. The corruption that eats away at the pillars of our faith and our strength – we pull that out by its head, do we not, gentlemen? When something weakens what the Stormfront ought to be, do we not, as men of the Stormfront, without thought, remove it, for we are duty bound to do so, for we know the First King would not hesitate to do the same, and it is strength that has kept us mightier than our neighbours for hundreds of years," Oliver said.

Hod saw then, that the young man had the crowd agreeing, even though they knew not what they were agreeing to. They waded into the traps of metaphor, and with open arms, they declared that there was nothing that they could be certain in than that. They shifted, like soldiers before a General's speech, that could already see the barbarian hordes on the horizon that they would need to cull. Oliver Patrick's Command swirled around him, as blinding as the sun. The more they gave him, the more he seemed to grow.

It was violent, and it was overwhelming… and to Hod, it was, in the end, incredibly sad. He was not a man that found himself easily moved by the emotions of others, but as Oliver Patrick grew, all parts of him seemed magnified. The look in his eyes, that seemed to be overwhelming, betrayed a deep sadness. The smile that he wore on his lips seemed different for it, as if the young man had other intentions at mind, and as if he wished to have gone about things differently, but this was the only path that he had available to him.

Whatever the case was, Oliver Patrick had started a fire, and now that it grew so hot, there were none that could stop it. Not Queen Asabel, not General Blackwell, not even General Karstly. The heat that Oliver had created was his alone. He'd been allowed too much room to talk, and now he led their people into a war.

"This corruption has spread, gentlemen, like a poison," Oliver said. "Assassins in the dark. What Stormfront man needs operate by assassins? Those are not our tools. We need no arsonists in the night, and killers that cling to shadow. Yet our enemy does – an enemy from the heart of the Stormfront itself. Word has not spread to you yet, I imagine, for this is a matter of the utmost important, one that we have kept to ourselves, for fear of plunging you into the darkness of war prematurely… But I think we look down on you in doing so. You do not need our coddling, or our protection. You are men of the Stormfront just as firmly as we. You nobles, and you that they call the peasantry. You all bear the spirit of the First King, and so I know you are with me in my disgust, when I inform you of the assassination of Ferdinand Blackwell, on the afternoon of yesterday, by the hands of our common enemy."