A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

Chapter 618 Skullic's Mission - Part 4

Oliver did nothing to offset that, though. He'd chosen to sit outside merely to give himself a better chance of defending himself should anything go awry. This new, more cautious side to him was something that even he was having difficulty explaining to himself, but it seemed like a wise enough idea nonetheless and as he saw the scenery begin to unfold before them, he was glad he'd done so.

The driver's seat afforded a view of the world that the carriage window just couldn't match.

They travelled through the snowy wilderness, along roads of ill-tended cobblestone, leaving the Academy – and the city of Garsh which loomed behind it – far off in the distance.

That was not to say the world was empty, though. They passed the occasional hamlet, with an inn and a farmhouse where their animals were stabled for the winter. Whenever they passed such places, the driver would give a name and only then would he earn a grunting acknowledgement from Oliver.

He wasn't trying to be cruel to the man. He hardly noticed how on edge he was. Or at the very least, he hardly paid it any attention. With so many angry eyes cast his way, even Oliver was beginning to lose his calm. It took him nearly an hour of watching the scenery pass before he was ready to entertain even a passing conversation with the man.

"Will you be driving me back as well?" Oliver asked.

The man flinched, surprised by the question that punched through the silence that had been hanging in the air for a while. The last hamlet had been fifteen minutes gone, and when the shouting of the butchers and the gleeful laughs of playing children faded into the background, it had merely been the wheels on the road and the sound of the horse's hooves clopping that had filled in the silence.

"Huh? Oh! Yes, Ser, I will be," Petyr said, nodding his head vigorously. "I've been instructed to stay no matter how many days it takes."

"They expect it to take days?" Oliver asked.

"Petyr," Oliver said, finally calling the driver by his name. It wasn't as though he'd hated the man personally, or anything of that sort – he'd merely grown sick of all the disdainful looks that he'd been receiving and had needed that near hour of quiet. Despite needing it, he almost felt a little guilty for inflicting it.

Not truly guilty, but enough so that he made an effort to put the driver at ease, for he seemed amiable enough. "What do you know about Dollem Fort?"

The driver perked up. It seemed almost typical of their profession that they had something to say about most places. Few travelled as much as they, after all. Petyr was no exception in that. "The fort, Ser?" He said, nodding his head, collecting himself. "Well, I can say that I can I understand why bandits or outlaws might want to make their home there.

It's meant to be well enough defended."

"Oh?"

"Yes, Ser, it's built with the line of these, valley, see?" He made a gesture of cupping with his hands. "And where the cliffs come together, just so, you get natural walls on all three sides. A bowl of rock – you only need to build a wall of wood in the front and you've got yourself quite the military encampment," Petyr told him.

Oliver nodded, this time without humour. That was genuinely useful information. Though these missions weren't something that he'd decided on himself, he wasn't about to take them lightly. He didn't think that he could afford to, as strong as he'd become.

He thought back to his strategy lessons with Volguard as he reflected on that information. They'd done a little bit of studying on the proper way of attacking fortified encampments, but most of that was theory, discussing the merits of a siege, the demerits and what was necessary to make a siege successful.

The primary thing there was to ensure that the fortress was surrounded on all sides – barring that, an attacker would need to make sure that every route to and from the encampment was cut off.