A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1658 - 1658: Strength in Arms - Part 3

The two of them were taken, along with the mass of soldiers, deeper into Ernest, down its paved streets. Neither of them had been to a city before, and they marvelled at the stonework of all the ancient buildings. They weren't alone in that. Like a crowd of pigeons, the peasants looked as one at all the new sights that they had to drink in. The Blackthorn soldiers shook their heads in disgust at the sight.

And then there was a sight that stunned both Blackthorn men and peasants alike. When they neared the encampments of those captured Emerson soldiers. More than ten thousand men, in hundreds and hundreds of tents, spread deeply across the more open spaces of the city. Their fires filled the air with smoke, and their cook pots boiled from their rations.

The men themselves looked hearty. They stared at the newcomers, almost fiercely. There was a fading of hope in their eyes, but they weren't broken entirely. It was clear that they didn't like what they saw, but that they still had enough will left that they could glare as defiantly as they did, it was a strange sight.

"…Are these men truly prisoners?" One Blackthorn Captain remarked from nearby, and both Jacob and Marty found themselves echoing the sentiment.

They were unarmoured, and unarmed, but there seemed to be nothing else holding them in place. There were no chains, or anything of the like, and the men certainly didn't seem ragged or underfed. They were well protected against the cold, with thick clothing. They seemed to be living better lives than most of the peasants that Marty and Jacob had left at home.

"What are we looking at, Jacob?" Marty said. "I thought General Patrick only had three hundred men left? How comes these prisoners aren't doing something about that?"

"I don't know either, cousin…" Jacob said. "They've got Prince Hendrick hostage, don't they? Maybe that… But that doesn't feel like enough."

It was that strange sensation again. That lack of understanding. Where naturally, it seemed as if something ought to go in a certain direction, but instead, by Oliver Patrick's strange hand, it flowed in a different direction entirely.

It was a haunting gravity that they could see in its effects, rather than just feel themselves. Its existence seemed more implied than actual. It was difficult to tell just how much effect it had on even them as individuals. It was the closest thing any of them had come to seeing magic.

The peasants marvelled, as did the soldiers. They stared, long and hard, at all the tents around them, passing through them by the main road. Emerson men, what had once been a mighty army. To see just over half of them remaining, and for them to be so numerous. It more than put into context just how startling Oliver Patrick was.

"There was double this number?" Marty said. "That seems a fricken terrifying thing to imagine. Them on the field, attacking ya. When you're outnumbered ten to one. This is weird, this is Marty. Why's am I getting tingles on me skin?"

He rose up his arm, and pulled back the dirty wool of his sleeve, showing his flesh, and the hairs that stood on end. Jacob shook himself, as a chill passed over him, feeling the same thing. They'd stepped into a world that was entirely different from their own.

He'd voiced his want earlier – a want of the head, given that he was unsure of the wants of the heart. The want for change. The hope that, of all the people who might be capable of shaping him towards such a change, it would be Oliver Patrick.

He saw the magic such a man was capable of wielding now, right in the flesh. He stepped into that domain, and knew it to be different to his own. His fear heightened, as did his excitement. His head went numb, and he stopped thinking as frantically as he had before. Or perhaps it was that he was thinking even more frantically, and he'd lost the ability to keep track of each individual thought.

That the Blackthorn men kept up their stunned muttering only made the matter seem all the more profound for the peasants that bore witness to it. They knew it to be a strange sight, but without the Blackthorn soldiers for context, they would never have known quite how strange.

Blackthorn men started to filter off from them, leaving the peasant masses freer than they had been, without the encirclement of men that had kept them feeling like prisoners before. Orders were barked into the air, and men obeyed with gruff grunts in return. And then they plunged straight into the heart of those Emerson encampments, to perform their duties in scouting, or to dive off elsewhere, deeper into the city, to see the defences in their beginning stages of fortification.

For the peasants, however, their destination still had not been reached. They were sent in deeper and deeper, past the magnificent church of Claudia, and off to the left of the Blackwell estates, where they were not to know that Prince Hendrick was being kept prisoner.

Patrick men came to observe them every now and then, only to disappear. Jacob had the sense that they were being evaluated, and he had no idea whether such evaluations were to end up in their favour, or against them. He suddenly began to feel self conscious, wondering whether they would not fail to meet the expectations of such magnificent men.

"HALT!" Came the bark of a Captain, setting all those five thousand men to stopping. By now, only a hundred Blackthorn soldiers had remained with them, completing their duty of escorting.

They'd come to a part of the city that seemed almost residential, given that the only thing occupying it were small houses. And yet, for a residential district, there was an awful lot of open space. Jacob found that confusing. He didn't know much about city planning, but he would have assumed that for a walled city like Ernest, they'd want to cram as many houses inside as they possibly could, to see their residents well protected.