A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1657 - 1657: Strength in Arms - Part 2

He was looking around in far too obvious a way for Marty though. He had to nudge the man to stop him from drawing any more attention to them. "Can you see him?" Jacob asked, as they were forced further into the city, past Lady Blackthorn, and a few other Patrick men, bearing the sigil of the beast on their surcoats.

"Nah, I can't… But those are Patrick soldiers, ain't they?" He said. Jacob looked with him.

"Aye, they are. They must be. That's the sigil they're wearing…" Jacob said, staring with the same sort of evaluating intensity that Marty was. They were the men that they were meant to fight alongside one day.

They both tried to search for similarities between such men and themselves, and they tried to search for the strength that those men had become so famed for.

They certainly seemed different from the usual straight-laced soldiers that they were used to seeing. They didn't stand with the rigid pointedness, with their chins straight in the air. There was something more casual to them. But it was the lazy casualness of a mountain lion. It was a confidence that came from a strength that they ought not have had. Somehow, for how relaxed they were, they seemed just as intimidating, if not more so, than the harsh Blackthorn men that already surrounded them.

"…They can't be peasants, can they?" Jacob said in a rushed whisper. "That news was right, wasn't it? General Patrick took a thousand peasants, and he trained them to take on an Emerson army of twenty thousand, when his army was only two thousand? That's right, isn't it?"

"…I said before, the peasants were probably just cannon fodder, cousin. That might be our destiny. They'll train us just enough to draw attention, and then they'll use their actual strength elsewhere."

"But that can't be right, Marty. I says it can't," Jacob insisted. "You don't get victories like that if a thousand of your men are cannon fodder."

"Why do you look so nervous then, cousin? Why are you the one asking me for reassurance?" Marty said. "It sounds to me like you don't believe your own words."

"It only makes sense if they're right… But I don't know how they can be right. I doesn't know, looking at those men, how peasants like us could become them, in just a month, or however long those others trained for."

"There's only three hundred Patrick men left though cousin," Marty said. "For that victory they achieved, how many are there left to tell the tale? There's no coin to be had when you're dead."

"…Might be fine to die like that though, Marty," Jacob said. "You know… With purpose, with glory. For a man like General Patrick, for a victory like that. Those men that died there, they're heroes, ain't they?"

"I doesn't know about that… They're peasants just like us," Marty said.

"Aye! They were. And 'cos they're just like us, doesn't that make it stranger? Doesn't it make it more impressive? How the fuck do you turn this into a soldier like that?" Marty said, gesturing at himself. "I doesn't have a clue. But if anyone knows how, it's that General Patrick. He knows some magics we can't even conceive of. He turned peasants into fuckin' heroes, Marty. Men capable of stopping an army ten times stronger than them."

"This doesn't sound like you're in it for the coin anymore, cousin…" Marty said warily. "Where did that story go? That's how you convinced me."

"The coin will be nice, if we live," Marty said. "But just an opportunity to stick it to them above us, ain't that enough? Serving Class men, and bloody nobles – that's who our lot butchered in that battle. We can be like that. Doesn't matter where we were born, we could die on the same battlefield as them, as equals, killing more of them than they do us. That's a statement to make, ain't it? I likes the sound of it… The feeling of it. But it scares me still."

"What the pissin' hell are you talking about?" Marty said. "Yer talking like a religious man. It frightens me to hear you talk like that."

"Thinking about it frightens me cousin," Jacob said. "I doesn't want to die. I don't even know if I wanna be here… But y'know. Y'know, I think it scares me less than dying in our village. Old and alone."

"You wouldn't be alone. You'd get yourself a wife," Marty said.

"How's that been going for me so far?"

"It'd work out in the end. Yer not a bad man. You'd be alright."

"I don't just wanna be someone to take pity on, Marty," Jacob said. "I don't want to be someone that has to struggle just to get a wife. I want a woman to be proud to have me, ya know? I want to be proud of myself. I don't wanna lower me eyes every time a better man walks past. I'm sick of it."

"You don't need to get yourself killed chasing that, you know," Marty said. "There were other ways."

"Then why are you here?" Jacob said accusingly. "You said it was for coin. Is that the whole truth of it? You seem to think we'll die, even more than I do. So what are you doing? Just looking after me?"

"…I don't know," Marty said with a frown. "I'm not sure why I'm here. Me mind doesn't know, I'll tell ya that. But I tried thinking on it, I did. I let the thought rattle around in me head, day after day. Tried to come up with some sort of answer. Tried to ask people wiser than me. But when that Blackthorn man came to round us all up, saying that it was time we made our decision, I didn't need to think anymore. Me body moved for me. I surprised meself. And here I am."

"…Here we are," Jacob agreed. He looked at his hand. "Aye. I think that's it cousin. I doesn't understand it either. Something else is dragging me here. I try to think on it, try to decide what it is I want. But I doesn't know really. Not really. Think me heart is in a different direction to me head."