A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1601 - 1601: To Flow or to Fly - Part 8

"MEN OF THE PATRICK ARMY!" He spoke, blooding his sword once more on the man in front of him, lopping a head from its shoulders. Each movement was effortless enough that he found he could so easily speak, so passionately, at the same time as fighting with all his supposed might. Nothing required anything more than the slightest of efforts. The dragon had trained him in that, for before the currents had been set to changing, it would have killed him for anything more. Even now, anything more would serve to limit the natural phenomena that had the barest feelings of allegiance in it.

Those resurrected men, far more than just the strength officers, with reason to listen to their Lord, had numbered over a hundred. So separated from their allies, and some of them already so near death, had found in themselves the strength to rise once more, for one last stab, before the blood ran free of their wounds, and they entered the next world, as defeated men.

Riding the current of such a wind – even in his later years, Oliver would struggle to find a feeling so intoxicating. Buoyed by such a thing, it was hard to protest against the laws of something that struck like fate, no matter how much a man wished to.

The horse that came to find Oliver, long since after he had lost his own, felt most strongly of the currents of such a wind. For it to come when it did, in the manner that it did, made Oliver's stomach stir with profundity in the very moment of its coming, and in all the years that came after it.

There was a Colonel on its back, with armour that had been bronzed, giving him the appearance of some sort of temple gargoyle. A great mane of red horse hair plumed down his helmet, and ran along his back. He hardly looked like your typical soldier, but Oliver knew him to be a Colonel nonetheless, from the way the men parted around him, and the presence he had over them, and his own presence as a man of the Third Boundary. It was a level of eccentricity that most soldiers would have ordered out of their Colonel, but this man had been allowed it.

He had a trident in his hand, the most unusual of weapons, and the mask of his helm as it sat over his eyes made him seem even more strongly less than human. He was a creature from folklore, and the white horse that he rode was no lesser.

That beast snorted heavily, a great towering creature, fighting with the bit that sat in its mouth, chewing at it in its anger, sending great rivers of foam falling to the ground. It was impatient for something, its eyes were red. The white hair that ran down its neck had been braided, and the end of each braid was steeped in a red that seemed like blood.

Feathers of hair hung over each of its hooves. They'd been cut – or so it seemed – so that they only hung at the back. If ever there was a horse that truly seemed like it could have taken flight, it was that beast there.

Oliver had lost his Walter to the chaos of battle, and all the enemies that had come for him, but there stood a horse that almost equaled his want for Walter. No, it was beyond want. Oliver could not dare to have wanted, on a battlefield where even the air weighed so heavily. It was the current of the witch that made him reach out, and follow her orders, to reach for that creature, and declare it his.

His open hand seemed to drag it towards him, as if there was a magic in his palm that pulled at the very air itself, and made it bend to his will.

In truth, it was Gar that operated on his behalf. In a flash, he was on the saddle behind the great gargoyle, a creature that had seemed so mythical, as if he were the greatest and most profound of enemies – and Gar had made him look like nothing. He plunged his sword through the man's back, easily finding the heart, and he'd grabbed his shoulders, and tossed him from the saddle.

The trident twisted in the air, and landed with its points straight into the ground, piercing the ice. The armoured figure fell next to it, the helmet loosening, and rolling, revealing a bald man in his forties. Its great stream of horsehair made a halo around that trident.

Everything seemed symbolic, like a message from the Gods themselves. The profundity was intoxicating. Evenif Oliver had been elsewhere, his mind would have been as still as it was then. Even without all that he had been forced towards, in quieting himself, such a series of events would have weighed heavily on him, and made him pause, without thought, merely to drink them in. It demanded that of all that saw them – and by no means was Oliver the only man watching.

The gathered soldiers were forced to remain in place, as that horse – now free of Gar, and its rider – trotted mindlessly up towards Oliver's outstretched hand. It was the natural will of the creature, in being so suddenly freed from its burden, after having been spurred forward, to merely continue like that. But when it reached out with its snout, and pulled back its lips, to sneer at the hand that Oliver offered to it, before allowing Oliver to touch its head, it most certainly seemed like a fact of destiny.

Helplessly, as the Minister of Blades and Gar allowed Oliver the path, those soldiers were made to watch, as the enemy General, who ought to have been defeated, was seemingly delivered a gift from the Gods themselves, as if they preferred Oliver Patrick's victory far more than his own.

Oliver gently passed the creature by, running his hand along its flank. That mighty, mighty beast, the subject of another man's poetry, and aesthetics, in the way that they had seen it dressed, and in its angry, angry temperament, and those bloodshot eyes. It stood still, its breath steaming in the air from its nostrils, as Oliver swung himself in the saddle.