A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

There came murmurs of agreement from his men as he said so. The Blackthorn men stared at them in bemusement, wondering why on earth those soldiers would be puffing out their chests in pride. Yorick's men too, who had been forced to work amongst them, as part of the same army, wore very similar expressions.

Lasha looked up, as if reading something into Oliver's words that he hadn't intended to put there. She felt an outsider, when she saw all the others giving the veteran men the same look. She thought she had understood them, but there were times, like this, when it seemed as if there was a different sort of tongue that Oliver spoke that only they understood.

It was the same tongue that he spoke to the villagers with, and at times, Nila. It was the same tongue that had made the sparks of jealousy flutter in her heart for the briefest of moments, before she hurried to quash it.

"Heave!" Oliver said.

"Heave!" Firyr echoed, putting two corpses to his shoulders. "Haha! You see that, Karesh? The Patrick men do the most with the fewest!"

"That's right, we do. Heave!" Karesh said, throwing two on one shoulder, before staggering, and attempting to get a third on the next. He just barely managed it, and the proud look on his face was evidence of his competitive streak.

"Nghh…" Firyr rushed to the fire with long strides and rid himself of his burden, before hurrying to the pile and trying for four corpses. He almost managed it, but in the end, he staggered on three, just as Karesh had.

Jorah shook his head, seeing their pointless competition. The other ex-slaves and peasants strode past him, throwing corpses over their shoulders as if they were no more than sacks of meat. They, like Oliver, knew the filth. Some of them knew it even worse than he. The peasantry had to fight merely for the sake of keeping their bellies from remaining eternally empty.

They had to debase themselves as low as they could go if they wanted to continue living.

And indeed, that was the pride that Lasha saw. The pride that Oliver had occasionally spoke of – the pride of being a peasant. She put it together in her head as she watched them, feeling her understanding of her Captain grow, if only by the slightest degree. It was another phenomenon to attach to the name 'Beam' that she had heard the others occasionally slip and call him.

It was the voice of that which, at times, she had felt speak to her, and demand more from her.

She threw herself back into her work with more reassurance in her hands. At first, it had been anger that had motivated her past the filth, but now, she wondered if she didn't feel the same sort of pride as the rest of them.

There was something about being willing to do what others could not that seemed a source of strength, rather than the weakness of the simple-minded that most nobles dismissed it as.

"…Have I missed something?" Verdant asked upon his return. It had been his duty to report the state of the Patrick supplies to Karstly's retainers, so that the store men could form their accounts. He'd barely been gone an hour, and yet he'd been made to return to such a scene.

Pauline and Amelia shook their heads, both of them looking thoroughly destitute. With every minute that passed, the state of Lasha Blackthorn's appearance was reduced further. They winced, seeing the blood and filth mat her hair, her face, and her clothes.

"We're going to have to find hot water for a bath," Pauline said, sounding as if she was fighting a battle of her own.

"I think we will need more than one bath, Pauline," Amelia said.

"Oh! Verdant. You're back. How goes it? Are we due anything extra?" Oliver asked.

Verdant shook his head. "Our supplies are still all in order. We've not lost a single carriage. I've been told that no extra will be sent our way, save for a portion of the Verna spices that we have uncovered amongst their stores."

"Spices, is it?" Oliver said, wrinkling his nose. "I'll leave you in charge of those."

Even after spending so many years at the Academy, he hadn't grown much of a taste for the dishes with spices in. Even the likes of pepper was too fragment for his tastes. He preferred to keep his meals simple. His body seemed to tolerate those simple meals best.

"I had thought that such talk wouldn't excite you," Verdant said with a smile. "It seems that work here is proceeding swiftly. You've made a remarkable dent already in the portion of the body pile allotted to us."

"We have," Oliver agreed. "We could do with another fire, though. This work is inevitably limited by how fast the corpses can burn. Grizzly thing to talk about, isn't it, Lord Idris?"

Verdant laughed, hearing that. Oliver had caught him taking off his gloves, and had chosen only then to call him by his proper title. Verdant knew it to be Oliver's way of poking fun at him, as he sought to join in the messy affair.

"I couldn't bother you to look after my gloves, could I?" Verdant asked of Amelia. "The leather, of all that I am wearing, seems the least likely to be cleanable."

"Cleanable?" Amelia replied, accepting the gloves with a wrinkle of her nose. "Lord Idris, I hope that whatever clothes you wear carrying out such a task are clothes that you see burned."

So it was that the Patrick men put all the strength they had available into carrying out their duties with a swiftness. Oliver's rallying speech – though he hadn't really intended it as such – had motivated the men to a considerable degree. They ended up carrying out their work twice as fast as the three hundred man unit next to them.