A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1754 - 1754: The Lion's Den - Part 3

"There, I have brought you," the same young nobleman said, gesturing to the crowd with a limp hand, loose at the elbow, and loose all the way through. "But I will not be speaking on your behalf, Lord Blackwell. These people have every reason to detest you. I couldn't in good conscience vouch for you in any way."

"Very well," Blackwell said gruffly, though he had a thousand things rattling inside his head. Different ways that he wanted to tear apart the young man's statement.

The handful of other noblemen that had led the way to the city centre drifted off on horseback with the young man, leaving the Blackwell men very much alone.

Blackwell gathered himself, and set his horse forward again at a walk. He brushed through the crowd. They didn't willingly part for him and his lot, but there was no other route to take other than straight through, if he wanted to make it towards the speaking platform that had been set up for him.

The complaints at that were loud. One man even tried to lash out at the horses of one of Blackwell's men – but it was the creature itself that retaliated on the man, with a grand knock of its mighty head, sending him pushing backwards.

Blackwell had the urge to sneer. It demonstrated his opinion of them all too well – even if our horses have far more fight in them than the likes of you.

He couldn't empathise with their plight as well as he ought to have. Indeed, he was the conqueror, it was he that had shattered their homes. He'd felt regret at that, from a distance. It was a theoretical sort of regret, in which he might empathise with those that had been misplaced. But it was difficult to feel pity for the angry little creatures before him, who knew only hatred.

He stood before them, his lips twisted, wondering whether he really wished to win them to his side. To him, they seemed the creatures of the High King. They were satisfied with what once was. A corrupt realm it might have been. But at least it was quiet. And they had their lot, and there was safety. Now it was he that had come in and forced to towards the future, towards a certain degree of light, and they hated him for it. More than just the acts that he had committed, they decided to hate him for the lies that they had told themselves throughout the years when they felt something was off. For what creature could sit with corruption drifting through their nostrils, and not feel that something was off?

"People of Hurst," Blackwell addressed them, his tone grim, and sombre, and overbearing. It was an axe on the wet stone. Harsh to their ears and even harsher to their hearts. "These Pendragon lands now belong to their rightful heir, Queen Asabel Pendragon. They are once more a unified kingdom, and one that represents, as it always has, the justice of these lands. As Arthur took up the banner for justice once, so too does your Queen take up the banner again. She seeks the righteous path—"

"Righteous? Is this what righteousness looks like?" Came a shout, as a lump of rubble was tossed, bouncing off the helmet of one of Blackwell's soldiers. Just in the discipline that same man had in not showing the slightest bit of anger, the difference seemed all the more evident between trained soldiers and the glorified mob that had formed, thinking themselves to be mighty.

"You stood in our way," Blackwell pointed out. "You fought a battle on behalf of your King. And you lost. We do not blame you for that. Nor do we treat you as enemies."

"Oh, you don't blame us?" Came a nobleman's comment, from behind a leather glove. "Very kind of you, very kind indeed. You slaughter our garrison and leave them dead in the street, yet it is you that don't blame us?"

"The crematorium has burned night and day for weeks because of the dead that you left! TYRANT!"

"TYRANT!"

"""TYRANT!"""

More joined in the cry of tyrant, with fists raised in the air, and rubble being tossed in their directions. Blackwell growled from the back of his horse, and glared down at them. How easy it would be to force obedience upon them, but he had strict orders not to. Idris was very firm when he spoke of the strengths of free trade. They wanted – and they needed – a city that would operate for their cause, without threats. A city that would choose to do so of its own freewill. That was a city far more useful than one subdued through the continual pressure of repercussions.

"Are you quite finished?" Blackwell said, when the last bit of rubble had fallen. "Your city fell, because your defenders were inadequate. You did not have the men on your side to see it stood. Now you do. With my protection, it shall never fall again."

"You don't belong here, westerner. You're of the Emerson lands."

"Oh, you'll protect us now – now that you've taken everything that we own, is it?"

"And how's you going to protect yourself from the wrath of the High King? Eh? Tell me that?"

"THE HIGH KING WILL SEE JUSTICE!"

"JUSTICE FOR THE HIGH KING!"

"JUSTICE!"

They took up Blackwell's own cry, and used it against him. Hearing it spoken as such, Blackwell could very much tell that none of them had ever met the High King. The last thing, he thought, that was on their High King's mind was justice. It was self-preservation above all else that he was concerned with.

Blackwell sighed. Hurst was not the first city that he'd visited. Two towns he'd visited before it, and both of them had ended the same. He was an outsider, it was true enough, and he was an invader. When he spoke of what he might offer them, none of it sounded quite as good as what they had once had.

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