A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1848 - 1848: Old Boulders - Part 5

Just like Oliver, they had grown with the wanting freedom of the wind. Not even the confines that would be offered to water could hold them. They wished to fly as high as they could, to pursue that highest level of glory, as their hearts did dictate for them. To give them that want, for most Generals, would have been to lose their power. To cut them free from his will, and allow them to fly, with the trust that, in flight, they would still return to him, and they would still be his men in the end.

It was a courage that many other leaders would not have dared to try, for fear of contest of their own rank. But Oliver gave it to them willingly. He did so almost with a feeling of relief, as if he was cutting free many little strings from his shoulders, and in the process, stretching out his own wings, so that he could fly higher.

"Verdant," Oliver said. "Or Colonel Idris, I should say. Do not attempt too strongly to match me. You have a duty – a duty to see a hole found in this encirclement, just as much as I do. If you pay so much attention to me, you will not find it. Function as if I do not exist."

"I could not possibly ignore your existence, my Lord," Verdant responded with quickness, knowing very well the limits of his own attention. He had one loyalty that sat above all other loyalties. It was the very centre of his reason for being.

"Then I cannot pay attention to a half-formed man in return," Oliver said. "I have great need of you, Verdant. Not as a subordinate, but as a comrade. You made the mistake of swearing loyalty to me, but in the end, we are still equals. I would have you prove that once again to me. Tackle this battlefield by the strength of your own spear, not mind. Find a way to break through independently of me, and I shall do the same."

Verdant looked doubtful. For once, the man was struck dumb. He was not one to play for his own gain. He had more interest in seeing the strength of others raised, than that of himself. But with how suffocating the battlefield was beginning to become under Tavar, naturally, he'd begun to feel the pullings in his own heart towards the same course of action. It seemed the most natural thing to do was find a way to pierce through independently, for tension would have seen them separated regardless. Yet Verdant could never have done so, without his Lord telling him to.

"Do you give me the command to be mighty?" Verdant said, his eyes hardening, to the slightest degree.

"If this battlefield were a giant sea, then I would ask to be the giant boulder that falls into it, and sends up great waves to see us all drowned in," Oliver said.

"Because a strong spear is more use to you than a mere side dagger," Verdant said.

"Because it is a sin to hold back your own strength, in favour of something else," Oliver said. "Find your freedom, Verdant, here and now. You have been waiting too long a time for this. Forgive me for not noticing it sooner."

"There is naught to forgive," Verdant said. "I am lacking. Where we stand here and now does prove such a thing. I am not as useful to you as I once was."

"I say that not."

"I shall find strength to better serve you regardless," Verdant said. "By the leave of your orders, my Lord, I will see it done. Bohemothia stirs in agreement."

"A man must be his own man," Oliver said. "He must have the freedom to grow of his own accord. Claudia has agreement in that."

"The others stir as well, my Lord," Verdant said to him. "They have their own sorts of wants. I fear that I may have drowned them. I fear my impression might have been the wrong one. I interpreted their wants for insubordinance. But the magnitude of your Command, my Lord, I underestimated it. We can all fly quite freely, without ever losing the favour of your wind."

"I will see them spoken to," Oliver said. "Buy me time. Tavar looks to strangle us before we can find enough order to see towards a counter attack."

"I will engage him," Verdant said, no longer with merely the disposition of a man that supposed himself to be incapable of such a thing. A man that merely held the door open so that his Lord could plunge through, and see the job done. There was fire to him now – fire that he had learned from his Lord, after many long years of watching him, but fire that he had never been able to use of his own accord.

Verdant could feel it stirring, his own sort of wanting in him. Hollowly, it burned a hole in his heart that had once been so satisfied with so much less.

"On wings of want, the heart does flutter, fingers do tremble, voice does stutter…" Verdant murmured to himself, recalling an old poem that he had read, and thought to be rather applicable to Oliver Patrick. With motions of his hands, he gathered up those two thousand men that Oliver had gifted him, as if it was the most natural thing in the world, as if he too, as a mere Second Boundary man, had the right to stand shoulder to shoulder with these giants. There was arrogance in it, but Oliver Patrick gave permission for that. He bargained with nature on their behalf, and now he pushed to them the fruits of his own struggles, and declared to them that it was a glorious road, that it was well worth the suffering.

Glorious road it might have been, but that only came in hindsight. Verdant knew, for the darkness that Oliver had willingly wandered into alone, he had suffered greatly. The light that he cast down for them, from so far up ahead, was their privilege to explore, as men under him. He led them into that well-lit forest of plenty, bordered by the dangerous potentials of the unknown, and he invited them towards their freedom. He told them to pick the direction that they feared most, to plunge towards it, and when the fear did overcome them, to return to the safety of the territory that Oliver Patrick had already conquered by his lonesome.