A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

The professor had said, if one wished to improve the rate of healing for lighter injuries, then small amounts of exercise – if the injury was not too severe – was always advisable. What the blood carried was what saw the wound healed, and ensuring that there was enough blood flowing past that wound was always of a benefit to it.

Even if the change was only marginal, it was a marginal change that Oliver would want.

"…It's not right," Blackthorn said. "For a noble to be doing this sort of work. You sully yourself, Oliver."

"You are remarkably talkative this morning, Lady Lasha," Oliver said, as he heaved another body onto the fire. "If you stray too close, your clothes and your hair will begin to smell of smoke. There's a wind whipping. It'll catch you, even if you think yourself to be standing in the opposite direction."

"And what of you? You're going to smell far worse. You've covered yourself in filth. Did you not say when we met this morning that you wished to train?" Lasha said. "For all your goals, Ser Patrick, you're awfully quick to lower yourself into filth."

"Is this not training?" Oliver said.

"…Is it?" Lasha asked seriously. Oliver's words still weighed heavily for her when he spoke of matters of training. Though their relationship now was far closer to that of a friendship than it had been of teacher and student when they'd first met, she still seemed to consider him the same teacher, whenever it was that she needed advice.

"It is my sort of training, anyway," Oliver said. There was something about the grimness of the task that reminded him of who he'd once been. Working the shovel in Solgrim. Working in the slave pits. It was all the same. That sort of labourious work that reduced a man to nothing more than the volume of his work output.

Oliver liked that he didn't like it. It made him feel as if he was returning to the past, in some small part. It was Beam that he needed to get in touch with again, for it was Beam's desperation that led to progress.

Blackthorn slowly lowered her handkerchief.

"My lady…" Amelia cautioned. She'd been standing behind her mistress, urging her away towards other tasks, and Pauline was there, trying to do much the same. The two attendants had survived two horrific battles, just like the rest of them had – it was a wonder to Oliver that they still managed to carry out their duties so professionally.

He had thought it would be weighing on their minds far more than it was. But then he supposed, perhaps it might have been, and perhaps they were simply good at hiding it behind lively eyes.

Lady Blackthorn frowned. "Oliver, be honest with me," she said. "Are you doing this for training?"

"You likely would not call it training," Oliver said, shifting another body. "Some things are important to me, because they feel right to do. Are you not the same, Lasha? Are there not things that you would do, at times, that others would not, simply because they feel right?"

"My own men are at work beside you…" Lady Blackthorn noted. "For soldiers of my father to be reduced to such menial ghastly work, and for them to not be complaining about it…"

She was wrestling with something, and Oliver didn't know quite what. Still, he felt it necessary to make a statement. "Whatever you are thinking, you do not need to join me. In fact, I would prefer that you did not. This is not a woman's work. I think Gordry would see me executed if I let you get covered in this sort of filth."

Apparently, that was entirely the wrong thing to say to a woman like Blackthorn. She was frowning now, and she was tucking her handkerchief inside her pocket.

"My Lady!" Amelia said in alarm. "You'll ruin your clothes! We don't have enough sets for one pair to be permanently ruined."

"Captain Patrick said it was fine, my Lady, why not listen to him?" Pauline said tentatively.

"I might have been a corpse like that, if not for him," Lady Blackthorn said harshly, pulling off her sword belt, and handing it to her attendants.

"There's no meaning in this…" Amelia said, staring at the slender sword that sat in her hands.

"I will do it anyway," Lady Blackthorn said. She stepped forward, and grabbed a corpse, thoughts of her disgust forgotten. She grunted from the weight of the swollen flesh, but with a readjustment of her grip, it started to move again. Oliver watched her with a conflicted look on her face.

Then, she hurled the corpse into the fire, creating a cloud of sparks, the same as those that happened as the other soldiers put their corpses on the fire.

And they were watching. One couldn't help but watch when a woman like Lady Blackthorn was engaged in such a grisly task. It felt like a form of sacrilege. At times, Oliver had heard her curse her own beauty, for how it made other people see her, but he thought that to be a misplaced anger.

"Lasha…" Oliver said, shaking his head. "You're always so damn troublesome, aren't you?"

She didn't respond. She'd chosen then to go silent, as was convenient for her. If Lasha Blackthorn didn't have something to say, then she wouldn't say anything at all. She was such a single-minded woman that it was almost unfair.

"Sorry, everyone," Oliver said, apologizing to the onlooking soldiers as they watched the sin against all that the Gods had created unfold. "It doesn't seem like I have the command over her that I should have."

She tutted hearing him. "Don't make it a question of command only when it's convenient to you, Oliver. That isn't fair."

"Ah, but you heard that line, did you?" Oliver said. "Very well, Lasha, if you're to work, then make sure you do it right. Even if we're assigned to the worst of tasks, the Patrick men will do it better than any other. There may be few of us, but we know the filth better than the many. We won't buckle or complain at a task like this."