A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

"Quiet it down, is that what you're saying to me?" Oliver said. It was amusing to hear Verdant put it as such. "Well, this is the most poorly timed lecture possibly in history. I've lost a dear friend, and now is when you choose to poke at old wounds? You're quite the corrupt priest, Verdant."

Verdant seemed to recognize the humour in those words, for even though he stiffened, he soon loosened up again. Oliver wondered just how nervous the man had been to genuinely criticize him.

"Of course, I am in agreement with you," Oliver continued. "I see weakness in myself, as every man does, and no doubt I seek to crush it. You need not be afraid of pointing that weakness out to me. I might be irritated with you at times for doing it, but I think past that irritation I shall always see the usefulness."

"Very well, my Lord," Verdant said, dipping his head to hide his smile. "I shall endeavour to do just that."

The Idris man was quiet for only a short while before he too reached to grab a stick from the fire. Though he didn't seem to be that excited about making the fire spread as Oliver was. He simply held it up as if it were a candle, and watched the light that it gave off.

"Now that I hit upon sorer things, I suppose it would be a good time to address that which… that which… somehow, is even harder to speak on than criticisms of you," Verdant said, frowning at his own struggle. "I wonder why that is? Praise should not be so difficult to speak. But perhaps the magnitude of your achievement is what puts a frog in my throat."

"I didn't expect it either," Oliver said.

"No," Verdant agreed. "No, you didn't expect it – not in this battle, anyway. But at the Lonely Mountain, beyond all reasoning, you felt that you could close that gap. That is an impossibility beyond impossibilities my Lord. It would be called madness of the highest degree, even in you, if you had not followed it so closely with true achievement.

Your father Dominus claimed to know the laws of progress, but could he ever have known them quite so well as you?"

"Oh, he knew them far better," Oliver said. "I have not discovered anything beyond what he already has."

"And yet, you have done something impossible once more. The youngest to break the Second Boundary. The talk then was that prodigies are found often enough, but rarely do their continue such competent progression in adulthood. When you hit the Third Boundary, as the youngest ever once more, the talk was the same, though it was considerably more muted and nervous.

You could feel the fear all the way from the High King. Now… Now the Fourth Boundary, my Lord. The Boundary of a General, at a mere eighteen years old. It's reached a point beyond celebration. Even those in your corner might begin to feel its terror. The magnitude of you… It mutes the Fragment of Bohemothia in myself.

He no longer knows quite what to say."

"I do not know what to say either," Oliver said. "But when that man was in front of me, having cut off Lombard's head, I could not let him pass."

"That was your only thought? Resistance?" Verdant said with the slightest hint of incredulity. "You did not aim for his life?"

"Even I knew that such a thing was unlikely," Oliver said. "Arrogant, even. I hardly thought, but what thoughts I did have couldn't dare to reach that far."

"The stubbornness in you… It exceeds comprehension," Verdant said, stroking his chin. "The more time I spend with you, my Lord Patrick, the less I understand the humans around me. There's something ever so strange about you, and every word I've used in the past in an attempt to categorize it has been swatted away…"

"I suppose I might be guilty of a degree of stubbornness," Oliver said.

"But alas, that is not even the end of our story," Verdant said, in a sudden spurt of animation. "Fourth Boundary – an incredible feat, incredible enough that it cannot be put into words, nor hardly categorized. And yet, that was not it. That wasn't even the height of the mountain that you spanned. A Fourth Boundary Sword should never be a match for a Fourth Boundary General.

It defies all comprehension. It upsets the state of the battlefield strategy – it turns everything entirely on its head. What follows my Lord might be a foolish question, but I can think of no other way to put it. How did you manage it? How did your blade manage to overcome his Command?"

"A sword ought to aim for the gaps in the armour," Oliver said, quickly enough. He'd come to terms with it in his own head.

Somehow, that made Verdant even more incredulous. "You claim to understand Command entirely enough that you can see the gaps in it, and its weaknesses?"

"Oh, no, not at all," Oliver hurriedly corrected him. "I understand it less than Zilan still. If I had such a grasp of it, I would draw as much strength from my men as he did his."

"Something tells me you've thrown me yet another puzzle," Verdant said. "What am I to do with this information…? You've cursed me, my Lord. I almost regret asking. What you've said is going to dance around in my head for days, and I'm going to be arrogant enough to think I can possibly make sense of it, before all thought inevitably dries up and I'm revealed to be the fool that I always was."

Of all the conversations that Oliver had imagined would help him deal with his grief, he didn't think that the one he shared with Verdant then would have been it. He laughed, despite the weight on his shoulders. The earnest difficulty with which Verdant wrestled with the strangeness that Oliver offered him could be nothing if not amusing.

If he didn't laugh, then he would dare to take the weight of it seriously. And if he ever took the weight of it as seriously as others would bid that he do, he knew his arrogance would grow so inflated that he would never walk again.