A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1705 - 1705: To Poke a Bear - Part 7

For him to be able to say that, and accept that, without arrogance, it made Tavar shake his head. He had seen many students possessed of talent and ability, but few could recognize their own competence in a healthy way. They either shied away from it, fearing to boast, or they would overindulge in it to the point of arrogance. They would overestimate their abilities.

From Germanicus he had none of that. The only way he could describe it was with Germanicus' own words. Naturalness – that was all that seemed to cut it. It was perfectly natural for a monster like him to rule all of the forests of his home. Who else would those wild creatures kneel to?

They very much knew Oliver Patrick's intentions when going to those villages by now, and from Germanicus' perspective, they could even begin to see just how normal a thing Oliver considered it to be to ally himself with the peasantry. And yet, they could see no traces of his success when they did pass through.

For the number of houses that there were, one could guess at the population of a village, and not a single one was beneath the estimates of Tavar's population. He was quite certain indeed that not a single man had left as a result of Oliver Patrick's words, and over the course of two days, he had visited five of those villages, likely offering them the same words, asking them if they would join him as recruits. And he had nothing at all to show for it.

Tavar had half-expected for him to be successful in his efforts. He'd even prepared counter measures for that inevitability. He'd had teams of cavalry out ready to serve as the pursuing force, to dispatch the newly formed enemy squadrons long before they could become a danger in battle.

Still, there was no danger to be had. They found with them only peasants.

Indeed, these were peasants that did not seem exactly pleased to see them. Tavar made sure that his column of marching men passed a good distance from their village, and still when he made his way to their village squares to address them, he found the highest in hostility.

It was a hostility that made the likes of King Germanicus bristle. He seemed to see it as a challenge, and he glared them all down, a growl arising in his throat. That did much to cower them, but it didn't seem to break them.

If Oliver Patrick had failed to bring them to his side, that certainly didn't seem to mean that they were on Tavar's side either. They pushed him out of every village that he came to, with all the swiftness, and barely grunted politeness that they could manage. They watched him with the wariness of men that were watching their enemy.

Then, there was the strangest little occurrence.

Tavar made his camp on the night of the second day. His army was proceeding even more slowly now. He could have pushed them to a faster march, so that they might have covered more ground, but there was a timing that he was keen on matching. His communications with Tiberius were none existent, but he still had his ways of checking up on the man, and predicting his movements.

He knew the Pendragon Capital to be safely in Blackwell's hands, and he knew Lord Blackwell himself would likely be thinking of where his next destination was. Tavar would much sooner that it be the Skreen – which was much closer to Pendragon territory regardless – than all the way down towards Ernest. At least for now, until Tavar held the city with certainty for himself.

The men had their tents being hastily set up, but not before they had seen thousands of fires started and stoked from the wood of their wagons. It was wood that Tavar had attempted to offer the peasantry too, 'to make up for the harshness of their winters', but even with such gifts, he had still been disdained.

Tavar made a point of setting up his own fire. Not sheerly because of the principle of it – though he did suppose that a General ought to remember to engage in the duties of an ordinary soldier from time to time – but because he rather enjoyed the act of lighting a fire. As he nurtured those little flames, allowing them to eat through the kindling, he tried to understand the perspective of those villagers that had so harshly turned them away. He was sure that in the heart of winter, a gift of wood would always have been a welcome thing, and yet even if they had taken it from him, they'd done so with the distrustful looks of men that supposed it to be poisoned.

"Is the High King that hated amongst the peasantry?" He wondered to himself, feeding his fledgling fire slightly larger sticks, and allowing it to grow. "…I think not. The High King's loathing sits firmly amongst the noble class. To him, the likes of the peasantry don't even exist. He doesn't acknowledge them enough to ever think of bothering them, intentionally or unintentionally."

As he fell into thought, and his fire found its strength, finding itself solidly established, his gaze drifted out over the landscape. Here, the ground was growing boggier. If it wasn't the middle of winter, they'd have had far more trouble crossing. Still, their wagons found themselves struggling whenever they left the main road, to traverse through the slightly more rugged sections.

There were small hills, and an army of thorny little bushes and stooped trees. All the acidic soil loving plants sprung up there. There was none of the lushness native to some bog regions, for all the nutrients that the moist soil might offer. This was just harsh, and it was wet. There were few enough roads that ran through it, and few enough trails. It forced any travellers into a bit of a choke point. A travelling merchant's choke, Tavar had heard it called, for the fondness the merchants had of such natural occurrences. It gave them certainty that they'd meet someone on the road, whether those people wished to be met or not.

So it was, Tavar did not fail to see those few gathered torches, marching their way down one of the trails a short distance away.