A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1755 - 1755: The Lion's Den - Part 4

Those that knew not the battlefield never seemed to be well enough affected by the gruff charisma that Blackwell did carry. He felt there, again, as he'd felt before, that perhaps he'd made a mistake. That perhaps he ought to have placed himself differently in the realm and allowed another man to handle the job of seeing the Pendragon lands unified.

But who was there? Broadstone and Rainheart didn't have the temperament for it. They were sharpened for battle just as he. And Karstly was a non-starter. The man would cause more chaos than he would see problems solved. Really, there was only Lord Idris. He alone seemed to be having an effect. He'd at least managed to broker some deals, compared to Blackwell's nothingness, even if the man was struggling – as he indeed professed himself.

'This is a waste of time…' Blackwell thought to himself. The crowd shouted uninterrupted now, never giving him a chance to speak. It was more an act of public humiliation than it was anything else. He had to wonder if it was at all possible to unite the Pendragon lands with the sort of swiftness that they needed. Somehow, he didn't think so.

'We do have swiftness, however… We still have momentum on our side,' Blackwell thought, trying to see – as he had a thousand times – if they could simply build a strategy off that, without a homeland to see themselves properly secure. It didn't seem impossible, at least, not when he lied to himself as strongly as he could. But then it didn't exactly ring of battlefield genius either, to avoid doing that which one disliked, and to set themselves down a worse path.

Colonel Willem tried in his General's place, when he could see very well that Blackwell was struggling. "It's a civil war, gentlemen. The worst sort. It's natural that you would be bitter. We are bitter in fighting it. To cross swords with our comrades, it brings us no joy. But it is a cause worthwhile. A cause aimed towards the future of the Stormfront, and the justice that we know to be true."

"Easy for you to say, when you're the one swinging the sword. What about us, eh? When we're forced to go along whatever direction you say?"

"You will be forced in no direction," Willem assured them. "There shall be discussions, fairly held, and we will decide together what is good for the realm."

"You will – and you'll do it again with a sword at our necks, won't you? Hard to speak your mind when you're bloody being threatened into it."

An hour they went back and forth pointlessly like that. Blackwell and his men stood in the cold, simply listening for the most part, warmed only by their own anger when it arose again and again at particularly harsh comments.

It was the comments about Queen Asabel that stirred them the most. They'd begun to feel a fierce sort of loyalty to her as their sovereign. Rarely did the men see her, save from just before battle, when she would make a point of showing her face to them all should she be nearby.

To Blackwell as well, when he saw the girl struggling with the responsibility that she had to bear, and when she found the strength to move forward despite that, he had to say he felt his heart stir. When she had claimed the crown of her father – it had stirred then too.

He felt a certainty that she was a monarch worth following. Increasingly, he could see why it was that Oliver Patrick was so fond of her, as feral as the boy was. He seemed to have a nose for strange people, and he would sniff them out, and find a degree of warmth at their side.

It was for that monarch, that Blackwell forced himself to do that which he disliked. As he felt his strategy begin to fall to sand in his hands, he forced himself to stand there and endure, looking for a better route in this realm that he hardly understood. He made himself apply all that cunning he could, all the experience he had gathered in leading men. But every time he opened his mouth, he only seemed to drive the people of Hurst away from their cause.

They trusted him not. They saw the flags of House Blackwell, with its sigil of the owl, flying behind them, and they only mistrusted it. The single Pendragon banner that they saw was not enough for them.

More townspeople came to look upon the spectacle. There were nearing a good few thousand now. They walked upon the mounds of rubble, or climbed up upon the roofs of shops and buildings that were still standing, to hurl their insults, and at times their rocks.

One came particularly close to Blackwell, colliding with Willem instead. The Colonel's teeth clamped together in his anger, but he managed to contain it. Then, just after, another stone, larger than the last, tossed from the height of a nearby roof, came along the perfect parabola to hit Blackwell square in the face.

The General's hand reached out with snakelike swiftness, to pluck it out of the air, and his Black blood stirred in anger. He could bear it no more. His eyes flashed towards the roof, where a nobleman in lavish furs had just thrown it. The man didn't seem to have any intention of negotiating. He was here simply for sport – and he was a man well into his middle years at that, making a mockery of their proceedings.

The sort of man that, as soon as Blackwell's gaze landed on him, did flinch. Blackwell nodded to himself, an enraged smile on his face, as he wheeled his horse around. "Very well," he said quite loudly. "Very well."

In the end, it was only force that House Black knew. Blackwell knew how to restrain himself to a degree, but he was a creature of the battlefield through and through. It was the mighty that he bowed to. If he was continually bitten at by the weak, he could not help but allow the fire of his heart to stir.

If it be force that they demand he rule by, then Blackwell was of the opinion that he ought to give them what they want.