A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1565 - 1565: Shifting Tides - Part 8

Verdant could well understand her apprehension in arguing, for he did not doubt that she, like the rest of them, could well feel it. The Oliver Patrick that stood before them, though stooped, and so dreadfully relaxed, and though he declared almost proudly that he had given up, and was defeated, he strangely seemed a far more dangerous man for it.

There was no hint of his usual overwhelm, no sense that he was reaching out to them with the strong hand that he often did. He was a man that operated so firmly on the strength of his will, that it almost felt wrong without it. Verdant did not think he had ever seen Oliver relaxed enough, that his willpower wasn't in some extent governing his actions. Only now did he find that he had the privilege, and he saw the purple in his eyes, and wondered why it was that he was so lost for words.

It was childish the way Oliver positioned himself, and it should have been maddening that he could have such a contented smile on his face, as if he had found some small degree of peace, somewhere, in admitting his defeat, but it was far too frightening to feel any of that. The terror wasn't manifest as a true reaction of fear. It was a stirring in the heart, the beholding of something mighty, as if one had stumbled upon something that was not mortal, and they could not battle with it – that battle before it would even be pointless. All they could do was kneel, and Verdant was struck by the urge to kneel again.

"You've given up… but you haven't," Verdant said, dipping his head, feeling through the contradiction in his mind.

"These hands of mine anyway, cannot solve it," Oliver said calmly. "No matter how much I have strained my mind, I have been unable to do anything. But they," he pointed to the men, as the first of them began to come running down the mountain path, "might be able to."

He allowed them to stew in silence for a few moments, as they followed the path of his pointed finger, and tried to decipher the meaning of his words. Oliver said no more on the matter himself, in an attempt to explain it, for he didn't truly understand what it was that he was pointing to himself. He only knew it wasn't him. It wasn't his strength. It was something elsewhere that already existed. If Oliver Patrick and all his might could not shift their boulder, then he had to turn his eyes outwards, and see what creatures could.

"Anyway, the message," Oliver said.

"Oh, right… Here," Nila said, attempting to hand it to him.

"You read it," Oliver said, waving her away with his hand. "Everyone here ought to be informed anyway. We'll get it done in one fell swoop."

She hesitated for just a second, but then she cracked the seal open with her thumb, and drew out the small scroll, and squinted at the tiny hand writing inside of it.

"…The High King has heard our declaration of war, and has declared us enemies of the crown," Nila said, scanning through it. "Blackwell claims that by the time we're reading this message, he and the rest of his gathered men will begin marching into Pendragon territory. They're hoping to have captured a stronghold before the week is out… Skullic has been noted as a target as well, and they're gathering up enemies to head towards the Skreen. Our position here in Ernest has been announced too, and there is a bounty that the High King has placed on our heads – one that the Emerson King has claimed will be his. Supposedly he has begun forming his army already, but it would not be surprising if he were to send out advance troops to harry us."

"There we are," Oliver said, nodding. "About what we expected, isn't it?"

He looked around at the rest of them, seeing their grim faces.

"It's a bit faster than we expected, my Lord," Verdant said, unable to match Oliver's smile. "We had hoped for a month. At this rate, we might only have a matter of weeks. When time is so set against us, I do not think this to be particularly a cause for celebration."

"Once more, it is an unsolvable problem," Oliver said. "We do not have a chance of seeing it fixed. So do not look so grim. If we are defeated from the start, we cannot be defeated again. Enjoy what there is to watch while we have time to watch it."

He saw his newly formed squadron then, coming down the mountainside, at roughly the middle of the pack. All ten men had stuck together, though from the lack of strain on their Sergeant's face, it seemed well evident that he could have gone far more quickly, and not even struggled for it.

It was the fact that the exhausted men had managed to keep up at all that Oliver found to be a matter of the utmost interest. And when they did come down running, their flows were different than when they had started it. There was far more unity in them, though each was dyed the colour of their Sergeant, just as he was, to some small degree, dyed their colours.

Oliver tapped his finger against the wall, acknowledging it, and knowing for a certainty that those men did not have the capacity to complete the two tasks together in the way that they hard. A good portion of the new peasants were nowhere to be seen. There were a hundred or so that had collapsed along the way, and would require help in getting back, so crushing was the training that they were being forced to endure.

And yet these few, with no extra additions, with nothing at all, had seemed to find their way. And they did so without their faces being crunched up in an excessive battle of will. They did so almost easily, as if they were not trying. Or at least, they weren't trying in a conventional sense. They were merely being dragged along by something else.