A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1731 - 1731: An Iron Curtain - Part 1

What he left unsaid was that he would also be of use to his own coin purse.

"Are you quite sure Davos?" Came the question as the young man stood. "Are you quite sure? We will be tried like the rest of them should we be in support of it. There will be no saving us. We will be treated as if we had warred on the battlefield beside the rest of them."

"You mean, you will require courage to see this through?" Queen Asabel interrupted harshly. "Indeed, courage shall be required – and for your courage, you shall bear the prestige of Royalty."

"If," Davos said, "your General Patrick is the man that he seems to be. And if, these other Generals of yours, in Blackwell, and Blackthorn, live up the rumours that they are the sorts of men that can turn the tide of any battle. Then, with my assistance, I cannot see us losing. If they have the supplies, and the soldiery equipped to the degrees that we are capable of equipping them, they ought not be incompetent enough to lose."

"You put your faith in nobles?"

"I put my faith in my own skills," Davos replied. "With what I have, and what all seem to agree they have, there should be no losing. And you," he said, pointing to Lord Idris. "Minister of Coin. You are a danger that the High King does not have on his side. I believe this a gamble that I am willing to take."

The Pillar of Coin nodded his head. "Such is the beginning of all great trees. A seed, nourished by the courage to take risk. Very well, Davos. By Queen Asabel's orders, I name you a Trader of Royal Commission. I will require you after this meeting has been brought to a close, and I shall give you your areas of jurisdiction."

"Areas of jurisdiction?" Came a question. It was a question that Queen Asabel herself found herself asking, for she'd mentioned nothing about such things in her speech.

"Naturally," Lord Idris said. "Such a position of authority, is it not? You will govern over local trade guilds, and for the good of the Pendragon lands, you will see them work together towards prosperity. You will see reunited those that have fallen into rebellion."

Queen Asabel watched Lord Idris work, and wondered if indeed that was what Oliver saw in Verdant, when he had proclaimed so often about how strange the man was, and how much he managed to surprise him. He had said once that for every erratic move that Oliver himself had made in a passion, Verdant seemed to immediately know the best way to compliment it. And so did it seem true for Verdant's father.

So easily did the Minister of Coin take advantage of that which Queen Asabel had seen stirred up, in her passion. He made it solid, and logical, and altogether viable. He spoke his benefits with a level-voice and with due certainty, and he had more and more merchants standing up to declare their want for a post set by Royal Commission.

By the time Lord Idris was done, not a single man remained seated. There was a competitiveness in the air, as all twenty men glared at each other, and there arose the natural question.

"How shall the jurisdictions be decided?" Came the question.

Lord Idris smiled. "By performance, naturally. I will see you tested, through my own arbitrary means. But then it shall be the work you do for the good of the kingdom. There is no reason that one man should not be able to govern two districts, should he have competence enough for two men."

Like that, their competitiveness was stoked even further, until it was built like a raging fire. All twenty men were set against each other, towards a common goal of seeing the flames that had shot up around the Pendragon lands put out.

The allied forces of Queen Asabel's armies lay scattered around the country, and the black clouds of war gathered towards the west. Tavar made his camp beyond those walls of Ernest, with his hundred thousand men, and with his mighty General in the form of King Germanicus, and the rest of the country wrestled for their place on the battlefield.

The fleeing armies of Karstly and Skullic cut their way towards the north, nearly perfectly equidistant from both the Pendragon lands where they knew more of their allies to await, and from the battlefields of Ernest, that seemed to be growing increasingly significant in the struggle for superiority in their civil war.

Fleeing as they were, there was the want to turn their flight into a position of advantage. They had seen Emperor Tiberius make his home in the castles of the Skreen. That meant, at the very least, that they had a day's march on him, should they wish to intrude upon any battlefields that were not yet their own.

Hod, however, consistently stamped out the flames of such ideas before they could spread any further. "Tiberius waits for you to do exactly that. He has the Skreen now. He exerts all the pressure that he wishes, both to the East and to the West. He is capable of moving toward whatever battlefield he wishes at the slightest moment."

"Then, what do we declare as our destination?" Skullic asked. "We can't very well just dance around in the middle of the country, doing nothing for our allies and our cause."

"Tiberius waits for you to make a move so that he can retaliate," Hod said again.

"Then you're saying we're more effective doing nothing at all?" Skullic asked, making his dissatisfaction evident. "You would have us take up residence amongst one of the intermediary castles, and wait simply to see what might happen?"

"You have lost your position as reactive forces," Hod said. "Your role now is that of a blocker. Tiberius has bested you in the first battle. You must wait, and ensure that you do not allow him to best you in a second. As for the initiative, that now lies with General Blackwell – though he is busy tending to matters of his own. The speed with which they can see the Pendragon lands settled will be the crucial question as to where our strategy might go from here."