A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor-Chapter 903: The Castle Town of Valance - Part 1
"I am," Oliver admitted. "Thousands of years they've been missing, that's what's said – but how are we so sure of that? Perhaps they were never here at all. Perhaps they were merely made to explain the existence of the Gods that we currently have."
"Would that be the case," Lombard said, iron in his voice. "We still feel their presence, even if they do not interact with man directly. The Old Gods still play their part. Look to Pandora – you see what it is that she does, do you not? The world is riddled with monsters, and in their unnaturalness, they still continue to exist. The Pandora Goblin – a creature that size – ought not to exist at all.
But not only does it exist, it has existed for at least hundreds of years. We've records detailing the many battles we've had with it."
"Mm," Oliver said, considering it. "I suppose." He said, eventually deciding that he didn't have good enough grounds to counter argue. Pandora indeed. The matter of monsters seemed more fundamental than the more vague way that some of the Gods interacted with the world.
After all, they were beings – if one was being generous enough to ascribe them with that title – and to make such a being, surely, would require a significant amount more power than the likes of merely adjusting what already existed.
Even thinking of it, and trying to put it into some sort of logical order in Oliver's head, seemed to be a tall order. But then, that too made sense. Gods were Gods for the very reason that they were beyond human comprehension.
Though they might have been able to detail and understand some of the ways in which they interacted with the world, to expect to understand them in their entirety, when they did not yet even really understand the likes of deer or wolves in their entirety – that struck Oliver as being ambitious.
He was content to leave the matters of that discussion to Verdant, who seemed to thrive in the vague and the unapprehendable.
With talk of Gods, both old and new, filling Oliver's ears, they passed another series of checkpoints. The closer they came to their destination, the more impressed Lombard was with the soldiery.
To Oliver, they all seemed to be disciplined men, at the very upper echelon of the disciplined endeavour. But apparently, even within that upper echelon, there were details that placed one group above another, and Lombard must have seen those details, from how he had nothing but praise for each new gate squadron.
"This takes time to do," Lombard said, as they rolled away from the most recent one. "That sort of discipline isn't instilled overnight. These must be old Blackthorn men. Still, the fact that they could have had their loyalties bound to a new leader so quickly… That's an impressive feat."
Only with knowledge of Command could Oliver discern quite why that was the case. Tolsey, for his part, frowned at the comment, as if to be in the midst of protesting 'but surely isn't training disciplined men the hard part? If you tell them to serve a new master, then they will.'
But the reality of it was not so simple. One would do as they were told, but there were limits to what mere emulation could achieve. True loyalty was discernible. True subordinance to a Queen or King was something that stood out, away from the likes of those who were simply following orders.
Those men at the gates, with how crispy they responded and how clear their eyes were, could not have feigned it on the basis of simple orders.
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"She's been hard at work, that girl," Lombard murmured to himself, rolling away. "I have not seen her in years. I will be interested to see just how she has changed."
It was a sentiment that Oliver silently echoed. He would have been lying if he said he wasn't just a little bit nervous. The same Asabel that he'd met when he'd first joined the Academy was markedly different from the Queen that she had become. It had to be the case.
To shoulder that kind of responsibility, for hundreds of thousands of lives, one couldn't be a simple pleasant girl any longer – they had to embody something more.
They were ushered through the final gates with the same courtesy that they'd been ushered through many of the checkpoints along their way. Though, these gates, it had to be said, were considerably larger than the ones that Oliver had grown used to.
He sat in the centre of the carriage, away from the window, but it was hard not to steal more than a few glances outside of it, to marvel at the high walls, and the war-ready studded gates, high enough to accommodate even giants.
The Castle Town of Valance was by far the largest structure that Oliver had ever seen. The Academy had prepared him in part for grand architecture, with its castle-like walls, and its grand towers, but nothing could prepare him for the grandness of Valance.
It made a mockery of what he'd tried to attempt in Solgrim. Their walls were three times the height of a man, and they were proud of that fact. Valance's walls were far taller, at ten times the height of a man, and they were much longer too.
Verdant had said their walls protected thousands of people in the castle's interior, and the garrison that the castle kept protected many thousands more, in the streets and houses that surrounded the fort.
The Castle Town of Valance didn't seem very royal. The architecture was grand and magnificent for a certainty, but it seemed to be more grim, and purposeful in its construction. It sought to serve a military purpose, rather than a ceremonial one. The fact that it was the very seat of Asabel's Crown, and where she'd declared her palace was an interesting thing.
