A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1603 - 1603: The Witch - Part 2

He recalled that neither Tussle nor Fitzer had seemed particularly surprised or alarmed to see it happen. They'd seemed more like they'd expected it. Theirs had been the reactions of men that decided that what they saw in front of them, after so much strangeness, finally did make the sense that they wished it to.

The Prince pulled at his fingers, and eyed the attendant that had been left next to him. The man was a Colonel of considerable standing. Fitzer seemed to place an awful lot of value in him. But compared to the General himself, he seemed more like a sapling that had been given to replace a mighty oak.

He recalled his father's warning about making sure that Oliver Patrick was dead before he dared to celebrate any form of victory, and he'd done that, hadn't he? He hadn't pushed too far at any one point, he hadn't grown arrogant, nor conceited, and he'd continually checked with his Generals to ensure that neither of them were subjected to those same sort of poisons. And yet, why was the state of the board in the position that it was? Why did it seem to him that after all they had managed, they were still struggling? And indeed, why did he feel the first fingers of cold fear beginning to grip his heart?

The white horse that he suddenly saw Oliver Patrick mounted on – there could be no chance of his foe having planned that. There could be no chance that Oliver Patrick had planned any of the events that led up to his current resistance. So indeed, were the Gods not more on his side, than he was on the side of the Princes? Had the Gods simply forsaken the Emerson House? The more he thought on it, the more unsure he was. He watched the two Generals go, and it took every bit of willpower he had not to call them back, for he was sure, no matter what happened, as long as they defended the fort that Oliver Patrick had built in Solgrim, he would not be able to be victorious in an assault against them.

When the Patrick men looked around, they still could not find comrades. It was the lucky few that found themselves in isolated groups of three. The most common sight was a man standing alone, uncertain, bloodied and bleeding, swinging his sword for a cause that he could no longer see. They all operated, merely by the sound of that single voice, that had spoken just the barest flicker of a few words for them. That was all that animated their bodies, even when it seemed as if their hearts had given up the pumping of blood.

If they were lucky, they might have seen the General on the back of his horse, swinging away at the enemy before him. Calmly, valiantly, distantly, like a creature not of this world. The expression on his face was far from human. He fought like a man that cared not for the results around him. He had no sign of strain, or exhaustion, no sign of any sort of want – and yet the men bound to him, because they could not understand him.

They could only trust the love that they had built up in him. For the large majority of them, their time spent training had been far too short. But it had been enough to get a sense for the man. And before that, they had the stories that had been told of him, and then the speech that he had given them that had made him fight for the cause they were in the first place.

He had given them a purpose. For a time, he had given them a reason to live – a short few weeks, whilst that training lasted. And now, he gave them a reason to die. For a cause, and a victory, that their own General seemed to believe they were not capable of.

When they fought, they did so as if to prove him wrong. His officers that knew the solidness of the words that Oliver had continually spoken atop the walls of Solgrim, when they had known the coming battle, knew even more solidly than the rest, just how firmly Oliver had given up on victory. He had said it continually, and he seemed to have meant every word of it, and yet he fought, harder than he had ever fought before, more stubbornly, without a shred of his usual recklessness.

"See my Lord," Verdant said, as he gave a thrust of his exhausted spear arm, smacking through the guard of an enemy swordsman, and finding his stomach. "See it, see the victory that we can not."

So they willed it of him. Oliver could feel their pulling, the stirring of the wind, the strength of their desire, and hardly could he respond to it. Still, he was convinced, theirs was a cause that was hopeless. There was a dragon ahead of them greater than they could ever be. He could not match it – but, perhaps, after all, the witch could.

The witch of the wind operated in the strangest of ways. She seemed to guide the currents of his air, and cause disruptions through it, allowing paths for Oliver's sword that seemed easier to travel. And then at other times, she would buffet him, and growl against him, turning his sword aside, opening him up to the danger of a counterattack.

More than once, did Oliver have to put in more muscle than he would have liked, to turn aside a blade that sought to come for his horse's neck. Whether they were conscious of it or not, it was a fact that atop that horse, the soldiers came more readily for his mount than they would have against any other horseman. They attacked the beast as if they were blind to the rider atop it. It was as if the very image of seeing Oliver atop it offended them, on the most fundamental of levels. It was almost enough to make Oliver wonder, just for a second, who the man in the bronze armour had been that he had taken the mount from. But that was a thought quickly cast aside, for no great man, he assumed, could have gone down quite so quietly.