A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1706 - 1706: To Poke a Bear - Part 8

He squinted at first warily, but none of his instincts warned him of any particular danger. He heard his men sound the horn. They pulled themselves into a readiness, as he had taught them to.

But soon enough, the source of the light was revealed, and he was made to issue an urgent order. "HOLD YOUR FIRE! THOSE ARE CIVILIANS!"

His General's voice was practised and loud enough that it could be heard even by those a good distance down his line of men. His officers took up the cry, and saw his soldiers halted and stilled before they could commit a war crime.

The torchlight revealed them for what they were. Peasants, with tiny little bundles on their back, held up by old sacks, hastily sewn together, and then bound all with rope. Their eyes glowed when the fires of Tavar's army illuminated them. They were round, and they were fearful, yet they passed so close regardless.

"King Germanicus…" Tavar said, acknowledging the man when he arose from his tent to inspect the cause of the disturbance. The King took one look, grunted, then went back inside, losing his interest, but Tavar continued to stare, captivated.

The sheer gall. Two hundred peasants, at most, he supposed them to be. A couple of faces he even recognized. As any good General ought to be, he was practised in remembering a few soldiers' faces, even after only seeing them once. When his memory prodded him, and reminded him that these were faces that he had seen in Heath's Edge, he was devastingly sure of it.

They'd travelled a good distance. A good couple of days of walking, just the same as Tavar had. But here they were, still pushing themselves in the night to walk by torchlight, in land as treacherous as those frozen boglands. And to do all that so close to Tavar's army of a hundred thousand. They wandered in close to a sleeping dragon – mere peasants at that – and for what purpose? It was a courage he would never have known that they had.

He felt a chill as the answer revealed itself.

Not just one answer, but several. The answer to the question that had been hovering in his head earlier, as to the hostility that he received.

It was not that the High King was so hated, nor that the gifts that Tavar had been given were so scorned. It was that Oliver Patrick was so loved.

"Gods be good… What has he become?" Tavar said, barely able to believe what he was looking at, and barely able to agree with what his years as a General had so deftly concluded.

It wasn't just that one lot of villagers that they saw travelling across the plains. In the days that followed they saw groups of hundreds of them, picking their way through the snow and the grass, fighting their way through the wind, with makeshift weapons in their hand.

"…Reinforcements," Tavar could hear his men mutter. The peasants shot them not the warmest looks either. Their gazes were filled with hostility whenever Tavar's army did come close. One group even outright ran from Tavar and his men.

It seemed obvious enough where their destination was. What their goal indeed was too. The pointing of their feet ran only in one direction, and that was the city of Ernest. They worked themselves into a haste, each group of a hundred or so villagers, so that they might get themselves ahead of the long snaking procession of Tavar's army.

Though untrained men as they were, they had difficulty doing that. He could see the price that they paid with the exhausted looks on their faces. They barely managed to get half a day ahead at most, some of them, even with Tavar so burdened by his supply chains as he was.

"You let them run free," Germanicus acknowledged, seeing that Tavar had given no orders as to how they might stop the peasantry in their tracks. Quite the opposite, he had given active orders that they be left alone, and that none of his soldiery harass them.

"Would you have me run them down, and kill them mercilessly in advance?" Tavar asked.

Germanicus shrugged his shoulders. "It makes no difference to me what you do. However, is it not obvious that they are your enemy? You Stormfronters eye for the easiest battle that you can, do you not? You seek to weaken the enemy in advance. I am content with a mightier foe."

"You are a Stormfronter as well, King Germanicus," Tavar reminded him for what must have been the hundredth time. The Treeants viewed themselves as so distant to the Stormfront as to be a completely different nation at times.

"Perhaps," King Germanicus said, though he didn't sound particularly convinced.

Tavar heaved a sigh. "If they had gone about this differently, perhaps I could have. Perhaps if they had left with Oliver Patrick when he had come to ask it of them, I would have been able to charge them as soldiers, rather than as peasants. But these processions of men, why do you think they move with the gall that they do?"

"Because they know no better," King Germanicus said. "A rabbit doesn't know fear until it sees the works of the wolf."

"I think that to be untrue," Tavar said. "They know fear, just as a rabbit has its instincts of fear. However, there is something that each village seems to have come to understand, almost independently. Or apparently independently, for we see no evidence of the communications between villages. They realize, quite rightly, that they have every right to be roaming these lands as they are. This is the territory of the High King, and they are entitled to roam in it, as long as they do not bother any land holders in their crossings. In other words, we would be the criminals if we were to cut them down."

"…But have we not said it is obvious what their intentions are?" Germanicus asked. "You are looking for a reason. You are a General. No one would bat an eyelid if you declared that they were criminals, and for the efforts of the High King, you would cut them down."