A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor-Chapter 1123 A Changing World - Part 1
1123: A Changing World – Part 1
1123: A Changing World – Part 1
“Then, if I had your permission…” Oliver said.
“I would find that option useful.”
“How long do you wish for?” Samuel said.
“I assume that you wish to be a part of the next patrol, given how you spoke to my Lord at the last meeting.
Then, your time frame would only be set to a week.
Do the odds still stand if the time frame is simply a week?”
“That is what the odds were based on,” Oliver said.
“I cannot afford to leave my men for any longer than that.”
“Indeed, the fact that you are leaving them already will have its consequences,” Samuel said.
“But if you manage this, Captain Patrick… Then the scales shall shift.
My Lord will not simply be happy – he will be elated.
This is the exact sort of matter that brings him his delight.
I warn you, though, he will know of your intentions immediately.
I intend to inform him by crow.
Does that bother you?
Your failure shall be known by your General, and by I, and likely by many of the members of this encampment if you do indeed blunder.”
“That is simply another risk that I will have to take,” Oliver said.
“Very well, then,” Samuel said.
“I can not believe that we are talking strategically about matters like the Boundaries, but here we are.
Strangeness ensues.
My Lord will be disappointed that he has missed this.
The best I can do for you is granting you permission to dwell in the forests below for the length of a week.
And, I can make this matter with Captain Hawthorne disappear.
I advise you to leave it there.
If you push for their heads, you will make this situation all the more difficult to deal with.
Are you content with that?”
“I am,” Oliver said.
Both Verdant and Lasha looked as if they wanted to say something by way of disagreement, but now that Oliver had spoken, they could not overrule him.
They meekly dipped their heads.
“So here we find the first display of discipline, do we?” Samuel said, looking the two of them over.
“You’re like emissaries from a different civilization.
Your values differ so strongly from those around you as to make you appear to be foreigners.
Very well, Ser Patrick.
We will call this matter concluded.
You are dismissed.”
Chapter 7 – A Changing World
The winds of change whipped, granting the opportunity to more than just Oliver Patrick.
As he set himself ready to leave from his men for the week, taking the minimal amount of supplies that he would need in order to survive in the forest below, so too did other great men find themselves in position of import.
General Karstly led his dispatchment of two thousand men across the same route that they had travelled to get there.
They followed the deep lines left in the earth by the Verna armies with many wagons, and they relentlessly pushed their horses forward, trying to close the gap between themselves and that massive number with as much speed as they could manage.
“A crow has landed, my Lord,” came an attendant’s shout.
“Ah, finally.
Lord Blackwell’s response has made it through.
Read it.”
“It just says… ‘Forward’, my Lord,” came the attendants’ baffled followup.
At that, Karstly knew to smile.
Lord Blackwell needed no more words than that.
It was an indication of his trust.
In those castles that he had captured, Karstly could imagine Lord Blackwell sitting, staring at the state of his battle board.
And indeed, in that moment of imagining, he was not far wrong.
“They managed it,” Lord Blackwell grunted, nodding his head.
He’d only just managed to receive a crow from Karstly the night before.
He assumed that they had settled far longer than the crow indicated – and indeed the date on the crow told that to be true. fгee𝑤ebɳoveɭ.cøm
It was the Verna archers keeping the message of the crows from reaching him sooner.
“Gods be damned, they only went and managed it.”
With a certain degree of relief and authority, he changed the pieces of his battle board to reflect the current state of affairs.
Four thousand men he placed atop the lonely mountain, and then from them, he took another two thousand, predicting Karstly’s harrying forces, though Karstly had not mentioned such things in his letter yet.
‘Lombard, Patrick – how do you both fare?’ The man wondered.
He tried to envision the battles that they had been through in his mind, and he couldn’t imagine that those two men of his hadn’t played significant parts of them.
He knew Karstly to be greater than his reputation indicated, and given the strength of his victory, with still four thousand men remaining, he knew that for a certainty now.
But just as he knew the potential of Karstly, he knew the potential of his other men as well.
There were many uncertain elements amongst his troops.
Young men and old men both with promising futures, and the strong likelihood that they would be able to achieve more, when the time came to be right.
Though, even he knew not quite how much more, and even he could not have predicted that Oliver was entering the lower forests in order to begin his pushing towards the Fourth Boundary.
…
…
Two days passed in such a position.
The isolation wore at Oliver, and granted him a degree of freshness.
The forests and the mountains reminded him firmly of the training of his past with Dominus, and that reminder was a reprieve on his mind.
It felt as if he had travelled years back.
Even the rock of the Lonely Mountain, as it rose up above the trees, reminded him of the same rock of the Black Mountains that it had once been a part of.
So far into enemy territory, and it carried with it the stench of home.
So he worked.
He worked without rest.
His right hand ought to have still been spending much longer to recover, but he pushed it just the same as he pushed the rest of his body, ignoring the pain.
He pushed himself until he could not summon a thought up into his head.
