There is a sense for greatness.

Some people carry it around like a bad smell. They make us stop on the street, and look their way, whether we wish to or not. Their appearance might be ordinary, but there’s something about them, something beyond the norm. Something that makes you almost wish to bend the knee to them.
Our kings have likely had that something, those that came from nothing but ashes and ruin, in times of trouble and famine, where the hearts of the masses are restless, and they need a cause to bind to. What makes them choose one man over another?

It is my contention that there is a true gravity to such individuals. That progress, or competence, or greatness itself carries a weight. That a man might grow greater in the dark, and whether he wishes it or not, by the sheer gravity of his existence, tigers will make their way towards his door, catching his scent in the wind.

The tigers hide themselves in the forests, in villages unknown, amongst the peasantry, but sooner or later, it does seem, that they are always cast into the light. It requires an immense effort of will to keep them hidden. A man of such a gravity will see themselves risen, without will, to ranks beyond that of the norm – in times of peace, they might rise high indeed. But in times of chaos? When the world is in upheaval, when every piece in up in the air? Then a tiger from the most lowly of starts, with a competency – a density – beyond belief, as if they were a different creature entirely – they might go all the way. They might be the creature that – though a peasant themselves – the peasantry themselves kneel to. They might go further, and make the soldiery kneel, and then even the nobles after them. And a special class, beyond all others, might go even further still, and snatch a crown the head of a king, on a flurry of brilliant victories, on a story so overwhelming it almost might have seemed preordained.

It is those men that we ought to fear, and it those men that we will eternally be at the mercy of. It is those men that we do the honour of addressing as our kings, and our emperors.

"They require sharpening," Oliver said. "I will do what I can before Tavar arrives, but battlefield experience, gently done, will be of the most benefit to them."


"You ask me to shoulder that burden then? Me and my men?" Lord Blackthorn asked. It came in a growl, but Oliver did not get the sense that the man was particularly angry about that. He supposed, little by little, he was getting a sense for the Lord's moods, beyond his constant aggression.


"To what degree you can, General," Oliver said. "I will not allow them to be a burden to you regardless, but nor would I see them spent in an instant, as those soldiers that I trained before were."


"It was you that spent them, General Patrick," Blackthorn said. "Your choice to stay is what spent them."


"It was," Oliver said. "They gave their lives for that victory. Without them, it would not have been had."


"Would you have preferred to retreat, and trained them for longer?" General Blackthorn asked.


Chapter 1717 - The Dogs of War - Part 3