A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1563 - 1563: Shifting Tides - Part 6

The woman who had carried the message had quickly sprinted back up to guard her Lord, and she did so entirely breathlessly, more like a spirit of the wind than a person.

"…Serious," Blackthorn said, giving one of her patented one word replies, but Oliver grinned at her, a wide, innocent smile, and he nodded, as if he was entirely in agreement.

The expression was enough to make Blackthorn's eyes flash. When Oliver turned around, she shot Verdant the very same look that he had shot her earlier, and he replied with a shrug and a smile of his own.

'An extraordinary amount of pressure, that is what my Lord is under,' Verdant thought to himself. 'I think at the heart of him, he has decided that, on this one thing, on this one problem, he will not give him… and he's trying to find a way around it, employing whatever means that he might.'

Under the new Sergeant's command, his squadron survived the training, better than any other group of men did. In a similar such radius, any such ten men had two or three collapsed to their knees, unable to carry on for the duration of the session. But with that Sergeant, every man did survive. And when the job was done, they gathered together, with tired, but cheerful expressions, and a strange sense of unity between them.

It was one man that they gathered around, but it was not as if it invalidated the rest of their struggles. He only provided that extra hint of something, allowing them to go forward with just the slightest bit extra force, enough so that it was not such a crippling endeavour, surviving in the way that they had.

It was not as if it permanently invalidated the weaknesses of the gathered men having that Sergeant thee either. Oliver noted, more than once, that there were still catastrophic dips in their standing, where they looked like they might buckle over. But then, on the very opposite end of the spectrum, there were bouts of energy that they shouldn't have had access to, where they were able to perk up enough, in their post-training chatter, in order to smile, and give a few chortles of laughter, even though the entirety of the group, along with the Sergeant himself, were all thoroughly drained of energy.

It was a subject of the most fascinating sort for Oliver. With all those ten men around him, Oliver felt that he could have stared a lifetime and not had it be sufficient. For, each individual had their own unique flows, that he had already enjoyed trying to decipher for the good part of two hours now, but the interaction between their flow, and that of another human being – that was a matter so much more complicated, that Oliver's mind went silent as he considered it. It was pure instinct that he felt with, along with an unbelievable calm.

When the order was given for them to begin their run into the mountains, as they were ordered to do most days, Oliver kept his eyes pinned to the same group. The lanky youth had been chattering with one of the old men in the group. Two very different individuals. It turned out that the youth was a more outgoing type than Oliver had expected. He'd assumed him to be quieter. It was with a rush of curiosity that he saw himself to be wrong, and that the youth's flow was far more complicated than he had first realized.

The older man was quieter, but he was patient for it, and he listened in with nods to what the youth was saying, smiling all the while. Both of them were in their own little pocket of the world, but what seemed to unite them was the presence of the Sergeant. Oliver had suspicion that, if not for the existence of the Sergeant, they would not have been able to converse so freely.

The Sergeant himself seemed changed by the men that had been given to him. Depending on what man he paid attention to, it was like for short bouts of a few moments, he was an entirely different human being. He was exactly what they needed him to be, as far as he could be, whenever it was that they needed him. He made sure that they were all gathered and prepared for the run, before the order was given for them to set off.

And when they did set off, they did so with looks far less anguished than those around them, as if they weren't thinking of the task ahead, but of something else entirely. Not a single man in the group had fallen into the disconnect of complete isolation. Even those that weren't speaking seemed tangled in the presence of their new squadron somehow.

Comfortably, they went up the mountain path, until they disappeared amongst the trees, with the rest of the gathered men.

Then Oliver's shoulders slumped to a degree, though his smile didn't fade, as he realized he would have to wait awhile to see that squadron again.

Verdant and Blackthorn allowed him his silence, and only interrupted when the flutter of bird wings from overhead drew Verdant's eyes upwards. "That would seem to be a crow, my Lord. From the east. That will be news from our allies, I expect."

"Hm…" Oliver glanced towards it briefly. "Indeed. Keep me informed."

"…You would not have me rush the messenger?" Verdant asked, fighting hard to keep hidden his surprise that his Lord was not already rushing about trying to snatch the letter from the hands of the bird handlers.

"It will reach us soon enough anyway," Oliver said. "There is naught we can do but wait."

Verdant said nothing then. He decided that, to see his Lord so relaxed, despite everything that had built up over the last few days, and how swiftly he had looked for a solution to their problems, that ought to be an entirely good thing.

When the snow began to fall, Oliver only acknowledged it with a brief raising of his head, allowing a few flakes to fall on his cheeks, and on his nose, before he fell again, with his hand upon his palm.

When the message did come, it was Nila Felder that bore it, with Judas marching behind her, fighting to keep up with the girl's short, but far more rapid strides.