A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1556 - 1556: Protector of the West - Part 5

Gar gnashed his teeth again and again in frustration, not understanding why the sword that had once pushed Oliver such a distance could no longer reach him.

"You will remember your role, won't you?" Oliver had said to him, more than once, as he stood over the defeated young man. "When the time comes, I will have a use for you. You will secure glory in your name."

"Yes, yes, Gar understands," had come the irritated reply each time, as he angrily stomped his feet. "No more talk. We keep fighting."

"We talk when I wish to talk, Gar," Oliver had said, just once, stepping in close, with his sword against Gar's neck. "Do not forget the loyalty that you have sworn to me. Until the day that you beat me, you will serve. Or I will be done with you in the here and now."

"You're cruel to him as well," Verdant had noted, in between one of their sparring sessions. "It seems as if your intention today is to break everyone here."

He had said that almost teasingly, but Oliver could tell, by Verdant's eyes, that the man had seen through him.

"Send them running through the mountains. You know the course – the same one we send our own soldiers on. Tell them that every man that does not make it back within the next two hours will be whipped. I shall take the time to review our defences. Tell Firyr, Jorah, Kaya and Karesh to run amongst them. They aren't to let a single one slack. Send out our own men half an hour after the rest," Oliver said.

"With orders to hunt them down?" Verdant said, with some degree of amusement.

Oliver considered it seriously just for a second, much to the worry of Nila, but he eventually shook his head. "We need not add anything extra. We will be making them feel that emotion regardless."

Nila had come with him to inspect the city, along with Volguard. Though she had not said a word, there was a tenseness to her that indicated she wished to say several. It was only when they were walking back towards the gates, and the silence had held for a while, that she dared to speak up.

"Oliver," Nila said.

"Hm?" He asked, turning to look at her.

"You have a plan, don't you?" She asked. "This is not cruelty just for cruelty's sake, is it?"

"…You have trust in me, then," Oliver said, his look softening slightly, to see how much she fought with herself in asking the question.

"I do. I just do not enjoy the sight of watching in the process," Nila said.

"Nor do I enjoy the deed," Oliver said. "But it is better than leaving a thousand corpses on the battlefield."

"I admit, I have a curiosity towards this as well," Volguard said. "Your methods have left me… uncomfortable, I admit. Though it is no harsher than what I have heard the Blackthorn recruits go through, in the first week of training, before they are accepted as amongst the rest. Though I did not suppose that you had won the loyalty of your men through such means."

"He had not," Nila said. "It was through trust that Oliver has won over the rest of them. They believe in the man that commands them, and the glory that he promises them."

"But now is not the time for such things," Oliver said. "I have no time to build trust, when our very first battle with them under me is set to crush them. They need more than experience, and they need it now, from the very start."

They slid past the open gates of Ernest together, back out onto the plains, where the snow was still thick on the group, just in time to see the first of the men returning from their run through the mountains. And the men that led were men wearing Patrick surcoats, fully armoured, despite the head start that the new recruits had gotten on them.

Their breath fogged into the air in front of them, and heat steamed from their sides. Every step brought them falling all the way to their ankle in the snow, but the best of them powered through it. Those that led the front were veteran men, used to far harsher conditions, and Oliver had to acknowledge them with some degree of pride, though having that emotion worn on his face went something against his motives.

He nodded to them instead, as they pulled up beside him.

"Collect yourselves," he said, not too harshly. "And stand firm. Share those towels, and wipe the sweat from your brow. You will give the illusion of invincibility. You will stand as straight as if you had not run a single step. On your pride as Patrick men, see it done."

A hundred soldiers came ahead of the rest of the veteran men, all of them. The order did not need to be repeated after it was told to the first of them. They could see their fellow men, standing to full attention, their shoulders peeled back, and the sweat dried from their bodies, looking ahead, as proud as lions.

They were peasants, and ex-slaves, at one point, but their pride in who they were now washed away that past. They needed not to be told what was expected of them – not in this regard.

Four hundred men arrived ahead of the rest, all of them armoured, and they joined the ranks of trained Patrick soldiers proudly. By the time those four hundred men had arrived, the first amongst the new peasant recruits could be seen, steaming down the hill on wobbly legs, after braving their way through the heart of the forest.

The hundred Patrick men that remained amongst them looked furious. They were bigger men, and running wasn't exactly their strong suit, but they still had a certain level of fitness that they expected to maintain. Even though they were as close to the front of the pack as they were, it still wasn't good enough for them. They fought like dogs, desperate to overtake as many peasants as they could before the finishing line.

Then they went, steaming with anger, to join the rest, doing their best to ignore the condescending looks that they were being given as they went about it. To be amongst that final hundred, at least for a while, was likely to be a subject of some degree of bullying.