A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1833 - 1833: A Man of Significance - Part 5

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Skullic saw Broadstone drilling his men, having received the message that Blackwell was finally on the way, and that they would likely be having their battle against Tiberius soon. Skullic went about the conditioning of his men in a similar way, though less harshly. He thought them already to have seen enough recent blood upon the walls of the Skreen. He only pushed them enough now to deprive them of breath, and keep them supple, but he didn't push them to the point of exhaustion.

He looked across the landscape, and the distance between the fortresses, with a good deal of open ground, and then great patches of forest off in the direction of Karstly's fortress, and he fell to wondering where they were likely to meet their foe. He tried to imagine the battlefield in his head, and how they would fight off Tiberius' mighty strategy.

As much as he fell to thinking of it, he found that he couldn't conjure up any sort of idea that he could believe in. He couldn't envision a normal battlefield, where one side delicately chipped away at the other. Especially not when it was Tiberius that they were fighting against.

The snow, the cold, the ice, could they find some way to make it more on their side than his? After all, Skullic liked to think they were harder men than Tiberius. Pompous was the word Skullic would use to describe him after having seen him. There was an effeminate nature to him, a grandeur that seemed as if it would shatter like glass if only a man was brave enough to put his fingers to it.

He recalled the conversation with his wife Mary, before he had urged her to leave by the Skreen's underground tunnels. Caution was what she counselled him towards, and begged him towards, with tears in her eyes. A strong woman she was, but like he, she had tripped and fallen deep into the dark waters of love, and it weighed on their very hearts.

It was for love that Skullic did not share in that promise, and love that made him feel stronger, now that he had returned to the battlefield. He was a young General, true enough, only having just made it to his thirtieth year, but he had still spent more time away from battle than he would have wished to.

The enemy knew it not, but the many weeks they had spent putting him under siege in the Skreen were all efforts to make him sharper. Skullic felt it with each passing day, the weight of the accumulated experience that made him what he was – that made him a player in this mighty game, though one that the others seemed to easily overlook.

"Daemon, please, promise me. Promise me you will show caution," Mary had said.

Skullic had simply smiled in return and placed a kiss upon her brow. "Go quickly, my dear, I will be seeing you soon enough."

Caution was in defeating the enemy before them. Skullic knew the weight of the war that they had started, and he knew what sort of place Mary would find herself in, if they were to fall to defeat. For her sake, as much as any other, victory had to be guaranteed. The lives of all the High King deemed to be traitors would be struck from the world, and she, being a Serving Class woman by birth, would have even less protection than the rest.

In the forests, Karstly sought to make himself stronger. But it was here, under the steady light of day, where Skullic found his strength. He found it in the memories of his wife too, and the memories of the book of the First King, that he had been privileged to read on Oliver Patrick's estate – if his single house could at all be called an estate.

Then there was the memory of the young man himself, and the talk of his achievements delivered from afar. It was evidence, to the likes of Skullic, that magic existed, if one dared to reach his hand out to grab it.

He did not need to walk, or kneel in prayer, for he had a confidence. He could feel himself pushed forward each day by a will that was entirely beyond him. He had a certainty of his place, and knew not where the Gods intended to take him, but only that it was significant. Only that it would require a great duty of him. Skullic was willing to serve that duty to the very end. He had no reservations about that fact.

As other men might have laboured in fear, Skullic felt only impatience. He pawed at the ground beneath his feet, kicking the snow, waiting, ever waiting, like an angry horse. He longed for that moment when they stood on the battlefield once more, for now he knew, he knew just what the man called Tiberius looked like, and he fancied, in knowing, he would not be so easily outdone again. He wanted to have the excuse for adrenaline to rise, to devote everything he had to the man in front of him.

His want came quicker than he expected, in the form of banners on the horizon, gold and silver. Blackwell's letters had come, and they had expected his arrival not this day, but the following. It was either a stratagem on his part, or simply that he had decided to push his troops to the quickest of marches.

What the case was, those silver and gold banners made one thing obvious. It was not only an army of five thousand that Blackwell arrived with, but upon horseback, with her long hair dancing behind her in the wind, he had also brought a Pendragon Queen.

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The High King was not content. All that he attempted to do lately, it seemed, was met with one form of obstacle or another. He stalked about his chambers, making his servants as they stood guard at the door nervous for fear of his temper.

Every single blue flame that he'd attempted to seize had disappeared. Every mage that he had attempted to contact was dead. And he had no one to ask as to why. More than once, had he been about to pose the question to Blake, but everytime he did, he could see the way the man's eyes now looked at him, almost close to scorn.