Narnia fic: "Four Things Greater"

[bedlamsbard]

Title: Four Things Greater
Author: bedlamsbard
Fandom: Chronicles of Narnia movieverse
Rating: PG-13 (violence, foul language)
Summary: “This is not exactly what I pictured when I won my shield,” Fiorenza Paolucci said. Golden Age, gen.
Disclaimer: The Chronicles of Narnia and its characters, settings, situations, etc., belong to C.S. Lewis. Some characters, settings, situations, etc., belong to Walden Media. Title and quote from Rudyard Kipling's poem The Ballad of the King's Jest. Parts of the U.K. and U.S. military oaths of office and enlistment used.
Author's Note: Written for the cliche_bingo prompt "yentas and matchmakers"; my card is here. Part of the Warsverse.

Four things greater than all things are, --
Women and Horses and Power and War.
- Rudyard Kipling, "The Ballad of the King's Jest"



“This is not exactly what I pictured when I won my shield,” Fiorenza Paolucci said, watching Princess Meloria Giancana kiss babies and bestow blessings upon the villagers that huddled around her like she really was a divine of Jendresi (Father of Kings, Lord of Justice and Mercy) instead of just a lay priestess like any other member of the Shoushani royal family.

They were three weeks out of Guenveuer and five days from the Narnian border, which was the conservative estimate. The knights that were serving as the princess’s escort had bets on anywhere from five days to another three weeks, depending on how many villages the princess insisted on stopping at on their way to Narnia. Fiorenza, in a moment of either blind optimism or misplaced patriotism, had money on the lowest estimate of five days, but that had been a week and sixteen villages (and three respectably sized towns) ago. She was nearly positive now that she was going to lose hard cold cash to the pot, which was a real pity.

It was only about two days to the Narnian border from where they were currently, even with the big wheelhouse that Princess Meloria traveled in, but they were sure to stop in at least one village every day, and there were five relatively large ones marked on the map, all of them on the road and all of them ready to fall over themselves in order to fawn at the princess’s feet. There were doubtless countless smaller ones in between; three weeks of following the Opal Road out of Guenveuer had taught Fiorenza more surely than four years in the Accademia Militare di Shoushan that maps lied. And that princesses were far more trouble than they were worth, but she was nearly positive she would have eventually figured that one out on her own.

Pico Viceronte, sitting in the dirt and leaning against the wheelhouse on her other side, nodded wearily. “We could have been in Cair Paravel by now,” he said. “I could be down in a tavern in the Shifting Market right now, taking a glass of faun wine and watching the ships come in –”

“Oh, stop,” Fiorenza said, because it was too much to think about; she had road dust in places she didn’t even want to think about, including her good set of formal silks in Paolucci colors, which was supposed to be locked away in safety in her chest in the luggage wagon. She’d dragged it out in order to find her armor repair kit, packed away by accident, and nearly wept to see the dirt. She still had no idea how it had managed to make its way from the ground into a wagon into a locked chest into a set of silks wrapped up to protect them from just that.

She turned her head to glare at Pico; at least he was going to get out of this sort of business when his father died. He was a first-born son; he was going to inherit a lordship. Fiorenza was probably going to be a common knight for the rest of her life, since her brother was set to inherit the Paolucci estate and Luti had already produced a passel of heirs, legitimate and otherwise.

“Five days?” Pico said, grinning at her, and Fiorenza resisted the urge to bang her head into the side of the wheelhouse.

“Five months, more like,” she said. “I could grab her now and throw her over my saddle horn, have us in Narnia by dawn tomorrow. You could catch up with us sometime next Tuesday.”

“But that would be treason, lady knight,” a light voice said from above them.

Fiorenza and Pico both scrambled upright, snapping salutes to the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard.

Chiare Accola returned the salute, a bemused expression on his face. It was the same expression Fiorenza was starting to get to know outside the practice fields at the Accademia, which the Lord Commander made a habit of frequenting in order to eyeball new recruits to the Kingsguard. The name was outdated, a remnant of the time when Shoushan had still been a small, squabbling kingdom in the midst of other small, squabbling kingdoms; there was no king now but an emperor, but the name and the guard remained.

“And how are we enjoying the journey, Sir Viceronte, Lady Knight Paolucci?” he inquired, with the gentle air of a kindly grandfather. Fiorenza would have found it less disturbing if she hadn’t been well aware that beneath his craggy features lay the soul of a warrior; she’d seen Lord Commander Accola lay a woundman open to his wooden bones, spilling his straw and sand guts across the oiled practice floors of the Accademia.

Pico, perhaps braver than Fiorenza, said neutrally, “It wears on, sir. I had some idea that we would make better time than this; the distance did not seem so far on a map’s painted surface.”

“But when does it ever?” Accola replied. He turned his attention to Fiorenza. “And you, lady knight?”

“It is my first time in this part of the country,” she said, “and the land is striking.” Which was a polite way of saying that the hills and valleys that characterized eastern Shoushan were proving a nightmare for a baggage train like this one; on some of the steeper hills, she swore she could see the wheelhouse and luggage wagons considering the matter of tipping over before deciding against it as too much work. Farther to the south, the hills turned into mountains that stood stark and imposing against the sky; Fiorenza spent a long time composing prayers of thanks to Zaid, the Wanderer, Lord of the Long Road, patron god of travelers, that Narnia didn’t lie on the other side of those and instead met Shoushan on a relatively flat stretch of forest land, which they had begun descending into this morning.

“How are your beasts?” Accola asked, all business. “Their wind, their legs?”

“This is easy work for them, my lord,” Fiorenza said. “I’ve switched my riding beasts every day since we left Guenveuer so that they don’t get bored or forget what it is to be ridden.” Although that hasn’t done anything for her warhorse’s temper; Pugile was so bloody bored out of his mind with doing nothing more than walking in a straight line and stopping for most of the day that she was virtually certain he was going to snap and do something drastic, like run off into the woods with the remount string or suddenly decide to imitate the legendary Narnian horses and start talking. Which she wouldn’t put past him; if there was any horse in Shoushan that was a Narnian talking horse in hiding, it would probably be her Pugile. Her riding horse, Fiore, had been more than content with this easy business; none of the nonsense with fooling about with cavalry charges or fancy riding.

Pico agreed, chatting easily with Accola for a few more minutes until the Lord Commander nodded to them and finally left, leaving them with a warning about relaxing in Narnia, since the High King apparently had a habit of coaxing foreign soldiers to break their oaths and remain in Narnia. Fiorenza had to force the tension in her shoulders to unknot itself before she could relax again.

“He’s had dinner with my father a few times,” Pico said, seeing her nervousness. “He’s actually quite nice, once you get beneath the shell.”

“Nice,” Fiorenza said flatly. “I’m sure.” Paolucci was on the far side of Shoushan, closer to Demelza and Resi than it was to Guenveuer; before she’d gone to the Accademia, she’d only been to Guenveur once before, and that had been to see her brother get his shield from the Emperor’s own hands. Accola had been a dim shape on the Emperor’s other side, scowling down somewhat less than benevolently on Shoushan’s new knights. She’d seen him at the Accademia, of course; he kept watch for new candidates for the Kingsguard, dining with the most promising cadets sometimes. She’d never been one of them.

Before she’d gotten this assignment, she’d been a bandit hunter on the southwestern border for three years. The one time she’d come back to Guenveuer after she’d won her shield and left the Accademia, it had been to testify at a trial for a petty lord who’d been funding a suspiciously well-supplied group of bandits, and in the week of the trial she’d been spending time moping around the city and hoping that it would all be over soon so that she could get back to Lartigue and the rest of her company. Instead, she’d gotten orders to join Princess Meloria’s escort into Narnia, where, if she and the High King of Narnia were found to be suitable, they’d be engaged. Fiorenza felt sorry for the High King, though he was probably as much of a spoiled noble as Princess Meloria and therefore probably deserved her.

“You think Narnia’s really going to try and bribe us away from Shoushan?” Pico asked curiously.

“Bribe us with what?” Fiorenza said. “The latest rumor is that Narnia’s dead broke.”

“I hear they give out officers’ commissions to experienced foreign soldiers,” Pico said thoughtfully. “Not that I’m considering breaking my oath. I’m out of the full-pay army in two years anyway.”

“I’m not,” Fiorenza said. “I’m here for the rest of my natural life.” She tilted her head back and stared at the sky, watching a few white clouds chase each other across the horizon. “It can’t be much different from the Imperial Army, anyway. Probably more boring; it’s smaller.”

“Probably more interesting,” Pico said. “Haven’t you heard about the creatures that run all over Narnia? Half-human monsters – in the army; that’s probably why the High King is so desperate to get humans. Must be a hell of a thing to see, don’t you think?”

“You considering breaking your oath and deserting?”

He shook his head, laughing, and Fiorenza sat back, watching Meloria bless what looked like a newly-wed couple, the woman holding a baby in her arms. Like every other graduate of the Accademia Militare, Fiorenza was an initiate of Calla Macha, the Lady of Battles, but she never pretended to be a full divine – which she supposed the princess was, but hardly qualified to do this kind of mass blessing. A real priest of Jendresi would come by eventually, surely.

Bellisente Allaro wandered over and dropped into the dirt besides them, pulling one of her ever-present packs of cards from the inside of her leathers and shuffling the dirty, sweaty pasteboard heptagons absently. The lady knight was another bandit hunter, lean and tough as old leather, with the daggers tattooed on her knuckles concealed by thin black leather gloves. Fiorenza had seen beneath them once; the wide, shiny splotches of scar tissue across her fingers and palms, legacy of the fire that had won her fame and the silver talons on her collar, fouled her grip without the gloves.

“Show still going on?” she asked, nodding at the princess.

“Calla Macha have mercy,” Fiorenza muttered, taking the cards Bellisente shuffled out to her. The three of them played for the next hour, joined by a pair of twin knights that had been pulled off duty with the army for this assignment, Anjais and Tomsa Meregalli. By the time Princess Meloria finally dragged herself away from the fawning villagers, the sun had already tipped low into the western horizon; they could make the next town by dark, but only if they didn’t stop anywhere else.

Bellisente put her cards away and the rest of them dusted themselves off, adjusting weaponry until it sat comfortably on hips and shoulders before they swung into their saddles, and the whole bloody spectacle of a company moved off. Somewhere, the Lord of the Long Road wept in horror.

They made the biggest town left before the Narnian border three days later. It was home to a petty landed knight and his lady; their manor was barely able to hold Princess Meloria and its ladies, leaving the rest of her highness’s escort to find lodging in the town. Fiorenza contented herself with the inn’s stables, eschewing the common room (all its rooms full up), which would be filled with dirty, smelling, farting men-at-arms and other knights. She was more likely to catch the plague from all the fleas or get felt up than she was to get any sleep. The stables were warm and dry and the hay made a softer bed that the hard wooden floor of the inn would be; she used her saddlebag for a pillow and fell asleep to the sound of the horses and Anjais Meregalli and a stable boy in a stall at the other end of the building.

The next day found them within a mile of the Narnian border, most of the knights trying to hide their surprise. “I will be gods-damned, Paolucci,” Esteve Mazzon announced, edging his big piebald gelding up beside her. Pugile glared at the other horse and snapped his teeth on thin air as the gelding avoided him adroitly. Esteve gripped his horse’s reins and didn’t comment on Pugile’s temper; Fiorenza’s warhorse’s bad manners were well-known by now. “It looks like you’re actually going to win.”

“Good,” Fiorenza said, pulling on her reins to keep Pugile from trying to bite the piebald again. “I need the money. The Throne pays for shit.”

“And don’t we all know it,” Esteve said, the last few words lost in an outburst of swearing as his horse danced sideways, away from Pugile.

“Lady of the Lone Lands take you and leave you to rot, you pox-ridden whoreson!” Fiorenza snarled at the horse. “I’ll sell your sorry carcass to feed the army and make some extra coin off the glue from your hooves, you fucking piece of arrow fodder.”

Esteve took the convenient moment to escape while Pugile sidestepped his way out of line, snorting and half-bucking. Fiorenza hung on with grim determination, trying to wrestle him back to obedience. Instead the warhorse trumpeted, getting the attention of the other horses, most of whose knights and men-at-arms were already watching the spectacle with some amusement.

“All right there, Paolucci?” Pico called, laughter in his voice.

“Go to hell, Viceronte! And take my gods-damned piece of crowbait with you before I send him to the Peacemaker myself!”

Pugile screamed a cavalry horse’s war cry, rearing and pawing at the air with iron-shod hooves, and Fiorenza would have fallen if she didn’t have her feet firmly encased in his stirrups. The sound had drawn the attention of Chiare Accola, and the Lord Commander turned his horse back and rode back down the side of the column towards Fiorenza.

“A problem, lady knight?” he asked, as his mare stared sedately at Pugile’s antics.

“No, sir,” Fiorenza said through clenched teeth, trying to wrestle Pugile back down. “No problem at all.”

Pugile reared again, trumpeting a stallion’s challenge, and Accola looked up at them, his expression mild. “I see that.”

“Sir, I have it under – son of a bitch, Lord of Justice hear my call, if I have to take the shears to you myself – sorry, sir.” Pugile went back down at the threat, suddenly quiet and mild as a fat old squire’s pony. Fiorenza resisted the urge to wring the stallion’s neck.

“Get your beast under control, Paolucci,” Accola said, his voice suddenly cold. “Because the next that happens, I’ll have the men-at-arms fill it full of arrows, and ill luck to you if you can’t get clear in time.”

“Sir,” Fiorenza said, red-faced, and pulled Pugile back into line, where Pico and Bellisente were trying and failing not to laugh at her.

“Your own fault for riding an uncut stallion, Fiorenza,” Pico said without sympathy.

“Go to hell, Pico,” Fiorenza snapped again, her jaw clenching on the words. She sawed angrily on the reins and immediately regretted it when Pugile jerked his head back, stamping his hooves in pain. “Sorry,” she said shortly to the horse, and he whinnied softly and put his head back down, sedate as a plow horse on the field.

She rode in sullen silence until they reached the border, where their escort to the capital of Cair Paravel was waiting, all red and gold banners in the distance, the wind catching the flags and spreading them out so that she could have read the insignia if she knew any but the golden lion. The forest was thick on both sides of the road and while there had been no trouble on the way here – the princess was too heavily guarded for any ordinary bandits to risk hitting the bandit train – Fiorenza’s training kicked in and she found herself watching the woods warily, resting her left hand on the basket-hilt of her backsword. The other bandit hunter knights with the train were equally nervous, though the soft city knights and the Kingsguard were relaxed, joking with each other about the comforts they’d soon be enjoying in the white city. Above them, the green and gold banners of the Empire of Shoushan snapped and flew in the wind, spreading the golden griffin for all to see.

“You look like you expect a dragon to come crashing out of the woods,” Pico said lightly. “Relax, Fiorenza. Nothing’s going to –”

The words died in a gurgle of blood as an arrow sprouted in his throat. For a moment the sight didn’t make any sense, then Pico slumped over sideways and fell slowly out of the saddle and the word started moving again, Fiorenza snatching her sword from its sheath as Pugile reared, screaming his challenge.

Accola was shouting orders, the bugler scrambling to obey, although his first note came out as a flat blat before he got control of himself and blew the notes for defensive circle. The knights and men-at-arms leapt to obey, pulling any mounted civilians off their horses and shoving them into the wheelhouse.

“Don’t you dare!” Princess Meloria began indignantly, starting out of the wheelhouse, and then screamed as an arrow thunked into the wood beside her head. A man-at-arms grabbed her arm without ceremony and shoved her back inside, then died in a spray of blood when two arrows struck in his chest, within a handspan of each other.

Fiorenza forced Pugile back into the circle with Anjais on one side of her and a Kingsguard knight on the other, unhooking her targe from her saddle and bringing it up in front of her. “Shoushan!” she shouted with all the others. “Shoushan!”

She swung her shield up in front of her, feeling the impact vibrate through her arm as the heavy painted wood took an arrow that pierced all the way through, the point coming out only a few inches from her face. Fiorenza plucked out with her sword hand, tossing it aside and looking for the archer. But there was still no one in sight; whoever was shooting at them was doing so from behind the cover of the thick trees, hidden and invisible.

“Knights, prepare to charge!” the Lord Commander barked, and the bugler sounded the signal.

Fiorenza stared at the woods and wondered if the man had gone out of his mind. Yes, they could charge through the woods – but the advantage would be all to the archers, and the horses would be fouled by the undergrowth, and the impact of the charge would be lessened by the trees in between. She raised her sword in front of her and kissed the cold metal above the hilt, murmuring, “Calla Macha, Lady of Battles, Friend of Ravens, Queen of Warriors, She Who Brings Fear to the Unhallowed, be with me now and in the hour of my death, guide my hand in war and in peace, take me under your shield, grant me a warrior’s death in battle and not a coward’s in bed –”

The command to charge sounded, and Fiorenza kicked her heels into Pugile’s sides, sending the stallion barreling forward into the trees, screaming, “Shoushan! Shoushan!”

The arrows flew hard and fast around them, and the knights and their horses fell and died, screaming in pain and terror. Fiorenza saw a figure rise up in front of her, standing nearly as tall as she was mounted, with the dark horns of Malgarini, Bringer of Plagues, Lord of the Long Sorrow, carrying a double-headed axe between huge hands. She screamed in fury, incoherent now, but focusing on an enemy she could see, someone she could fight. Her sword was feather-light in her hand as Pugile charged by and she leaned out of the saddle to slash at the figure, barely missing the axe that swung over her head. Pugile turned on a dime, faster than the bulky shadow, and the sharp side of Fiorenza’s backsword took him in the back, between shoulder and neck. The shock reverberated up her arm; only years of training and practice kept her grip on her sword and she jerked it free, bringing her targe up in time for the axe to glance off it instead of her arm. She swung again, into the baleful black eyes, and scored her blade across them, then stabbed, as deeply as she could, until she was hanging out of the saddle with one knee hooked over her saddle horn and her hand up to its wrist in coarse black hair. Fiorenza brought herself straight up in the saddle with a terrific twist of her legs, jerking her sword free and seeing the enemy fall before something flew at her head, batting at her face with leathery wings and sharp talons.

She slammed her shield up to protect her head, her long hair suddenly free of its tight braid and in her face, and felt it hit something that screamed wordlessly and struck at her again. “Shoushan!” Fiorenza screamed, slashing up with her backsword and slicing through something. Hot black blood showered down on her, foul-tasting when she spat it aside, but after that nothing came at her. Panting, she looked down at the two halves of what looked like a giant bat with a woman’s face and two giant talons like a pair of halves.

“Calla Macha protect us!” she exclaimed, flattening her left palm against the inside of her shield, the closest she could come to making the Warrior’s sign against evil with her hands full. On the ground beside her was what looked like a huge bull that walked upright, fallen face down with his axe on the ground beside him.

Fiorenza swallowed and reached for the reins, turning Pugile back around towards the road – or started to, until she heard screaming and saw another one of the bat-women winging her way through the air, clutching something – someone – in her talons. The someone was wearing bottle green silk and Fiorenza swore: Princess Meloria.

“Lady of Battles damn the girl!”

The sound of fighting was still coming from the road and the woods, along with the screams of the dead and dying, and someone shouting, “Narnia, for Narnia and Aslan!” The Narnians must have seen the attack and crossed the border to join the attack. One extra knight wouldn’t make a difference now, and she had a duty to the Throne. Fiorenza turned Pugile back in the direction that the bat-woman had gone, staring up at the sky as she urged the horse deeper into the thick woods. The creature was winging its way west and north, over into Narnia, and Fiorenza cursed Narnia, Princess Meloria, the Throne, the Lord Commander, and anything else she could think of. It had been late in the day by the time they reached the border; now the day was dipping into darkness and Fiorenza was beyond Shoushani borders, into Narnian territory, and alone except for her monster of her horse – though she was rapidly revising her definition of monster.

Not long afterwards, the bat-woman dipped down into the forests and disappeared from sight, and Fiorenza swore again. By the time she reached the spot where she thought the creature had landed, she was tired and hungry; her canteen was empty and her shield-arm ached from the impact of the man-bull’s huge axe. There was no one in sight, but there was a small stream running between the tree roots, trickling merrily away without a care in the world. Fiorenza dismounted with only a small whimper of pain, and led Pugile up to it, keeping his reins in one hand as the horse dropped his head and drank eagerly, though not so quickly he glutted himself. She splashed water on the back of her neck with her free hand, then brought a handful of it to her lips and drank, sighing a little at how cold it was and how good it tasted.

“Oh, look at this,” a woman’s husky voice said in Narnian and Fiorenza scrambled up, ripping her sword from its sheath and staring frantically around for the speaker. “A Shoushani knight all by herself in Narnia. Whatever can she be doing?”

“Probably the same thing we are,” a man replied in the same language, and Fiorenza jerked around as the undergrowth behind her rustled. “Looking for her missing princess.”

The woman was nowhere in sight, but the Narnian knight swung easily down from his rust-red mare, holding up his hands to show they were empty. He was younger than she was, with dark gold hair and expressive blue eyes, wearing plain brown leathers, unmarked with the sign of his house or the seal of Narnia, but the hand-and-a-half bastard sword on his hip had a gold lion’s head for a pommel; the red leather strap of his shield across his back had another one for the clasp. His horse wasn’t carrying a knight’s equipment, just a light saddle and a bit-less halter. He might have been out for a ride in his family park.

“Easy,” he said in slow Shoushani, heavily accented but perfectly understandable. “Put your sword down. We’re friends.”

“We?” Fiorenza demanded in the same language; she thought she might not let him know that she spoke Narnian just yet. “Where’s your partner?”

He blinked. “Sorry?”

“The woman you’re with. Where is she?”

“What woman?”

Fiorenza looked around for the speaker, holding her sword out in front of her, and then she realized that the fucking mare had been the one to speak.

“She means you, Sebi,” the man said to the horse, and the mare snorted, pawing at the ground.

“Bloody foreigners,” she muttered.

Fiorenza stared. “I will be gods-damned,” she said flatly. “It’s true.”

“Bloody foreigners,” the mare – Sebi – repeated, with more rancor this time.

“Sometimes I wish I could gag her too,” the knight said kindly. “Put up your sword, lady knight; we have the same goal in mind. Narnia doesn’t want to see Princess Meloria dead or injured either, especially not on Narnian soil. That would mean war with Shoushan.”

Fiorenza stared at him, trying to decide whether or not he was telling the truth, then lowered her sword slowly and sheathed it. “You’ll help me rescue her?” she asked.

He nodded.

“What were those things?” she asked warily. “The thing that took Princess Meloria?”

“Harpies,” he said, “accompanied by minotaurs, boggles, minoboars, satyrs, wolves, and at least one dark dryad. When she was alive, they were part of the White Witch’s army, but now that she’s dead, they delight in making our lives a living hell.”

“And I thought bandits were bad,” Fiorenza muttered. She stepped warily back over to Pugile, walking sideways to avoid showing her back to the stranger, and unhooked her empty canteen from the saddle, trying to decide how to refill it without turning her back, then finally just did so, ignoring the way her spine tingled at making herself vulnerable this way.

“Aren’t you going to introduce us?” the mare demanded in Narnian. “That’s just rude, you know.”

“What?” Fiorenza said in the same language, and flushed when the knight quirked an eyebrow at her, looking bemused. Well, there went that plan.

“Oh, please,” the mare said. “I can smell a talking horse from a mile away. And that,” she added, jerking her head at Pugile, “is a talking horse. Which means he’s Narnian. In Narnia. Which means he’s free.”

“I think you’re mistaken,” Fiorenza said, staring at her.

“I am not, how dare you, I know a Narnian horse from –”

“Yes, a mile away, we’ve heard,” the knight said, patting her neck, though his gaze was on Pugile, faintly curious. Pugile snorted, shaking his head and making his tack jingle. “Are you done, lady knight?”

“Yes,” Fiorenza said, capping her canteen quickly and hooking it back onto her saddle. She mounted again, watching the knight do the same, and they went single-file over the creek and deeper into the forest.

He seemed content to let her lead, even after the sun went down and the woods went dark around them, the trees casting long, eerie shadows. Pugile’s head dipped low to the ground, as if he was smelling out his way, until he stopped at a thick stand of bushes, whickering softly in the back of his throat.

“We can’t go on,” the Narnian mare said, like it hurt her. “The undergrowth’s too thick.”

“Then we’ll go on foot,” the knight said softly, sliding down out of the saddle. He patted her neck and added, “Don’t get caught.”

“Don’t do anything stupid,” she retorted, and he smiled, his teeth gleaming white in the darkness.

Fiorenza dismounted too, tying Pugile’s reins to a bush, and unhooked her shield from the saddle, sliding the strap over her head and one arm so that it hung across her back. She and the knight had to go down on their bellies to squirm through the bushes, their swords and shields snagging at twigs. She swore softly under her breath until they could stand upright again.

They went on in silence for another hour; Fiorenza wasn’t certain that they were going the right way and said so. The knight pointed out the deep, ugly scratches on a nearby tree, gouged into the wood and ripping away some of the bark. “Harpies,” he said softly. “And minoboars, here. You can smell them,” he added, his upper lip curling back in disgust. “We’ve known for a long time they have a hideout somewhere up here, but we haven’t had the resources to track it down. I thought it was further north.”

“Clearly you were wrong,” Fiorenza said.

“Clearly.”

They fell back into silence, up until the moment when a lioness slunk out of the bushes in front of the knight and said in tones of deep disgust, “Majesty.”

Fiorenza got a foot of blade drawn before the knight stopped her with his hand on her wrist, light. She stared around in horror as six other great cats stepped out of the woods around them – leopards and tigers and lionesses, all seemingly unimpressed.

“Queen Lucy says she’s saving the tongue-lashing for Herself and King Edmund,” the lioness went on. “She also wants to know why you get all the fun.”

“Of course she does,” the knight muttered.

“What is this?” Fiorenza demanded.

The knight glanced at her with amusement sparkling in his blue eyes. “Lady knight, this is Nuala, head of the Royal Guard, and Kaikura, Halmi, Cosio, Shahi, Abtahi, and Rigo, all with the Guard. This is –”

“Lady Knight Fiorenza Paolucci of Shoushan,” she supplied, then turned on him and demanded, “Who are you?”

“That’s the High King Peter of Narnia,” one of the lionesses said dryly.

Fiorenza’s jaw dropped. “You’re the High King?”

He flushed. “I thought you knew and just didn’t care,” he muttered.

“No!” Then she flushed too, feeling the heat rise in her cheeks, and added hastily, “Your majesty,” because she’d never been around royalty before, upstart eastern nation or not.

High King Peter of Narnia looked pained. “This will go faster now,” he added hastily. “They can scent out the White Witch’s followers.”

“Is that what you were doing?” a leopard – Kaikura? – said archly. “And here we thought you were just trying to get away from another arranged marriage, majesty.”

“Oh, shut up and have some respect for your sovereign,” he said easily. “Or I’ll replace you with that pack of hounds from the Marches.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” the leopard said, her voice sedate. “We’re much better looking than they are, and half of them have no independent initiative.”

“Majesty,” said another leopard, “I have a trail.”

“Good,” said Peter.

The seven great cats fell into what seemed to be a familiar pattern, the one with the scent ranging far out in front, two behind that one, two behind them, and one on either side, so that Fiorenza could barely see them, although the knowledge that they were there made the hair on the back of her neck stand up. The knight – the High King – seemed relieved to find them present, and maybe they were reassuring to him, but to Fiorenza they were bloody great carnivores with bloody great teeth, probably all too eager to use them on anything available, like Fiorenza herself.

At last the leopard that had been in the front – Shahi – comes loping back, murmuring softly in Peter’s ear when he crouches down and bends his head to her, “Found them, your majesty. About a dozen of them – two harpies, and a small wolf pack, I counted six, three boggles and a minoboar. I think there might have been a dryad, but I couldn’t tell; if there was, she was in her tree. The girl’s there too, unharmed as yet, though she’s bawling like a kitten.” She snorted a little, in disbelief or disgust, and Fiorenza scowled.

Peter nodded and straightened up, sliding his shield from his back to his arm. Fiorenza did the same, loosening her backsword in its sheath as the rest of the great cats gathered around them. Peter didn’t speak, just pointed, and the cats dipped their heads and slunk off in the directions indicated. He gestured to Fiorenza to stay with him, and she hesitated, then nodded. He might have been young, but he was a king in his own country and the great cats were obeying him without hesitation. Fiorenza had been trained to act as part of a whole, not on her own, and she was ashamed to find how grateful she was that he knew what he was doing.

They went up through the woods until Fiorenza could see a fire flickering through the tree, a few dark shapes moving around it. Peter nodded, as if to himself, and drew his sword as they moved closer.

Fiorenza swallowed hard as the figures became visible. The minoboar was a huge, squat creature, like a boar standing up on its hind hooves, with thick, stubby hands on its arms and a pair of great teeth sticking out of its mouth beneath its snout. It was wearing the shreds of worn leather armor that did nothing to cover its vast expanse of black and brown skin, hanging limp as if it had lost a great deal of weight very quickly. The harpies were familiar now, and there was nothing strange about the lean, shaggy grey wolves humped in a sleeping heap on the far side of the fire, snoring and twitching their legs as they slept. There were three oddly-colored lumps that Fiorenza took for piles of stones until one of them moved, revealing bowlegs and long arms that hung down nearly to its knees, along with a completely hairless pale body.

“Boggles,” Peter breathed in her ear, making her jump. “They’ll go for your feet, try and hamstring you.”

Fiorenza nodded slightly, working her backsword slowly out of its sheath. Princess Meloria was curled in a limp, sullen ball beneath the drooping branches of a willow tree, seemingly asleep. Peter raised a fist; Fiorenza saw the sudden gleam of eyes in the darkness on the other side of the clearing and clenched her fingers on her backsword as the minoboar snorted, walking back and forth and letting his heavy club dangle from his stubby fingers.

Peter brought his fist down, and the cats were in the clearing, ripping at the wolves and the boggles, the lioness Nuala leaping up to drag down one of the harpies as she tried to strike into the air. The bat-woman screamed with a high keening sound as one wing shredded between the lioness’s teeth. Her companion struck down at Nuala’s head and a leopard leapt up for her; the harpy backwinged abruptly, one taloned foot reaching out for the leopard before the great cat – Kaikura, Fiorenza thinks – twisted agilely out of the way and back to the ground, her front paws spattered with wolf blood.

“Don’t,” Peter said calmly as the minoboar started towards them, lifting his club. He stepped into the clearing with his sword raised in front of him, pointed directly at the minoboar’s throat.

Fiorenza edged around him to Meloria’s side as the princess uncoiled abruptly, staring at the carnage the great cats were doing in the clearing as Peter stood their calmly. “Your highness,” she said in Shoushani, reaching for Meloria’s bound hands with her sword arm. “Are you injured, your highness?”

“Watch out, lady knight!” Princess Meloria exclaimed, and then something hit Fiorenza’s chest, flinging her halfway across the clearing. It was like getting knocked out of the saddle while jousting, only whatever it was had lashed across her chest and ribs. She struggled back up to see the great willow tree above the princess uncoiling its branches and lifting its roots clear of the ground. The princess curled back down around herself, hands clamped protectively over the back of her head.

Fiorenza allowed herself half a heartbeat to gape at the impossible sight, then her training brought her back up, shield raised in front of her and sword in her hand. “Shoushan!” she shouted. “Shoushan!”

And she attacked.

She hacked at the branches that came at her, cutting two cleanly through and trying to knock the rest aside with her shield before one particularly strong blow shattered both her targe and what felt like every bone in her arm, throwing her aside. Fiorenza dragged the remains of her shield off her arm and saw the fire beside her. She snatched up a burning stick, briefly aware of Peter and the minoboar hacking at each other, the Royal Guard entangled with the other Narnian bandits. One leopard leapt at the tree and was thrown all the way across the clearing, where it lay limp as a rag doll.

The tree whipped its branches away from the fire when she thrust the torch out at it, ignoring the way her arm screamed protest. “Calla Macha!” Fiorenza screamed. “Lady of Battles! Friend of Ravens, Queen of Warriors, She Who Brings Fear! Be with me now and in the hour of my death! Guide my hand in war and in peace; I fear no evil for you are my shield and my sword-arm!”

“Jendresi!” Princess Meloria cried. “Hear your servant now! Father of Kings, look down upon your children and rain down mercy upon the just and wreak your vengeance on the unjust! I fear no evil for I know that you weigh the scales fairly; save the just from the hands of those who hold nothing but evil in their hearts!”

“Calla Macha!” Fiorenza screamed again, swiping the torch back and forth in front of her, the tree’s branches whipping around in wild protest, bending unnaturally to avoid the fire as Fiorenza slashed out with her backsword. “Be with me now and in the hour of my death!”

“Jendresi, Father of Kings!” Meloria was standing in the midst of a whirlwind of tree limbs, leaves swirling around her and yet not touching her. She raised her bound hands up to the sky and yelled again, “Jendresi!”

“Calla Macha!” She lunged forward and threw the torch into the tree’s heart, reaching through the frantic leaves and grabbing Meloria’s arm as the tree screamed. One branch whipped across her face, snapping her head to the side, but Fiorenza hung onto the princess with grim determination, dragging her back out of the mess as the tree screamed and screamed and screamed, fully aflame now. They both collapsed back on the ground, staring and panting as the tree burned.

There was a rough, gurgling sound behind them; Fiorenza forced herself to scramble to her feet, leaning on her backsword for balance before she brought it up, in time to see Peter take the minoboar’s head off with one blow. At his side, a tiger was shaking a boggle by the neck; she heard the sick, green stick sound of bone snapping before the tiger spat it aside.

The clearing was filled with the dead and dying, the leopard struck by the tree the only apparent casualty on their side. Nuala limped over to it, nosing at it, and the leopard made a faint sound of pain that seemed to be nearly human.

“Shahi,” Peter said, and ignored Fiorenza and Meloria completely in favor of going to the leopard and dropping to his knees beside her, the rest of the great cats crowding up around them.

“Your highness,” Fiorenza remembered to say after a moment, turning back to the princess. “Are you hurt?” She sawed clumsily at Meloria’s bonds with the sharp edge of her backsword, dulled from hacking at tree limbs, and the princess cast the shreds of rope aside with distaste, shaking her head.

“No, lady knight, I’m – I’m not hurt,” she said. After a moment she reached up to grip Fiorenza’s shoulders, staring at her with intensity heavy in her green eyes. “You saved me,” she said.

“He helped,” Fiorenza said, jerking her chin at Peter’s back, but Meloria didn’t even spare a glance at the High King.

“Thank you,” she said.

Fiorenza felt herself flush. “I’m a knight of Shoushan,” she said, tongue-tied and oddly clumsy. “It’s my duty.”

“No one else came,” Meloria pointed out.

“I’m sure they’re –” But the words died on her tongue and Fiorenza lapsed into silence. No one else had come – because they hadn’t seen where the princess had been taken? Because they were too occupied with the wounded from the ambush to notice that the princess had vanished? Because they were all dead?

She shoved that thread of thought aside and said firmly, “It doesn’t matter, because you’re safe now, your highness.” She reached down to give Meloria a hand up, and the princess took it.

Peter carried the wounded leopard all the way back to the horses, lifting her up carefully over his mare’s saddle before he mounted, the rest of the Royal Guard milling around his feet. He’d said only a few words to Meloria; the princess climbed up to ride pillion behind Fiorenza without prompting.

It was after sunrise by the time they made it back to the road, on the Narnian side this time. One of the less winded members of the Royal Guard loped forward ahead of them; even from this distance Fiorenza could see that there was some kind of standoff at the border. Fiorenza found herself reaching tiredly for her sword, the weight of it reassuring under her hand as they rode up.

The Narnians included a troop of what looked like two-footed goats standing upright, easily the height of a grown man, around a centaur and two riders, one of them only a slip of a girl, barely fifteen, if that, as well as another pack of great cats. On the Shoushani side of the border was Lord Commander Chiare Accola with one arm in a sling, as well as Anjais Meregalli and Bellisente Allaro, both of them looking exhausted and about to fall over. Accola’s gaze sharpened as he recognized Fiorenza.

“Paolucci!” he barked. “Where in the name of Lady of Battles have you been?”

“Sir,” Fiorenza said, so tired that she couldn’t think of anything else to add, and slid – nearly bloody fell – out of the saddle.

For a moment, Accola gaped at the sight of Princess Meloria, then he found his tongue and exclaimed, “Your highness! Are you quite unharmed? Have you been mistreated at all?”

“I’m fine, my lord,” Meloria replied. “A little knocked about, but no more. The Father of Kings and the Lady of Battles were kind to me, and Lady Knight Fiorenza Paolucci a blessing of Calla Macha.”

“The High King helped,” Fiorenza said after a moment.

“The High King?”

“That would be me,” Peter said, his arms still tight around the leopard limp in front of him. “Lord Commander Accola,” he said. “This is not exactly how I planned to welcome you to Narnia.”

“I doubt it,” Accola said, his voice suddenly very cold. “Your highness. Lady knight. If you would.”

Going back across the border seemed almost surreal, for some reason, even there was no discernible difference in the land, just stepping forward a few paces and leaving behind the odd residents of Narnia in favor of the Shoushani knights. Anjais clapped her on the back as she passed, and Fiorenza managed to force a smile at him, her hands starting to tremble on Pugile’s reins.

“Well done, Fiorenza,” Bellisente said. “Well done.”

Much as Fiorenza wanted to fall into her bedroll and sleep for about ten years, Accola wouldn’t let her have it. He had her up in his tent along with the princess, giving him her account of the attack, its aftermath, and the rescue mission, lingering on the High King’s involvement. By then Fiorenza was so tired that she was nearly positive she wasn’t making any kind of sense at all, and Meloria, who had dark circles under her eyes but had been allowed to go and clean up and change, insisted that she be let go.

Fiorenza found her packs in the half-burned luggage wagon, covered in ash and smelling of smoke but otherwise untouched. There were a few tents set up, but aside from the princess’s and the Lord Commander’s, they were reserved from the wounded. The dead were laid out by the side of the road, and she made herself walk by them, murmuring a silent prayer to the Lady of Battles and her sister Eleuthera, Goddess of Death, Lady of the Lone Lands, the Eternal Peacemaker. Pico Viceronte, Esteve Mazzon, Tomsa Meregalli, and so many others she knew by name or not at all. The enemy dead had been dragged unceremoniously into the woods. So many of them; it seemed to have been a suicide mission and Fiorenza wondered grimly what it had been that they wanted before she put the matter out of her mind and went to find some place to put down her bedroll.

Three days later, they still hadn’t moved from what Fiorenza was starting to think of as the graveyard by the road. Tensions were running high on both sides of the border; rumor was that the attack had been deliberately planned by the High King of Narnia to steal the princess in order to elope with her, thus securing a claim to the throne of Shoushan. Fiorenza, thinking of the anger in the High King’s eyes when he’d confronted the Narnian bandits, thought it was ridiculous and said so, fairly vocally. However, despite her new status as head of the princess’s personal guard – which merited a pair of silver griffin’s head pins on her collar and her permanent reassignment to Guenveuer, the last thing in the world Fiorenza wanted; she was trying to think of a way to tell Princess Meloria that – her protests went unheard, swallowed up in the congratulations the remaining knights offered her.

Dawn on the third day found her in the Lord Commander’s tent along with the highest-ranking remaining knights and Princess Meloria. Even counting the princess, Fiorenza was the youngest person there, and certainly the least experienced.

“We are returning to Guenveuer,” Accola said without preamble. “What occurred here is a clear sign of the hostility the Kingdom of Narnia bears toward the Empire of Shoushan and merits an investigation by the Emperor’s Hands; we cannot continue to endanger the princess by remaining here.”

“What do you mean?” Meloria demanded. “What did Narnia have to do with this? The attack occurred on our side of the border, and moreover, if Narnia hadn’t joined the battle, there probably wouldn’t be any of us left! That’s not even counting the fact that the High King Peter, along with Lady Knight Fiorenza, was responsible for my return – my safe return, I might add; he had every opportunity to kill the lady knight and have his way with me, if that’s what he wanted.”

Accola looked irritated. “Whether or not the attack was directly ordered by Narnia is a matter for the Hands to decide; however, it is clear that the attackers were Narnians by nationality –”

“On our side of the border, which makes banditry our issue and not Narnia’s,” Meloria interrupted, her eyes flashing angrily.

Accola ignored her and barreled forward. “Which makes this a clear act of war against the Empire –”

“Lord Commander, these were clearly bandits,” interrupted Marius Agassiz, a knight Fiorenza knew only by name, who usually commanded a garrison on the Natarene border to the north. “Which means they’re outside anyone’s jurisdiction, especially given the fact that they rode without flags.”

“Which the garrison on the border did, when they crossed into Shoushani land,” a lady knight said. “And that’s an act of war.”

“What,” said someone else, “you’d rather they just sat on the other side of the border and watched us all get slaughtered? Why, Dina, I had no idea you had a death wish.”

“Whether or not Narnia was responsible for this atrocity, we clearly cannot go on to Cair Paravel, not without a much increased guard on the princess,” a rather portly desk knight from Guenveuer said. “We are put at a clear disadvantage which may induce the High King to use his temporary advantage to abscond with her highness –”

“How many times do I have to tell you people that the High King doesn’t want to elope with me!” Meloria exclaimed. “Lord Commander Accola, this is ridiculous; I order you to continue on to Cair Paravel, at which juncture the original point of this journey may resume –”

“Your highness, you have no authority here,” Accola said flatly. “We leave for Guenveuer tomorrow, at which point I will advise his imperial majesty to announce a declaration of war upon the Kingdom of Narnia –”

“Are you insane?” someone said; it took Fiorenza a moment to realize it had been her. “You can’t blame Narnia for a bandit attack within our own borders! For the love of the gods, four days ago you were ready to ally yourself with Narnia. You were ready to marry your princess to Narnia’s High King!”

“Lady knight, you are out of line,” Accola said. “Cease and desist immediately.”

“I will not,” Fiorenza said fiercely. “Ask any bandit hunter here! That wasn’t an organized army force, that was a bandit raiding party, and you would know that if you’d ventured out of Guenveuer to do any actual work in the field. Sir,” she added belatedly, feeling the heat rise in her cheeks, and continued hurriedly on before Accola could do anything but stare at her. “Those were Narnians, yes, but Narnian bandits, not representatives of the Kingdom of Narnia. We studied the White Witch in the Accademia; even after her defeat her followers are still at large in Narnia, and those bandits were remnants of her army –”

“I will not suffer your conspiracy theories, lady knight,” Accola said, and Fiorenza realized that she was standing up, fists clenched at her sides. “You are insubordinate. Remove yourself from this company and report to the master-at-arms to be stripped of your weapons –”

“Sir,” Fiorenza said, and, dreamlike, raised her hands to slowly strip the silver griffin’s heads from her collar. “I resign my commission with the Empire of Shoushan, effective immediately. I will not be privy to this.” She dropped the pins on the floor in front of the spluttering Lord Commander, then turned to Princess Meloria. “Thank you for all you’ve done, your highness. It was an honor to serve you.” She saluted with a precise quivering snap at the end.

Meloria stared at her with huge eyes. “Lady knight –” she began, but Fiorenza was already walking out of the tent, heading for her horses and her baggage, listening to the Lord Commander shout for her arrest for everything from desertion to treason. She saddled Fiore quickly, piling her bags on Pugile in the hope that it would keep him calm, and was swinging herself into the saddle, ignoring the stares and the whispers that were already spreading among the knights and men-at-arms, when Meloria came running out after her.

“Fiorenza!” she exclaimed. “Don’t do this, please! I can make this go away – my father will realize that Lord Commander Accola’s gone mad –”

“I don’t think so, your highness,” Fiorenza said kindly. She hesitated, then added, “It was an honor to serve you, your highness. And I apologize for any unpleasantness I may have said or implied in the past.”

“You’ve never –” Meloria began, then raised her hands helplessly. “Where will you go?”

Fiorenza glanced across the invisible line of the border at the neat cluster of red Narnian tents, the golden lion banner dancing in the wind. “I rather thought I might go to Narnia,” she said. “I’ve heard that they’re always glad to take soldiers.”

“You always have a place in my household,” Meloria said suddenly. She took one of Fiorenza’s hands in one of hers and pressed something into her palm – the griffin’s head pins. “Those are from me, not the Lord Commander. Keep them.” She stepped back. “May Jendresi watch over you, and weight the scales in your favor when the Lady of the Lone Lands comes for you. I hope that this is not the last time we meet.”

Fiorenza saluted again. “May Calla Macha guide you in war and peace, your highness,” she said, and sent her horses into a gallop, out of Shoushan and over into Narnia.

She slowed them to a walk as she neared the camp, where a pair of goat-legged men – faun, she knew now – had the watch, carrying unfamiliar long-bladed pole arms with grips of deep red leather. They challenged her as she approached, and Fiorenza said in her heavily-accented Narnian, “I’m Lady Knight Fiorenza Paolucci. I’m here to see the High King.”

“Why?” one of them demanded.

“Because –” The only way to finish that was, because I just deserted in the vain hope that the Narnian army might take me, but Fiorenza hesitated over the words, and the fauns’ faces grew grimmer until a familiar voice said, “Let her through, Marin. The High King will see her.”

One of the fauns knuckled a salute as Nuala the lioness came up, looking up at Fiorenza with curiosity as she said, “Follow me, lady knight. The High King is in council with Queen Lucy and General Oreius, but he’ll see you.”

“Thank you,” Fiorenza said, dismounting and leading her horses, trying to ignore the stares she was getting from the numerous Narnians that came out of their tents or looked up from their work to watch her go by, and trying to avoid staring back in turn, because not one in ten of them was human. She had the creeping feeling that even the ones who looked human weren’t actually so.

Nuala stopped in front of a large crimson tent with the flag of Narnia and another flag, with a sword and crown beneath the lion rampant, flying under it. Three great cats were lounging about in front, with the kind of coiled wariness to their limbs that meant they could spring up and into action at a moment’s notice. “Leave your beasts here, lady knight,” she said. “They won’t wander, and no one will touch them.”

Fiorenza dropped the reins, telling Fiore and Pugile to stand, and ducked into the tent behind Nuala, blinking at the change in light. The High King was there, along with the teenage girl she’d seen at the border – Queen Lucy of Narnia, Peter’s youngest sister – and a tall centaur who must be General Oreius. There was another cluster of the Royal Guard in a corner of the tent, all of whom drew themselves up at her entrance and stared at her suspiciously. One of them was the leopard Shahi, the one who’d been injured by the tree’s flailing branches. She looked unhurt now.

The High King turned toward her, his expression courteous, and said, “Lady Knight Paolucci. It’s a pleasure to see you again. What can I do for you?”

“I resigned my commission,” Fiorenza blurted out, unable to think of a more diplomatic way to put it. “And the rumor is that Narnia will take experienced foreign soldiers.”

“Always,” Peter said calmly, watching her with steady eyes.

“I thought I might swear my sword and shield to you,” Fiorenza finished lamely, and drew her sword, holding it out hilt-first to him with her hand on the blade. “Though – I don’t have a shield anymore.”

Peter’s hand closed on the basket-hilt of her backsword. “Oreius, your shield,” he said, and the big centaur handed him a teardrop-shaped shield with gold at the top and scarlet at the bottom, bound together with a stud shaped like a lion’s head in the center. “Are you sure?” he asked.

“Yes,” Fiorenza said. She went slowly to her knees in front of him, smoothing her sweating palms across the fabric of her trousers, and said the same oath she’d said when she’d left the Accademia with her shield. “I, Fiorenza Ciecherella Della Corte di Paolucci, do solemnly swear and affirm by the Seven Gods who watch over us all, by Calla Macha, Lady of Battles, Friend of Ravens, Queen of Warriors –”

“And by Aslan,” Queen Lucy interrupted to prompt.

Fiorenza swallowed and went on. “– by the Great Lion Aslan, by the Deep Magic that created the world, that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to –” She swallowed again, forcing herself to go on, “– to His Majesty High King Peter –”

“And to the kings and queens of Narnia,” Peter said softly.

“– and to the kings and queens of Narnia, his – their heirs and successors and that I will in honesty and all faith defend His – Their Majesties, their heirs and successors in person, crown, and dignity, against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and obey the orders of Their Majesties, their heirs and successors, and the orders of the officers set over me, as set out by the laws of the Deep Magic, by the will of Jend – by the will of Aslan, and by the Kings and Queens of Narnia. Father of Kings, Lady of Battles, hear my call, be witness to my oath!” She let out the last words in a desperate sharp outburst of breath, her heart beating painfully in her throat.

The sharpened blade of her backsword sliced easily across the High King’s palm. “And I, Peter of Narnia, High King over all Kings of Narnia by election, by conquest, and by the will of Aslan, solemnly swear and affirm to keep faith and life and truth and sacred honor with you, who swears your life and your sacred honor in the my name and my family’s. Aslan and Calla Macha witness!” He didn’t stumble over the unfamiliar goddess’s name; his palm was warm with blood when he pressed it against Fiorenza’s forehead. She drew in a sharp breath, closing her eyes for a moment, and only opened them again when Peter raised her up to her feet, pressing her backsword into her hand. He slid the centaur’s awkward, unfamiliar shield onto her arm and smiled at her.

“Welcome to Narnia, Fiorenza Paolucci.”

Fiorenza saluted, bringing her sword up to touch her lips just above the hilt. “It is my honor and my pleasure, your majesty,” she said.

end