A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1558 - 1558: Shifting Tides - Part 1

"You are frightened," Oliver said to them. "And you are wise to be. Today, you have been frightened, and you have been tormented by your efforts in training. I pushed you to a point where other men would break. But you did not. Not a single one of you. You were consumed by fear, and you moved regardless. That is called courage, gentlemen."

He allowed his words to sit in the air, as he looked from man to man, in the same way he had earlier. He patted the man who he had given a weapon to on the shoulder, and then began to move down the line.

"Each of you has earned your right to choose a weapon. Only the courageous should be entitled to the tools of soldiery, and you have shown, despite how the nobility and the Serving Class scorn you, that courage comes more easily to you than it does to any other. If I had taken another group of a thousand, from anywhere in the country, I do not believe they would have endured as you have," Oliver said.

More barrels were upended, from more of Oliver's men, and tentatively, bit by bit, the men in front of him were offered weapons. None snatched them eagerly. It took a few of the bolder ones to try grabbing something that they liked, with nervous eyes, before the others started to follow suit and join them, until there were eventually a dozen different lines forming up in front of Oliver's officers, hoping to choose a weapon that they preferred.

"For these next weeks, you will exist in fear, men of mine," Oliver said. "You will be frightened, and you will be uncomfortable, as you ought to be. Fear is the essence of war. You must grow used to it. But in surviving this first day, you have earned the right to pride. For you do not start from zero. You have made proof of that, and you will continue to make proof of it. You peasants have endured a harsher life than most, and you will be able to endure harsher training for it. Look at the men in front of you, now feared for their reputation, and know that they came from the same seeds as you. Some, even worse, some were chained as slaves. And now look how they stand. Mighty. Hold to your courage, gentlemen, and in time, you will earn the right to stand beside them."

If it worked in one fell swoop, war might have been an easy game that was to be played. Yet, it was still of note, to see how their faces thawed, with their weapons in hand, and the way they looked around at each other, with a hint of uncertainty, but with a spark of something else in their eyes to add to it.

There were the first seeds of something there. It was hard to call that thing a special thing, for Oliver knew progress by now, and he knew how a beginner in any endeavour seemed to glow with the faint light of hope. And indeed, hope infected these men, just as strongly as fear did. At two ends of a seesaw, Ingolsol and Claudia played their games, providing their opposite emotions.

Oliver could not yet see an army of proper sorts arising out of them. Yet he could see the danger. He knew that these thousand men, if they were gathered together as a mob of sorts, and they had been intent on causing trouble in such a regard, then their efforts would have most certainly been noteworthy.

It was one thing however to be a mob, and another thing to be capable of inflicting harm against organized, trained, and highly numerous soldiers. Of which, Oliver quite well expected to come out of the west.

The smell of charred meat hung in the air, and quickly following it, there came a dozen hurled complaints.

"You've bloody ruined it, you oaf!"

"That's good meat, that was!"

"You've been on cook duty twice, and you've cocked it up both times!"

"You're a fuckin' eyesore. I'm not losing food because of you. You owe me your bloody ration now."

When one turned their back on them, it was easy to imagine the new recruits as being the same men in the Patrick army proper. They spoke the same foulness now, and they knew to pick up on the same complaints. It wasn't exactly a difficult conversion. Every single one of them had a high regard for food, given that, in one time or another in all their lives, it had been a difficult acquisition. Whenever one drew a poor cook, as part of the ever-shifting rotas, there was no end to the complaints. Which was why, after a certain period of time, they had been practically forced to keep certain duties amongst the soldiery regularly. Having men that were good at cooking in charge of the food ranked rather highly in importance amongst that.

A week, and the peasants might have been called transformed. They had trained under Oliver's harshness for the entire duration, and there was a slightly different weight to them now. They seemed more sure of themselves, less likely to wilt, when the inevitable fear came. When they wore their armour – mismatched though it was, and completely devoid of the Patrick surcoats as of yet, for Oliver still did not acknowledge them as worthy of it – they could almost be mistaken as soldiers.

But it was still far from being enough. It was ordinary progress, by Oliver's estimation. He narrowed his eyes watching it, and had to fight back the grinding of his teeth, as he failed to see anything beyond the norm.

"They've sharpened up quicker than the previous batches," Firyr had commented, seemingly surprised at the magic of their progress. But to Oliver, it was still far from being enough. He applied the weighty pressure of Ingolsol's fear, forcing them to contort under its pressure, but he still failed to see anything beyond the norm in them. It wore at him, for he was well aware of the time pressure that they were under.