A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

Oliver could practically see the hate that those words contained. It made him shudder to think of. In a few short moves, Karstly and Blackwell had earned the ire of an entire nation. But he still did not yet understand why.

Lord Blackwell met his gaze. "That is the right of things, honoured foe," he said to Khan. "That is the path allowed to you. Now I will allow another one, contingent upon the word that you have offered me. Go to your people, and see the survivors that you can dig out."

"The spoils are spoiled," Firyr noted with dry humour. "Weren't we meant to loot all those cities that General Blackwell captured? Now… Now I don't think any of us want to go pissin' near them."

Oliver found that to be succinctly put. For Firyr, it was almost poetic. Indeed, the events of the previous two days had left a sour taste in the mouth of all the soldiers.

It was a strategic victory of the likes that the Stormfront hadn't seen in likely hundreds of years. At the very least, even after both Oliver and Verdant racked their brains, hoping for something to compare it to, they'd been unable to come up with a single battle in the last hundred years that had managed to draw up such significance.

Five cities they'd been given, with the promise that their soldiers would be sent fleeing from their walls. To that General Blackwell had given a promise of his own – that none of the citizens who remained would be harmed. That the Verna residents would be treated as well as any Stormfront citizen back home.

Of course, now few believed those words. After witnessing the horror that had come with the burying alive of so many men, it was impossible to blame the Verna for looking at them with such hate-filled eyes.

They'd let Khan do what he could for the survivors in the pit. He'd gathered as many of his freed soldiers as he was allowed – and he was allowed nearly a thousand – but no matter how far they dug, they were unable to rescue all the bodies that had been put in there. Nearly half were dead, and a good quarter were injured. The rest, undoubtedly, were traumatized.

Their gazes were vacant, always searching for some faraway place on the end of the horizon.

But indeed, five cities had come of it, along with the promise of a temporary treaty spanning three years. That was as long as they had to draw up the new border.

The Stormfront territory had been expanded by vast amounts. From their battlefield, all the way down towards the Lonely Mountain where Karstly's remaining troops still stood, and even beyond it.

"If the Verna lands were a fat pig, then the cities that Blackwell has chosen, and the territory that comes with it are the butchers knife that digs straight through the belly of that pig," Verdant had told them, when the men had requested an explanation for the significance of their victory.

Indeed, it was like beginning a battle with a detachment of cavalrymen in arrow formation, already burrowed into the heart of the enemy numbers.

It stood to reason that Khan had been so reluctant to give them what they wished for. It was five cities – that much they might have managed to accomplish by extending the fruits of their victory and marching and laying siege on each one. But five cities positioned with strategic perfection, that was beyond them.

"Blackwell and Karstly will have made him that offer," Verdant had said, when Oliver and his officers had tried to make sense of it after the fact. "They will have said, it's these five cities, or the slaughter of your troops."

"And… I suppose, Khan thought himself ready to standby and let those troops die," Jorah ventured. "But he was unable to."

"Khan realized that this one victory wasn't enough to spell an end to the Verna," Oliver said. "They're far from being a unified country. The numbers we faced were simply all they managed to come up with, as a result of the threat that Lord Blackwell had dealt them last campaign. But there were still holdouts amongst them.

Fielding another army of a hundred thousand is far from an impossibility for them. They could even go higher, if there was someone that could bring all those different houses together."

"Strategically, a loss of a hundred thousand here, even if it meant the deaths of their civilians as well, would have been the lesser end of the spectrum for the Verna," Verdant said. "But I suppose, Khan didn't anticipate the cruelty. Perhaps he'd thought that it was Lord Blackwell that he was dealing with…"

"Unmistakably, that plan bears the hand of Karstly," Oliver agreed. "He admitted it himself. If he was able to twist Khan's arm up his back. It ought to be worthy of admiration… I mean – look at what he has achieved. To say that we're capable of conquering all of the Verna lands from here on out wouldn't be an overstatement.

In fact, if things are left as they are, that's exactly what will end up happening. But…"

"But he's a villain," Lady Blackthorn finished for them. "To do what he did – it doesn't matter what we won. He tortured thousands to death. There were children there, Oliver…"

"I saw them," Oliver said. He didn't think he'd be able to forget the sight of them. "Perhaps if we'd moved more quickly…"

"Then what would have happened, my Lord?" Jorah said, tossing a stone onto the fire. "We would only have made matters worse. If we'd interrupted their plans, more civilians would have ended up being killed to make up for those interruptions and the losses that they might have incurred. From the start, we were in checkmate."

The sword that had arrived so quickly at Oliver's neck that second he had chosen to move illustrated that point more perfectly than anything else. Their plan had been so complete that they had managed to even take rogue elements into account."

"Are we so predictable..?" Oliver lamented.