A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor-Chapter 2067: Justice - Part 2

Never had Fitzer been robbed of his will to fight more than he had in that battle against Tiberius. His fire had been firmly snuffed out. And who was it who had seen it lit again? There was that youth, that strange creature called Oliver Patrick.

He detested it, the memory of that elation. The feeling that had rushed through him when Oliver Patrick had put a crown upon his own head. The delight. The willingness to serve. The beauty of the scene. It ran through his head, again and again, as the most beautiful painting.

The contradictory emotions. There was no man in the Stormfront that he hated more than Oliver Patrick, and in the same breath, there was no man that he more wanted to fight beside. An enigma, a poison in the blood. Something of such grandness that could only exist for a split second at a time. A fissure within the realm of reality. Something that could at times leak through. There was nothing in all the world that he struggled more to define than Oliver Patrick.

He dragged himself forward, along the road he knew Oliver Patrick to have trodden. Exhausted he was, but he would still fight to the very end. Burning in his heart, a building hatred, at having being tricked, and made to look a fool. He should have called Oliver’s bluff, and burned Ernest to the ground – that would have been the right thing to do. But even if he was a traitor to his allies, he could not be that to his King. His loyalty to King Emerson was the only tether he still had on himself.

Fitzer made his march, at war with himself, as much as he was at war with his enemy. His troops marched silently behind him, the exhaustion evident on their face. The will, and the morale difficult to define. Perhaps broken. Or perhaps there was the kindling there, ready to be ignited into a roaring bonfire – for troops that would lay down their lives to see their King defended.

That King stood, watching, from the highest point for miles and miles around. That was his privilege, his special perch, as the ruler of all that Emerson territory. The tall keep in the centre of the Emerson Capital, behind the tall protective walls that had kept out their enemies for hundreds of years.

On quiet days, he would climb to the top of it, where there was no shield from the wind. He would allow the force of it to toss about his long white hair, and his royal robes of red and purple, as he stared out across the sea, and wondered just what the land was like that laid beyond it. He knew if he were to follow the shore on a boat, he would come to Yarmon Territory. What if he left that shore entirely, what if he drifted off into the endless blue, where would he find himself?

As the Patrick and Blackthorn men worked outside of his walls, it was the sea that he was looking at. His son made battle preparations in his absence – he was freed from prison from that purpose. He had four thousand men to work with, but what could he really do with such a small number? He’d already filled the walls with archers, but would it be enough.

The same son that he’d put in prison, for refusing his orders, the same son that he now relied upon to see himself defended. He gripped the cold mossy bricks in front of him with his ringed fingers. Rings of gold, and silver. Just one would have been enough to buy a whole village. If a jewel was pried out, a peasant family would have been able to live happily for nearly a hundred years.

But that was not the world that they lived in – there was no justice, not when such a small effect for him could change the lives of many. To make the gift of that jewel, what was the point in it? Indeed, he was King, and he could inflict that change, in that moment of benevolence. But benevolence did not see a kingdom towards fruitfulness. For, one action did not occur in isolation.

To make rich one peasant was to make the other peasants even poorer in comparison. When one peasant was able to pay far more for food than the rest, without even thinking on it, the merchants would catch on, and raise their prices higher. A different kind of injustice would take place.

To rule was to control a carefully stacked tower of cards. Or more, it was to try and divert the water of an already flowing river. To exert control in a realm that did not belong to man. To interfere with the matters of nature, and hope that, in exerting that control, one did not bring his Kingdom to ruin, or to drown, but towards greater fertility. Greater growth, and progress.

"I know I have not made a mistake, Claudia," he said, as he looked at the sea. All he did, he was certain he did for the good of the kingdom. King Patrick might have made a fine ally as a General. But he was not a King. The past month had made that clear. Perhaps in time, he would mature to be one, but as he was currently, he would not survive that long.

He heard the approach of footsteps behind him, and knew who it to be. "How goes your preparations?"

"As well as they can," Prince Hendrick replied. A good son, King Emerson had to admit. There was pride in how level Hendrick was able to keep his voice, despite the anger he undoubtedly held. They had argued fiercely when King Emerson had announced his plan to see King Patrick killed, and Hendrick was adamant that he would not yield. There was nothing to be done but to see the man thrown in prison, to prevent him from intervening.

"This is what you have wrought, father," Prince Hendrick said. "And look at you – you turn your back on it, as an army gathers beneath your walls, and you look at the sea instead."

"Hm..." King Emerson said. "You think me to be avoiding my duty?"

"Think you to be?" Prince Hendrick said. "Look at how you stand, father. This is not the positioning of a King. You saw no horns blown, you did not hurry our soldiers towards defence. If you had not seen me freed – or worse, if I had refused you – who would have been here to turn away Oliver Patrick’s sword from your neck?"