A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

The man had suffered in every waking moment, and somehow, he had pulled himself together enough to smile. Is that a wisdom Oliver could say that he had adhered to? He didn't think so. He suffered in silence, and thought that to be bravery. He had a hint of pride that he was able to conceal his suffering so well. But he was not Dominus.

All the little things that Dominus had taught Oliver, he had not gone all that way yet.

He wondered if that was the weakness that Blackwell and Karstly had seen in him – the weakness of heart, preventing him from going any further in Command, or as a strategist. He wondered if they realized it was something more fundamentally wrong with him.

The only teaching he had absorbed well and truly from Dominus were his teachings of the sword. Oliver had focused on those alone, as if they were a kind of salvation. He had contented himself with the fact that, as he progressed, and he grew stronger, he would be keeping more of Dominus with him.

'And yet, where is he?'

Oliver looked over the crowd, and all he saw were greedy faces. Up the steps he went, and all around him were crows in search of carrion. He'd become what some of his men dared to call a hero, for all his achievements. But was a hero such a beaten piece of pottery?

Not even good steel – just a pot, filled with cracks, already leaking water before it had achieved a fraction of what he had boasted of, or what others expected of him.

The den of his enemy – how could Oliver look through it, and know that it ought to have been Dominus here, with the High King kneeling before him, acknowledging his worth, his wisdom, the supreme strength that had passed even Arthur's talent.

How could the High King be so blind to see who the man was? How could the whole country be so blind as to see it? The tragedy that was Dominus Patrick was so profound that it carved a wound in Oliver's heart deep enough, in the span of a mere few months, that it rivalled the claw marks that he had been delivered when he had lost his family.

And now, both of those wounds, they had never healed. He had never properly come to terms with either. Dominus had praised him for resisting Ingolsol's touch, but Oliver knew that was all he had done – he had merely resisted it all. He couldn't say he had ever come to terms with it. He'd taken pride in the fact of his resistance, for Oliver Patrick was a stubborn boy, but Beam was even more stubborn.

He recalled how he'd gotten the name from his slave master. The second name of many. "Yer as stubborn as a bloody boulder, you little bastard. But you ain't got the solidness of a boulder either. Yer just a lump of wood, thinking itself to be stubborn, holding a bit of the weight of the ceiling. Beam – aye, that's what you are.

Nothing more, nothing less, no thoughts in your head. Just being stubborn. Now, you try and be stubborn under the whip, and see what it gets you."

There was a name before Beam, however. If he thought of Dominus, he thought of that name. He could almost hear the child's laughter, running through the crowd, fighting against their envy, with the whimsy that only youth could have.

The anger that Oliver had so feared, when he had first came here, and when he thought he might turn his blade on the High King… He wanted that back. The sadness was not something he could do anything with. The sadness was a chain, binding him in place. At least anger could burn. At least it could bring about the destructive change that his heart claimed it so wished for.

He reached the top of the stairs, and finally, as the guardsmen halted in place, acknowledging that they could go no further, did Oliver lay his eyes on the High King.

"…"

He gritted his teeth. Felt the emotions swirling through him. The oscillating between the urge to swat the entire building down with a giant wrathful hand, and the urge to simply turn on his heel there and then, and give way to the overwhelming sadness that he felt.

'Why now?' Oliver thought once more. 'Gods be damned, why did I have to remember all this now?'

The High King wasn't big enough, he wasn't monstrous enough, and he didn't stir Oliver's heart enough for him to be satisfied. If only he could have put all his rage onto the man, and all his sadness, it would have been so much easier.

But as he stood there, Oliver could see that he wasn't enough. He was nowhere near equal to the post that he was meant to represent. From a distance, when he was viewed as a symbol, he was as large as the entirety of the Stormfront, but here, at the other end of the throne room, he was nothing.

The Generals that stood beside him, having already received their rewards, they were the far more noteable men. If Oliver could have felt an anger towards them, they might have been capable of securing the full burden of it.

Karstly, with that knowing smile of his, he seemed to invite such hate… But Oliver could not summon it. For all Karstly had done, he had not acted with malice towards Oliver. Indeed, he had an interest in seeing Oliver develop. His methods were just a barbarity that Oliver could not agree with, but he was not sure enough in himself that he could have posed an alternative path.

Was any man so sure?

Death surrounded Oliver as he walked that final distance down into the throne room. Dominus should have been there, but Lombard ought to have been there too. Lombard and Tolsey – those were deaths on Oliver's hands. Just the memory of them was enough to make him shake. He still had not come to terms with any of it.

How could Dominus have managed to sit as he had, after knowing what had been done to Arthur? How could he not give in entirely to the rage, as Oliver wished to?