A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

VOLUME THREE - PART TWO

"…" Oliver looked at his hand. The same hand that he had shattered barely a day ago. It ought to have been the same mangled mess that he had gone to sleep with, and indeed, for the most part, it was.

With a great amount of effort, he tried to repeat what he'd just managed. He'd had the strangest dream, and he wasn't sure how much of what he'd experienced then had been his imagination.

His nose twitched from the pain, and his jaw tensed. Indeed, that was a nasty injury. Not the sort of hand that would be in use any time soon. Yet, his imagination had not deceived him. His little finger had moved by the smallest margin.

He tried again. The next finger over moved. Then his middle finger moved. Then his index finger, then his thumb. Each movement came with the most frightful amount of pain, but they had moved regardless.

With a sigh, he fell back into bed.

"Asabel…" he muttered to himself. He could think of no explanation. That golden-haired woman had haunted his dreams. He'd imagined her kneeling by a shrine of a religion that would have labelled her a mage, and she'd heard her pleading with the Gods on his behalf.

She could not have known that he was injured, but she'd cried regardless, and she'd reached for him, enough that he'd almost felt her fingers on his cheek as she slept.

His left hand was a complete mess, but the fact that he could move his fingers at all was a frightening fact. Yesterday, such an attempt would have been impossible. Verdant had set the bones as best he could, but Oliver had studied his Field Medicine course at the Academy for long enough to know that bones did not heal overnight.

Even if you'd set the fingers, there was no chance of them being moved for a good while.

At worst, Oliver's hand now felt like no more than a bad strain. The more he turned it at the wrist, the less he felt its pain.

He shook his head, breathing out the relief. In truth, though he had kept it well hidden from his allies, the fact of his hand had been a matter of immense concern. He knew that it wasn't a simple fracture of the finger bones. He had been able to feel too many small pieces beneath his skin for that. It was far too messy a break for there to be any hopes of proper healing.

"That Asabel, she does not even know what a miracle she is," he said. Even if no one would have believed him, had he said what had happened aloud, he still knew it to be true. The dream had been far too real. Hundreds of miles away, this was the best that she could do for him. "It's more than enough, Asabel," he said. "You have done far too much.

I will not make such a mistake again."

That slightest amount of leeway that was all that he needed to be offered. Even without it, he had been prepared to take Khan's head, even if it meant that he needed to practice exclusively with his left hand. Now, for a certainty, he thought he would be back to reasonable health within the span of a week.

"What a strange world we wander through," Oliver murmured to himself, still feeling the oddness of head that comes with the dream state. He was reluctant to rise up out of his low bed so soon. His tent was still nice and dark, and his body was achy from all the fighting and movement that they had endured the last couple of days.

His thoughts fell back to his dreams. Asabel had not been the only face that had haunted him in them. He'd seen a woman of silver hair, and he'd seen a man with golden eyes. They'd been fleeting, and it had made Oliver's head pound to merely look at them. He would have called that a nightmare, had familiar faces not followed so soon.

He'd seen Blackthorn, and he'd seen Khan, both readying themselves for the start of true battle, both of them placing their hearts on the line, and making evident their convictions. The familiarity of Blackthorn had come as a relief, but the warmness of Asabel that had followed was the true cure from the unsettling start of that dream.

She had only stayed but a short while, and she'd left him with her tears, and her healing. Then the dream had moved on again.

He'd seen Greeves fighting with a bottle. The man was eyeing it, and the brown liquid inside it, as it sat on the table. He'd been pretending not to notice one of his maids peering through the doorway to watch him. Eventually, he'd grunted, and he'd grabbed the bottle by the neck, hurling it into the fire, and birthing an explosion of flames.

"You little bastard," he'd said. "Fucking… Bastard…"

He'd sniffed then, and he'd wiped his eyes, and he'd stood, before the tears could overtake him. And then Oliver's dreams had whisked him elsewhere.

He knew who was coming before he even saw her. He'd caught a flash of red. The ordinary man might have seen red, and thought blood, and thus fallen into fear. But in red, Oliver would always find comfort, not least because it was upon blood that he had crawled his way up out of the dirt, but because iit was on red that a dear friend had kept the colour of her wild hair.

"It's heading your way, Mistress Felder!" Came the call.

Nila was downwind, her back pressed against a tree, and her heart thudding. She still had the thrill of the chase, despite how commercial her hunting had ended up becoming.

There was a stirring in the undergrowth, and then there exploded out a giant stag, the subject of that day's hunt. A rarity of the likes most hunters would never see. A stag of the purest white.