A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1631 - 1631: Echoes in the Void - Part 1

"And yet, it is the soundest strategy," Blackwell said. "Is there any, aside from General Blackthorn, that find disagreement with it?" He looked around the table, searching for offerings. He looked to General Broadstone first, who had been snubbed of the post, and the man slowly shook his head. Rainheart followed, before Karstly spoke up, knowing full well he had found an opportunity to annoy the General further.

"I think you'll find Ernest rather to your liking, Lord Blackthorn," Karstly said cheerfully. "You only saw it from a distance, but rest assured, those walls and those streets are ancient. You will not be so bored, even if you find there to be a lack of fighting for yourself."

Blackthorn snarled by way of response, knowing full well that he was being mocked. His last bastion lay in Queen Asabel, and he turned his angry face to her beseechingly.

"…If this is what the war council has decided, my Minister of War, then I would ask that you obey it," Queen Asabel said. "I know little of strategy, but I can see no faults in their reasoning. See to it that Ernest is appropriately defended, and offer relief and congratulations to the Patrick men that still remain there.

A knock came at the heavy wooden door, loud, for all the quietness of the world around it.

The guards had been shifted. Ordinarily, there would have been quite a number of them stationed along the entire hallway leading up to the room. But there was nary even a torch lit. The footsteps that had marched down the tilted corridor had echoed more loudly in the silence. Loud enough that it seemed likely to wake up any nearby slumbering man – and yet none came. The lack of reaction was almost suspicious.

The response to the knock was near instantaneous, as if the man on the inside had opened his mouth to give a reply before the hand had even touched the wood.

"Come in," came the deep voice, full of command, and of danger.

There came a slight smile at the suddenness of the reply. It gave off a feeling of intimacy, the man felt. That the two could know each other well enough that they knew Hod would come when he had, without a word from him. That Tavar could know him well enough to see the corridor cleared, and the guards sent away, so there would be no impediment to his arrival.

He drew the door open. None of that goodwill that one would assume, if one made the same assumptions Hod had, was present. The room was as cold as ice, and there sat an old friend of his – or perhaps somehow who was closer to a father than a friend – with the nakedness of a drawn steel sword sat across his lap, and a fire crackling in the hearth.

The look that Tavar gave him, from behind his aged brow, was that of an enemy. He radiated killing intent. Hod could not smile, even if he had the confidence to. He was not a man of physical violence, he had long since accepted that fact. Against the likes of Tavar, he would be no more competitive than a small bird before a mighty dragon.

He closed the door behind him anyway, with mock cordialness, trying to hide the sweat that sprang up from all the pores of his body. He clung to his logic, when the fear rose like bile in his throat. He fought to steady his voice, and he spoke with his back still turned, before the door clicked on its latch.

"You look well, General," Hod told him.

"It's General now, is it?" Tavar asked, his aura intensifying. "And General only? Then you acknowledge the position you come to me in. You face a man ready for war."

"I had hoped that would be the case," Hod said, daring to wander over to the opposite chair by the fire, sitting himself down, before his shaking legs could reveal his fright.

"I had known which direction your hope lay in," Tavar said, growling. "We are in a nest of traitors. The Minister of Blades has fought alongside a rebel of the crown. It is my shame that I so mentored Oliver Patrick when I had. I should have seen him killed when the trial was held, all that time ago."

"Perhaps you should have," Hod said mildly.

"And General Skullic," Tavar said. "For the word I put in for him, he has been allowed to live on Academy grounds, loosely in the capacity as an instructor, without doing a jot of true work. He has escaped his duties, and he has even more of a stain to bear than any other. He made Oliver Patrick what he was, more than any other… And now he rebels against the High King from inside the walls of the Skreen! I have a mind to go out there and crush him myself."

"And will you?" Hod asked.

"You see me armoured, and you see my sword drawn. Ask not what you already know the answer to. The High King is seeing us rallied, and I intend to follow the word that I swore all that time ago," Tavar said.

As he said it, there was just the slightest flicker behind his mask. As if he were pointing to other intentions, at the same time as he played his character. Hod nodded his understanding, and he relaxed, ever so slightly, even still feeling the killing intent pointed his way. He had predicted that Tavar would stand as he had… And he had confidence in his predictions, and his logics. But outweighing that was the respect that he held for the man. There was a reason that Tavar had been put inside the Academy, as its head. His skills went far beyond what recent decades had allowed him to show.

"This war would be far easier with you on our side," Hod said.