A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1885 - 1885: Blessings and Curses - Part 2

Oliver was not a man to put a boot on another's neck, and force him into service. Or at least, he didn't like to think so. But this was an offering of a hand in the truest sense, three thousand good swords. He'd seen those Treeant soldiers fight, and they had fought fiercely. The morality of taking on men whom he had slain the King of – it was a hard thing to process in oneself. Yet, after all, it was not Oliver that processed it. For it was not Oliver that heard their wanting cry. Ingolsol could not be denied such a thing, when dangled in front of him. His eyes were of the most solid of gold when he did step forward, as if he was already in charge of them, and as if he would move to inspect them.

Even in memory now, it made Oliver feel giddy, to a degree that Greeves might have already demonstrated in fleeing from Prince Hendrick. Though his giddiness came with an embarrassed queasiness, for such straightforward emotions as that want to seize, that Ingolsol arose in him from time to time, those were fleeting things, and once that emotion was gone, there was left a void of embarrassment in its place.

"You seem as if you're remembering something fond," Prince Hendrick said with narrowed eyes, as he looked Oliver down. "Has the killing of a King already become one of your favourite memories? Even as you now throw the realm into turmoil?"

He could be accused of that. They all could be. The aftermath of that battle, what followed it was naught be chaos, truly done. Naught but more problems to be bashed out, prisoners to be dealt with, and perhaps sent away, to attack them once again. There was the problem too of seeing their army rebuilt, for they were nothing more than a few scraps of men to them now. They were the sorts of problems that Oliver knew he would dwell on, come the night. He knew he would roll in his bed, with the first grippings of fear, as he swam around that dark sea, unaware of which direction he ought to fly in.

For just the moment, however, there had been that grateful simplicity of honourable men. Soldiers so defeated, by such straightforward principles as the Treeant men. They kneeled to the one that had seen them defeated, honourably, in the same straightforward way that they had done battle with. And when Oliver had stood in front of them, with the eyes of Ingolsol, and his arms folded behind his back and he had seen them straighten up – there was a rush there, of that current that comes with a victory. That little boost of wind that allowed them to flatten obstacles that other times would have been impossible.

It was a matter of the most precise timing, and the most precise force. To speak too weakly would be to have the men ignore him. To miss the opportunity was to have the same – it was to miss the environment in which chaos bloomed at its highest, and strangeness operated to a degree of fluidity that almost would seem like magic in its hindsight.

He made them wait for a good few seconds, as if he was the most confident man in the world. As twenty thousand defeated soldiers watched, and his own allied men – men of good standing, and good sharp minds, like that of General Blackwell, and Minister Hod, and all the Patrick officers that had performed so well in the battle. They frowned at him in wonder, asking of themselves what it was that Oliver was up to. Why it was that, his normal quickness to bow his head to superior command, and to operate only delicately when it concerned the operations of taking charge of new men – why it was that such a man subverted all those things. Why it was that he'd lost that lightness that he'd battled with, where he did not always exert himself entirely, where it seemed like he might instead wait.

Even when he'd charged the flanks of Tavar's men, and had seemed to show more of Oliver Patrick than could ever be shown – at least in terms of overwhelm – he did not nearly seem quite as overbearing as here. For at least, when he had made those charges, he had done so as a man fully aware that he would find resistance. That was why he had built up his fire to the degree that he had – so that he could run over that great obstacle, with the fullest might that he could summon.

This, however, was an arrogance that bordered upon impossibility. It was the sort of thing that only Ingolsol could be blamed for. And it was only Oliver that knew Ingolsol to blame. Only those that had been closest to Oliver for a long time had seen such an expression on his face a handful of times. Nila was one of them, and she felt her palms sweat watching him, almost wanting to hide her face away, for she knew very well that it was the sort of situation that, if rejected, could end up rather embarrassingly. To see him wield that level of arrogance at all was already a subject of great embarrassment.

"You were asked to throw down your weapons," Oliver had finally said. "I bid you do differently. Keep them raised – on my command."

There was a smile as he said that, one of overwhelming confidence. Confident enough that he let his words hang in the air after saying them, so all could properly digest them, all that heard. Those Tavar men, and men from other parts of the Stormfront sneered their distaste. To attempt to force soldier into submission in just a single grasp of the hand, it was an insufferable, overbearing thing, and made them less likely to regard him well in future. Those Treeant men, however, they were the exception. They looked to him like dragonflies to a flame in the night. They that had lost their King, and they who, by their own laws, declared that they would follow the strong.