A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1623 - 1623: The Ripples of Victory - Part 2

In the room of a conquered settlement, she'd made her place. Blackwell had offered it up to her as if on a silver platter, as if it made her feel anything near gratitude to ride in her carriage through a half charred city, and declare that it was her own.

The very lands that she'd grown up in, and now it was she that bore the torch of destruction that ran through them all. They neared the Pendragon capital, closer and closer with each passing day. She had a new respect for the men that had sworn loyalty to her, and fought her war under her – they were terrifying creatures.

Every time Blackwell, and Blackthorn and Karstly returned there was something fresh, some new grand victory, something terrifying that ought not have been. It was as if the world distorted purely for their purpose, and they could squeeze more out of it than any other.

Blackthorn delighted in it. Every time he returned, he neglected to even clean his armour. He would come back, stinking of blood. He sought out the fiercest battlefields, the most dastardly of odds, and every time, he seized victory.

There had been an attempt by the Pendragon King in seeing the rear of their advance attacked. He'd sent five thousand men, under a competent General in Petelguise. He was well aware that the fullest of their army's forces were busy dealing siege elsewhere. All the thousands of their men were occupied. Blackwell had frowned in needing to make a decision, and the entire tent, as they looked at the board, had stank of trouble.

Even not truly understanding the delicacies of the strategy that had been put against them, Queen Asabel had known that they were in trouble. "We went forward a little too rapidly…" Broadstone had remarked carefully. For the entirety of their advance, he'd cautioned slowness, but with the news that the Emerson army was on the march from the west, their efforts forward had only quickened, bringing Broadstone's strategy into fruition.

"Your words bore me, General," Karstly commented with a yawn. He was a problem, just by himself. He picked fights where there needed be none. He was like a fish, finally returned to the water. With every day that passed, he grew into a larger man, and seemed to take up more of the tent with his presence. He was a terrifying, horrifying creature. Asabel found that she feared him most – for behind his smile, she could not tell what his intentions truly were. He spoke loyalty, but what did those words mean, when he so freely lied in his intentions on the battlefield?

They had bickered for a good while, before Blackthorn had slammed his fist down, as if just waking up. "A thousand men!" He said gruffly. "A thousand men, and I'll take care of that fool."

"Then a thousand you will have," Blackwell had said, quicker than ever.

It was only later that Queen Asabel had found that Blackthorn had truly been asleep at that table. He'd come to their meeting straight after a battle, and had slumbered within his suit of armour as the rest hashed out their discussion, and then the second that he'd awoken, he'd asked for more violence, and been promptly given it.

There had been a nervousness from the other Generals. They weren't particularly excited to have one of their finest Generals sent in on such risky odds. But Blackthorn had come back more frightening for it. He'd fallen upon an enemy five times stronger than his number, and he'd routed them in a single crushing charge, taking their General's head in the process.

It was a victory that brought the most mixed emotions for Asabel. She had known Petelguise as a child, and though they had never been close enough to have been called anything more than acquaintances, he had always been polite to her, and she had thought him to be a kindly man. The news of his death brought her no amount of pleasure.

The war that they were fighting, she was told, was progressing well – better than they could have hoped. But from the state of her heart, she would not have thought it. Every day, every victory, wounded her all the further. She found herself wishing that she had not begun it, and then she loathed herself even more for wishing it, for all those tens of thousands of lives that had already been lost would have been for nothing.

Her time was spent in the nervous waiting for black crows to carry news to them. From her Generals, and from her enemy. They waited day after day for a peace offering from the Pendragon King, and each day, he failed to deliver.

"Father…" she muttered helplessly, dreading the day in which she would arrive at his gates, and see him, and her mother, and see the betrayal in their eyes. "Father," she said, as she had said in all the days before, along with the name of her mother, but it was not them that her mind thought of then. Not them who she shed tears for. She shed her tears for those that were already slain.

She had known it, ever since Oliver had been given command of the west. An honorary position it might have been for anyone else – but not for him. Blackwell had ordered him towards a swift retreat, the second that their enemy was set to marching, but Asabel had known from the start that he would not take it.

She had known, even hearing that the Emerson army was over twenty thousand strong, that Oliver Patrick was the sort of man that would stand there, and face them regardless. He was the strangest mix of honour and aggravation. He wouldn't allow the Blackwell ancestral home to be marred, after all they had done for him, but nor would his pride allow him to leave an enemy without seeing them properly confronted first.