A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1621 - 1621: The Fingers of Man - Part 8

"And so, in fear of that, you have always pushed us enough of a distance away that you shouldered the majority of the burden yourself," Verdant said. "We did not delight in that fact, you know. But we respected you for it."

"I think it made you a good leader," Blackthorn said. "It is honorable. I don't like people that take the lives of others lightly."

"…A good leader – I'm not sure it made me that," Oliver said. "Or at least, it didn't make me an effective one. Karstly and Blackwell have continually pointed at me, and declared that there was something that I didn't understand, and of course, they were right – I've never felt the Command that empowers a General, as they do, and as Khan does. I have always been lacking."

"But in this defeat, so far in advance, I knew I had not the capacity," Oliver said. "To be defeated from the start, to be unable to move, to see no purpose in trying… It was liberating, even if it felt cowardly. I wanted to win, more than I've ever wanted to in my life, but I could see no way to move by my own hand. And when I ceased to try – you all tried in my place. Yorick and Volguard threw themselves into the fight in the Patrick name. Yorick, I could feel his pride in his death, and damn it, I was proud of the man as well. That was my brother, Verdant. As close to my heart as anyone will ever make it. He feared the battlefield, but what bravery he fought with…"

There were tears in Oliver's eyes as he declared it.

"I'm proud of him. And I'm proud of Volguard. Do you know how much Volguard feared the battlefield? It was his one regret, that he couldn't apply all he'd learned to true combat. He thought himself a coward for hiding in theory at the Academy. But in the end, for us, he gave us everything – the entire plan towards victory, all the steps to see it secured, and then, in the end, his own life. Gods be damned he lived well, Verdant, and he died well too. For us soldiers, the purpose isn't a long life. It's a glorious one. Here… Here we can live more strongly than elsewhere. It is not my job to preserve life. It is my job to allow a man to go as far as he wished to."

"And they all wished to go all the way, my Lord," Verdant said. "Your new peasant recruits, they became soldiers, quickly enough."

"They became the seeds of grandness," Oliver said. "They fought like veteran men. That was not me – that was not my achievement. There was no claim to my glory in that. This is your victory, gentlemen. Everything that we have here, you all gave us. Gratitude is all I feel, for all of it, I was given. I would take away from you if I felt guilt. Thank you, Verdant. Thank you, Blackthorn. Thank you, Volguard. And damn it, thank you too, Yorick. You two had better rest well. It's not bloody fair, you taking all the glory like that for yourselves."

"Gods be damned, gentlemen," Oliver said. "How is it that we stand here? How is it that this world still has us as living men? Are we even living men? The air feels different to me." Oliver ran his hand through the air in front of him, over the top of the wall, and indeed it had a different weight to it than he thought it had before. It was strong enough that it threatened to carry him high into the air if he moved any faster.

Blackthorn pulled a face. "It seems the same as always to me."

Verdant smiled, hearing her blunt dismissal of Oliver's poetics. "I think I understand what my Lord means. It is a strange thing, to be so prepared for death, and then rise once more through it. A different world, perhaps it is. How could we die and then be the same again?"

"An army of ghosts," Oliver murmured. "That's what it feels like. But if we are dead, death has never felt so good. We ought not have had this victory. My efforts were insufficient for it. I still do not understand it. I will contemplate it for the rest of my days, and still fail to understand it. Never has anything felt so far out of my hands."

"Ah," Verdant said. "But that is why men pray, is it not? Because they acknowledge that there are indeed things that are out of their hands, and that there are other things they desire so intensely, that they'd seek to influence that which they can't touch."

The Idris man gestured to a flash of red hair that popped up atop the ramparts, her every step light and bounding, like that of a rabbit. One could see the energeticness, before they could even see the smile on her face. Yet, knowing her as he did, Oliver could acknowledge that there was a melancholy there. Like he, she was struck by the nature of the deaths of those that were so close to them. It would never be easy for her, just as it was never truly easy for Oliver, even with a change in perspective.

"There indeed is something worth giving oneself to the Gods for," Oliver said, feeling his eyes begin to water again. Just the sight of her was enough to bring him to tears. He'd never felt such an intensity of emotion for any other human being as he did Nila. And with every week that they spent together, the intensity of that emotion only grew. He thought that, in large part, it was his feelings for her that had set him on the path that he had chosen for his victory – he would never have been able to set aside his self to such a degree without something above himself to act as an anchor. It was a strange thing to describe.

"We will be taking our leave then, my Lord," Verdant said. "Cherish every second, for time can only tell when the Gods might turn on us, and when we might lose their favour."

"I'm well aware, Verdant," Oliver said. "We live on borrowed time already."