A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

"Those are civilians!" Oliver said, shouting despite the sword pressed against his throat. "Those children were never going to pick up a sword, nor raise a spear."

"Unfortunately, they are mere collateral. What would we do with a few hundred thousand civilians once the soldiers were dealt with?" Karstly said. "Besides… Once they saw how we killed their men, would the women really stand by? You might look down on them, Patrick, and see them as harmless, but even the smallest of felines still has claws. We've a small enough army already.

We do not need those kinds of losses."

It was the harshest of all possible reasoning. It was the product of a sharp mind, and a lagging morality. Terrifying was what Oliver found it to be. He knew Karstly was a dangerous man, but he didn't think he was this dangerous.

"How did you convince Blackwell? He at least sees the immorality in what you're committing," Oliver said.

"It didn't take much conniving," Karstly said. "Broadstone was with me, and Rainheart could see the merits. I expect it was out of respect for Khan more than anything, really. The death of that man would have made them less fearful. But how can you dismiss an enemy that is not yet buried?"

With every line that Karstly spoke, a few chains of prisoners were led up to the side of the pit, and they were promptly tossed in. The efficiency of the process only increased. The cries of terror had already reached their fervour pitch earlier on, and now their melody was far more constant. The terror transitioned slowly but surely into an all-encompassing despair.

Oliver struggled against the sword at his throat, but the clamping hand on his wrist only tightened, and the sharp blade only pressed all the more deeply.

"Don't struggle too fiercely, boy," Karstly told him. "You'll take your own head by the strength of your neck."

Such was his warning, but it was spoken by a man with all the strength of the Fourth Boundary. With such an advantageous position, there was no way for Oliver to even attempt to break free of him.

He was made to continue his watch as the seconds passed into minutes. The sword didn't slip from his neck for even a second. His head was held firmly in place. The only way he could have escaped the sight was if he'd closed his eyes, but he never opted to seize that way out. He could see the logic in Verdant's reasoning.

In seeing it happen, and allowing it to take place, he was just as guilty as the rest of his allies.

The bodies gathered, and the first of those pits began to fill up. When they were halfway full, Oliver could see the writhing bodies gathered at the bottom, even from a distance. It was like a horrific pit of snakes, as men, women and children alike all reached their necks upwards, hoping to gasp some air in their eternal fight against suffocation.

The filling of the pits halfway must have marked a turning point, for it was there that an order was finally given. The shout came from one of Lord Blackwell's men, who had been standing watching impassively with the rest of them. It was the first time in nearly half an hour that a single sound had been uttered from Lord Blackwell's direction. They'd watched like phantoms up until that point.

What exactly he said, Oliver found it difficult to make out. He only knew that it made Khan's head droop against his chest when he heard it. The pride that he'd tried to carry himself with as he rode out of the castle's gates as a prisoner had vanished. Tears stained his cheeks, and he could no longer watch.

The Verna prisoners were forced back from the sides of the pit, and the way was made for soldiers.

"What are they doing..?" Oliver asked.

"You will see," Karstly said dispassionately. The fact that he couldn't even summon up the slightest bit of emotion at the sight before them made Oliver's stomach turn in violent dispute. If not for the sword to his neck, preventing the gulping of his throat, he might have wretched there and then.

When the soldiers came, they came with spades. A good few hundred of them.

Oliver's gaze had been so fixated on the otherworldly sight of the giant pits up until that point that he had neglected to pay much attention at all to the mound of dirt that had been gathered beside them. To him, that had been a natural product of the excavation attempt. Something that had already served its purpose, to be considered no more.

But then the soldiers' spades dug into it. And with a twist of their hips, the first group threw the first dusting of their quarry down into the pit, like a chef tossing his final spices on top of the soup.

The Verna prisoners, all but exhausted from their situation at that point, unable to summon up the cries of dismay that they'd had when the whole ordeal had begun, were soon reawakened. They'd dared to think that they could not die a more grisly death. Some had even begged for the mercy of a sword or a spear to dispatch them before they were kicked in the hole to suffocate.

Now that fate seemed all the worse.

Spade by spade, the dirt pile was torn into. The groans of the damned reached through the cracks in the bodies. Those with their broken bones, and their agony, lacking the oxygen they needed even to draw their final breaths, were soon enough drowned out. The most miserable of ways to die, with their mouths dehydrated by the dry earth that they were forced to swallow.

"What…" Oliver said, unable to even finish his sentence from the horror of it. It took a fit of rage to see the words found. "What manner of cruelty is this, you bastard? If you decide they must be killed, so be it – but what purpose does their suffering serve?"

"You will see soon enough," Karstly said. Oliver could feel him shift behind him just for a second. A briefly excited patter of steps. "This is my little plan, to tell you the truth," he said in a whisper. "But that is between you and I. See the picture that I paint, Ser Patrick, and see the effect that it has."