A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1560 - 1560: Shifting Tides - Part 3

From the stones, it went to the buildings. From the buildings, it went to the snow. With a problem so immense that the mind could not readily solve it, with every solution and every known path already so well ploughed, that there could be no more thinking to be done, it danced from everything, to everything. From the birds, to the trees, to the wind again… And then finally, back down to his men. He sank his chin deep into his palm, his expression not exactly that of a General. He just sat there, and watched, and listened, going back to the cook that was being berated for his poor performance.

He was one of the older men, with a perfect lack of hair, yet he still kept a blonde scrap of it that grew long on the back of his head. He seemed rather flustered from all the men that were berating him, as one might expect. He looked as if he might stomp his feet. His eyes flickered to, and fro, with a rapidity that reminded Oliver of a cat. He tilted his head, observing him, sinking in deeper. When the man's mouth opened to protest, Oliver was surprised that he very much expected the exact instant in which the man's lips parted.

When he stepped forward, to jab a finger at them, and then nervously stepped back, Oliver found his eyes widen with interest. He felt that ticklish sensation of mind that the stones had given him in his observation, as if he had found a particularly rare bird.

The others gathered round him, closer, more violently, more annoyed and angry with him, and he cowered away again, frantic in his movements. Every gesture was slightly faster. Oliver found, though he knew not exactly the face, for there were too many men now to keep track of easily, that he began to know the man. He thought he could imagine very well what the man's place in the village had been.

His hand gestures came frantically, as he warded them off with a ladle. He could well imagine the man explaining himself in such a way to an overseer in the past. They weren't the motions of a particularly confident man, at least not currently.

His axe slapped against his hip. Apparently, that was his chosen weapon, and he'd been allowed to keep it. The peasants were made to sleep with their weapons, in an effort to try and convince them of what they now were. To ever remind them that, when one learned violence, one did not simply unlearn it. It was a line that they had crossed that they would never uncross. They would never cease to be dangerous.

A spark of confidence came, when the man remembered his axe. Oliver found that he could understand the man's reasoning in that too. He felt it with a faint shred of amusement. His lips curled up into a proper and true smile, as he watched the man fight his little war. He genuinely, and quite earnestly, tried to fight the men that were ganging up on him with his ladle, but they merely barked at him in annoyance, and easily evaded his wild swings.

It was a rather excitable, rather nervous personality that Oliver found himself seeing. And he had the privilege of watching it change, as the men finally tired of their assaults on him, and decided to see the problem actually solved – especially since a Patrick Sergeant had come over to shout at them all for being slow.

The pot was hefted aside, spilled in the snow, and fresh rations were put in, though from the loudness of the Sergeant's voice, it seemed quite clear that they would all be punished for the mistake.

Now the man who'd been the cause of it all had his anxiousness twisted with a strange little sadness. His frantic movements had a particularly tragic motion to them, as he traced the air with his ladle still helplessly biting his lip.

The curiosity of the change struck Oliver as even more exciting than the rest of it. One moment that man's flow had been one thing, and the next it had been rather different. He found himself leaning over the high walls of Ernest, no longer with his head in his hands, but infected entirely by interest.

He had the sense that the man that he was looking at was a creature of the highest curiosity. That strange change in temperament had come so suddenly, so excitingly, that it made Oliver wish to look more. But that man was quickly getting lost in the fog of other men, as the crowds shifted, and the men began to move their way back outside. He found himself distinctly disappointed that he could not observe him more.

It was like, temporarily, he was allowed to have a certain degree of access to that man's problems. The boulder he shifted, and the boulder Oliver hoped to shift, were entirely different things. But that did not mean that the man was not moving. He was like a gentle little stream, steadily ebedding its way at its own problems, eroding its way down the mountainside.

Oliver raised his head with a start, and looked at Verdant.

"Hm?" Verdant said, seeing the look, and the degree of excitement.

"Mm. Not sure yet," Oliver said, unable to put the emotion into words. He narrowed his eyes, and went crossing to the other side of the ramparts, so that he might observe the men as they trained. He suddenly found that in them, there were subjects of the greatest curiosity. But he wasn't quite sure why.

They were set to be drilled harshly again. Though they all had different weapons that they were to use, for the sake of training their endurance, at certain times, they were again handed their weighted wooden practice swords that they had used before.

All thousand of those men were gathered in the snow, with their bellies full, and practise swords in hand, to be drilled relentlessly under the brutal authority of the older Patrick men. Firyr was quickly becoming a nightmare for them. His sadism spilled out of him like a bottle with a hole in, now that he knew Oliver approved of it, for he deemed it necessary to see the men before him struggle, if they were to get anywhere in the month.