A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

So too could he swear that he could hear the crackling of thunder. Inside Ernest walls, the storm continued itself. The old, weather worn stones seemed more like the jagged rocks meant to gut ships, that a lighthouse ought to have warned against. Only beyond those gates could he see the light of sun.

"Very well," the Sergeant said, saluting his Captain. He turned on his heel, as he'd done a thousand times before, after being given such an order. He'd fought on a battlefield under the man. And this, to him, seemed another such battlefield.

The Captain, with a flick of his fingers, summoned some of the surrounding soldiers to see the inspection performed. Then he stood, watching, and waiting, playing with three braids of his long red beard, making them squirm like a krakan's tentacles.

The newcomers pushed through the on duty soldiers, and they reached for the door. Only then did the Sergeant seem to realize his mistake.

"Halt," he said, before the man's fingers could properly curl their way around the handle.

"…Is there a problem, Sergeant?" The Captain said, unable to hide his irritation.

"I do not recognize these men, Ser," the Sergeant said, studying each one of them.

"Naturally. They are newer recruits," the Captain said. "No doubt you will learn their faces in time."

"…Then I must decline your access to the carriage, Captain," the Sergeant said, rather bravely, Oliver thought. He was a mere man, on a flimsy bit of driftwood, standing up to a kraken that could quite well see him sunk.

"You're disobeying the commands of your Captain?" The man said, taking a step closer to him. "That's grounds for insubordinance. How many years have we served together now, Sergeant Tom – and now, when the moment is most dangerous, you would refuse my orders?"

"It is because the moment is dangerous that I must refuse your orders, Ser," the Sergeant said. "The lives of the Lord and Lady can not be threatened any further. Lady Blackthorn has already been injured. Lord Blackwell would not stand for it, if he were to hear."

"You think above your station," the Captain said. "That is my responsibility, not yours. I relieve you of it."

"All the same, Captain, you would forgive me for being mistrustful of newcomers, when even someone like Lady Snowbloom was roped in this," the Sergeant said.

"And if this is all a ruse? If their carriage is instead full of contraband that they wish to disguise under the pretence of an attack? How do we know that that man is truly Lord Idris, and that woman is truly Lady Blackthorn?" The Captain said.

"…I can be certain that they are," the Sergeant said. "There would be no mistaking them. Besides, I have seen the Lady Blackthorn before."

"I am afraid I cannot have this, Sergeant," the Captain said, the tentacles of his beard seeming to move now even without his hand, as he loomed over his Sergeant. "If you wish to be insubordinate, then you will be punished for it. It is a simple affair. Gentlemen, seize him, if you would."

The newcomers stepped forward to seize the Sergeant. The man stood there, quite resolutely, seeming ready to accept his fate. His men stirred around him, unsure. Their loyalty was divided. Was it to their Captain in that moment, or was it to their Sergeant?

With Sergeant Tom restrained by two pairs of powerful arms, the Captain moved forward himself, slithering his way towards the carriage door. His fingers curled around the handle. Oliver slid off the driver's seat around the same time, to stand right next to the Captain's shoulder, and to watch his business.

The Captain acknowledged him with a shrug. He swung the door open with a single swift motion. It clattered against the wall of the carriage, leaving a dent, as if a violent wind had seen it flung. Then, his men moved.

Two spears together, they drove through that gap together, taking the opening of the doors as some kind of signal, they thrust those long spears into the carriage.

Oliver could see the satisfaction written on the Captains' face. He could almost see his mouth beginning to open, in order to make an excuse, or to deliver some kind of admonishment to the soldiers that had gone rogue. But more than anything else, he had the sense that this had gone entirely according to his plan.

CLANG! CLANG!

With two swift movements from Oliver, however, that plan ended. The spear thrusts were turned aside, and then the spearmen were driven down to the ground, when Verdant managed his way behind them, stealing their lives with the point of his own spear.

"Captain," Oliver said shaking his head. "What a tragedy. I have to wonder, just what you have been offered, to throw away everything that you've worked for, in order to see the act of murder done. Against civilians, no less."

The Captain had the grace, at least, to grow red in the face.

"SEIZE THEM! THEY THWART JUSTICE!" The Captain said, attempting to use the last of his authority to make things once again go in his favour. But all had seen what had happened, and the only eyes cast his way were ones of doubt. The only men willing to listen to his commands were those newcomers that Sergeant Tom had rightly pointed out.

The Sergeant now struggled against his restrainers. One of them drove a dagger into his side in response, seeing Tom silenced, and seeing himself freed from his task. Then that dagger was rushing towards the open carriage door, thinking himself to be unstoppable. But there was no opening to be had, no whilst the brick wall that was Lady Blackthorn was there.

She cut the man down, with a single well aimed thrust through his eye, before he could even get close.

The other new faces, Verdant saw dealt with. Sergeant Tom's soldiers had attempted to the join the frey by then. They could quite clearly tell which side they needed to be on, given that their Sergeant had been left bleeding out and groaning on the floor by the opposition.