A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1791 - 1791: Supposed Victories - Part 2

The parallels between that battle – or at least the feeling of it – and where he stood now, were incredibly strong. The way he had been made to wait and conceal himself, in the fullest pitch of battle, merely going slowly, with the direction of the breeze, as best as he possibly could. The same it seemed was required of him now, to be quiet enough and content enough to do hardly anything at all, with the grand and seemingly insane belief that somehow, something would be revealed.

It was with a great effort that Oliver reminded himself of the strength of his current position compared to that of the battle's past. The same sort of feelings swirled up inside of him, the barely contained terror, and the lack of belief, and he had to keep track of them in the same way. But had that battle with the Emerson's not already been the fatal point of victory? Could anything truly be more difficult than that?

He wanted to believe that it couldn't be.

Alone in his room, he didn't want to believe Hod's words that something had changed. It brought about a pain in him that only Nila's warmth seemed to cure. But here, on the battlefield, when there was a different sort of pain, the belief in that which was beyond him seemed a source of salvation for Oliver.

He had sought it, and sought it, for years on end. The means to defeat his enemies, to see their strategies overturned – and he had never quite been able to overcome that magnificent mountain that all Generals stood on. It was his sword that he'd continually turned to, he'd forced his way through. And now there was something else in the water, something he couldn't logically define. Something that seemed to give Oliver victories as if by accident.

He had to remind himself of that. He'd defeated Germanicus more than once, and he'd seemed to do it easily. Why was that? Why had he been able to find the little strategic hole on the previous day? He knew not. It had come to him as an impulse, as a sense beyond himself. He knew not how to provoke his impulses. He had no control over them, they simply came to him.

What could he do then, other than have faith in that which had granted him victory before? In the soberness and quiet of the normal world, away from the battlefield, he would never have dared believe in something so arrogantly. But now in waiting, it was all he had. He had no means to carry out the duty that was asked of him by Hod. He had no ability to match Tavar. Unless he assumed what Hod said to be true. Unless he trusted in that sense in himself that was ever growing, but ever so fleeting.

It came with such aggressive certainty at times that it was as if there were another creature inside Oliver, and then other times, like now, he could hardly hear it. It was something that seemed to have a want to grow. It swallowed up the voices of Claudia and Ingolsol and made them nothing more than muffled whispers in comparison to it.

It was strange to think that he missed hearing his Fragments. It made him feel dreadfully lonely. He felt as if he was sitting in the clouds, spinning around and around, and he knew not where anything lay anymore. He'd declared that he'd enjoyed sitting in the storm, but now he was indeed one, and he found himself disoriented. Nothing was solid, no future seemed certain, no plans could ever be complete. Everything was shifting.

He heaved in another breath that was more like a sigh. He wished he could move based on something, on anything, but there was nothing stirring within him, no sort of fire. If he was to have faith in that new part of himself, then he wished indeed he could feel it, and see that it was to happen.

He glanced behind him at his men again, and he saw them shifting and shivering. They were tense, and nervous. Two hours had passed in their waiting, and for all of them, it had been an exquisite degree of torture. For them to wish for blood, simply to cut away the waiting. The peasants amongst them would never have believed such a thing to be true if they had been told that a few weeks ago.

It was in those peasants that Oliver saw the change brought about by the storm that they sat in. That those same men could hold spears, and axes, and hammers, and be such a terrifying fighting force, when just a few weeks ago they had been more timid than field mice – that was magic. That was unpredictable. Not even Oliver, in training peasants for the battle with the Emersons, could have supposed that this current batch would do so well, to the point that even Blackthorn and Hod relied on them just as much as Oliver did.

Peasants, who barely even seemed to exist from the eyes of nobility, they were the very cornerstone of this current battle. If not for them, the defence of Ernest would have been lost long ago. They would have fallen to Tavar's numbers.

The quietest of things, that which were so easily overlooked, they seemed to be the strongest seeds in all the victories that Oliver had seen thus far. He could not fight as he had once fought, when the battlefield was as it was. He was so high in the air that he felt he did not even have the footing to gather himself. Most of everything was done lightly, as if he were grasping for clouds.

A soldier fumbled the helmet that he had been playing with, and it crashed to the ground with a loud clatter. A good portion of the men turned to look at him, Oliver included. For the little pocket of silence that they had, just away from the battle going on at the wall, the mere dropping of a helmet was such a point of agitation. The soldier quickly and embarrassedly snatched it up again, dipping his head to those that were staring at him in apology.