A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

Jok watched expectantly, dangerously, his eyes hawkish. The young commander had excellent instincts. He'd felt a twinge of expectancy at the boy's cry. It carried with it a gravity equal to a whole group of men. He'd been wary upon hearing it, and he'd tensed up. He knew to respect such forces, for the flow of battle was fickle, and it would all turn in an instant if he took his attention away from it.

He didn't understand the boy, so he treated him with the most caution. He was the sole inconsistency in an otherwise flawless plan, a plan that had continued to deliver.

But nought came from it. Even though Jok had sensed the power in the shout. It was a commander's shout, almost equal to Gorm's own. The shout of a wilful commander. But no troops stirred from it. It was then that Jok was hit by a sudden realization, a fact that made him shiver.

"He's no commander…" he murmured. When he realized that, it all made sense. The way they'd made use of the boy in battle, the lack of orders that he'd given to his men, and the boy's dress. He was something else, something potent, like a hot fire. But he did not have the experience of leadership. That frightened Jok, for he knew the power and potential that came with commanding men.

It was commanding men that had made Jok and Kursak as strong as they were. It was that pressure that hardened them, and made them stronger. It was a more effective training weight than any stone or boulder found in the forest.

Yet this boy had not experienced it, and still managed to match them. No… He managed to surpass them.

"If he'd known how to lead…" Jok shuddered at the thought. The thought of a dangerous enemy. "We will make sure we stamp out that spark here, lest it burn us in the years to come."

He gave orders, directing his men towards Beam's rear. He held his hands up, and brought them together, imagining Beam in the middle of them as he crushed him.

That cry of Beam's, no matter how much caution Jok paid to it, there could be no signs of its effect. After all, there was no one for it to affect. The Stormfront soldiers were all but wiped out. It was a rallying cry for ghosts.

Even the villagers, they were not stirred into action by it. They heard the shout, for a certainty, and it made their hearts waver for just a second, but it did not make them grasp for their weapons, as they rushed to fight. If anything, it made them resent that voice. They'd already given up. They didn't want to relive the torture of mental surrender once again.

It was only Nla that the voice changed. Only she, that knew Beam. She could almost hear the smile in his voice. The shout was so different to how he normally sounded. He sounded almost happy. It sent a ripple of sadness through her heart, a ripple of pain.

She had to clench her fist to deal with the sudden wave of emotion. Fear had been dominant for the longest time, accompanied by doubt, but now sadness overturned the two. It wasn't fair. It was far too cruel.

Had he not fought enough? Had he not suffered enough? Why did the Gods torture him so, why did that bring such burdens down upon him, no matter how much he struggled? And why was it always left to Beam to fight those burdens on his own?

Her tired mind reignited at the thought.

'No… That's not it. It was never left to just Beam…. It was just Beam that dared to do something about it.'

Something about his recklessness, something about his painful past, it seemed to inspire him to be a shield. He didn't do it for love, nor praise, nor even for strength, not really. He simply did it as though he knew nothing else. As though struggle was the only option. Nila wondered if he even did it for victory..?

"Ah…" She realized. So that was the difference. "If it's all painful anyway… Then we may as well dance."

It was a different conclusion to Beam's, but she almost understood him. Hers was fuelled by the womanly emotions that she oft-ignored. The love of her friends, the love of her family. She dared to dance a dance with death in their name, for their sake, for the slim chance of victory.

It was a different conclusion, but that was her strength, a strength that Beam could not reach. A strength that was still bound to the world, and all the things in it. It was the strength that she thought Beam had, the true calling of a hero.

She looked to the frightened children, as they gripped their parent's legs. There were many children by now. They'd come out, when their parents had not returned home, and then there were of course the same children that they'd rescued, still shivering in their borrowed fur cloaks.

The children had not given up, even if the adults had. The children did not know surrender yet. They did not know true loss, and so they could not accept it.

She clenched her fist.

"They haven't fallen yet," she said, daring to speak up to them. Her heart wavered as a few people looked her way. These people did not want her to speak, they didn't want to hear the whisper of a valkyrie, tempting them towards violent death, when they knew it would be delivered to them anyway.

Only a few heard her voice, so she repeated herself, louder this time. "They haven't fallen yet," she said firmly. Now they were all looking at her, all their attention was firmly on her.

It made her feel weak in the knees, the gazes of so many people. It always made her feel like that, ever since she'd been saddled with a position of leadership, seemingly out of nowhere.

Rodrey and Rodrick had been sat nearby, their faces blank. They'd been reunited with their own families. They too looked up as she spoke.

Now that she had their attention, another wave of unsureness washed over Nila. She realized she didn't have the words to convince these people. She couldn't explain the emotion that she'd felt when she'd heard Beam's shout. She couldn't explain that it was far better to have struggled and to have lost, than to merely surrender from the start.

She believed in the struggle, because she believed in hope. That was the difference between her and Beam. She believed in what struggle could bring. Beam dared not wish for anything from the struggle, he merely believed in the struggle itself.