A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

The men followed Oliver further into the woods away from the trial, looking for somewhere thick and untrodden where they might question the man. That place proved hard to find, though. Now that they'd gotten so deep, there seemed to be a path in every direction that they walked. Multiple different routes converged towards a single point where Oliver could only assume the camp to be. Enjoy more content from My Virtual Library Empire

It was a compromise they had to make – a spot a reasonable distance between two paths. Oliver forced the man's back against the tree a little too hard, enough to win him. Then his sword was pointing against the man's chest, as Oliver's other men caught up, drawing swords of their own, pointing it towards the same man.

"Speak anything above a whisper, and my sword goes straight through you," Oliver told the man. The man took that pronouncement as a command and nodded vigorously.

The drink tainted the fear leaking off him just a little. It wasn't as potent a scent as the archer that he'd killed in the woods, but it was strong enough. Enough to attempt to exert Ingolsol's Command over him. No doubt those added swords that Oliver had brought with him were helping.

"How close are we to your camp?" Oliver asked him.

"A minute or two of walking," the man said, clearly and concisely, as though he was trying to be as informative as possible. "Less than that if you ran it."

"How many people?"

"Near a hundred now, I expect," the man said.

Oliver shared a look with the other men. His earlier fear had been confirmed. He could see from the white of their faces that they understood just how serious that was. Had this ambush gone undiscovered, having a hundred men pressing against their rear, forget heavy losses, they could have been faced with total annihilation.

"You boys have anything else to ask him?" Oliver said, turning the questioning over to the others. He found all that he wished to know. The rest he would discern with his own two eyes.

"How well-armed are you?" Rofus asked.

"Some good, some bad," the man shrugged almost casually, before remembering there was a sword at his chest, allowing his fear to return again. "Some spears. Lots of axes. Little armour."

"A peasant force all the way through," Rofus noted. "These seem less like bandits and more just dissatisfied villagers."

"We was promised gold for it," the man continued, without anyone asking him to, "said it would be worth our while – rebelling that is. But we've been freezing our feet off for weeks an' ain't seen no sign of no gold nor even food on most days."

Ingolsol's Command over the man jolted him into spilling more than they'd asked for. Information about their situation and their state of mind. Oliver could sympathise. If it was as the man said, and they were just peasants lured in by the appeal of gold, then how much different were they to him? He'd come from the same place, the hard winters, counting coppers.

He knew he'd have leapt at an opportunity if it presented itself.

"You've looted over twenty caravans," Rofus said hotly, holding his sword to his neck, "don't be looking for sympathy now. You attacked a village just the week before, made off with their livestock and killed a good few working men."

"It's not less than the Yarmdon do," the man said back. "We're raiders of a different sort."

"The Yarmdon don't raid their own," Rofus growled. "They've laws against that. You want to go raiding, then go raid the Yarmdon. Go and raid the eastern border. They'd praise you for that. Here you're just a criminal."

The man had no reply for that. He was barely conscious. With the drink and Oliver's hold over him, he wasn't really there. He was less a man, and more an instrument that expressed all a man had kept hidden. "This is the worst," the man said. The fear was still hovering about him like a bad smell, but his voice didn't sound afraid.

It seemed detached from his circumstances. "After all this, I'm just going to be killed in the woods like a dog."

The detached pronouncement caught the other men off guard. Even a soldier couldn't meet his own death so straightforwardly. If that was his route – resolute acceptance of his own demise – then why bother answering the questions that they'd given? It didn't make sense to them, nor should it have. There was no reason for a drunken man that they'd just captured to be so obedient.

Oliver was faced with a dilemma. Their cause seemed almost a sympathetic one. Raiding as the Yarmdon did, in order to find a better winter for themselves. It was understandable. They seemed far too human to declare resolutely as the enemy, as absolutely irredeemable.

"Off with his head, boy," Ingolsol said. "Come. Come. You owe me this. Don't try to go soft and save that which doesn't need saving. Your blade needs an outlet."

"He has committed many a crime," Claudia said, "it would be justification for punishment, but progress and compassion run arm in arm. If given the opportunity, he might become a better man because of his crimes, not in spite of them."

They were both salient arguments, though he got the feeling Claudai was not advocating strongly either way. He got a hint of resignation from her tone, as though she realized that even optimism here had its limits. Eventually, an end would need to be put to a criminal's road and it was not for her to judge the punishers, just as she withheld too strong a judgement on the criminals themselves.

It was a difficult position to be in, once one got thinking about it. In the heat of battle it was one thing, to have a weapon pointed at you and to take a man's life in self-defence. But as soon as you learned of a man and you started to empathise with him and it became a stronger and stronger choice to let him live… It weighed on you.