A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1545 - 1545: Where Art The Fire - Part 10

"I suppose it's different for a civil war than a foreign war regardless…" Oliver murmured. "A winter campaign has the problem of supplies, but the lands we currently sit in, they're ours, filled with our own supplies… That is, until word of our war is announced, and those same supply stores are put to the torch."

It was a thing of mess, Oliver thought. He felt the fear throb in him as he acknowledged it all. He thought fear to be the only appropriate reaction to it, especially when he was held right at the head of such an army – so many thousands of men, with peasantry, that could very well just be called civilians, for that was what they were.

Of those peasants that could be called fighting men, there were the other peasantry that had travelled for the sake of the tournament, that consisted of only women and children. The same was true of the nobility. They'd acquired an army, but it had not come without a cost. They had a weight of citizenry to look after that could very well have been called burdens.

Once more, that had been pointed out at the strategy meeting the previous night. Karstly had been quite blunt in stating that they should be sent away, for they had no purpose at war. They could have very well claimed no involvement in it.

But, fortunately, the other Generals had seen more honour than pragmatism, and they had protested that the families of the warring nobles could quite easily be taken hostage, and used against them, or otherwise punished for the sins of the rebels that they were related to.

It was Blackwell that had offered the solution, in the walls of Ernest. He had traced a line on the map, between Ernest and Solgrim, and he had declared that the beginnings of their kingdom. All the villages between the two, in the village of Forgin and the like, and all the land between them, they were allied territory.

Suddenly, it had become a thing of the utmost importance that Solgrim was as fortified as it was. Oliver had hardly said a word at the strategy meeting, but he had listened, and he had noted the way that the Generals had talked about Solgrim, as if it were a military outpost, rather than a town. It was a strange thing for him to listen to. They had not said it directly, but they placed a clear amount of respect on the defences that Oliver had seen put in place, and now they placed trust in it as well.

In holding forces in Ernest, and in Solgrim, they saw that all the territory between the two was firmly secured, and then the territory in a radius around the two, both to the East, and the West, could be called secured as well, for as far as they wished it to be.

The trouble was, though it was a large stretch of land, it was most certainly not fit to serve as the entire foundation of their war. All the men of rank that they had gathered had one fear in common – they feared for the state of their homelands while they were left away. The Asabelian lands seemed the foremost on their list of worries, with their Queen, Minister of War and Minister of Coin away, along with a good few of their Generals.

But, those lands that had left had another thing in common too – they all contained the soldiers that formed the backbone of the armies of the different Generals. They commanded, at the very minimum, two thousand men each, as permanent conscripts. And then, in times of war, they were given the command of further men by the order of the High King, as behoved men of their station.

Their strength, in short, was scattered throughout the country, and their foremost objective was unifying it. Every scrap of power that they had, as soon as the High King heard of their declaration of war, found itself entirely surrounded on all sides as enemies. They were far less a united army, and more a scattering of thousands of misplaced men, and it wasn't as if they could protect everything important to them at once.

The war had hardly begun, and already, they were forced to pick their sacrifices. Generals were forced to put their own families and lands at risk, leaving them behind, as they took their war elsewhere, to more strategically sound locations.

The full weight of what a civil war meant had kicked in at that strategy meeting at the previous night. It was very much unlike the conquest of foreign lands. Here, they could attack nowhere, without wounding themselves. They'd all been left in a state of permanent grimness as a result of it.

There it was, likely the position that Oliver had aimed to achieve since he was a child, and it struck him with nothing but an overwhelming sadness. His fears all intertwined, to make this maddening concoction that demanded that he stay as still as he could for as long as he could.

His poorly clothed body was already in rebellion against that, the cold was far too serve for the state of his dress, but his mind was firmly of the opinion that they stay where they were. The fear was far too much. The crushing weight of that responsibility. If he did not concentrate, then he was not the equal to it.

Ten thousand gathered people, but could the army be called ten thousand strong? Oliver did not think so. Not even at their most optimistic. They were in trouble, to put it lightly.

"But gathered here are the greatest strategic minds that I know," Oliver said, attempting to reassure himself, knowing quite well that it was simply an attempt to foist responsibility elsewhere.

"Damn it, who am I for such a position?" Oliver said, practically shouting. "I'm nothing more than a peasant… Nothing more than what they themselves would rightly look down on. Look what they've done – they've foisted me into this position, based nothing more than on a bed of lies."

His heart tore as he expressed it, wondering how many of his close allies would have changed their tacts if they knew the origin of his birth. All that they'd built, and the very symbol that he was, it was all built upon a lie that Dominus and Lombard had crafted in their dying moments. He was no Patrick. His ties to Dominus were as loose as they could be.