A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1690 - 1690: Like a Bird - Part 7

It was those small gestures that reassured her as to the respect that Oliver Patrick had. He was a man of strong feelings at times, and other times, the most incredible degree of subtlety. It was hard exactly to tell what he was feeling, unless he was wound up in his passion.

It was by Captain Lombard's grave that he knelt on that day. They'd erected another gravestone for him, at the Blackwell residence, after returning from campaign, and they'd done the same for Tolsey. Alongside the two of them, there was buried Yorick and Volguard. Oliver had wept before those graves in his silence, thinking that none could see. And those times when Nila did chance across him, she pretended not to know, for fear that he might try to hide it from her in future.

She made her footsteps loud as she approached him in the snow, so as not to catch him off guard. He didn't turn to look at her, but the way he stiffened his shoulders let Nila know that she'd been spotted.

She put a hand on his head, to dust off the snow that was settling there.

"Your hair is getting long again," Nila said mildly, playing with it. "Will you keep it that way for the winter?"

Oliver put a hand to his head along with her, and pulled at it, and he frowned at its length. "It is, isn't it..? Mm. I suppose I had better do something about it sooner or later… Are you all ready to go, then? Are your men all ready too?"

"They are," Nila said. "And I am as well. Professor Yoreholder is going to say goodbye to the Minister of Blades… and I thought I ought to say goodbye to you as well, General."

Oliver smiled. "You don't have to play at being a soldier, Nila," Oliver said. "The formality doesn't suit you. You're fierce enough when you speak to me normally. I know you do not desire the battlefields that we fight upon…"

"But I'm not exactly going to leave you alone, when you're going into the battles that you are," Nila said.

"Perhaps you wouldn't. But you don't need to force yourself to become a soldier in the process," Oliver said.

"Is that what you fear? That you'll force me to become a soldier?" Nila said.

Oliver poked her between her eyes before she could go any further. "I don't need you trying to peer inside my head. Was this the goodbye that you were after?"

She pouted at him, and twisted her lips, completing the picture with a fold of her arms. "I was going to ask what you were planning. You haven't said anything, and when you don't say anything, that's particularly worrying… Because it means you're up to no good."

"Hmm…" Oliver said. "What exactly can I say, I wonder? I suppose I have the barest little wind of a plan, but I am unsure how I intend to put it into action, or even quite what my intentions are…"

Nila shivered despite herself. "You've been like that a lot more lately," she noted. "It's frightening. You were like that in the battle too…"

There was the smallest look of hurt in Oliver's eyes. A look that he quickly tried to hide. At the same time, Nila quickly tried to clarify what she meant. "No, no… I don't mean I'm scared of you. I just mean… I don't know… You've got the sense for something else now, don't you? It's the same thing that Verdant said Lord Blackthorn was trying to nudge you towards?"

"Have I?" Oliver said, standing, and dusting the snow off his knees. "That's hard to know, Nila. I stand before these graves, and I wonder the same things myself. From Dominus, now all the way to Volguard. Good men have died so that I might learn. Learn to be what though, Nila? To have a stronger arm in my sword? That is what Dominus taught me. He taught me it well enough that I rely on it even now… But all that I was wasn't enough for this battle with the Emersons."

"You're still reflecting on it," Nila said.

"How could I not?"

"That's not what I meant… Sorry. I'm saying things as I'm thinking them," Nila bit her lip, realizing that she was right on the border of quieting him exactly when she wished the most that she would speak. "I'm just sort of voicing what I'm seeing, you know? I didn't mean to say that you shouldn't be… Of course you should be."

Oliver inclined his head with a little nod, and rose up his hand to dust the snow from her hair, as she had dusted it from his. Though he did with a considerable amount more weight, forcing the hair to fall in front of Nila's eyes, evoking a grimace. "I'm being touchy as well. I don't know how to talk about it. It's just a weight, Nila…" his hand came away then. "I shouldn't have won that battle. They ask me – both Fitzer, and Blackthorn – how it was that I managed it, and the truthful answer is that I do not know. I still don't. But I feel as if I had better learn fast… Or…"

He went quiet then, and Nila left them both in silence, fearing for what she might say, fearing that she might drag him away from that which he wished to talk about most. Mercifully, he spoke again, robbing her of the responsibility of thinking up something clever.

"Or is that even what I mean to say," Oliver said, raising up a hand to his chin. "The loss of those that I hold dear. The weight of that responsibility… they sit here in this hand, they jab at me, and warn me that I do not deserve to cling to life as I have been. And then I think further back still, and I feel the fingers of something else coiling around my heart…"