A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

And when it was all done, he raised his fist up in the air once again, and once again, the Stormfront men echoed his call, with the loudest cheers that they had delivered that day.

"""AWOOOOO! AWOOOO! AWOOOOO!"""

With that shout, the ground shook, and the winds trembled. That cry must have been heard for miles around, Oliver supposed. It deafened his ears. With its announcement, all knew, whether they wished to or not, that the battle was done, and the Stormfront had gained its victory by the hands of General Karstly.

From the boulder that he stood on, Oliver looked down on his men. He met Verdant's eyes. The ex-priest seemed to be bearing his own look of expectation. "Well, my Lord?" He asked, unable to bear the silence. His enthusiasm, when it was allowed to truly build, was as devastating as one of those tidal waves that the God Bohemothia was famed for delivering.

"I have much to do," Oliver said, clenching his fist, and gritting his teeth – but there was a smile through those gritted teeth. His eyes sparkled with purple and gold, and he felt a want fill his chest.

The image of Karstly on the mountain top, surrounded by his men, as they cheered for him in their victory – it was firmly fixed in his mind. Oliver did not imagine that he would forget it anytime soon.

There was a strangeness to the feeling that Oliver found it hard to put his finger on. At once, he was terrified, seeing just how far he needed to go. At another, he was frustrated, as he reviewed how he'd spent his time, and he questioned whether he'd done all he could. In another beat of his heart, and another thought, however, he felt at peace. That look in Verdant's eyes – that expectancy.

It was the same look that Blackthorn bore. It was the same look too that Jorah wore. So too had Nila looked towards Oliver with the same look, at times, as had Queen Asabel.

Expectancy. He felt it was hundreds of eyes that had looked at him by now, and saddled him with the same weight of that expectation. It was that man, atop the newly captured mountain that they compared him to. It was Karstly – and beyond him – that they supposed he could reach.

It was twofold. It doubt, and it was hope. There was something beyond him, and now he saw it, even as he saw the distance that he would have to travel to achieve it. Then there were all their eyes. There was expectancy – and expectancy was intimidating, but behind expectancy, if he dared to peel back its curtain, he could see the faint shower of belief that powered it.

Too many men, and too many great women, all of which he respected, seemed to believe that he could reach that same impossible height.

It was beyond beautiful, beyond all he'd imagined. Karstly was a mere man, until he was intoxicated by the moment that he'd spawned. Then the men that surrounded him – as they bellowed their cries of victory – elevated him to beyond the status of a man. All eyes, no matter where they stood, looked up to him. They made him seem higher than he was. They made him seem more man than God.

That was the pinnacle that those expectations of Oliver Patrick pushed him towards.

Dominus, at times, had given him a similar look with those aged eyes of his. He would grow quiet, and look him up and down when he thought Oliver wasn't watching. Then he'd grunt, he'd shrug his shoulders, and he'd murmur to himself. "Maybe… Just maybe, Arthur. He might be able to reach it."

Now he was closer than ever, and the eyes that looked at Oliver and saw his future glowed brighter than ever. There was hardly any room for Oliver's own doubts when the eyes of his men were lighting the way for it.

"Mark my words, soldiers of mine!" Oliver spoke, from atop his boulder, to the crowd of seven hundred men that had gathered nearby, both Patrick and Lombard soldiers. "That mountain, one day – I shall see it climbed."

He said it with such conviction that the words themselves burned his throat. He'd never had a more powerful feeling of destiny in all his life. Standing there, atop the boulder as he was, gazing up towards the mountain upon which his ideal stood… It was his dream in physical form. It had always been something fleeting, but Karstly had made it something solid.

To Oliver's surprise, when he spoke those words that were meant for him alone, his men stirred.

They had raised their fists for Karstly's victory, and they'd shouted with him, but they had not shouted as loud as they would have had they been a part of dealing the final blow. The Patrick men that heard him – they were part of these grand claims that he made.

"But of course, my Lord," Verdant said, bowing his head to hide the smile that sat on his lips.

"Ain't that obvious, Captain?" Firyr said. "We're just getting started. It's a long campaign yet, we'll show that pissin' General just what we can do when we get going."

"Even your hand did not slow you," Lady Blackthorn said, still unable to forget the injury that dangled so clearly in front of her. "I can not imagine that even the Gods themselves could, Ser Patrick."

Even those that did not speak, they found themselves nodding. Yorick had barely served with them for a matter of weeks, and still he found himself nodding too. There was something about the Patrick forces that even an outsider was able to get a sense of. They couldn't put their finger on it exactly, but they knew it was something forceful, something that wouldn't allow them to stay in place forever.

Even a handful of the Blackthorn men grunted in begrudging acknowledgement.

Then there came Lombard, who Oliver would have expected criticism from. The man was never one for fanfare. Especially when it came to speaking out of turn like this. He was a man of action, not emotion.