A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

He closed the carriage door, and bid them on their way. All the soldiers continued to salute until they were well past the checkpoint.

"Now those are proper soldiers," Lombard said, nodding seriously. "That is immensely heartening. Queen Asabel might very well have saved this country if she is keeping our borders secured with that level of discipline."

"Have you not fought alongside her men yet?" Oliver asked, curious.

Lombard shook his head. "No. Not for lack of her offering, either. She came to power after the campaign had started, but it has taken her a good couple of years to amass the sort of forces that she now wields. She offered again, not even a year ago, but Lord Blackwell was forced to decline out of formality. With that many men in need of moving, the High King would have needed to get involved.

It would have been disadvantageous for a House that was still in the midst of being built."

"Besides," Lombard continued. "It is not her borders, strictly speaking, that we are defending. Only a single castle lies in her territory, and attacking is difficult to the point of impossible. The Verna front hardly stresses that far. It is the Greens – that is to say, the Treeants – who ought to be sending us men."

"…The Treeant Silver Kings," Oliver mused. "I know very little about them."

He'd interacted with nearly every Silver King House, in some sort of fashion, aside from the Treeants. After all, they hadn't had a child at the Academy during Oliver's time there. Though, even still, he couldn't exactly say he knew that much of the other Silver Kings either, aside from the Pendragons.

The Emersons were meant to rule the territory that Oliver and Lord Blackwell resided in – that is, the North-West region of the Stormfront – but he hardly felt their presence, save for in the form of taxes.

"They're…" Lombard started to explain, but quickly found himself at a loss for words. "Difficult," was all he could manage. "Lord Idris, perhaps you would have a better way of describing them than I?"

"No, despite your lack of words, Captain Lombard, I believe your description to be a fairly elegant one. They are difficult, but I would not go as far as to say they are dishonourable. I do not believe they are corrupt, they merely seem to look out for their own interests," Verdant said.

"Indeed," Lombard said, going with that. "If they had thought that the border would end up proving to be a true problem, they likely would have given us the men they ought to. But they've made a gamble. They claim it is as much the High King's responsibility as theirs, and so they leave it to him, as they focus on the stability of their own province."

"…I can't bring myself to dislike them for that," Oliver decided. It might simply have been for the petty reason that they were standing up to the High King, but Oliver was fond of factions that put everything they had into protecting their own people.

"It is easy to, when you are outnumbered three to one," Lombard commented dryly. "But I do not believe them to be a malevolent people either. They're simply different. It's as though they're a very country in and of themselves."

"They worship different Gods, I've heard," Verdant commented. "Claudia does not reach so far there. They speak of ancient names instead. Gaia still lends them her ear, though I am unsure as to whether she offers them her Blessing."

Lombard looked around the carriage. "…It is easy to forget that you have come of age," he said to Oliver. "I was quite right to point out that such talk of Blessings was inappropriate."

"I'm sure you'll be quick to remember," Oliver said. "It makes your life easier, after all."

The other Commander in their carriage laughed at that. Lombard gave him a harsh look, but Tolsey was quick to defend himself. "I'm sorry, but Ser Patrick does have a point. I do not recall the matter of his age ever being a problem when he wished to discuss the likes of Blessings.

To you, Lord Idris, though, I must ask – given that you were once a priest – do you believe that talk of Gaia in the Treeant territory?"

"Believe it? I do not need to believe, Ser, for I know it to be true. I have travelled there in times past. There are many shrines to Gaia, thousands of years old, that have been kept alive through the love of her believers," Verdant said.

"Truly?" Tolsey said, surprised. "They never spoke of such matters at the Academy."

"They have reasons not to," Verdant said. Oliver had a feeling he knew what those reasons were.

"But are the Old Gods not dead?" Tolsey pressed, suddenly talkative, now that he had something to add to the conversation.

"Dead, when one speaks of Gods, is an ambiguous term. To suppose that the same laws of definites that we men limit ourselves with would also apply to the Gods, that seems a mistaken supposition," Verdant said. "They go without true worship, or so it is said, and their Blessings can not reach ordinary folk, as the Blessings of the more powerful Gods do, but dead? I wonder."

"If they be dead, then we would feel their pieces in everything else," Lombard noted. "A castle doesn't merely disappear. The stones that made it up end up somewhere."

"Is that not in the form of their children – our Gods?" Tolsey asked. "Are they not those stones of the castles?"

"I wonder," Lombard said. "There was a time when they existed together, so I think not."

It was interesting to see a man like Lombard speaking so sternly on the matters of Gods. Oliver had thought him to be a rather logical man, and indeed he was, but he didn't treat the matter of the Old Gods with even the slightest hint of scepticism.

"You look uncertain, my Lord," Verdant noted.