A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1578 - 1578: War at the Gates - Part 2

They were insects before it, they were nothing but the meek. They could make no claims, stake no glory, for to do so, once more, would only be to invite the punishment that came along with it. Their Lord – as they now him, along with the name of General – seemed to move the same. He made no grand boasts, he spoke not of victory. He walked with the tentativeness of a man in danger. But still, with it, there was a peaceful smile on his face. Or else, a look of deep contemplation, when he found his quiet spots to watch them, or he perched in a corner of the city that none visited.

The dragon, alas, had found them regardless. They had turned a blind eye to it – or so they could be accused of doing – but it had spread its wings, and it had come to find them in the end. Now they saw what it had to offer. All those hundreds of banners, flapping in the wind, proudly bearing the serpent dangling from a tree, the sigil of House Emerson, and all those nobles that owed their loyalty to it.

"Doom," is what Greeves called it, from behind Oliver, before he was quickly ushered away by another one of Oliver's men. They were all so dreadfully careful, for they could feel the fear in the air. It was a line of kindling, waiting for a fire to be held to it, to set them all aflame, and secure their defeat in stone.

Calmly, or perhaps madly, did Olvier Patrick stand in place. He gave no orders, no reassurances. He simply stood and watched ,along with the rest of his men, as the Emerson army advanced on a now abandoned Solgrim. They came right up to its open gates, and tentatively, did a few hundred men enter.

"I suppose we shall see whether or not it was wise to give them that," Volguard said grimly.

If not for the clearness of the day, they would never have been able to see quite so far as Solgrim. It was as if the Gods wanted them to see what was being taken from them. As if they wanted them to squint at the figures in the distance, and imagine what was being done to the village that Oliver Patrick had put so much time into protecting.

It seemed quite likely that they would bring out the torch, and burn it to the ground in a single instance. Such would be the might of the dragon that they were to confront. The destroyer of all things, that which could never be overcome, no matter how mightily they tried.

Yet, despite it all, the dragon seemed to invite the challenge, by Oliver's eyes.

He could feel the nerves of the men around him. Not a single man could cling to hope any longer. The only hope they had truly, was in him. The greatest, most weighty of expectations. But Oliver could not accept them. For he knew, as he'd known weeks ago, that he was not equal to the task.

He could not hold together a plan, for the dragon would swat it down. Any of his intentions, and the mass that was an army of twenty thousand, would sniff them out. The slightest little inkling of understanding, and it would be there to kill them all, disgusted that they would even try to fight against it.

And still, he said again, that the dragon invited the challenge. It declared that it would kill them all, but still, it wanted them to get closer, it wanted them to try, to the degree that it wouldn't invite its anger.

It was the personality of a dangerous dog. A carefully outstretched hand, and one was still likely to be bitten. But the right person, the right attitude, the right little set of movements, and that dog – even if it didn't allow a pet – might just allow a man to stand unusually close.

"Do you have orders, my Lord?" Verdant asked Oliver, feeling the nerves, just as well as any of them had.

"There are none to give," Oliver replied. He dared not even speak his mind. It was a madness to the point that, if he did, he was sure the Emerson army could hear.

It was something that invited action of some sort, but there was no action to be had. No grand plan could pierce straight through the heart of such numbers. Though Volguard had tried to put some together, and Oliver had patiently listened to all of the old strategist's cunning, he had been firm when he declared that none of them would work as they were. No grand bridge could be built that would allow them to sneak right up to the dragon's head, and have their world be changed.

They'd tried to build that bridge a number of weeks ago, when the odds were even worse than they were now. When it was that, it were merely five hundred soldiers, and a thousand untrained peasants. Now those odds had been narrowed. Those thousand peasants, that had been dismissed as useless, whose highest purpose had been as straw dummies, for absorbing the arrows meant for better men, now stood, with a certain danger.

"It is they that hold the key," Oliver said, nodding to them. "Not I."

Verdant looked in the same direction as Oliver. As did Blackthorn, and Nila. All they saw were the nervous new soldiers, clutching their mismatched weapons, in their motley armour, with the only thing they had in common being the Patrick surcoat that they wore over it, and they could not help wearing the doubt on their faces.

They required the firmness that Oliver usually offered. The raised fist that he would usually meet them with, when there was a problem of the highest sort, and he would declare, with passion, that he would crush it, like a hammer crushes a rock.

"They're terrifying little things, aren't they?" Oliver said.

"…Indeed, an army of twenty thousand is a terrifying prospect, when one is charged solely with defeating it," Volguard agreed.

"Not them, Professor," Oliver said. "Them."