A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

"Naturally… Naturally, I asked her to marry me for a reason," Oliver said.

"Aye, aye," Greeves said. "And that reason for you was because of the sword, wasn't it? You saw what she'd defended, and you thought 'damn it all, I can't be without that.' Didn't you? That was a soldier's way of looking at a woman. You reckon she's useful, and you don't mind her, but for you, that suggestion of marriage was just a tool. You don't love her."

"…" Oliver did not deny it. He didn't know enough about romantic matters to declare with certainty that he knew what love was.

"She understood that well enough, but she didn't mind it," Greeves said. "She accepted anyway. Because at least you were a step closer to it than you were with any other woman. She was determined that she'd draw it out of you. I reckon, you know, the real uncertain one here, is you. I don't think you'd be in the same situation if you loved the girl."

"How could I not be? She's terrified of me. If my feelings for her were even stronger, then it would be all the worse to see her fear," Oliver said.

"Maybe if you loved the girl, you would have tried to understand it, instead of interpreting it as a threat," Greeves said. "Ah, I'm not trying to lecture you too much. In your position, at your age, I'd think the same. You live in a world of swords and spears, attacking and defending, and if a woman says something or does something that wounds you, naturally, you'd put your guard up."

"You sure seem to be doing a lot of lecturing for a man not trying to lecture," Oliver said, spinning the letter from Skullic on his desk, trying to decide whether he should open it or not.

"Hey, lad, what about this? What if you assume you're wrong?" Greeves said, holding his finger in the air, taking sudden inspiration.

"Assume I'm wrong?" Oliver said, frowning.

"Why not? You've managed to humble yourself in matters of governance. I ought to give you respect for that. You're listening to me and the girl there, accepting that we've got more experience in it, and we're likely to know more than you. Why don't you assume you're wrong in this as well? You know nothing about love, and you know nothing about Nila.

She said she's not afraid of you, why not just accept that?" Greeves said. "See how many wounds you can take. Let yourself suffer for a bit, and see what happens. Lower your guard, I suppose."

"That sounds miserable," Oliver said. He imagined being cut to ribbons by a Nila wielding a dagger, and it was not so inviting an image. But then, he supposed, on the battlefield, to take strikes wasn't always a bad thing. As long as they weren't fatal, or overly damaging, the more one allows one's opponent to strike, the more likely they were to slip up, and learn something about them.

"I don't know, it's just an idea," Greeves said. "Let her batter you a bit, see if she overcomes whatever she's got in her system. Think of it as a reward for her looking after Solgrim for you. You owe her that much."

"Somehow, I think you're enjoying this," Oliver said, noting how energetic Greeves was.

"You're damn right I am. It's the funniest thing I've ever seen," Greeves said, showing all his teeth in a wide smile. "But I will say, I'd prefer to see it go well for you. She's a good girl, even if she's a handful. And you're not so bad yourself. Give it time, and see where the two of you get to.

Maybe don't think about it too much… Maybe you need something to distract yourself, eh? If you had a battle that you were preparing for, you wouldn't be getting nearly this wound up abut it, would you?"

"I suppose not," Oliver said.

"Then we just need another battle for you to fight," Greeves said. "And on that front, I've got some ideas. The excitement of getting one up over the Guild has worn off for me. Now that you're wanting to have a stone keep built as well, I'm conscious of our coin purse falling low.

The taxes that we've got on the merchants operating here and the ones passing through, they're all well and good, but they're not really of the level yet where we can sit back and build what we need to build without worry."

"What do you have in mind?" Oliver asked.

"See, there's a pulling that brings a visitor to a location, or a merchant for that matter," Greeves said. "Solgrim's got a certain pulling in its appeal, and Ernest has a certain pulling as well. And make no mistake, Ernest has likely a hundred fold more traffic than we do. That's a hundredfold more taxes – and their taxes are higher than ours. It's a mountain of gold big enough to sit a dragon on."

"What are you getting at?"

"It would take a bit of effort, and a bit of time to build up those kinds of numbers ourselves, and to make that kind of appeal. Ernest has been building its city for hundreds of years. It's no wonder it's at the strength that it's currently at. It's got enough of a draw to attract people from all around the country.

We only really have the draw to attract people from the west, who are already on their way to Ernest," Greeves said. "So, I'm thinking, if we wanted a bit of growth, a bit of improvement, we ought to try and attract visitors from the east."

"And how would we do that?" Oliver frowned. "As you said, the only reason visitors are stopping in Solgrim is because they're already on their way to Ernest. Few enough people are travelling east to west, and when they are, all their business that they need to conduct will have concluded in Ernest already. There's no reason they'd save it for us."

"Then we give them a reason to," Greeves said, smiling a malicious grin. "We take something that Ernest has, and make it our own. We force them to come to Solgrim."