A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

By now, the crowd had hardened itself. They had already begun preparations for battle, and there was no reversing that decision now. The children had been sent away. The families watched them go, their expressions mixed. Some with fiery looks, like men truly ready for battle, while others looked even lonelier and more unsure than they had just minutes before.

"There's no time," Greeves barked at them. "I can see ya all trying to sort your minds out for this, but damn it, there's no time. We aren't soldiers. There's never going to be a right time for us. The sooner we get moving the better."

They could hear cries from the battlefield even as Greeves spoke. It was a terribly uninviting prospect to run into that. In towards that sea of ever-expanding flames, and that hell pit of desperate cries.

Nila shared Greeves' urgency. If they arrived and the soldiers had already fallen, if Beam had already fallen… Then it would all have been for nought.

A quick look at the crowd, and it was obvious that they weren't ready. They weren't a single unit, they never would be. They were a disorganized mob with half-arsed intentions. Some held their weapons, their tools and axes, with a keenness, others let them dangle from their wrists limply, as they stood by their wives.

But there could be no more waiting. Neither Nila nor Greeves were capable of turning common villagers into a war band. All they could do was urge them to fight, urge them to struggle, and urge them not to give up until the very end.

It was the women that caused the most doubt now. Perhaps the men would have been more eager to follow if they knew that both their women and their children were safe. But there had been no room for such luxuries.

Greeves turned around, trusting that if he started to move, then the rest would follow. He did well to put up a calm front, but he could not deny the pounding of his heart, or the sweat that coated his back.

'Damn it,' he cursed to himself, as he reflected on their particularly dire circumstances, and his particularly dire position. Never in his life did he think he'd be leading a war band, and especially not to save someone else.

He took his first step forward towards the fires of battle. The air was biting cold, but Greeves could swear that he felt the heat of those burning tents already. He could feel the aura of battle even from afar. That which he'd only just escaped. His legs shook as he stepped back towards it.

But none could tell that of him, he moved with his usual confidence, his usual swagger. His men followed after him. Loriel gave a pointed look to the crowd before she followed them, as if testing them, goading them.

The men noted the look, even more than the women. Their anger had been thoroughly stoked. That last little look, as the woman drew her dagger, and went to join the battlefield alongside that merchant, even as her long purple dress trailed in the snow behind her… It was such a thoroughly ridiculous sight, that any man who dared to retreat after seeing it, he could be called no man at all.

The men felt that, even before Nila hurried to join them, the crowd was already moving after Greeves. Slow and steady at first, the most eager of men leading them, the men who had a true fire in their eyes, a true soldier's spirit from the anger that had been stoked up.

They were eventually followed by hordes of the rest, those that weren't quite as sure, but those who didn't want to die as cowards anyway.

Before her eyes, Nila witnessed the mind of the mob. How emotions greater than their own could so easily corrode the will of the individual, and thrust them into action.

Amongst the men, even a handful of eager women began to join. They were the more tom-boyish women at first, those with broader shoulders than even some of the men, but soon enough, other meeker women began to join. Women that hadn't held a weapon in their lives, but wanted to stand up and fight for themselves nonetheless.

Finally, Nila turned on her heel to hurry towards the head of the party at a jog, her bow slung over her shoulder, ready to be drawn should the moment arise.

She was not want to see it, but her tiny figure at the head of the war band had ample effect. Many of the villagers recalled seeing that shock of red hair barrelling around the village in her younger years, causing trouble. It was hard to miss her. Discover hidden stories at m,v l'e-NovelFire

And now, as small as she still was, she was ready to lay down her life like the rest of them, to protect what was important to her. No, she was even quicker to do it than them. She'd believed in something from the start, even before they did.

They'd labelled it the naivety of youth, as they struggled to whip up their own fighting spirit, but now as they shifted forward, it was hard not to wonder if it was something else.

That tiny little back became an innocent beacon of light for them. The same voice that had stirred them into a frenzy, despite her weakness, it became a symbol for their cause. That there was the back that they needed to protect. A back the same size as their children's.

Greeves picked up the pace to a jog. He was not a fit man, that much was evident. As soon as he allowed his feet to pick up the pace, he felt his legs ache, and his lungs began to grow panicked. Years of lacking physical activity had left him in such a state, but he could not complain. The adrenaline was thumping through his blood.

From the front, there was the oppressive force of battle, that which not only drove him backwards, away from it, but also downwards, into the earth, as though trying to get him to dig his own grave, before the cruelties of war delivered it to him anyway.

But now there was an army at his back. He did not even have to look, for he could hear it, and he could feel it.