A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1834 - 1834: A Man of Significance - Part 6

When had Blake become that? Was it doubt for his cause that Blake now saw? Or was it the mere irritability of an old man?

There was blame there, and he'd spoken it aloud, he'd used the term "foolish decision" far too often. He made the King look like a much smaller man upon his own throne. There were nearly two decades of blame there. He never said as much, but that was the feeling the High King got for him.

His Chief Strategist almost seemed resigned to their fate. Why was that? Why did he not bluster around with that old intensity, looking for victory, as he once did? Why did he seem almost sullen when they received good news, and equally sullen when the news was bad?

Was it simple age that kept him appearing so placid?

"He has much to manage, my King, do forgive him his temper," Justus has been quick to tell him. The High King had more than once suggested that another might lead their campaigns, but again and again it was obvious just how much the Chief Strategist knew. He seemed to predict the course of events almost entirely. He seemed to know that Karstly and Skullic would make contact with Tiberius even before the message had been delivered – and naturally, without a word from Tiberius himself.

Tiberius was another sore point for the King. To walk around, and call himself the Emperor. He was a rebel in and of himself. He ought to have been struck down like the rest of them, and torn apart for his crimes. But Blake assured him of his use. Though dryly, in that impatient way that he had now.

"Very well, make Tiberius your formal enemy, my King, and send your crown along with the letter," he'd said. "For Tiberius and Tavar together are the only reasons that your defences still hold."

The High King had twisted his lips in anger hearing that, but he had no cause to defend it. For all the strategies that he had tried to put out on his own, behind Blake's back, were struck down by an invisible force. The High King was half-tempted to think that it was Blake himself that was doing it. For who else could have predicted him to that degree?

His suspicion grew with each passing day, and he studied the man further and further. "If his loyalties have changed, when did they? Has he lost his stomach for what it means to rule?"

Blake, at his heart, though once loyal, had always been a good man. The business with Persephone had weighed heavily on him for a while, though he had attempted to hide it. He'd received his orders and he'd carried them out without fault. Though naturally, the High King hadn't been foolish enough to tell him about his plans for a poison blade for her, not directly. But he didn't need to ask whether the man knew. The man knew everything. He would have known the assassin was leaving even before he did. That he didn't intervene, as far as the High King was concerned, was practically agreement.

The High King fell down onto his canopied bed. His heart was beating with terror. It always seemed to be these days. His sleep did not come easily, no matter how much he walked around his flowered gardens. And even when it did come, he wished it hadn't, for the faces of the past, they haunted him, like the demons they were. His lack of sleep was severe enough that those demons wandered their way into the normal world.

Three faces that were set against him, though now dead – three faces that had been his mightiest foes. They hung, as twisted and rotted things, all around him. The man that they called Arthur, the fairest and warmest of heroes. Would they say that if they saw the look of him now, with skin half-peeled, and eyes rotted in their sockets, and a maddeningly cruel smile on his face, as he danced just beyond the reach of the High King's gaze, right in the shadows.

"You're no hero," the High King muttered to himself accusingly, much to the alarm of those that had to stand guard by the door for his benefit. "You're nothing more than a…"

He drifted off to say the rest in his head. His men were waiting with mattresses, so that they might border up the corners of his four-poster bed, and see all the sides sealed, so there would be no getting in or out until morning came and he gave the express orders that it be dismantled.

The King had become increasingly suspicious the longer he reigned, and for good reason, he thought. For he knew his gift. Unlike the other Kings of times past, lost in their follies, the King could at times see and feel these demons – they were the manifestation of the realms malevolence. A warning from the Gods that someone meant to do him harm. That they were so frequent and vivid now, during this period of rebellion, only strengthened his belief in such a thought.

"A freak?" Arthur finished for him, his face far too close to the High King's when next he looked up. The King yelped, and rolled back into his bed.

"Board me in! Board me in, I tell you, and see the candles blown out. I will rest now," the High King said, much to the relief of the men that had been waiting for him.

"Sire, shall we call for your attendant to see you undressed?"

"Nay! Board me in! Are you dull? I told you to board me in. Do you not know how to follow orders?"

Still fully dressed, with his boots on, the High King lay there, his crown clinging stubbornly to his head, though threatening to shift every time it did roll. He closed his eyes, and heard the sounds of his servants' busy labour. They worked together to put the heavy mattresses in place, and then they saw them fastened, before they gave their farewells to the King, and presumably bowed beyond the walls where the King could no longer see them.