A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1532 - 1532: The Resentful - Part 4

"Where is my answer?" Oliver said. "Why do you not deign to reply? Do I shout my words into the wind? Do you know nothing, but standing there, shiftless, thinking yourselves to be blameless? Where went the ferocity with which you fought each other before?"

The silence the crowd sat in was practically unnatural. When the wind blew, to stir Oliver's blood-matted hair, it drowned out the small little whispers of noise that the crowd barely made, and reduced them entirely to void.

He had the alarming sense that, perhaps, even with all that he had, he could not move them. He'd been bold enough to feel fear, in allowing all that he was to the surface. But even with all that he was present, he found his words to be plentiful, and yet their effect minimal. The best he could do was hold them in place.

His eyes tracked a flash of movement, scanning the crowd for anything that he might latch onto. Each movement led to nothing. There was nothing at all for him to draw on, no further sparks to fan the embers that had been built up earlier. Each time his eyes tracked something, it was reduced to nothing. Then, he saw a nobleman, round enough from his weight and aged enough that he could never be called a soldier again, reach out with a hand, towards the rear of his young wife.

He did so with the blankest of expressions, the most thoughtless of eyes, but his hands found their target nonetheless, and from the yelp the young woman gave, and the angry way she turned on him, he had most definitely given her a squeeze.

Oliver's eyebrows furrowed at the sight. His frown was deep, and irritated – but only for a second. There, right in the middle of a boiling pot, that would change the fate of their country, when others were so tense that they could not move, a man's instinct still leered, good and strong. Well, good might have been a stretch. It was perversion, and uncouth, but that seemed to be the nature of all instincts.

He had to turn his head, lest the others see the way his frown threatened to become a smile, and as he did so, he could not fail to see the earnestly worried face of Nila Felder. With his eyes wavering between gold and purple, as humour fought with seriousness, and his earlier tiredness threatened to return, he had a similarly base thought himself. He wondered how good it might be, to sit with Nila, as they had often taken to doing after a long day, and simply hold her, with nothing more on his mind than relaxed contentment.

He thought too, with an increasing ferocity, how certain he was that he'd wish to start a family with her. It was a base emotion, more like desire, beyond the honour that he'd tried to hammer into his soul. She stirred his heart to the point that, at times, he feared he would lose control of himself. Only his love for her, and what they had, kept him from moving more quickly than he knew to be sane. He picked each step as carefully as he could, as if he were walking a tightrope, gently looking after the most precious treasure that he'd ever received.

He could see her eyes narrow, when he stared at her too long. She too, apparently, was hovering right next to humour, quite quickly, despite the seriousness of the situation. But it was the very fact that it was so serious, that Oliver had to appreciate how fundamentally simple the creatures that he sought to persuade were. He knew it, because he was the very same. Despite his complexity, and the struggles that he juggled, at his very heart, he had been reduced to something as simple as any other man in the world. When it had come to a woman that he had finally been able to give his heart to, in truly loving her, he had found his quiet moments of peace, and quickly, nothing had become more important than her.

That passion seemed to sit nearer the heart of all men than talk of loyalty. Oliver shook his head. Ingolsol seemed to already have that understanding, long before he did. His own talk of honour was what had led him to expect to see the same in other men. But it was peasants, and soldiers that he was talking to for the most part – and the occasional noble, with more debased thoughts than what they'd admit to, as he'd seen in the man groping his wife.

Glory, honour, and justice, they were pretty enough words, but the truth was, a man needed something more to motivate him.

"Our families," Oliver said. "They will inherit this country, when we are done with it. The High King's hands already reach for your daughters. Even if you yourself have not been affected by it personally, you surely know of someone who had. The honour in giving your daughter, without marriage, to a King, on his demand, so that he might use her as he pleases? Do you suppose Arthur Pendragon would have seen that law forced to the extent that it has been? Do you really suppose that we need further evidence of corruption, when these are the very ideals that the High King chose to hold up and enforce. Rather than the betterment of his country, he has seen to his pleasure. Do you suppose that he will learn his limits, so deep into his reign, or do you suppose that his confidence will grow?"

"How do you plan to deal with that, when his eyes turn to your own woman, or to your own daughter, and he demands, by royal leverage, that you give her away for the likes of him?" Oliver said. "Do you suppose that corrupt power, left unchecked, will eventually weaken, or do you suppose instead that we ought to do something about it?"