They wished not to survive every battle. They feared death, no doubt, but in swearing service to him, they had, in a strange way, given over that prospect of death, and come to terms with it in a way that Oliver himself had not. In holding them back, and not using them to their fullest capacity, he realized that he betrayed them.
Like he, they were tiny streams, wearing away at rocks. They all sought to overcome something. That was the nature of the existence that they had chosen. They had sworn to serve an ideal that named itself progress. They had fallen to that ideal, in the same way that Oliver had, and they gave it all the meaning that life was to offer.
He robbed them of their burdens. He failed to utilise them properly. He closed their eyes to the grandness of existence, and declared, in their place, as the mighty river, he would push aside all boulders in their path. It was not compassion, it was tyranny.
