A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor-Chapter 2099: King of the Land - Part 4
Why did that same intervening hand, that same impossible twist of fate, spin itself for the likes of the High King?
A deep breath again. He didn’t understand it. His world view could not tolerate it. For injustice to exist so plentifully made no sense. For the likes of Tiberius to grow as strong as he had. For a woman as good as Asabel to be made to suffer to the degree that she had... The world was different to what he wished it could be.
He lowered his head. Just because his cause was just, did not guarantee him victory. If anything, it seemed to work against him, just like it had worked against Dominus and Arthur. There was a real force to what it meant to be High King that seemed to preserve the man, as if the very country itself were working to defend him.
Oliver was increasingly unconvinced that defeating the High King meant defeating him on the battlefield. That was certainly a component of it, and he thought he could trust in his men to see that won for him – he could not imagine a world in which the High King stood in front of him, shielded by his armies, and was stronger in any capacity than Oliver and his allies. If he was near enough that Oliver could see him, then his sword would find him.
The trouble was reaching him. In the same way that something that approached magic had allowed Oliver victory against the Emersons and Tiberius, at a time when he ought to have been obviously inferior, now that same magic, wielded by Lord Blake, worked against him. A defeated foe was suddenly stronger than it ever had been. No longer did it simply feel like the country itself worked to defend the High King, now, it actually did. Through the threads of corruption that Blake and the High King wielded, the people were being puppeted to their bidding.
Oliver had received word from Hod, informing him of the effect. The Pendragon King had found his throne, and found his fury. Every sword, every drop of gold he could lay his hands on, he was doing exactly that. Mercenaries were said to be recruited from the Verna so that he might raise an army.
The townspeople, from those Pendragon lands, across to the Treeants, and then towards the Capital, all of them were united in opinion. "King Patrick the Traitor," was the popular brand that they inflicted on his name.
He’d read that message from Hod, as blunt as anything that his Minister of Logic ever said, and he’d had to do his best to keep a straight face, despite the fact that it hurt him. The peasantry – even the peasantry! – who Oliver had always felt a kinship towards, given his own station, no matter what Silver Kingdom they inhabited, even they were united against him.
A villain above villains, that was what he was painted as.
It was hard not to crouch before the stream where he sat, and allow his heart to fall towards the depths of self pity. What had he done to deserve such a title? Had he not carried himself with honour as much as he could? If he were so honourable, then why did he deserve the position that he was in?
An easy question to ask, though it was even more easily slapped down when one looked at Dominus and Arthur, and saw the trajectory of their lives. In falling in love with Persephone, Dominus had been deemed dishonourable by the entire Kingdom, and punished for a time by the High King, before corruption had been washed away by the clear flowing streams of truth, and they had been allowed to be together. For a time. Until the High King’s jealous knife had found a belly to stab her through.
In the stream, Oliver’s tears fell, as he thought upon the past of his mentor. A man that had turned Oliver’s entire life around. A man whose teachings in the span of those short few months were still the foundation that Oliver clung to until this very day. Even now, as he struggled, he did just as Dominus did, and he isolated himself in nature, beseeching Claudia to find an answer.
"For how he served you, why would you reward him like that?" He asked her. The Fragment inside Oliver resonated with guilt.
"I do not know," Claudia said. "But I am not all powerful. I have limitations. If I intervene in one regard, then that suffering is transferred all the way downstream. Sometimes, I must let it be. His reward did come – in the form of you."
"Years and years he spent on his own, suffering," Oliver said. "And the only reward was me? A pain in the arse of an apprentice? Ha! Some reward, Claudia. He lost the woman that he loved, and his child along with her. He must have been drenched in loneliness and sadness, and filled with the bitterness for revenge, but he never once allowed those feelings to affect me. He never once counselled me against the High King, or pushed me towards revenge. He did only what he thought to be best for me. Was ever there a more honourable knight in this Kingdom? Was ever there a more decent man? And for all that he was..."
"He broke through to the Sixth Boundary," Ingolsol said mildly. "A different sort of reward. The curiosity of Claudia’s Boundaries – his honour carried him through them."
"...Hah," Oliver bit back an argument, and dried his eyes. "Perhaps. Perhaps honour did lend him that power. But honour was also the reason he laid it down, to see a village as small as Solgrim defended, when he might have turned all his strength on the High King..."
Neither had anything to say to that. Ingolsol seemed disinterested, even scornful of Oliver’s pondering, whereas Claudia’s heart, Oliver could tell, throbbed with remorse. It was wounded enough that just feeling it secondhand seemed enough to provoke tears.
The life of Dominus Patrick did not fill one with hope. To live so decently, to demonstrate such high qualities, and happiness was not his result. The same was true for Arthur. For Asabel. Despite the corruption that they battled, to the very end, they did not allow themselves to stride free away from honour.
