Nick_Alderson

Chapter 1997: The Scale of a Foe - Part 2


Chapter 1997: The Scale of a Foe – Part 2


If the future was indeed so grand, then why was he still so afraid? Why was he more afraid now than ever? Not a single night had passed since the battle with Tiberius that Oliver did not tremble as he fell asleep.


Even if he felt strong occasionally, there was a weakness building in him that he could not deny.


There was less strength in his daily decisions. More uncertainty. More need for reassurance. He could feel it starting to grate on those that relied on him, and asked so much of him.


Terrifying.


When the fear swelled so great that there were no thoughts at all, just absolute overwhelming terror. When he would look at Nila as she reached for him, and flinch heavily enough that she might strike him. A madness is what it was, and he knew not where it built up from.


Outside he went, finally escaping the corridors, making it under the night sky out in the city. More guards here. Oliver took the long way around, and even waited at corners of the street so he might avoid them. The extra effort that he was willing to go to simply to avoid conversation, and to avoid questioning glances – more evidence to himself of his weaknesses. More of a reason to hate himself.


All was harder than it ought to have been, and all evoked a weakness in himself.


There was so much to do, and he dedicated all that he was to doing it.


There was a story that had been told to himself, and that he was beginning to grow convinced of. That of the responsibilities of a King. That he simply needed to deal with the High King, and do what he could for the Stormfront. Once those problems were solved, finally peace would settle in his heart.


So too did he wish to grow stronger, to lend more time to his sword, and pursue higher Boundaries. Then, surely, he would not need to fear so much a future as dismal as the past that he had already experienced. The failure to save Queen Asabel, the failure to save his family. Or perhaps simply the ability to resist that lash of the slaver’s whip. To escape and make forever impossible those many years that he had kept hidden in the deepest recesses of his memory.


He was erratic to the highest degree, he knew that in himself. He would hit upon a new idea one day, a new mode of being, and it would fuel him for a day or two – he would be convinced that the problem that he faced was finally solved. Then something would gobble that idea up, and he would be back to where he started. Or even worse off, for another thread of hope had been crushed.


An endless spiral, where he only grew more fearful, and more isolated from himself.


He found himself reaching for that which he’d call dishonourable, simply out of fear. For necessitating more control. Seeking continual reassurance. And only in his quietest, most lucid moments, could he tell that was what he was doing.


He slipped out around the guards. Not through the main gate where they stood, but an extra little path that Greeves was fond of using. A little side door, big enough barely for one man to fit through, only if they stooped. It was hardly of any use in a siege – they’d made sure to close it off entirely with rubble and boulders. Now, however, that had all been picked clean, and it was only a single guard that stood there, standing watch over it.


Oliver found a discarded bottle that the man had evidently been drinking earlier, laying atop a snow-covered barrel. A sniff of it made his nose wrinkle from the strong stench of liquor. A Blackthorn man – and the soldier had been drinking on duty. A rarity. If ever there was a picture that could point to how quickly they were falling apart, there was one.


Oliver tossed the bottle down a nearby alleyway, making sure to throw it hard, so that the noise would at least cause some disturbance.


Despite his state of intoxication, the soldier was on it in an instant. He slipped away from his post, spear in hand, to look towards the source of the noise. “WHO GOES THERE?” He shouted, his voice strong, as if he didn’t stink of drink.


Barely a few metres away from where he had been made to stand guard, but that was enough for Oliver to slip past him, into the tall enclosed space beneath the ramparts. Then he sent the door that connected it to the city swinging closed with a loud slam, as if it was nothing more than the winds that did it.


The man gave a startled shout, but that was all. He had the keys to unlock it again on his belt, and already could he be heard jangling with them. By that point, however, Oliver had slipped past the final door, and was set to freeing himself into the outside world.


The same boy, eternally running away, and he hated himself for it. Even the minor inconvenience of talking to other soldiers and his own men in such a state was something that he was willing to go to such lengths in order to avoid.


Rather than simply speak to a man directly, he was far more willing to make his already miserable shift of standing guard in the cold that much more difficult, and Oliver made sure to hate himself sufficiently for it.


He didn’t know what to do, he didn’t know where to go. The longer his men and Blackthorn’s men gathered in Ernest, however, the more they seemed to blacken and grow worse for it, as if there was a poison running through the veins of the city, infecting all things. Oliver was half-convinced that he was that poison.


He raced across the snow, pushing himself to his limits, going at an all out sprint, and quickly feeling a burning in his lungs, and an aching in his leg, as his sheathed sword slapped against his side. He pushed it further still, almost finding it, through the pain – the source of all that seemed to infect him as of late. That terrible feeling in his chest, this isolated poison dagger that infected all the things he did. That made him an even worse man than he already was.