A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

"GENERAL PATRICK!" Came Hendrick's shout. "PLEASE, MOVE TOWARDS US! WE'VE COME TO RESCUE YOU – YOU'RE IN FAR TOO DEEP. ANY MORE, AND YOU WILL BE SLAIN!"

"DON'T ENGAGE WITH THE ENEMY, GENERAL! HE MEANS TO LURE YOU IN!" Fitzer seconded.

Oliver still didn't know what they meant. He glared at Tiberius, as the man smiled at him, a thoroughly mad smile.

"That's a good deal of hatred in those eyes, creature of Claudia," Tiberius said. "You're more rotten than the rest of them, aren't you? They couldn't have recovered from it – they didn't have your coldness of heart. I think all of us overestimated just how close you were to them. I'm sure you won't mind me telling you then, how Queen Asabel cried out in fear in her last moments, and how she begged for the torment to end. Or how Lord Blackwell wept, and pledged his life to me, if I would only spare him."

Oliver only continued to glare, his fists clenched, the wind around him howling.

"Look!" Tiberius laughed. "I have a souvenir, if you wish for it. I fetched it off her head for you. I thought you might like it back. Something for you to remember her by. Something for you to die with."

Laughing he might have been, but his eyes were not. Cruelty was the only thing in them. His flesh might as well have been green, for Oliver had never beheld a monster like him. He could not stomach his existence. With every second that Oliver stood still, the pressure mounting on his back grew. He had to go forward and rid the world of what was in front of him.

The self-professed emperor reached towards his back. Tangled in his cape, and held in place by the hood, there was a ring of metal, all muddied and covered in blood. He held it out to Oliver, from a safe distance away, dangling it temptingly. "A memory of your Queen. Do you not wish for it, General Patrick? Come, I would taunt you, and demand that you fetch it, but there are limits even to my cruelty. You may have it now, if you so wish."

"GENERAL! WE MUST RETREAT!" Hendrick shouted, almost breaking through to Oliver, but not quite. Fitzer hammered away at the lines in front of him with a relentlessness, but could not find a way to break free of those heavily armoured men that Tiberius had seen gathered. They ought to have turned themselves inwards, and looked for a way of attacking Oliver, but instead they simply focused on keeping Fitzer and Hendrick away.

"MY LORD!" Came a shout. A voice Oliver recognized. He didn't turn.

"Colonel Idris! For what reason do you abandon your position? I thought we had agreed that we Emersons would see General Patrick freed," Fitzer said.

"Hod has changed his mind," Verdant said. "Wisely. My Lord would not operate without reason. It was a mistake to assume that his reckless disappearing was without purpose. We will harry the line here, and look to push in with him."

"...He's delirious, Lord Idris," Hendrick said. "He does not even hear us when we call to him."

"So you suppose. And yet, from the other side of the battlefield, could you not see the destruction that he wrought by his lonesome, with only a hundred men?"

"...You Patricks held the rest off," Fitzer grumbled. "You're only here to join them, since you were left out of the initial reinforcement charge, aren't you? Mad bunch of bastards you lot are."

"Hod changed his mind the second he saw Emperor Tiberius in the mud," Verdant said harshly. "If you had trusted in my Lord from the start, this battle would already be over."

"And now Tiberius has him where he wants him," Fitzer said. "Your Lord isn't moving. He's listening. Tiberius knows better than any other how to toy with a man's heart."

"...Is that Queen Asabel's crown?" Verdant murmured, feeling a spark of rage. "That cur! We break through here, Fitzer! Hod will handle organizing the rear. We will press through with all due relentlessness, until these heavy armoured monstrosities yield."

"Easier said than done," Fitzer said, "but I don't see another option…"

As they watched, Tiberius tittered, and he tossed the crown of Queen Asabel Oliver's way. The jewels were hidden from sight now, for all the mud and blood that coated it. The silver of it was impossible to tell, from how tarnished and scratched it had become. If a peasant had seen it lying in the mud, he would have hesitated to even pick it up, assuming it to be simple rubbish, left lying around by one of the less clean farmers.

"See!" Tiberius said, as the crown landed in the muddy snow in front of Oliver, wedging itself into the stickiness. "A memento of a cherished friend. I have heard how close you two were at the Academy. Isn't that heart-warming? For other men, the Academy was not nearly such an inviting place."

Tiberius gloated, high on his victory. Oliver entirely surrounded. His hundred men that had managed to stay standing for so long now pushed to the edge of exhaustion, and weakening. One man took a wound that seemed far too heavy for further living, and so began the reduction of their number. Patrick men spread out along the full length of Tiberius' formation. Hod had seen them split up. And from all directions, they worked with the same terrified eagerness to reach their way to their Lord. They too had lost much that day – but there was one man that they truly could not stand to lose. The last pillar of support that they had to keep them steady.

Hod saw summoned the entire might of their army to assist him. He saw them spread, assisting the Patrick efforts, with bowmen peppering Tiberius from just beyond range, and with Hod himself mounted on horseback, ever watchful, looking for the most minute changes in battlefield situation that he could take advantage of. Though even those were precious few, against a man like Tiberius. The Emperor seemed so preoccupied with what was in front of him, but his formation and his resistance still remained water tight. He'd been unable to wound Oliver any further in a charge, and so he did the next best thing, in attacking directly the man's heart.