A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1700 - 1700: To Poke a Bear - Part 2

The cold ate at them for all their pointless efforts, and Tavar sent no more men after Oliver. It was his lack of movement that seemed to be the most irritating strategy. It was suffocating.

"Oliver Patrick enjoys his sparks," Tavar had explained, when Germanicus complained about the fly that had been allowed to live so close to their army. "If we give him nothing to feed on, he will starve himself out in boredom."

Even Tavar had not supposed Oliver would stay as long as he did. By the end of the first day, if Oliver had been the same impatient youth that he had been at the Academy, he would already have been long gone from where he was.

Instead, he stayed, and when the third day came around, and he was still there even close to the setting of the sun, Tavar had to remark to himself that the Oliver Patrick he faced now, and the one that he knew now, was rather different from what he had come to expect of him.

There might have seemed no opportunity, there might have seemed no pressure, but Tavar felt the weight of his gaze. That constant watching. Those sharp eyes. It was the threat of a hawk eternally hovering over the head of a rabbit. It felt strange to describe it truly as patience, for it was as if something else was feeding Oliver, rather than the responses that he would usually need.

"He's stayed a while," Germanicus said. His own opinion on the youth seemed to be changing with each passing day. His interest grew. The great and new king of the Treeants was growing restless. "I wish to fight him, Tavar. I wish to fight him soon."

"Yes," Tavar said. "I am well aware that you do. But if you charge him now, Oliver Patrick will simply flee, and you will give him the reaction that he so desires… Or is it even a reaction any longer that our young General uses to fuel himself? Before, it was fire that he knew. Fiery passion. What sustains him now?"

"…The same thing that sustains the birds," Germanicus remarked absentmindedly.

Tavar seized on it, feeling a sudden glimmer of understanding. "What do you mean by that?" He said, a little too rushed in his question.

"The birds gloat, do they not?" Germanicus said. "Caw, caw, they say, as they laugh at us, knowing that we could never overcome the gravity of the earth as they do. We have not their might."

"Then, what sustains Oliver Patrick?" Tavar asked. "What gravity is there?"

"Ours," Germanicus said, pulling a confused face, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. "Are we not the giant earth, and him a little bird, Tavar?"

It was a very Treeant thing to say. Cryptic, and mystical, but with the strangest little touches of wisdom hidden in there. Tavar suppressed a shiver. He had always found them to be a thoroughly disconcerting people, and he thought no different of Germanicus, though he did prefer the King's straightforwardness, when compared to some of the other, more dreamy members of his people.

"…Then there is nothing we can do to starve him of that which he wishes," Tavar said, stroking his chin. He wondered upon the fact, and wondered whether it really was enough for Oliver Patrick to simply be as close to them as he was, to exist in that zone of danger, without allowing it to consume him.

It almost made him wish to change his own strategies, to get a sense for Oliver, in advance of their battle. But it was not wisdom that made him wish for that, it was curiosity, and being the older man that Tavar was now, he was able to resist those youthful impulses, and stay true to what he knew to be solid.

He smiled at his wavering. "So, then, he almost did provoke me," he said. "Simply by being there, far longer than he should have been… Almost did he provoke me."

By the end of that third day, Oliver finally decided to take his leave. "Tomorrow," he told his men. "We will go ahead to the village on their route, and do what we can as far as convincing them."

For all that heard it, that seemed like good news indeed. Their complaints had been growing louder and louder to the point that the Minister of Blades had to angrily turn to silence them. A change of pace – if it could be called that – seemed liable to do them all a world of good.

Though, indeed, there was a cost for it, and that cost was paid in the form of lagging sleep, and a harsher schedule than they'd had in a number of days. Oliver had them arisen well before dawn, and pushing their horses at a pace across the plains, well past the head of Tavar's army, and where he had made his encampments.

Naturally, Oliver could not resist going closer than was necessary. He had yet to bother Tavar and his men on a night. The torch-bearing guards saw him and his company, and in a panic, they saw their horns blown.

Knowing full well that they were going to be flying straight past regardless, the Yoreholder men, for once, seemed to see the amusement in the situation. They laughed at the panicked guardsman, earning a good few curses, and a dozen misfired arrows that had not the slightest chance of hitting.

Oliver grinned. 'They're adapting too,' he thought to himself. He had to marvel each time it happened. There had been many points in his career in which he was made to handle new soldiers, and each time seeing the process of acclimatization, and how they grew accustomed to his way of battling, always brought a degree of satisfaction.

With that laughter behind them, they were forced to hard riding again. No one was laughing then. Not when the cold wind whipped in their face, along with a few traces of icy snow, that seemed half hailstone from how hard it hit them.

Even with the gloves on their hands, it was hard to keep them truly warm. The wind found a way, no matter how many layers they put on. It wormed through the smallest cracks in their clothing, and always found a way to accomplish its mission of chilling them to be bone.