A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

"Yer looking forward, but it seems to me yer seeing all around us," the driver noted.

"It seems to me that you're seeing more than a driver should see too," Oliver replied.

The driver grunted in reply. The stars were shining bright up above them. Oliver had learned in his short life one or two things himself, staring at such a sky. Winter, it seemed to him, was the season of the stars. They seemed to dominate that deep blackness of the sky, whenever there weren't any clouds to block their shine.@@novelbin@@

Summer, by contrast, never allowed them to settle quite as well, and didn't allow them to be properly appreciated.

Winter was a time to admire the moon – and that night too, amongst the stars, a crescent moon shone brightly – and summer was the time to admire the sun.

That night, it was not only the moon and the stars that he admired, but the budding familiarity that crept on the further that they came to Solgrim. They'd neared Ernest and entered it, using the crossroads that ran through the city gates, as the guards ushered them through.

Now they were off west, with the mountains to the side of them plunging across those plains, towards the closest thing that Oliver had to home.

It was well into the evening by the time they arrived. Oliver kept looking over the side of the carriage for the place of battle, but he couldn't spy it. The fresh snow had covered everything up and even the fortifications that Lombard had left behind seemed long gone, leaving only the village itself, and the warm glow that came off the different houses in the evening light.

Under that glow, Oliver's carriage rumbled into the village. Though it was dark, the villagers didn't seem to be asleep quite yet. He saw more than a couple moving torches, as they made their way from one house to the next.

As they grew closer, one man stopped, a bucket in one hand, a torch in the other, looking towards the carriage and squinting. No doubt he could see that it was a nobleman's sort of carriage, so he dared not call out, or show any sort of blatant disrespect as it came nearer.

And then the light caught Oliver's face, and the man's bucket fell from his hands.

Even with the hair that was longer than it had been, more well tended to and free of grime. Even with those clothes, and that coat, finer than anything that he'd ever seen, the man knew. It wasn't an appearance, it was a sense. Ingolsol seized on it. A connection of the rawest sought. Oliver felt it, like an arrow to the chest, from a man that he didn't even know the name of.

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"By the Gods…" The man murmured to himself. "Is that Beam..?"

Oliver leapt from the carriage, his boots landing with a crunch in the snow. He approached the man swiftly enough to make him flinch. Had it been any other nobleman, the man would have thrown himself in a gutter to escape whatever punishment was sure to come his way. But this man seemed to know what Oliver too felt – that he meant the man not even the slightest whiff of harm.

"Comrade," Oliver said warmly, surprised by the strength of his own emotion. He held out a hand to the man – a gloved hand, of finer leather than the man had ever seen. The man grasped it, after wiping the grime from his hand on his shirt.

"By the Gods…" the man said again, tears arising in his eyes. "By the Gods… It's really you. It's really bloody you."

That night. That dreadful night. Oliver hadn't considered it properly. Not until he returned now, and faced one of the men, did he truly understand the magnitude of the waves that they'd made. Not just towards the villagers, but towards Oliver himself.

He'd thought he'd feel the detachment of a Commander, knowing that these men would serve him, but it was deeper than that. It was the recovery of a limb. Something that he had missed terribly. He almost cried with the man.

The man's voice alerted his wife from inside. A door opened with a creak, as a woman's cautious head peaked around.

"Come see, Greta," the man said, wiping his eyes with his sleeve. "Come and see. The Gods have given him back. He's back, my good woman, he's back."

The woman fell to her knees before Oliver, the tears streaming from her eyes, as she reached up to grasp his hands, not minding the snow that soiled her dress. "Oh Gods be good," she said through her tears. "Oh, you're real, aren't you? You're real! You're well, and you're alive! You're back!"

"I am back," Oliver assured her.

"We heard what happened," the man said, still crying. "Yous the son of Dominus Patrick. Yous a noble – a noble that's one of us. Yous bled for us, yous saved us. You dug in the mud beside us…"

He trailed off, and the woman took over. "A saint," she declared, holding his hands. "A saint for true – you saved us all. You threw away the darkness. You even had food sent here, in your name… Oh, Gods bless you, Beam…"

"He ain't Beam," the man corrected, though he'd called Oliver the same. "He's Oliver Patrick. He's the son of the Greatest Swordsman to ever live. His father died defending us. We've heard, Ser Patrick. We've heard – there's finally been justice.

This village was yours in everything but name. This were a Patrick village, and now you've come back to us."

It was hard to bear the strength of their emotion. Even Oliver's own emotion was hard to bear. It wasn't them. It wasn't even Oliver Patrick. It was a singularity now, an entity that beat with its own heart, that belonged entirely to the village, something that united that more solidly than an army could hope to be united.

They were blades of grass of the same plant, leaves of the same tree, waves of the same grand ocean. They were one.