A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

"We, is myself, and the very Emerson Prince that you fathered. We, is myself and Minister Hod of the Academy. General Blackthorn, Asabel's Pillar of War. We is myself and the Treeants that we will turn to our favour – and the Pendragons, who we will see revenge carried out on behalf of. We, is the realm, King Emerson. The inevitable result. We are those that will see it carried out," Oliver said.

"You believe that my son will fight alongside you, regardless of my pronouncement?" King Emerson said.

"Not at all," Oliver said. "I believe he already has. For it is obvious. When the moment comes, we are Stormfronters, all of us, well and truly. When the moment arose, it was no longer ambiguous. Fitzer and Hendrick acted as men of the Stormfront. That, in the end, is all that matters."

"Is that your attempt to unify us – to placate us by saying that we are all men of the Stormfront? When you head this cause, you will still placate us by saying that, if gathered so, we are all equals?"

"Do you dispute that? Do you believe that Tiberius could have been slain without the ten thousand men that your Prince and his General brought? That is not a question or agreement of equals – that is the very fact of the matter. There would have been no victory without either of them, and nor was there any discussion. We acted as the moment dictated. Tiberius was borne out of the corruption of our times. Tiberius robbed us of what ought to have been, in the very sort of just Queen that Queen Asabel proved herself to be. The beating heart of the Stormfront is what saw Tiberius slain."

"It was you that saw Tiberius slain," King Emerson said.

Oliver had no reply, other than a hard stare.

"Is that to say you state the two are one and the same?" King Emerson said, the smallest of sneers upon his lips, once more just for the benefit of the crowd, for behind the eyes, the man appeared thoughtful.

Oliver took the crown from his head, and showed it to him. "This is not my crown," he said. "I wear it only temporarily. It will disappear from my head soon enough. Justice will find itself revealed. I am no King, just a temporary protector of Queen Asabel's interests."

"Lord Protector, is it?" King Emerson said, once more, just with a hint of mockery. Some noblemen sneered, doubting him. "Forgive me, but I do not see you readily displacing the crown now that you have found cause to put it upon your own head. For that is what you did, is it not? None gave it to you – you yourself were the man that placed it there."

Oliver shrugged. "I did, for it was muddied and at my feet. It was obvious then what ought to be done, just as it is obvious now."

"Obvious only to you, it would seem. You do not wish for an alliance, King Patrick. You come here, off the back of a string of victories, and you look for subordinance. You hold an army at your back, and the threats along with it. You drag us to the negotiations table, knowing that we are in a lesser position than you."

"Indeed, you are," Oliver agreed. "Indeed, we have an army at our back. And indeed, if we wished to, the last remnants of your Emerson army would prove no obstacle. Blackthorn's men could be gathered, and the sword could be pointed at you instead, and for the sake of nothing more than destruction, could we set your lands to flame."

For the first time, Prince Hendrick looked uncertain. He'd kept himself subdued, with no true commitment to either side, he simply let the two Kings speak, but as Oliver laid his threat to bear, he started to bristle, and the doubts that had arisen to his mind in the previous days startled to bubble over. He wanted to withdraw what he said. After all, was the creature called Oliver Patrick not too volatile to wear the crown? Had they not already committed an injustice, in putting it on his head. Had they not substituted one tyrant for another?

Oliver drew his sword, and Blackthorn and Verdant were quick to do the same. That brought to bear a silence, only answered by the ringing steel of King Emerson's bodyguards, and of Fitzer's own blade, soon followed by Prince Hendrick's.

"You Emerson's are fond of the colour red, are you not? This stone could be watered with such a colour. Of the few hundred noblemen that are gathered here, we could take a good hundred or so to the grave, merely with the men that we have. Outnumbered as we are, do you doubt that we are capable of such a feat?"

Oliver let his words sink in, and he studied the look on the silent King Emerson's face. He flashed a smile that looked more like an attempt to show his teeth. "You do not," he said. "For you know that we are serious. We are beyond the point of politics. We are pressed to the point of madness. Wounded men, King Emerson, you find before you. This victory cures us not. We have lost far, far too much. We will push, until our bones are broken, and until there is not a drop of blood anymore to leak out of our wounds. Strong, our army might be, but our minds are reckless. The weight of grief will follow us for years to come."

His voice was a growl of raw emotion, impassioned, from his own haunting pain. It was easy enough to draw from, for these days, it never stayed far away from his heart. Every moment of relaxation brought easily to bear the pain of the years. Not only the passing of Queen Asabel – but the pain of all the years that he himself had suffered, and slowly been forced to remember.