A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1606 - 1606: The Witch - Part 5

All across the battlefield, such a sight was evident. Patrick soldiers coming together, after fighting for so long alone, finding the strength in the formations that had been so shattered before. Oliver saw a flash of red hair, and saw with relief that Nila was still standing. He had emptied the emotion from his heart, for he could not have even thought of raising his sword if he dwelled on it, but were she to fall on this battlefield, he could not even consider the thought of living another day.

What was victory without her? What was victory if his comrades were to fall for it? There they were, the old emotions, that he'd dared to lie to himself and suppose that he might have overcome. So it was revealed, Oliver Patrick, even against the dragon, was human after all. He wanted to win, more than he ever had wanted anything before. When he thought on it, he wanted to win so badly that tears threatened to well up in his eyes – but once again, there was that lament. He was unequal to it. He'd been crushed by the task. He could not dare to even think of that victory, even when he acknowledged to himself how badly he wanted.

It was all so terribly dangerous to offer him hope like that. Blackthorn and Verdant came ever nearer, their men fighting like demons behind him. Those words that Oliver had spoken to see them risen from the dead and so passionately animated felt as if they had been said a lifetime ago, in a dream, from the mouth of another man. That they continued to have such an effect he never would have dared believe.

He wasn't even sure, in seeing it now, that he wanted to believe.

He hated all those acknowledgements and emotions that so dragged him back into the human realm. Memories, and wants, and the like. He hated when his eyes wandered, and they started to see, and he could drink in those old faces. Was that not the lanky youth that he had first seen struggling, before he had picked his first Sergeant, deciding that he could do better? And was that not the ex-slave that Kaya had taken a personal dislike to, and decided to train himself, with the intentions of getting him to quit, only to make an absolute monster of an infantryman instead?

They were all too familiar for Oliver to feel distant. Coming closer to them as they did, he wanted to try again, he wanted to fall upon his old ways, and reach in the way that he had before, with all that will and wanting. Fear made him cling to it. He didn't want to lose anyone. Not Verdant, not Blackthorn, and most certainly not Nila.

"And then what of Volguard..?" Oliver said to himself, daring to look hopefully, but not finding sight of the man. That came as a pang to his heart, and once more, he had to remind himself that there was no victory in sight, there was no point at feeling a pang at the loss of one man, when they were all doomed to fall in the end anyway.

His arms were tired, his entire body was, and the enemy that they faced was mightier than the one that they had faced before. Their numbers hardly seemed lesser, and all the Patrick army had to face them were the exhausted few that were gathering, lesser than the thousand that had initially been there, with so many dying alone, before they could find allies to see their life extended.

There came the question – quite a rational one – of what even the point was in their struggle. They'd lost their strategist, the only man who'd possibly have enough distance from the battlefield to forge a fresh plan for them, and allow them to pave their path to victory. There was no hope of building anything that could possibly have them reach where they wished to go.

Such a thing, even if Oliver rationally agreed with it, still did not match the stirrings of his heart. He wished to keep himself calm, but he could not deny that he was moved. Against the strong feelings of his men, how could he stand in place, and not return them?

"We prevail, my Lord," Verdant said, when he finally fought his way to Oliver's side, buoyed by Gar and the Minister of Blades' efforts in helping them break through. "We will prevail all the way."

He said so sternly, his single open blue eye looking at Oliver with an intensity that demanded that he agree. Oliver smiled. Verdant could be the most willful of men when he wished to be, but rarely was that wilfulness directed at Oliver. Still, Oliver shook his head. "There is no road," he said.

Verdant did not seem quite so defeated by that line as Oliver had feared that he might be. "And yet you are smiling, my Lord," he pointed out.

"Ah, how could I not, foolish retainer of mine?" Oliver said. "You put in such a degree of effort, how could I not smile to see your valiance? Victory might not be an option, but it seems that it need not be. This is a good place to live, and this is a good place to die. In the lands of a place that I have found to be a home – and amongst you, soldiers of mine, treasured comrades that would fight this far. It will be an honour, once again, for all finality, to struggle with you, as we have struggled before."

"Then struggle, my Lord!" Verdant exclaimed. "Will you not allow us to see it, the efforts that you have shown us in the past? You have subdued yourself, and seen yourself limited. If it be grand strategy that pushed you to do that, I know not – but the steps you have taken, they have kept us all alive! They have taken us further than we ever had before. We should not be standing here, still breathing the same air."

"We should be dead. I should be dead," Blackthorn acknowledged next to him. "There's magic, Oliver. I don't know how, but there's magic."