A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor-Chapter 2098: King of the Land - Part 3

’No,’ Oliver told himself firmly, batting away such thoughts.

"Oliver," Lady Blackthorn said again, a degree more gently. Stern words had seen Edward sent away, muttering something strange about the spirit of Claudia, and in the falling darkness, Lady Blackthorn’s quiet voice seemed almost disembodied. "You ought to rest."

Oliver turned to where he thought he could hear her speaking from, and favoured her with a smile that she likely could not see. "I shall," he told her. "We’ve had strong victories today and yesterday. If I don’t rest now, as a small celebration, whenever will I rest?"

She handed him a woollen blanket of his own by way of reply. King he might have been, but she knew him well enough to know how he would have waved away any higher level of comfort. A strange man he was, who found himself far more content on the hard cold earth than he was in any feather bed.

"I’ll put it down here," Oliver said, placing it by the trunk of a tree.

"Where are you going?" Lady Blackthorn asked, barely seeing his back turn in the darkness, but more hearing his retreating footsteps.

"Can’t I go to the toilet in peace?" Oliver complained wryly, knowing that it would silence her. She said nothing more, but he could feel her suspicious eyes boring into his back.

He still had yet to thread his sword belt back around his waist. He carried his blade by the scabbard in his hand. His eyes were far harder than those that he had shown Lady Blackthorn, and his feet carried him far deeper into the forest than a want for a piss ever would have.

He found the stream deeper in the forest than where he had washed his blade before. He’d already been gone too long, and he knew that Lady Blackthorn would have a complaint for him when he got back – but she was wise enough to know that he’d wished for his time alone for a reason, and sought it out, even by means of trickery. If she were wiser still, she might even prevent the curious Gar from coming in search of Oliver later. If he awoke, and sensed that he was far away, the young man would come trotting, with a confused tilt of his head, figuring that something was occurring without him.

Where he found the stream again, he was greeted by a reward of the smallest slither of moonlight. A small crescent moon, peaking through the clouds, and threading its way past a small clearing in the branches. Oliver squinted up at it, and stars, and felt a shiver.

The Gods were watching, he thought to himself. They were most certainly watching. They played an eternal game in the Stormfront. Their actions had seen it most vastly affected. They played out their battles against each other through the mortals and creatures that inhabited it. How could they not watch now, when the Kingdom was at such odds? And if they were watching, what did they see? What nuggets of gold did they find amongst the mess?

Oliver heaved in a deep breath, and found the hardness in his heart. How could he rest when he lacked certainty? He had the responsibility of a King now – a responsibility that he was forced to take seriously. Every action that he took, reckless or otherwise, depended on his future performances. Where they would lead him, he knew not. The war had grown messier than any could have expected that it would – but the only thing that mattered now was victory. Victory was the only thing that could make all that they had suffered worthwhile.

But where was victory to be found? It was the favour of the Gods that had allowed Oliver at times grandness beyond his comprehension, but he had no control of it. He knew not why their favour sat with him at one moment, and then disappeared in the next.

There was a rage in his chest that went with the responsibility. A rage dark enough to make his lip curl. When he considered what had happened to Queen Asabel. When he considered what had been done to Dominus, and to Persephone. When he considered further, those stories that he did not know, but could assume of. Those women and men that were not powerful enough to even hear their suffering at the High King heard.

Oliver had no doubt that the High King would not have stayed his hand for the weaker members of society, those without loud voices to defend them. It was like a noise in his head, how easily his imagination wandered, and their suffering filled him.

He clenched his fist, and gritted his teeth, as the rage filled him like a fit. Where was justice, that this could all go on? Where was justice, that he could not seize all the strength that others thought he had, and solve this war in one fell swoop? Where were the claws of those mighty hands that ought to be able to contain the High King and all his regime in a realm where naught could go wrong – where victory was assured?

Oliver had dared to think that they were approaching victory. It ought to have been right there, when they were in Ernest, with Tiberius defeated, and King Emerson for an ally. Yet it had wormed away from them. As if it were the natural course of events, once more, nature itself seemed to flow in the High King’s favour.

Oliver thrust his hand into the cold waters of the stream, and felt its magnificent pull on him. Everything he understood and believed about the world was called into question. He did not think himself naïve. He had seen terrible things happen, and had experienced terrible things himself. There had been a period of years where he had felt hopeless, and disillusioned, but since meeting Dominus there had come a trust again, in something greater than him. And that trust had at times been rewarded. In places where he ought to have died, he found victory, time and time again.