A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1570 - 1570: The Strategy of Defence - Part 5

"It's against the orders of our Commanding General. Do you not see that Oliver Patrick had established himself as essential in this war effort? Not as a man, but as a symbol. If he dies, the war effort likely dies with him," Volguard said. "This is not so simple as pride, and emotion. Lord Blackwell has deemed this a worthy sacrifice to make. I believe our General should show a greater degree of detachment, and do what is asked of him."

Verdant inclined his head. "Those are the sensible words of a strategist."

Even saying that, it was almost amusing to see just how clearly his disagreement was expressed.

"Yet…" Volguard prodded him.

"My Lord, atop these very walls, expressed that he was already defeated," Verdant said, turning away from the Professor, just as Volguard felt an ominous chill pass through his body, and panic rising in his throat. "Yet he had not given up."

"…What do you mean to say?" Volguard asked.

"A contradiction," Verdant said. "Of the strongest sort. It should not be possible, yet my Lord embodies it, well and truly. Have you given ponderance before, Professor, as to the union of opposites?"

"Naturally it has been mentioned within earshot of me, but I had not deemed it exciting enough to spend much of my own thinking time on," Volguard replied.

"Perhaps you are right not to," Verdant said. "It is only a rather loose idea of mine. There's no real power in it. I pondered it long ago, when I was a different man, and it meant little to me, it did not change my world. I simply supposed that the strength of knowledge, or the strength of any skill, was dependent in part – or perhaps entirely – on its ability to unify opposites. It seemed to me, that the most profound pieces of knowledge unified some opposites, in some sort of quality. And indeed, the strongest relationships do that too, when one observes them… Yet it's that initial conception that is difficult. Opposites do not wish to sit tightly together. It requires a significant something in order for them to. When they do, however… It is powerful."

Verdant motioned with his hand, for Volguard to join him, in looking down on the troops, training hard outside the wall. "Do you not feel it, Professor Volguard, that though the shift in our Lord has been strange, there is an undeniable power to it? Do you not see the army that he builds, and do you not note that there is power to it as well? It is insufficient for my own Lord's wants, as of yet. He's still searching for something. Yet he is managing. He has determined he cannot defeat this problem. He has determined his efforts won't do anything… Yet he hasn't given up. I wish to see exactly what that means. I have a belief that my Lord will show me."

When Volguard looked, he could almost see it. There had been a handful of other Sergeants promoted amongst the peasantry, and there was a sudden strength that those Sergeants evoked. There were far fewer men dropping and collapsing to the ground once the training was done. And it seemed far less of a gruelling endeavour than it had done before. It was an improvement, of the most certain sort, but it was not the sort of improvement that could defeat an army of the size that they expected to come their way. Volguard was just as certain of that.

To see it, one had to ask whether it was a mere illusion of the eyes. To feel its touch on one's skin, Volguard had to ask himself, again, if he was not deluded, in some hidden aspect of himself. And when the wind came, and stirred the small lengths of hair on the back of his hand, robbing him of the sensation, he had to wonder if the memory of it itself was not once more a lie.

To see it, one had to strain. Even then, it was only present for the slightest of seconds. It might well have been no more real than the fables told to children. It had taken Verdant's pointing, Verdant's self assurance, and then Blackthorn's stoic agreement before Volguard could even sense it for the slightest of seconds. When the moment had passed, it was dead again.

They had a very real, very concrete problem that they would have to face. Initial scouting reports had estimated that the Emerson's were amassing an army twenty thousand strong, at the very least. Some parts of it had already begun their march. Their time, most concretely, was running out.

No tool they had on hand, however, could pierce it through. It was the boulder that Oliver had conceived, and he had declared, quite rightly, that no chisel and hammer that they could put together with human hands could dare to pierce through it. All that they were was defeated. They were pieces in Lord Blackwell's plans, and the only option they had was for retreat.

It was only in those slightest shifting moments, when Volguard found himself led, by the words of another, away from what he was, away from all the years of strategy and theory, into a realm that he could not conceive, did he begin once more to see possibility. Where there were lines, and borders, they were crushed, never to rise again. They were ashes before a stamping herd.

It was the immaterial that they put their faith in. But to snatch at the immaterial demanded that they define it. The second they did that, it lost its magic. It became part of their world, and a part of Volguard's theories, and they lost, well and truly, the power that it held.

It was as if, in standing, and doing nothing, and having no thought at all, having no true plan, no true intentions, they stood mightier than they ever could have. But Volguard could not help asking, what was the difference between that, and childish delusion, how were they not to simply know that they were sweeping all that they were under the rug? Did they not simply ignore the problem at hand, in a way that a gambler might ignore his debts, only to see them slowly increase, and the debt collector to rise at his door?

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