A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1625 - 1625: The Ripples of Victory - Part 4

She punched her pillow again and again, until it started to spit out duck feathers, and then when that mess wasn't enough for her, like an angry toddler, she pounded her foot. Her irritation was an obvious thing, but beyond the deceptive curtain that it cast, the delight shined even more brightly.

"What exactly does it say?" Lancelot dared to ask, getting in the way of Asabel's excitement. "How exactly does one win against that? They were twenty thousand strong, were they not? What sort of deliverance could allow them victory?"

"I don't know, Lancelot! How could I know?" Asabel said. "Imagine something stupid, and you're probably right. Every time… Every time, he just does the most stupid thing that he can imagine. It's soooo infuriating! How can they dare to trust him? How can I dare to trust him?"

When it became quite clear that Lancelot wasn't getting anything useful out of his Queen, he seized the letter that she had cast aside, and asked for her permission with a motion of his hand. She snorted, and gave it. "Read it, for all the good it will do you. You'll be as angry as me, you'll see. I almost wish he'd fail—No. I don't mean that… Ah, but Oliver, how dare you… Can you not go one day without trying to throw your life away? Pity help all of us that care for you."

"…Gods be good," Lancelot said, unable to restrain himself, reading through it all.

"See?" Asabel said. "He's a fool."

"I agree with that," Lancelot said. "Gods know I agree with that, my Queen… But this… It's ridiculous? Doesn't this change the entire board? We were willing to give up the west, so that we might establish ourselves here, in Pendragon lands. But he's subdued an Emerson army of twenty thousand, and he's captured Prince Hendrick and General Fitzer in the process – those hostages are strategic tools of the highest quality, as are the ten thousand men that they have with them. How many men does he have left..? Three hundred. Three hundred… Our strategy has to go out the window, I imagine. Blackwell will want to move to reinforce Ernest in an instant, won't he? There's no need to forsake it now."

"Whatever it means, I don't know," Asabel said. "I can quite well imagine that it has ruined everything that we have built up until now, though. That's what Oliver does. He just can't stomach following orders, can he? He has to go and do everything himself. Does he not know the meaning of the word ally, does he not trust us?"

"I'm full of as much condemnation as you, my Queen… And I think the other Generals will be as well," Lancelot said. "But when we have finished insulting him, we will have to admit, he has secured us a godsend of the sort that we desperately needed. The tides of this war will shift more strongly from that battle than any other that we have fought until now."

"The fool made himself a symbol for this rebellion," Asabel said. "And now that symbol collects more glory for himself." She looked thoroughly irritated by that.

Lancelot was caught off guard by the keen analysis for a second, but then he nodded, almost exaggeratedly. "Yes, yes, you are quite right, my Queen… More than just strategy, the effect on morale… It's all changing."

…

…

Outside the walls of a Pendragon city, General Blackwell sat calmly astride his horse, as their siege weapons peppered the stone walls with boulders. They were machines that they'd seen captured from the Verna, and had their engineers rebuild to the same standards, but as of yet, during their invasion, they had seen limited use. Blackwell had wished for the majority of the cities that they captured to still be defensively able, but not that they were finding their way so far from any of the nearest borders, and travelling right into the heart of Pendragon territory, the necessity for defensively able cities started to diminish. And so it was, in the interests of speed, Blackwell was content to see this particular city of Harley, and the little rock formation that it sat on, firmly shattered.

Their siege had gone through a whole day already, and they were already on the second. Steadily, without wasting any men, they whittled the enemy's defences. There was little that could be done in retaliation. Even without the catapults, Blackwell had shown through his repeated capture of multiple cities that he was quite capable of breaking through the gates themselves. With the catapults, the usual capture became all the easier. He expected to see Harley fall into another day or two at most, and he found that he was most content with the speed.

"A letter, General," Colonel Willem said, crisply handing General Blackwell a small wound up scroll, straight off the leg of a bird, and sealed with a small red seal. Blackwell hardly acknowledged the seal before he cracked it open. As the Commanding General of their campaign, he received a number of such reports throughout the day, from all the different battlefields near them, and he would send just as many back in reply, commanding an immense distance simply from where he stood.

It irritated him that he recognized the sprawling hand that the letter was written in, from the very first word. All that time at the Academy had not taught Oliver Patrick to write prettily. He had expected such a report, in time, and he scanned the letter to see if he could pin down Oliver's current whereabouts. Provided that he hadn't run into trouble, he'd supposed it would take Oliver another three days before he reached their front lines.

He had contemplated the matter with some amount of glee in the days before. Like the catapults, Oliver Patrick was a weapon of a particular sort. The sort that General Blackwell especially would enjoy making use of personally. His edge in sheer attacking might was reminiscent of the likes of Blackthorn, and it made General Blackwell wonder just how well those peasantry that he'd been given to train had come on.