A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1559 - 1559: Shifting Tides - Part 2

By now, he had assumed that Asabel, and all the men that had gone with her, would have managed to return to her homeland. They would be gathering up men with each passing day, amassing the grand army that they so required to seize the entirety of the Pendragon territory for their Queen.

In the same breath, however, the armies of the High King would most certainly have been marching as well. Every day, Oliver looked towards the horizon, and he expected to see Emerson armies streaming up after him, and the words of Blackwell's orders for a retreat echoed in the back of his mind. He could well see the walls of Ernest burning, he could well see the ancestral graves at the back of Blackwell's estates torn up, and hundreds of years worth of history rid of, in a single act of pillaging.

He'd taken to walking the tall ramparts of Ernest, whenever it was that he needed a chance to think, and indeed, he did so again now. When he placed his hands on its smooth stone bricks, weathered from all the years, he fancied he could feel its history. There was a tingling in his mind, whenever he allowed his thoughts to stop, and he allowed that history to come in, as if he were seizing upon an energy that was not his own.

It had an entirely different presence to Solgrim. Solgrim, to Oliver, felt of hope, when he walked in it, he could imagine the future. He could feel a populace all pointed like an arrow in a single direction, hoping for more, trying to make up for the sadness of the past, erecting a shield for themselves, so that it might never happen again. Ernest was the opposite, it was a city that seemed to think its best days were in the past. It already had all that it could ever want, and the only thing it seemed to ask for from Oliver was that he protect it.

Whenever he began to feel tired, he rid himself of his own mind, and he remembered the city. The boulder that he had to shift was insurmountable. It wasn't something that he could think directly on. Though Blackwell had given him his orders to retreat, Oliver's honour would not even allow him to consider it. All he could think of was the army that was to come his way, and the impossibility of the task, and all he could think of along with that was the time that was steadily running out.

He leaned his head, with a certain childish lack of dignity, on his hands, in between the crenellations of the castle wall. His jaw was slacker than he'd let his men see in him, and his eyes were glassy, and less focused. When he stood like that, Oliver fancied he was far less overwhelming. Sometimes, it almost came as a relief not to exist, in such a capacity. To stand like a tree would, and simply observe the world around him.

Verdant stood next to him, knowing to be silent, looking upon the world with a gentle smile, and his own kind of vision. It was Verdant's presence, Oliver felt, that affected him most strongly in his pondering. He did not think he would have fallen so quick to pondering if Nila had been there, as excitable as she was… But then, given the problem that he now bore, even around Nila, he had his fits of silence, where he could think of nothing else but his duty.

Blackthorn, like a sentinel, only added to their quiet. Like triplets of gargoyles, Oliver Patrick and his two closest retainers looked down on the peasants that were camped inside their walls. The sun was high, the snow was thick, and they buzzed like bees around dangling cook pots, as they smoked over their various fires. Those men were never happier than when it was time for lunch.

As a mass, it was hard to grasp them all. But by the same vein, it was easy to reduce them. As a mass, one could label them as the peasantry, just as one would label a hive of bees simply as bees. And then there was no more to look for, nothing else to watch.

The very stones of the walls that Oliver stood on, he found that he treated with more individuality, at times, than they. He knew each stone apart, for the years had affected each stone differently, and he'd stood in the same spot now, for a number of days, pondering the same thoughts, gaining nothing, but an increased intimacy with where he puts his hands.

No two of those stone bricks were cut alike. Even if they might have been milled symmetrically at one point, the many centuries of their standing had given them their individuality, and each one told a different story. Some still stood, flat, and smooth, unmoved by the years of beating rain and shivering frost that had snapped at them. Others had little pockets of holes, where the water had worn in. Those seemed sadder to Oliver. He personified them, and imagined them as old men, battered by the years.

Only when his mind was so distant, that he could put it into the history of the rock, did Oliver feel a calm that could keep his heart beating at a normal rhythm, even in the enormity of the situation that he bore. It was to such a degree, that he could almost be happy standing then. It was a privilege, standing next to ghosts.

After days of doing it, however, even those rocks began to grow too familiar. They did etch at his mind in quite the same way. They didn't give him the sense that he was being filled with new information, knowledge beyond his station. They grew to the point of familiarity that he moved further along them, in search of new stones to put his hands.

Even now they only lasted but an hour. As with all things, they quickly grew tiresome – something too Oliver saw as a principle of progress by now, and languidly did he accept the fact, as his mind continued to wander.