A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

"How deep do you want this hole?" Oliver found himself asking.

The Sergeant saluted at the question. A courtesy that a different Sergeant hadn't spared Firyr later on. He supposed there was a limit even to the daringness of a Sergeant operating on the General's orders.

"Twenty feet deep, Ser, we were told," the Sergeant said.

"Twenty feet, is it? Very well," Oliver said, he nodded with a polite smile, as if he was asking for the price of a particular item at a stall, but inside, his sickness only began to grow. What a mountain of bodies they would be creating. With every stab of his spade, he lent deeper to what would most certainly be a most nightmarish slaughter.

"Damn it, Captain, you're fast with a spade," Firyr said, dragging Oliver's attention back to the world around him. The more troubled his thoughts had grown, the more he'd put what was left of his mind into his spade, and the faster he had begun to go.

Now he had to look up at Firyr, as the Commander stood on the edge of the grave that he had created. "We're done, you know. Our shift is over. Did you not hear them shouting?"

"Hard to hear much down here," Oliver joked. He had to jump just to reach the sides. He guessed that grave to be around ten feet. He looked around, and he saw not a single other grave beginning to approach that depth. Three feet, at most, was the average.

There were a number of pickaxes that had been scattered around – evidence of the trouble the men had encountered when they got deeper, and the earth began to get even harder.

"The men will have been moved by your efforts, Captain," the Sergeant said, as he relieved Oliver from his duty. "As will Lord Blackwell, I am sure. Most did not expect the nobility to—Ah, meaning no offence, of course."

"None taken," Oliver said, giving the man a firm slap of reassurance on his shoulder. "You'll have to pick whatever man you like best to see my work continued," he said with a grin.

As soon as he turned away, that grin was gone as quickly as a leaf on the wind. His stomach was on the verge of overturning itself. Even in this, just as he had done with his sword, he had managed to contribute most to the demise of the Verna. Victory, bit by bit, was beginning to adopt a sour flavour.

"My Lord," Verdant greeted him, joined by the rest of the Patrick men who'd been chosen from the next shift.

"It might be as we feared, Verdant," Oliver told him, dropping his voice to let the words loose.

Verdant managed to keep his voice as solid as stone, but the troubled nature of his pale blue eyes was a more difficult matter to hide. He was a man that seemed to be capable of retaining his calm no matter the occasion. But this, for him, like it had Oliver, or perhaps even more so, seemed to trouble him. "…It would seem so," he said. "No matter how I spin it in my head. I can see no other reason.

Nor can they," he pointed to the nearest Verna encampment. "I have heard their women begin to weep, and their men talk with sorrow in their voices. Their children wander lost – they don't understand. Even in their culture, it seems they see the mercy in sparing children the details of a gruesome fate."

"There has to be something else," Oliver said. "Lord Blackwell did not seem to be of the mind when I saw him. This is too sudden a shift."

"Did he truly not?" Verdant asked. "Was there no moment when he might have seemed swayed."

At Verdan''s urging, Oliver did remember. That single instant where Blackwell's arms had tensed, and his face had sunken in on itself, as if it had been drained of blood. As if there was a war between mind and sword, and the sword had won out.

"I can see from the look on your face that whatever you have remembered is not something promising," Verdant said. "You will have to forgive me, my Lord. It would seem we are wanted."

Verdant was hurried along with his spade, along with the rest of the men. Oliver was dragged in a different direction, made to put a distance between himself and the grave that he'd already begin to dig.

Still, he found he could hardly tear his eyes away from it. The more he walked, the broader his perspective grew. The more soldiers he saw digging. Thousands of them, all scoured across the sand, digging up that soil that must have been untouched for hundreds of years.

They'd only just won their victory days before, and already the Stormfront men had made sure that the earth would remember their passing through.

At his encampment, he was surprised to find food already waiting for him. Not food from their own supplies, but food delivered from within the castles. The stock of the different Generals, apparently, to give thanks to those that had put in work, even with it being beneath their station.

At the first, Amelia and Pauline had made themselves useful seeing it served. The Patrick forces had few enough attendants brought with them, so that help was usually welcome. Otherwise, it would have fallen to another one of the soldiers to see the work done.

Lady Blackthorn hovered near them, armoured lightly, with a helm under her arm, and gauntlets on her wrist. She'd left herself free of a breastplate, however. A rare instance of her treating herself.

"Ser Patrick," Pauline called. "Thank you for your work. Would you care for some food?"

Oliver wrinkled his nose. "It seems far too hot for the likes of stew."

"You can wait for it to cool," Amelia said. "We'll leave yours at the bottom of the pot, and wait to see whether the flies or the cold get to it first."

"Ever helpful," Oliver said dryly.

"Amelia," Lady Blackthorn said sternly. "Not now."

"It was a jest, my Lady… Apologies," Amelia said, seeming embarrassed by the rebuke, as she often was.

"Oliver?" Blackthorn said. She spoke his name close enough to him that none other could hear.

He turned to her, seeing the trouble in her eyes, and the danger in the way she carried herself.

"Blackthorn…" Oliver said slowly, uncertainly.