A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor-Chapter 613: The Day Before The Mission - Part 7

In honour of the man, whose achievements the world still had not grasped, Oliver told them. Not because Lancelot was the man asking, but because Asabel was there to listen. Of all the people in the world, he felt that she would have understood the magnitude of all that Dominus had achieved.

Perhaps, even, if her goals ever came to fruition, she could have his life – at least that part – recorded for that which it truly was.

Asabel was looking at him expectantly. Her eyes screamed the question. He hadn’t managed to give her any interesting stories the last she had asked him. He wondered if this would suffice. Pointedly, he looked away from Lancelot and spoke to her instead, as he wondered if she understood his intentions.

"He told me that he sought the Pandora Goblin in a rage, after finding what it had done to Arthur," Oliver said. "He regretted not being there to fight alongside his friend. He wounded it, but was caught in return. The creature threw him all the way into the nearby woods. It must have assumed him dead, because it didn’t search for him. Or maybe it knew that it’s poison would kill him eventually."

"He wounded it?" Lancelot said in disbelief. There was a hint of incredulity in his voice, but Oliver noted that the man did not outright deny it. He seemed to have far more respect for Dominus Patrick than he let on.

He thought the little bit of information might have pleased the Princess, but it only succeeded in making her terribly sad. "For a swordsman that was not a Pendragon to go as far as Dominus Patrick did… It boggles the mind. It is terribly sad that he was not given the full recognition that he deserved before he died."

Apparently, the Pendragons had a strong lineage of accomplished swordsmen. They’d given birth to more than a handful of century-defining Swords. It was rumoured that they had something special within their lineage, a different kind of Blessing – a generational kind, passed on from father to son.

To achieve the heights of swordsmanship that they had without it… Only now that Oliver was beginning to learn of such things that he truly realized how special the man Dominus Patrick had been, and how lucky he was to have had him as a teacher.

"If you ever make it to the High Crown, Princess, I’d ask that you remember him properly," Oliver said. "I do not know why the events of the Pandora Conquest were ordered a state secret, but the fact does nothing to endear me to this High King of ours. If you say that you’ll compete with him, then I do not need much of an excuse to support you – though I do not know how you will do it."

"Politics, for the most part," Asabel said, as though the very thought of it exhausted her. "To build this new Kingdom that has been given into something powerful. I do not think my father will be granting me a Full Inheritance any time soon, so I have very little choice in that matter."

"Your father… How did he take it?" Verdant asked tentatively.

Asabel gave a brave smile. "Not well."

There was a sympathetic look in return from the priest. "You have my admiration, Princess. You have done well, though such a short time has passed. My father praises you highly in his letters to me."

"I have done nought worthy of praise yet, though I thank him all the same," Asabel said, "if times were different, I might be able to move more quickly… but, as one might expect, it is not only my father that did not approve of my decision. My fellow Silver Kings are unhappy, as are my friends amongst them.

The Lordlings that I’ve befriended have mostly turned away from me, as have many of my other friends."

She said all that with a straight face, not allowing any of her true emotion to leak out, but Oliver thought that, just beyond his eyes, he could glimpse a terrible sadness. It was the same manner of connection that he’d seen in the villagers all that time ago, that he’d even begun to feel on the Command board. Experience tales at novelbuddy

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That slight reaching that he did with the fingers of Claudia and Ingolsol, enabling him to inadvertently near the essences of others.

"Princess Asabel," he said, unaware that his eyes had begun to twinkle, as though he were on the battlefield. "If the High King moves against you, as he did against me… If he searches for your life, like he did mine…"

Even uttering that sentence was enough to get him hung. In a room full of retainers, it was an incredibly foolish thing to do. But they’d spoken of the High King already and he could see in Asabel what the man had reduced them to, though he’d never met him.

"He will not," Asabel assured him.

"If he does," Ingolsol said, as though he was in the room with them. His voice was as clear as a bell, but no one flinched at its sound. "We will burn this country to the ground and pull out the rot. Only when the grey ash coats everything green will we even begin to think of peace."

"Foolish as he is," Claudia said, her voice firmer than Oliver had ever heard it. "Injustice cannot be allowed to reign. We are blind infants, ignorant and foolish in our ambling, but if we see even the hearts of goodness threatened, we should not slow our blade."

The two fragments said Oliver’s piece for him. His hand was clenched into a fist and his eyes were dangerous. This was a foe that spanned generations. The more he learned of the man, the more he knew to despise him. When swords had come for himself, he hadn’t minded, for he had the strength to resist, but what now that Asabel had put herself in such a position?

Would the same man show mercy to her, merely because she was a woman? Or would he recognize her as royalty, and show her the respect that royalty is deserving of?

"If he did," Oliver said, his voice hard, "I would likely become the worst I could be."