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bedlamsbardI suspect this will actually shake out at closer to six parts than seven, but I'll deal with that when we get there.
Read Part One here.
*
It’s been a long day faded into night, and Caspian might be sleeping off the exhaustions of the day – bruises everywhere, and after the initial staff bout in the morning Peta had taken him aside in the late afternoon and put a longbow in his hand, and he’s never even held a longbow; he hurts in places he doesn’t even know could hurt, and no one, not his armsmasters or his riding instructors or Glozelle, has ever worked him this hard in his life – if it wasn’t for the fact that somewhere, miles away in this darkness, men (and one woman) that Caspian knows are sneaking into his uncle’s castle, his ancestors’ castle, his castle, on information he’s given them to figure out the best and easiest way to take it. (Because a head-on attack is just stupid, Peta had said when he’d made the mistake of asking why she just didn’t do that, and not bother with the scouting.)
He’s too restless to sleep, and so he busies himself by pacing through the closed hallways of the How. Occasionally Narnians steer him away from certain passageways or caves, and he grinds his teeth and submits with as much grace as he can, remembering Peta’s words to him earlier. They only look at you as a Telmarine, she’d said. You have to show them you’re more than that; you have to prove to them that you’ll have their backs in battle, prove that you’re trustworthy. He’s never had to prove himself before – who could be more loyal to Telmar than the crown prince himself? – and the necessity of it grinds at the back of his skull, a relentless pressure that sits on his shoulders like someone’s dropped an anvil there. When he thinks about it now, he’s giddy with the realization that he managed to talk the Narnians out of not killing him, a shocked thrill that he’d never thought of before, because he simply hadn’t thought that they really would, or would want to.
He’s on the second level when he hears quick footsteps, and then Queen Lucy skids in the dirt and barely manages not to run into him. “Prince Caspian,” she says sharply. “My sister wants you.”
“Where –” Caspian begins, but Lucy has already turned before him, and he follows her, running through the narrow halls and down the stairs to the ground level and the big entry cavern, where Peta is waiting with six talking horses and Glenstorm’s centaur troop.
“Caspian,” she says as he comes in, “can you ride bareback?”
“Yes, of course,” he says. “Why –”
“Trouble,” she says shortly, and then to the horses, “I wouldn’t ask this of you, but we’re not going to get there fast enough on foot, and –”
“Of course, your majesty,” one of the horses says, staring at her with big, awestruck brown eyes. “It is an honor.”
“For you, at least,” a mare mutters, eyeing Caspian bitterly.
“None of that,” Peta snaps. “You’re armed? Good. Mount up.” She pulls herself onto the stallion’s back.
It’s been a long time since Caspian’s had to ride bareback, but it’s not hard to remember. “Watch the mane,” the mare grumbles. “You’re pulling my hair.”
“Sorry,” Caspian apologizes.
“Shut up,” Peta calls back over her shoulder, and all at once they’re racing through the woods. Caspian bends over the mare’s neck, fingers threaded through her mane. The wind rips at his face and hair; talking horses are faster than any horse he’s ever ridden before or probably ever will again.
They splash through the Rush at something that may or may not actually be a ford, and keep racing forward. Peta is in the lead, Caspian just behind her, the rest of the horses spread out in a fan between them and the centaurs. Ahead of him, Peta abruptly brings her horse to a halt, and Caspian’s mare stops beside her, panting hard with her head down.
“What is it?” Caspian asks.
“Perimeter,” Peta snaps. “String them out.”
Glenstorm and the centaurs move to follow her orders, spreading out on either side of the two of them in short lines with enough space between each centaur for three horses to pass through. They slide home bolts in their crossbows, and they wait. Peta puts her hand on her sword-hilt, but doesn’t draw it.
“What are we waiting for?” Caspian asks quietly.
“Something’s gone wrong at the castle,” Peta says, just as soft. “We’re the back-up. We hold until Ed and Su are past us.”
“What’s happened?”
She shakes her head. “I don’t know. Ed sent a messenger.”
They wait in silence, the only sound the horses’ breaths and the occasional scrape of hooves, and then, in the far distance, Caspian hears hoofbeats. Above them is the sound of wings, and he looks up, lips parting in astonishment as – gods below – a griffin angles down towards them, striking the ground before Peta as her stallion shifts in protest, though he doesn’t rear.
“What the hell is going on?” Peta asks, her voice very even.
“That fool Reepicheep,” the griffin spits. “There are a dozen Telmarine horsemen behind them.”
“There had better be a damn good explanation for this,” Peta says, drawing her sword as the Narnian riders come into view. They’re riding double, most of them, and riding hard. The griffin takes to the air, the wind from his wings stirring their clothes and hair, and the Narnian horses and centaurs thunder past them. Queen Susan and King Edmund are in the rear, and they slip off their horses and mount up on two of the riderless horses that have come with Caspian and Peta from the How, King Edmund drawing his sword and Queen Susan her bow. Caspian draws his sword, the rasp of steel strangely loud in his ears. He’s drawn with the intent of hurting Telmarine soldiers before, but that had been before – that had been before the High Queen confronted him. It seems different now, though he knows it shouldn’t be. Not really.
He sees the Telmarines come into view and swallows down his discomfort. He knows the man in the lead, one of Glozelle’s officers, a man named Astorge. A good soldier and a good man; he’d sparred with Caspian once or twice when Glozelle hadn’t been able to make their practices for whatever reason.
“Can you do this?” Peta asks. She doesn’t look at him.
“Yes,” Caspian says, and then the Telmarines must be within longbow-range, because the string of Queen Susan’s bow snaps and a Telmarine rider falls from his horse. There’s another snap, a second Telmarine jerks back as an arrow imbeds in his shoulder, but he doesn’t fall. Susan lets out a little growl of frustration as she shoots again, and this time the man falls sideways off his horse.
Men are going to die because of what you’ve done and what you’ve said, Peta had said to him. Caspian hears his voice in his ears, odd and tinny and utterly strange, like someone else is speaking, as he says, “The man with the red badge is the officer.”
“Put him down, Su,” Peta says, and Susan’s bowstring snaps again. The arrow takes Astorge in the throat, and he seems to fall backwards in slow motion, but his foot catches in his stirrup and his horse drags his body forward as the Telmarines keep charging, within crossbow-range now. The centaurs begin to shoot, the snap of their bowstrings a relentless buzzing in Caspian’s ears, and then the remaining Telmarines – far more than the dozen the griffin had promised; twice that at least – are upon them. Caspian barely gets his sword up in time, because he can’t believe this is going to happen until the first man is swinging at him, and then he stops thinking about the fact he’s killing Telmarines, killing his own people, because he’s too busy trying to stay alive and stay on his horse at the same time. The latter fails miserably, mostly because he tries to stay on the mare’s back and duck at the same time, and he falls off, rolling sideways to avoid the dancing hooves of the two horses as the mare rears, striking out at the Telmarine horse. He manages to keep his sword in his hand and rolls to his feet, turning to meet the downward stroke of an unhorsed Telmarine.
The man’s eyes go wide. “Prince Caspian?” he says, sounding like he’s seen a ghost, and his sword falls. “Your highness –”
Edmund’s sword takes his head off. “The point is to stay on the horse, Caspian!” he shouts, and then he turns to meet blades with another Telmarine soldier.
Caspian parries the swordstroke of a man who comes at him from the side; he sees the movement out of the corner of his eye and nearly loses his footing on the slippery moss as he meets him; the soldier’s sword kisses his cheek by bare chance. If he hadn’t slipped –
Little gods, if he hadn’t slipped, he’d be dead right now.
It’s pure instinct that lets him sidestep the swordsman’s blow and strike, his blade cutting through the thick leather of the man’s brigandine and open him from hip to shoulder while Caspian’s still trying to process the fact that he just came within inches of dying horribly.
“Caspian!” Peta shouts, and he looks around for her, a little wildly.
There are dead men all around him, men that he knew once, and horses as well – some of them saddled and Telmarine, others unsaddled and Narnian. One of the centaurs is bleeding badly from the area where his human upper half meets his horse lower half.
Peta’s stallion is suddenly beside him, and Peta extends him a hand. “Get on,” she says. “The others are dead, or fled. I should have –”
“Not your fault, majesty,” the stallion murmurs. He drops to his knees as Caspian wipes his sword clean on the sleeve of the dead man before him, mouthing a silent apology, and then sheathes it before he mounts. He settles his weight gingerly behind the High Queen. Her body is warm against his and he can feel her heartbeat, fast from adrenaline. There’s a rasp of steel as she sheathes her sword.
“Are you done, Su?” Peta asks, and Caspian realizes that Queen Susan has dismounted to pull her arrows free of the bodies littering the ground around them, replacing each one in her quiver.
“Yes,” Susan says, pulling herself back onto the back of the mare she’s riding. “We’d better go, I’m sure Lord Miraz is sending reinforcements as soon as he can –”
“There had better be a damn good explanation –” Peta says again, and King Edmund laughs, the sound raw.
“Oh, there’s not,” he says.
Peta snorts. “You’d better hold onto me,” she says to Caspian. “Unless of course you’re planning to fall off.”
“I was not, no,” he admits, and puts an arm gingerly around her waist, her sword-hilt bumping against his wrist. This close to her he can smell her, leather and steel and something a little brighter – something like the scent of fire, or blood. He wants –
He looks away, and nearly falls off when the horse leaps suddenly into motion. Peta laughs a little recklessly, and he holds onto that.
-
-
“Has your race lost what little intelligence it has in the past thirteen hundred years, or is this just you?” Peta demands of Reepicheep. “Because I remember mice that were brave, and noble, and valiant, and that had brains, and you are none of those things.”
They’re still fresh from the battlefield, and the High Queen’s face is bruised, a nick through her right eyebrow and the knuckles of her left hand bruised. The second wave of Telmarine riders had caught up with them not far from the How and Peta had been screaming to kill them to the last man, not to let a single Telmarine live because they can’t know where the How is, can’t, because being trapped here is exactly what they’d been sent to the castle of Telmar to prevent – but one rider had gotten away, and Queen Susan had run out of arrows. Peta and Caspian had both been on their feet, their horse cut out from under them, their swords bloody, and King Edmund had been biting his lip and fighting left-handed, his broken right arm hanging useless at his side. Those of them that are still alive are gathered in the main cavern of the How along with the rest of the Narnians here, and every eye is on the High Queen and her justice.
She’s furious, and not making any effort to disguise it. Her eyes are flashing, her hair is springing free of her braid and in a wild, fuzzy halo around her face, and one hand falls to her sword-hilt from time to time. Reepicheep’s gaze keeps flickering to that, but he’s still trying to deny that what he did was wrong in any way, and even Caspian can see that – well, he can see that what Reepicheep did he might have done himself, but he wasn’t there, and so he can’t know what he might have done if he’d been allowed to go on the scouting mission like he’d requested.
What Reepicheep did was to disobey his orders. “Only for the glory of Narnia and the High Queen!” he’d declared afterwards, and Caspian had thought Peta’s eyes would bug out of her face in her anger. He’d disobeyed his orders, and he’d left his troop of mice to the duty he should have been doing, and he’d gone to challenge Miraz in his own quarters. This, at least, is Caspian’s fault; he’d been the one to draw up the maps of the castle of Telmar, and he’d specifically marked out Miraz’s bedchamber for Peta when she’d asked. He hadn’t asked what she’d wanted to know for, just trusted that her reasons were good. Possibly they included murdering Miraz in his bed, and since Miraz had attempted to do just that to Caspian, he wasn’t inclined to protest, just ask if he could go along. Her amused grin had been answer enough to that.
Being confronted with a mouse the size of a large cat hadn’t had the effect on Miraz that Reepicheep had hoped for, and rather than quailing in his boots, he’d laughed in Reepicheep’s face – which had been when King Edmund had come bursting in, his sword in hand, informed by the other mice of Reepicheep’s whereabouts. Miraz had easily avoided Reepicheep’s attack, and Caspian’s aunt Prunaprisma had put a crossbow bolt in Edmund’s shoulder, and the distraction had been enough for Miraz to escape through a secret passageway Caspian hadn’t known about and therefore hadn’t put on the map – though he wasn’t entirely certain that King Edmund believed him on that note, given the glares that Edmund was occasionally turning in his direction. Faced with taking a screaming woman, a screaming baby, or a furious mouse out of the castle, Edmund had chosen Reepicheep and hauled the mouse out of Miraz’s bedchamber, barely missing Prunaprisma’s second crossbow bolt. One of the other mice had misinterpreted Edmund’s orders and sent up the signal for help; when Queen Susan and the back-up party had arrived in the castle courtyard, it had been to find themselves trapped in the same deathtrap Caspian had warned them about in the war council. They’d barely escaped with their lives, and they certainly hadn’t managed to escape the men Miraz sent after them.
“My queen, any Narnian would have done the same, I assure you!” Reepicheep chirps. “Why, ask anyone here – well, perhaps not anyone,” he adds, “some of us have no sense of initiative –”
“Some of you have a little thing called common sense, you mean?” Peta snarls. “I should certainly hope so, or I’d fear for the future of Narnia much more than I do right now, and I’m a little more worried than I’d ever hoped to be. No one else was stupid enough to try and go against my orders and try and attack Lord Miraz. You’ve brought this war down on our heads; you’ve done exactly what we were trying to avoid. Now he knows there’s an army out there; now he thinks there’s been an attempt on his life by my order. It’s not just petty theft, highway robbery, and vandalism anymore; now it’s high treason, rebellion, and open war. Now Miraz knows exactly where the How is; where we’re hiding, and I daresay he’s marshalling his armies as he speak. I daresay they’ll be at the How in a week, and then you’ll know exactly what it’s like to be under siege, which we are certainly not prepared for, not by any definition of the word.”
“Your majesty, I sought only to do what should have been done –”
“Should have been done?” Peta spits disbelievingly. “Are you questioning my orders, Reepicheep? What should have been done was that you should have followed your orders; if you’d done so, a dozen good Narnians wouldn’t be dead right now, and the Telmarines wouldn’t be marching straight towards our front door!”
Reepicheep’s long tail lashed the air behind him. “That monster Miraz and all his brood have been party to a thousand murders in Narnia, my friends and my family, and he should pay for his crimes! I do not expect you to understand such a thing –”
“No, possibly because I understand that personal revenge and the duty you owe to Narnia are two completely different things!”
“Humans –” Reepicheep begins.
“Think very carefully on what the next words out of your mouth are going to be,” Peta interrupts, “because I’m already imprisoning you and relieving you of your command. You don’t want to know what else I can come up with.”
Reepicheep’s eyes go wide, his tail flat, his ears up. “What?” he says blankly, then, “You cannot –”
“Don’t tell me what I can and cannot do,” Peta says. “Now. Did you want to finish whatever it was you were saying a moment ago about humans?” She raises her eyebrows, and the movement reopens the cut on her face. Bright blood beads up against the thick black smear of dried blood caking the side of her face, and someone – Caspian doesn’t know who – growls.
Everything about Reepicheep – even the feather stuck through the circlet on his head – droops. “No, my queen,” he murmurs. “Though I still believe I did what was best for Narnia.”
“Well, you can muse on that during your imprisonment,” Peta says. “If you’re lucky, the siege will have broken by the time I let you out. Take him away.”
A pair of badgers come forward to seize Reepicheep’s arms, and Reepicheep pulls away. He raises his chin. “A knight of Narnia should not be led away like a common criminal,” he says. “I will go willingly, under my own power.”
“You’re not a knight of Narnia,” Peta says, “but fine. Go. If he tries to run, kill him.”
“Your majesty!” Reepicheep’s second in command, a mouse named Peepiceek, squeaks in horror. “You cannot mean – I mean, surely you cannot believe that Reepicheep would so ignoble a thing as run –”
“He did so ignoble a thing as ignore my orders so, no, I don’t know what he’d do,” Peta says coldly, “but congratulations on your promotion. You have command of the mice now, and try not to abuse it the way your predecessor did.”
Peepiceek’s mouth opens and closes a few times – in horror, Caspian’s assuming, or maybe it’s surprise – and he turns helplessly towards his erstwhile captain, at the edge of the circle of watching Narnians and bracketed by the two badgers. “My captain, I did not ask –”
“I have faith in you, Peepiceek,” Reepicheep says kindly. “Keep them safe until my return. And now, my queen, I take my leave of you, with your permission.” He sweeps a bow.
“Make sure you take his sword away,” Peta adds dryly, and the badgers look at each other in horror before Reepicheep unbuckles his sword-belt, wraps it around the blade of his rapier, and hands it over.
When Reepicheep’s been taken away, Peta runs a hand over her face, looks at the fresh blood on her fingers, and then at the semi-circle of silent Narnians. “What are you all standing around for?” she demands. “There’s an army marching this way, and all they’d like is to see every last one of you very, very dead. Show’s over; now go back to your duties.”
They begin to disperse in groups of twos and threes, the whispers beginning and spreading like wildfire in a dry field. For a moment Peta looks pained, then she reaches up to pull her hair out of its braid and goes over to her brother and sisters, standing silent next to Caspian.
“Get yourself to a healer, Ed,” she says. “Just because I have to dress someone down for being an idiot doesn’t mean you have to stand around with a fresh, bloody wound and a broken arm.”
“I couldn’t,” Edmund says, his voice very dry. “You had all the healers standing around here listening to you yell at Reepicheep, and it’s not bad enough for Lu’s cordial.”
“Unless of course I happen to need your sword-arm, though why I’d need that – oh, wait, there’s a war –”
“There’s going to be a siege, and you and I both know it,” Edmund corrects grimly. “Broken arm isn’t going to make a difference one way or another that way.”
Peta shakes her head. “Lu can splint your arm, if none of the Narnian healers will see you or suit you,” she says, and Edmund nods before Lucy grabs his good hand and drags him away.
The High Queen turns her attention to her sister. “Su –” she begins, and Susan smiles at her wryly.
“It’s just like old times,” she says, her voice fond. “New idiots, of course, but otherwise very like.”
Peta grins at her and pats her arm. “Good shooting, little sister,” she says. “Get some rest; I’ll let you know if anything comes up.”
“Get some rest yourself,” Susan says, and then she’s gone too, leaving Peta alone with Caspian.
She smiles at him, her expression tired. “You did very well, Prince Caspian,” she says. “Though,” she adds, “you might see through to staying on your horse in a fight.”
Caspian finds himself smiling back. “It’s been a long time since I’ve ridden bareback, and without reins at that,” he says. “And I never learned combat that way.”
“Well, you’ll learn here,” Peta assures him. “Thanks for coming at a moment’s notice.”
“I wasn’t aware I had a choice in the matter.”
“Then I suppose you made the right choice,” she says. On a whim, Caspian reaches out to wipe the fresh blood from her face, his hand cupping her cheek as he does so, and Peta turns her face up towards him.
“Caspian,” she says. Just his name; nothing more.
She reaches up with one hand and curls her fingers around his wrist, but doesn’t pull away. Her eyes have gone wide again, and before his sense of self-preservation can get the better of him, Caspian leans forward and closes the bare distance between him.
Peta’s lips are just as soft beneath his as he thought they might be, but the kiss is little more than her sharp intake of breath, shock and surprise and the quick, intoxicating brush of her tongue against his before she pulls away.
“Caspian,” she breathes, her eyes wide and very, very blue. She lets go of his wrist with a jerk and takes a step back, one hand going to her lips, and then she says abruptly, “I have to go. You should get some sleep,” and walks away quickly.
It takes Caspian a moment to realize he’s breathing hard, panting like he’s run a marathon, and that he can still taste Peta on his lips – blood and wine, mostly. He looks down at his hand, the smear of blood on the ball of his thumb, and the five neat marks on his wrist where Peta had grabbed him.
-
-
In the morning – or early in the afternoon, rather; by the time they’d gotten back and roused the rest of the How there had already been light in the sky, the sun beginning to dawn in the east – Peta’s all sharp angles and business. The blood gone from her face, the cut through her eyebrow has faded to a red, ugly weal that’s shocking against her dark tan and golden hair. She paces back and forth in front of the Stone Table with her hand on her sword, sober in brown leather. She doesn’t look at Caspian.
“The majority of the Telmarine army is made up of infantry,” she says, “and the one advantage we have is that the Rush is between us and Telmarine-occupied Narnia. Miraz is going to have to move his troops across the Rush if he wants to take the How, and there are only so many places he can do that. The one he wants is Beruna, and I know you’ve been there, although why you didn’t see fit to engage in a little sabotage along with your petty theft is a question I haven’t heard answered and a problem we’re going to rectify. We’re riding out tonight and we’re going to destroy that camp.”
“What?” Trumpkin splutters, and then the cave descends into shouting.
“Shut up!” Peta yells, her clear soprano carrying easily. “Shut up right this instant, because you didn’t bring me here to question my decisions. Is that clear?”
The shouting stops, mostly, or at least dies down to whispers and groans.
“Your majesty,” Asterius says, “nearly all of Miraz’s forces are gathered at Beruna, simply waiting for the bridge to be completed; we cannot challenge that –”
“I didn’t say we were going to attack them, I said we were going to destroy that camp. Sabotage, gentlemen,” Peta says. “Guerilla warfare. We’re going to find every last resource they have at that camp, and we’re going to take it away from them. We’re going to raid their store-tents, their weapons stashes, we’re going to take their horses, and last of all, but most importantly, we’re going to burn that bridge. Let Miraz try crossing the Rush then.”
-
-
“I think I’m getting better at riding bareback,” Caspian says, and the horse he’s riding snorts.
“No, you’re not,” he says. “You sit like a sack of potatoes. Weight more forward, Telmarine. I’m not built like one of your Telmarine destriers, and you’re hurting my back. That’s better. Don’t grip my mane. I’m Sebird, by the way, and you should be extremely honored you’re riding me because it’s been more than a thousand years since a talking horse let a human on his back, especially a Telmarine. Especially one of the Caspians, good lord.”
Caspian blinks in astonishment, but says politely, “It is very good to meet you, and I am. Honored, I mean.”
“You’re also talking too much,” Peta says, her mare ghosting up beside them. “Would you like the Telmarines to hear us coming from a mile away? That’s rather counter to the point.”
“We’re farther away than that,” Sebird says. “Besides, it was all his fault.”
“What?” Caspian says indignantly, surprised to find himself bemused and a little pleased. Blame or not – well, it’s better than being ostracized by the Narnians.
Peta laughs softly. “Just keep telling yourself that, soldier,” she says. “And we’ve made good time; we’ll be at the river soon, and sound carries well over water.” She guides her mare away, and Caspian tries to suppress his glow of satisfaction.
“What are you gloating about, Telmarine?” Sebird grumbles. “We haven’t done anything yet. And besides, you’re going to have to be a damn sight luckier than you are to mount her –”
“I am right here,” Peta calls back out of the darkness, sounding more amused than insulted. “Watch your words, Sebird; you never know who might be listening.”
Caspian, blushing furiously, can’t help but smile at Sebird’s hastily muttered apology. He pats the horse’s neck, and Sebird shakes his head. “Oh, shut up, Telmarine,” he grumbles, and then falls silent.
It’s a small group, fast-moving, and Caspian’s surprised to be here at all. He, Peta, and Queen Susan are all riding talking horses, with another half-dozen riderless behind them; Glenstorm’s centaur troop is here as well, along with a handful of great cats and talking dogs and wolves. Within the baskets on their haunches the centaurs are bearing along with them Reepicheep’s former troop of mice, now commanded by Peepiceek, and a number of other small talking Narnians – moles, squirrels, skunks, a few badgers. This is a Telmarine camp, and Caspian’s surprised to be a part of this raid at all, given the High Queen’s and King Edmund’s words the other day. But the High Queen must trust him – that, or she’s giving him a chance to earn that trust, and he doesn’t want to let her down. He gave her the information about this camp, everything that he knows about the make-up of Telmarine war-camps (though this isn’t really a war-camp, and he doesn’t know that much anyway; it’s not something he was necessarily expected to know, though he’d somehow managed to absorb more than he’d thought from Glozelle’s lessons) and the men that are likely to be here. It may not be as accurate as he hopes – he doesn’t know exactly what’s going on, and since this is supposed to more a building project than a war-camp – well, they’ll see how good his information is, and he can only hope for the best and pray to the little gods that he hasn’t failed miserably, and that Miraz hasn’t increased the guard significantly since the failed attack on the castle.
They ford the River Rush as quietly as they can, in ones and twos, the better part of a mile down from the camp. The splashing of their passage is nearly unheard, and Caspian thanks the little gods that it’s a dark night, the moon covered by clouds that seem to offer no threat of rain; he can’t feel any moisture in the air.
There are Telmarine guards at the perimeter of the camp, and Peta and Susan slip off their horses. Caspian stays where he is; his role in this has been explained to him, and he’s not to go anywhere alone just yet. The distrust gnaws at him, but there’s nothing he can do about that, and Reepicheep’s example is a good excuse not to try any of the thrilling heroics, remnants of mostly forgotten legends about the great Telmarine heroes of the past, that flit through his mind.
The two women return a moment later, Peta’s dagger in her hand and Susan’s bow in hers, and mount up again. Caspian sees the dead guards as they slip through the hole in the perimeter – Susan hasn’t left her arrow behind, but the second guard is smaller than him, and his throat is slit.
Once they’re within the camp bounds – surprisingly, shockingly quiet for such large creatures – the Narnians separate and slip away in ones and twos to follow their orders, Peta and Susan directing them with hand signals. Caspian dismounts, pats Sebird’s neck – the horse whuffles in his hair, and it’s surprisingly reassuring – and follows Peta as Susan clasps her wrist briefly before vanishing between two tents, a badger at her heels.
The supply tents aren’t quite where he’d thought they were, but Peta doesn’t chide him for it, just puts his hand over his mouth when he opens it to apologize. There are guards on the supply tents and wagons – there hadn’t been when he’d been here last with the Narnians, and this is the fruit of that night’s labor – and they sneak around the back, Peta’s hunting knife in her hand, Caspian’s dagger in his. Caspian reverses his dagger in his hand and hits the guard on the right hard just behind the ear, catching the man as he crumples and lowering him to the ground, and then looks up to see Peta across from him wiping her knife clean on the guard’s sleeve. End it, she mouths at him, and Caspian shakes his head. He shouldn’t have to kill good men if he doesn’t have to, and he doesn’t; whoever this guard is and whatever he might try to do in the upcoming battle – and there will be a battle at some point; he has no choice in that matter, and it’s certain – he’s harmless now, harmless and incapacitated.
Peta scowls at him and comes over, kneeling down beside him and socketing her hunting knife just beneath the man’s chin. Caspian grabs her shoulder, but too late. Her eyebrows go up, testing him, and he lets go of her, sheathing his dagger as he straightens. He unlatches the back of the wagon as quietly as he can, trying to muffle the click of the metal, and Peta comes over to help him. They roll the barrels of lamp oil out one by one, and from the wagon over to the shadowed monolith of the half-completed bridge and the machines standing silent over it. The guards here are dead – shot, Caspian sees when he turns one body over, and the arrows removed. Queen Susan isn’t leaving behind any evidence of exactly who’s been here.
They work the stoppers out of the barrels and roll them over the bridge, spilling lamp oil across the split logs as they go. It takes four barrels before Peta signals him to stop, and then they roll the last two barrels over towards the lumber that hasn’t yet been added to the bridge and cover that in oil as well, abandoning the barrels there. She glances up at the sky; Caspian follows her gaze, and sees the circling black shapes of the three griffins above, carrying firepots in their claws to drop at her signal.
She catches his wrist and pulls him along with her, back towards the supply wagons, where a pair of beavers are determinedly wrecking the wooden wheels on the wagons as a number of other Narnians carry off everything they can get their hands on. Peta braces a hand on Caspian’s shoulder as she stands on tiptoe to see into one wagon, then nods to the Narnians around her before dragging him along to the weapons tents.
There are more dead guards here, their necks twisted at odd angles. A young centauress stands before the tent with a crossbow in her hands; Peta catches her eye and motions towards the tent with her hands. The centauress nods, drops her crossbow to hang at her side, and ducks into the tents. Another centaur emerges a moment later, the baskets on his flanks bulging with weapons, and Peta nods in approval.
She turns toward Caspian, standing on tiptoe to bring her lips to his ear, and he bends his head obediently. “Commander’s tent,” she breathes, barely any sound at all, and he nods before leading her away.
It seems unbelievable that the guards here, still alive, awake, and patrolling, haven’t noticed any disturbance. Caspian hopes desperately that they’ve struck just after the changing of the guard rather than before, because they’ve been here nearly an hour already, and when the guard changes – bodies are a little hard to explain, as are the two dozen Narnians steadily robbing the camp blind.
Peta looks at the guards, then at Caspian. She tilts her head towards them, and when he blinks at her, confused, she touches the front of his brigandine lightly and he understands what’s she’s saying: he’s dressed like a Telmarine and he looks like a Telmarine – well, he is a Telmarine – and he should be able to approach without raising an alarm. So long as they don’t recognize him for who he really is, and really, his face isn’t that well-known; Miraz had done his best to keep him under wraps and within the castle bounds.
He nods his understanding of her request, and she gestures again with one hand, touching her chest. She’ll go around and surprise the one guard from behind; he’ll take the other from the point. Caspian nods again, resists the sudden and strange urge to kiss her – now isn’t the time – and straightens his shoulders before he steps out of the shadows and into the open area in front of the commander’s tent. The air is still tonight; there’s no way to tell who it is, not in the dark and with the banners drooping. He hopes it’s not anyone he knows very well, or one of his father’s supporters (though the majority of those men are all long-dead or vanished, murdered by Miraz years ago).
The guards’ hands go to their swords as he approaches, then relax. “What news, brother?” asks one of them. “Is there some trouble across the river, or word from the castle?”
“None whatsoever,” Caspian says, resting his hand on his sword-hilt. “Just a walk-through.”
“That’s not scheduled for another hour now,” says the second guard, his eyes narrowing a little in suspicion. At Caspian’s accent maybe, and he curses himself silently, because he sounds like a noble, had never thought he should bother sounding otherwise, and common soldiers don’t speak like that.
“Lord Miraz’s orders,” he says, trying to roughen his voice. “Direct from the castle. Haven’t you heard? The schedules are all changing up.”
“No, we hadn’t heard,” says the second heard, and opens his mouth just as Peta buries her sword in his heart.
Caspian draws his sword and swings in the same movement, slashing half-through the other guard’s neck. He only gets out a gurgled shout before he slides to the ground.
Peta pulls her sword free and straightens, cutting through the cords that bind the tent flaps closed. Caspian follows her in, keeping his sword drawn. She crosses to the bed without hesitation, and puts her sword-blade at the sleeping man’s throat.
“Glozelle?” Caspian whispers as the general’s eyes snap open.
“Your highness,” Glozelle says slowly, his gaze flickering towards him. “It is good to see you safe, all rumors of your demise aside.”
“I thought my uncle was still saying I’d been kidnapped,” Caspian says uncertainly.
“Yes,” Glozelle says. “Well. From what I can see, it would be a most irregular kidnapping, though I suppose stranger things have happened to your family.”
“Having a nice conversation?” Peta asks. “So sorry to interrupt. General Glozelle, I’m assuming.”
“You assume correctly, madam,” Glozelle says, looking back at her. There’s no flicker of surprise in his gaze, not even when he takes in the curves of breasts and hips beneath her men’s clothes. “It seems you have me at a disadvantage.”
“It seems I do,” Peta agrees. “And because of that, you’re going to tell me everything I want to know, and I’ll make your death quick.”
“Your majesty –” Caspian protests.
For a moment Glozelle looks startled, and then he says, “Save your breath, your highness. You are lucky enough to have escaped your uncle’s attack with your life; I’d rather your luck not run out.”
“My luck?” Caspian says bitterly, ignoring the sharp glare Peta throws at him. “It wasn’t my uncle who aimed a crossbow at my bed and pulled the trigger; I believe that would have been you and your men.”
“It was,” Glozelle agrees, “and I can only hope you can forgive me for following my orders, your highness.”
“Are you also the one that told my uncle that your men died in the raid three nights ago?” Caspian demands, staring at the healing weal on Glozelle’s face. He hadn’t even seen Glozelle the night they’d been here; he hadn’t known Glozelle was commanding here, or he might have –
He would have killed him; he’s sure of that, tried to return the favor that Glozelle had offered him the night his cousin had been born. His grip tightens on his sword and he steps forward toward the bed.
“Caspian,” Peta says flatly. She doesn’t snap the word; she doesn’t have to. The tone of her voice makes it more than clear it’s an order, and Caspian halts automatically.
“May I know the name of the woman who has me at sword-point?” Glozelle inquires politely.
Peta leans down, her face very close to his, although her sword doesn’t waver, and says against the side of his face, “The name is Peta the Magnificent, High Queen of Narnia.” She straightens. “Now tell me how many men Miraz has.”
“Far more than you can muster, I assure you,” Glozelle says, his voice calm. He doesn’t seem at all surprised to find a legend stepped out of thin air to stand beside him, a sword that’s as much of a legend as Peta herself at his throat. Caspian has always envied the man his preternatural calm, and he still does. He’s tight with tension, vibrating with it, and he’s suddenly very aware of everything around him; the faint sounds outside the tent as the Narnians continue on with their raid, the sword beside Glozelle’s bed, the precariousness of their situation, trapped in the heart of the Telmarine camp with no easy way out except death.
His eyes on Peta, Caspian steps around the opposite side of the bed to pick up Glozelle’s sword, and sees Peta glance at him and nod in approval. He puts the sheathed blade down carefully on the folding table in a corner of the tent and reaches for the map there, stopping only when he sees the counters on it. He looks up at Peta with wide eyes and gestures to it.
“What?” she says, attention distracted as she looks over, and Glozelle snatches his hand out from beneath his pillow and buries a dagger in her side.
“Peta!” Caspian screams as her sword falls from her hand, her mouth opening in shock and surprise. He leaps for her, but Glozelle already has a sword – a second sword – in his hand, and Caspian barely manages to get his blade between it and Peta as he swings toward her.
The man’s barefoot and in shirtsleeves and hose, and he’s still a better swordsman than anyone Caspian’s ever met. Caspian parries desperately, trying to protect Peta as she clutches at the wound in her side, and Glozelle advances on him. He’s toying with him, Caspian realizes abruptly, because there are a dozen times when he could have struck easily through Caspian’s blocks.
“What are you doing?” he demands. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Peta bite the side of her hand and grasp the dagger in her other hand, yanking it free.
“You should run,” Glozelle tells him calmly as his sword slices a cut down the side of Caspian’s cheek. “Run as far as you can, your highness, and don’t look back. You will die if you stay in Narnia any longer.”
“This is my country,” Caspian insists, his sword too slow to avoid the kiss of steel as Glozelle’s blade nicks the side of his face.
“Then come back when you have an army to support your claims,” Glozelle says, knocking the sword from Caspian’s hand as he traps him between the tent wall and his own body. “Take a horse, leave this place – I’ll buy you the time – but you have to go, your highness.”
Once – before he’d seen the Narnians and heard Queen Susan’s horn split the air and looked the High Queen Peta in the eye – he might have agreed. Now he’d rather slit his own throat. “You’ll have to kill me first,” he says.
“Bad plan,” Peta says, and buries Glozelle’s dagger between his shoulderblades. She’s not tall enough to get a good angle and the blade doesn’t go deep; Glozelle half-turns, and Caspian dives for his sword as Glozelle hits Peta across the face with the hilt of his sword. She stumbles backwards, fumbling for the knife on her belt, and Glozelle raises his sword.
“No!” Caspian yells, which is when the guards burst in. He tackles Peta around the waist as crossbow bolts skim the air over their heads, and Glozelle shouts, “You idiots! Lord Miraz wants them alive!”
“Lion,” Peta mutters, voice muffled against Caspian’s shoulder, and shoves at him ineffectually before he scrambles up, sword raised.
Distantly, he realizes he can taste blood; the wounds on his face, maybe. He puts himself between Glozelle and the Telmarine crossbowmen and Peta. Outside he can hear shouts, the clash of swords; the rest of the camp has been roused.
“General,” he whispers.
Glozelle meets his eyes. “Go,” he says.
“What?” Caspian says, startled, and then Glozelle’s sword flashes, his men dying with their surprise still fresh on their faces.
Caspian doesn’t hesitate again. He turns to find Peta swaying on her feet, her sword in one hand and her other hand pressed to the wound in her side. There’s blood pouring down her face where Glozelle hit her. “Come on,” he says, and helps her sheathe her sword so he can put one of her arms over his shoulder, letting her lean on him heavily as he half-carries her out of Glozelle’s tent.
Outside, the camp is in chaos. The flames from the burning bridge are leaping high into the sky and soldiers are running back and forth, shouting. He doesn’t see any Narnian.
“Good,” Peta says, her voice starting to slur. “They got away.”
“Which we also need to do,” Caspian reminds her, and sheathes his sword before he scoops her up into his arms. She’s surprisingly light, and he feels the hitch in her breath as she curses. They need to get into the woods; that’s the closest they’re going to get to safety at this juncture.
There’s enough madness – some of the Telmarines are trying to put out the flames, others merely to contain them, still others are trying to organize enough to look for the saboteurs, and Caspian hopes sincerely they got back over the river in time and without too any casualties – that their retreat goes unnoticed. He puts Peta down behind a huge tree whose trunk is at least his height in diameter, and she lifts her fingers from the wound in her side to her face and says, “Caspian, you have to –”
“Right,” Caspian says, ripping at the bottom of his shirt. Peta fumbles at the buttons on her jerkin and finally gets it open. Beneath, her red shirt is stained dark with blood.
He’s never had to bandage a wound before, and his hands shake as he does so – so much blood, how can she possibly survive this – but Peta gasps instructions through clenched teeth, and he finally sits back and stares forlornly at his bloody hands.
“Thanks,” Peta says weakly. “Why did he –”
Caspian shakes his head. “He was – he taught me how to hold a sword, and he’d always –”
“Oh,” Peta says. “He likes you, then.” She tilts her head back against the tree trunk, breathing hard through her mouth. “Thank you,” she says again, and then, “Come here.”
Caspian goes to her, close enough that he can feel her breath on his face and hear her sharp pants, the hitch in every breath, and then she curves a hand around the back of his neck and pulls his head down to hers, mouth open beneath his. She kisses him for a long time, all tongue and teeth and the taste of shared blood between the two of them, and then she pulls back, wincing.
“On account,” she says, and Caspian realizes he’s straddling her lap, knees braced on either side of her hips and nudged up against the tree, and flushes.
He sees her smile. “I think your friend broke my nose,” she adds. “Haven’t done that in a while; I forgot what it feels like.”
“He’s not my friend,” Caspian says. He settles on the ground beside her, hard and uncomfortable, and adjusts his scabbard.
“Do me a favor?” Peta asks softly.
Caspian looks at her face – bruised, cut, smeared with blood, her lips swollen – and says, “Anything.”
She smiles again, wincing a little around the edges of it. “Give me my sword,” she says, and Caspian leans across her to wrap his fingers around the golden hilt of the sword of Narnia and draw it.
She takes it from him and lays it across her lap, then raises her head to kiss him again, hard and quick and sure. “Just in case,” she says against his mouth, and he curls his fingers around her sword-hand as he sits back. She leans her head on his shoulder and Caspian prays to every god he’s ever heard of that the Narnians find them before the Telmarines do.
-
-
He falls asleep, or thinks he does, because the next thing he knows is Trumpkin shaking him awake. Caspian’s hand closes on his sword-hilt, the blade unsheathed across his lap, before he recognizes the dwarf, and he croaks, “Peta –”
From beside Trumpkin Queen Susan is all pale skin, dark hair, and big eyes; for some reason, in the pale light of early dawn, she looks surprisingly like her sister. “She’s alive,” she says, cradling Peta against her shoulder. “She’s lost a lot of blood. We have to get her back to Lucy now.”
Caspian can’t see what Lucy will be able to do for Peta, but getting her back to the How is a better option that leaving her here to die. He gets up slowly, every muscle in his body aching, and sheathes his sword before reaching for Peta.
Queen Susan gives him an alarmed look, but relinquishes her hold on her sister and lets Caspian lift her up in his arms, Peta’s head lolling slackly against his shoulder. It’s only Susan, Trumpkin, and two horses in the wood; Susan says, absently, “Thank Aslan, I was afraid –” and stops abruptly as she leans down to pick up Peta’s fallen sword, curling her long fingers around the hilt awkwardly.
One of the horses kneels down so that Caspian can mount up and says anxiously, “Will she be all right?”
“I think so,” Susan assures him, which doesn’t sound particularly reassuring, and Caspian adjusts until he can grip with his knees – his arms are occupied with Peta, and he can’t reach the horse’s mane for a second grip – before the horse rises.
Queen Susan takes Trumpkin up before her, and she looks anxiously at Caspian before urging her horse forward.
It’s a rough journey. They’re hours away from the How already, and they’ve been out all night; the horses are tired and carrying double. There are Telmarine patrols up and down the Rush, and Susan stares at the river with her mouth set grimly before she urges them further down; they can’t cross here, so close to Beruna. They finally manage to ford the river three miles away, where the water runs fast and deep and the horses are swept sideways with every step they take. By the time they make it to the other side, they’re soaked to the skin and shivering, but Susan urges them forward anyway.
When they’re halfway to the How, two centaurs ghost out of the woods. Caspian’s horse, Aegla, raises his head tiredly and says only, “You couldn’t make some noise?” before letting his head fall, breath coming in sharp, heavy pants.
“King Edmund has sent out patrols,” the centaur in the lead – Caspian thinks his name might Leafducca – says, eyeing Susan with concern. “Has something gone amiss?”
Susan closes her eyes for a moment. “Please just tell me the majority of my people got back to the How on schedule,” she says, opening her eyes again.
“Aye, but when you did not return, the king sent us out to search for you – even on the other side of the river if need be.”
“Good,” Susan says. “I thought he’d get the idea; he certainly has enough experience with it. Look, we need to get back to the How as soon as possible; my sister’s badly wounded –”
“The High Queen?” the second centaur asks in alarm, and peers at Caspian suspiciously.
“Let’s consider the fact that my sister Lucy is supposed to be safe and sound back in the How,” Susan snaps, tone too tired for most of the sting to stick. “Which sister exactly do you think it is? And let’s not delay any further; the bleeding’s stopped for now, but I’m afraid that the wound might reopen –”
“Of course, your highness,” Leafducca says. “We will escort you –”
“No,” Susan says, and stares at him flatly. It takes Leafducca a moment to understand her meaning, and his eyes go wide in shock and surprise.
“Your majesty, you cannot possibly mean – not in a thousand years has any human –”
“My sister,” Susan says, “your queen, the High Queen of Narnia, is going to die unless she makes it back to the How now. Unless you happen to have a problem with that, in which case, I’m not particularly in a mood to be merciful.”
“No, your majesty, of course not,” Leafducca says, practically tripping over the words in his hurry to get them out, and Susan nods shortly. She dismounts from her horse and comes over to Caspian as Aegla goes to his knees again, and together they get Peta on Leafducca’s back. Susan mounts up behind her, holding her sister in place against her body, and nods to Caspian.
“I’ll see you back at the How,” she says, and then Leafducca leaps away, leaving Caspian alone with two horses, Trumpkin, and a young centaur who’s clutching his crossbow a little too tightly for comfort and glaring accusingly at Caspian.
“We’ll walk from here,” Trumpkin declares, and both horses drop their heads and breathe sighs of relief.
“Thank the Herdsman,” Aegla says. “Thank Aslan. No offense, Prince, but you’re heavy, and I don’t have much experience carrying humans around like one of your dumb Telmarine horses.”
“None taken,” Caspian says.
“Stop talking and start moving,” Trumpkin barks, and Caspian forces his weary legs to move, striding forward and trying not trip over tree roots that seem to have appeared out of thin air specifically to trip him.
“Stop that,” Aegla hisses the third time Caspian stumbles.
“It’s not my fault,” Caspian says, startled, and Aegla snorts.
“I’m not talking to you,” he says. “Sorry to disappoint.”
After that, there aren’t nearly so many tree roots, and Caspian stares suspiciously at the tall trees around him and doesn’t have anything to say.
It’s twilight by the time they make it back to the How, and the sight of the hump of stone has never been so welcome. As they break from the treeline, after passing the perimeter guard (who’d expressed shock and surprise to see them alive), a pair of great cats leap forward out of the grass.
“Queen Susan and King Edmund want to see you,” Hilzarie declares, sitting back on her haunches to look up at Caspian. She’s beautiful, sleek and strong, and the setting sun turns her grey and black fur golden. “Not you,” she adds to Trumpkin and the horses. “Just you,” she says to Caspian.
He rubs a hand over his face, feeling stubble and dried blood scrape at his palm. “All right,” he says. “Where are they?”
“In the table room,” Hilzarie says. “I’ll take you.”
He’s aware of the eyes on him as he enters the How, hundreds of Narnians all wondering at his late arrival. None of them say anything, but Caspian can guess at what they’re thinking, and it must boil down to once a Telmarine, always a Telmarine.
“I’ll leave you here,” Hilzarie says at the entrance to the cavern, and Caspian nods. His sleeves are dry with blood, and they crackle when he reaches up to push his hair out of his face before going in.
The room is lit along the walls as it always is now, fire burning brightly and eternally in the round trenches that run the length of the cavern. Queen Susan is asleep on the steps leading up to the top of the standing stones, her head on her brother’s knee and King Edmund’s arm around her shoulders. When Caspian comes in, the king raises a finger to his lips and shifts Susan so she’s lying down across the steps before he comes over to Caspian.
“What do you have to say?” he asks softly.
Caspian shakes his head. “There are no excuses,” he says. “Something went wrong.”
“Obviously,” Edmund says. His tone is flat, neutral. “Do you know what?”
There’s a tight, sick feeling in the pit of Caspian’s stomach; he can’t see why King Edmund would be asking him these questions if things hadn’t gone even worse than Caspian had assumed. If Peta didn’t make it back to the How alive, if the Telmarines had captured or killed the majority of the Narnians, if they’d lost the supplies they’d been sent to gather, if the bridge hadn’t burned – there are so many things that could have gone wrong that Caspian hadn’t even begun to think of until now.
“No, my lord,” he says. “The High Queen was wounded by my – by General Glozelle; I should have made sure that he was not armed.”
“Yes, you should have,” Edmund agrees. “Peta’s still unconscious; do you want to tell me exactly what happened after you left the How?”
Despite the phrasing, it’s not a question, and the tone of his voice is so like that of Miraz dressing him for some slight or another – real or imagined – that Caspian feels his shoulders draw in and his head go down, his gaze flickering down towards the dirt beneath his boots. “Of course, my lord,” he says, as he’s said to his uncle a hundred times, and does so. He dredges up every detail he can remember; the only thing he leaves out is Peta’s kiss, because – well, because Edmund is Peta’s oldest male relative, and it’s inappropriate behavior for a Telmarine lady. Doubtless different for a Narnian one, or at least for the High Queen, but Caspian’s not willing to implicate her in something that may well be his own fault.
“All right,” Edmund says when he’s finished. For the first time he looks tired, and for a minute the mask he’s been wearing fades and he looks like a boy again, a little lost, the strain starting to wear at him, and Caspan could almost feel sorry, almost feel just so slightly superior – and then Edmund draws his shoulders up and his back straight, and Caspian is looking at the king of Narnia, not the boy. Edmund runs his good hand over his face and says, voice rueful, “It’s just that I didn’t know what happened after you and Peta got separated from the rest of the Narnians, and like I said, she’s still unconscious, sleeping off the aftereffects of Lu’s cordial. She’ll be fine in the morning; Su got her back a few hours ago.”
“I am glad to hear it,” Caspian says sincerely, and Edmund gives him a thin but genuine smile.
“You know I’ll be talking to her in the morning,” he warns. “If anything you’ve said doesn’t match up –”
Caspian can’t hide his alarm, but Queen Susan laughs a little wryly from behind Edmund. “If Peta thinks that you’re responsible somehow, it won’t be us you’ll have to worry about,” she says, as Caspian looks over Edmund’s shoulder to see her sitting up, elbows braced on her knees. “I’m sorry I had to leave you back there,” she adds. “That was ungracious of me, but I thought you’d be found sometime before you – well, sometime before you got back to the How. Obviously not.”
“Obviously,” Caspian agrees, and tries to hide his yawn. “My apologies, my lady.”
“No offense taken,” Susan says. “Get some food and sleep, your highness. You look like you’ve been through the wars.”
“Thank you, my lady,” Caspian says, and manages a credible impression of a bow before he nearly falls over. Edmund catches his elbow to steady him.
“I thought you might like to know that Peta was the worst casualty,” he adds. “There were a few other injuries, but none life-threatening, and we got almost everything we went for over the river. The rest of it won’t be any good to the Telmarines, either.” He smirks a little, and there’s that quick flash of the boy again. The plan had been Peta’s, but she and Edmund and Susan had talked it out with Caspian sitting with them, offering what knowledge of the camp’s layout as he had.
“What about the bridge?” Caspian asks anxiously, because that was their primary concern. If the bridge didn’t fire – or didn’t burn completely – then it might as well have been for nothing.
“Ashes,” Susan says smugly. “You should have seen the look on the commander’s face when he finally got a look at it. I think he wanted to cry.”
“My uncle will not be happy with him,” Caspian murmurs, and feels a little twinge of pity for Glozelle – but Glozelle has tried to kill him more than once, and sparing his life the one time hardly makes up for that. Although he can’t help but wonder why Glozelle would do so – Glozelle, who’s always been loyal to Miraz, who had the almost unbelievable luck of rising from common birth to the position of an officer in Miraz’s personal guard, and now to grand commander of the Telmarine army. Sentimentality hardly seems an adequate explanation.
Edmud grins. “I doubt it,” he says. “Get some sleep, Prince Caspian. Long day tomorrow.”
*
tbc
go to part three
Read Part One here.
*
It’s been a long day faded into night, and Caspian might be sleeping off the exhaustions of the day – bruises everywhere, and after the initial staff bout in the morning Peta had taken him aside in the late afternoon and put a longbow in his hand, and he’s never even held a longbow; he hurts in places he doesn’t even know could hurt, and no one, not his armsmasters or his riding instructors or Glozelle, has ever worked him this hard in his life – if it wasn’t for the fact that somewhere, miles away in this darkness, men (and one woman) that Caspian knows are sneaking into his uncle’s castle, his ancestors’ castle, his castle, on information he’s given them to figure out the best and easiest way to take it. (Because a head-on attack is just stupid, Peta had said when he’d made the mistake of asking why she just didn’t do that, and not bother with the scouting.)
He’s too restless to sleep, and so he busies himself by pacing through the closed hallways of the How. Occasionally Narnians steer him away from certain passageways or caves, and he grinds his teeth and submits with as much grace as he can, remembering Peta’s words to him earlier. They only look at you as a Telmarine, she’d said. You have to show them you’re more than that; you have to prove to them that you’ll have their backs in battle, prove that you’re trustworthy. He’s never had to prove himself before – who could be more loyal to Telmar than the crown prince himself? – and the necessity of it grinds at the back of his skull, a relentless pressure that sits on his shoulders like someone’s dropped an anvil there. When he thinks about it now, he’s giddy with the realization that he managed to talk the Narnians out of not killing him, a shocked thrill that he’d never thought of before, because he simply hadn’t thought that they really would, or would want to.
He’s on the second level when he hears quick footsteps, and then Queen Lucy skids in the dirt and barely manages not to run into him. “Prince Caspian,” she says sharply. “My sister wants you.”
“Where –” Caspian begins, but Lucy has already turned before him, and he follows her, running through the narrow halls and down the stairs to the ground level and the big entry cavern, where Peta is waiting with six talking horses and Glenstorm’s centaur troop.
“Caspian,” she says as he comes in, “can you ride bareback?”
“Yes, of course,” he says. “Why –”
“Trouble,” she says shortly, and then to the horses, “I wouldn’t ask this of you, but we’re not going to get there fast enough on foot, and –”
“Of course, your majesty,” one of the horses says, staring at her with big, awestruck brown eyes. “It is an honor.”
“For you, at least,” a mare mutters, eyeing Caspian bitterly.
“None of that,” Peta snaps. “You’re armed? Good. Mount up.” She pulls herself onto the stallion’s back.
It’s been a long time since Caspian’s had to ride bareback, but it’s not hard to remember. “Watch the mane,” the mare grumbles. “You’re pulling my hair.”
“Sorry,” Caspian apologizes.
“Shut up,” Peta calls back over her shoulder, and all at once they’re racing through the woods. Caspian bends over the mare’s neck, fingers threaded through her mane. The wind rips at his face and hair; talking horses are faster than any horse he’s ever ridden before or probably ever will again.
They splash through the Rush at something that may or may not actually be a ford, and keep racing forward. Peta is in the lead, Caspian just behind her, the rest of the horses spread out in a fan between them and the centaurs. Ahead of him, Peta abruptly brings her horse to a halt, and Caspian’s mare stops beside her, panting hard with her head down.
“What is it?” Caspian asks.
“Perimeter,” Peta snaps. “String them out.”
Glenstorm and the centaurs move to follow her orders, spreading out on either side of the two of them in short lines with enough space between each centaur for three horses to pass through. They slide home bolts in their crossbows, and they wait. Peta puts her hand on her sword-hilt, but doesn’t draw it.
“What are we waiting for?” Caspian asks quietly.
“Something’s gone wrong at the castle,” Peta says, just as soft. “We’re the back-up. We hold until Ed and Su are past us.”
“What’s happened?”
She shakes her head. “I don’t know. Ed sent a messenger.”
They wait in silence, the only sound the horses’ breaths and the occasional scrape of hooves, and then, in the far distance, Caspian hears hoofbeats. Above them is the sound of wings, and he looks up, lips parting in astonishment as – gods below – a griffin angles down towards them, striking the ground before Peta as her stallion shifts in protest, though he doesn’t rear.
“What the hell is going on?” Peta asks, her voice very even.
“That fool Reepicheep,” the griffin spits. “There are a dozen Telmarine horsemen behind them.”
“There had better be a damn good explanation for this,” Peta says, drawing her sword as the Narnian riders come into view. They’re riding double, most of them, and riding hard. The griffin takes to the air, the wind from his wings stirring their clothes and hair, and the Narnian horses and centaurs thunder past them. Queen Susan and King Edmund are in the rear, and they slip off their horses and mount up on two of the riderless horses that have come with Caspian and Peta from the How, King Edmund drawing his sword and Queen Susan her bow. Caspian draws his sword, the rasp of steel strangely loud in his ears. He’s drawn with the intent of hurting Telmarine soldiers before, but that had been before – that had been before the High Queen confronted him. It seems different now, though he knows it shouldn’t be. Not really.
He sees the Telmarines come into view and swallows down his discomfort. He knows the man in the lead, one of Glozelle’s officers, a man named Astorge. A good soldier and a good man; he’d sparred with Caspian once or twice when Glozelle hadn’t been able to make their practices for whatever reason.
“Can you do this?” Peta asks. She doesn’t look at him.
“Yes,” Caspian says, and then the Telmarines must be within longbow-range, because the string of Queen Susan’s bow snaps and a Telmarine rider falls from his horse. There’s another snap, a second Telmarine jerks back as an arrow imbeds in his shoulder, but he doesn’t fall. Susan lets out a little growl of frustration as she shoots again, and this time the man falls sideways off his horse.
Men are going to die because of what you’ve done and what you’ve said, Peta had said to him. Caspian hears his voice in his ears, odd and tinny and utterly strange, like someone else is speaking, as he says, “The man with the red badge is the officer.”
“Put him down, Su,” Peta says, and Susan’s bowstring snaps again. The arrow takes Astorge in the throat, and he seems to fall backwards in slow motion, but his foot catches in his stirrup and his horse drags his body forward as the Telmarines keep charging, within crossbow-range now. The centaurs begin to shoot, the snap of their bowstrings a relentless buzzing in Caspian’s ears, and then the remaining Telmarines – far more than the dozen the griffin had promised; twice that at least – are upon them. Caspian barely gets his sword up in time, because he can’t believe this is going to happen until the first man is swinging at him, and then he stops thinking about the fact he’s killing Telmarines, killing his own people, because he’s too busy trying to stay alive and stay on his horse at the same time. The latter fails miserably, mostly because he tries to stay on the mare’s back and duck at the same time, and he falls off, rolling sideways to avoid the dancing hooves of the two horses as the mare rears, striking out at the Telmarine horse. He manages to keep his sword in his hand and rolls to his feet, turning to meet the downward stroke of an unhorsed Telmarine.
The man’s eyes go wide. “Prince Caspian?” he says, sounding like he’s seen a ghost, and his sword falls. “Your highness –”
Edmund’s sword takes his head off. “The point is to stay on the horse, Caspian!” he shouts, and then he turns to meet blades with another Telmarine soldier.
Caspian parries the swordstroke of a man who comes at him from the side; he sees the movement out of the corner of his eye and nearly loses his footing on the slippery moss as he meets him; the soldier’s sword kisses his cheek by bare chance. If he hadn’t slipped –
Little gods, if he hadn’t slipped, he’d be dead right now.
It’s pure instinct that lets him sidestep the swordsman’s blow and strike, his blade cutting through the thick leather of the man’s brigandine and open him from hip to shoulder while Caspian’s still trying to process the fact that he just came within inches of dying horribly.
“Caspian!” Peta shouts, and he looks around for her, a little wildly.
There are dead men all around him, men that he knew once, and horses as well – some of them saddled and Telmarine, others unsaddled and Narnian. One of the centaurs is bleeding badly from the area where his human upper half meets his horse lower half.
Peta’s stallion is suddenly beside him, and Peta extends him a hand. “Get on,” she says. “The others are dead, or fled. I should have –”
“Not your fault, majesty,” the stallion murmurs. He drops to his knees as Caspian wipes his sword clean on the sleeve of the dead man before him, mouthing a silent apology, and then sheathes it before he mounts. He settles his weight gingerly behind the High Queen. Her body is warm against his and he can feel her heartbeat, fast from adrenaline. There’s a rasp of steel as she sheathes her sword.
“Are you done, Su?” Peta asks, and Caspian realizes that Queen Susan has dismounted to pull her arrows free of the bodies littering the ground around them, replacing each one in her quiver.
“Yes,” Susan says, pulling herself back onto the back of the mare she’s riding. “We’d better go, I’m sure Lord Miraz is sending reinforcements as soon as he can –”
“There had better be a damn good explanation –” Peta says again, and King Edmund laughs, the sound raw.
“Oh, there’s not,” he says.
Peta snorts. “You’d better hold onto me,” she says to Caspian. “Unless of course you’re planning to fall off.”
“I was not, no,” he admits, and puts an arm gingerly around her waist, her sword-hilt bumping against his wrist. This close to her he can smell her, leather and steel and something a little brighter – something like the scent of fire, or blood. He wants –
He looks away, and nearly falls off when the horse leaps suddenly into motion. Peta laughs a little recklessly, and he holds onto that.
-
-
“Has your race lost what little intelligence it has in the past thirteen hundred years, or is this just you?” Peta demands of Reepicheep. “Because I remember mice that were brave, and noble, and valiant, and that had brains, and you are none of those things.”
They’re still fresh from the battlefield, and the High Queen’s face is bruised, a nick through her right eyebrow and the knuckles of her left hand bruised. The second wave of Telmarine riders had caught up with them not far from the How and Peta had been screaming to kill them to the last man, not to let a single Telmarine live because they can’t know where the How is, can’t, because being trapped here is exactly what they’d been sent to the castle of Telmar to prevent – but one rider had gotten away, and Queen Susan had run out of arrows. Peta and Caspian had both been on their feet, their horse cut out from under them, their swords bloody, and King Edmund had been biting his lip and fighting left-handed, his broken right arm hanging useless at his side. Those of them that are still alive are gathered in the main cavern of the How along with the rest of the Narnians here, and every eye is on the High Queen and her justice.
She’s furious, and not making any effort to disguise it. Her eyes are flashing, her hair is springing free of her braid and in a wild, fuzzy halo around her face, and one hand falls to her sword-hilt from time to time. Reepicheep’s gaze keeps flickering to that, but he’s still trying to deny that what he did was wrong in any way, and even Caspian can see that – well, he can see that what Reepicheep did he might have done himself, but he wasn’t there, and so he can’t know what he might have done if he’d been allowed to go on the scouting mission like he’d requested.
What Reepicheep did was to disobey his orders. “Only for the glory of Narnia and the High Queen!” he’d declared afterwards, and Caspian had thought Peta’s eyes would bug out of her face in her anger. He’d disobeyed his orders, and he’d left his troop of mice to the duty he should have been doing, and he’d gone to challenge Miraz in his own quarters. This, at least, is Caspian’s fault; he’d been the one to draw up the maps of the castle of Telmar, and he’d specifically marked out Miraz’s bedchamber for Peta when she’d asked. He hadn’t asked what she’d wanted to know for, just trusted that her reasons were good. Possibly they included murdering Miraz in his bed, and since Miraz had attempted to do just that to Caspian, he wasn’t inclined to protest, just ask if he could go along. Her amused grin had been answer enough to that.
Being confronted with a mouse the size of a large cat hadn’t had the effect on Miraz that Reepicheep had hoped for, and rather than quailing in his boots, he’d laughed in Reepicheep’s face – which had been when King Edmund had come bursting in, his sword in hand, informed by the other mice of Reepicheep’s whereabouts. Miraz had easily avoided Reepicheep’s attack, and Caspian’s aunt Prunaprisma had put a crossbow bolt in Edmund’s shoulder, and the distraction had been enough for Miraz to escape through a secret passageway Caspian hadn’t known about and therefore hadn’t put on the map – though he wasn’t entirely certain that King Edmund believed him on that note, given the glares that Edmund was occasionally turning in his direction. Faced with taking a screaming woman, a screaming baby, or a furious mouse out of the castle, Edmund had chosen Reepicheep and hauled the mouse out of Miraz’s bedchamber, barely missing Prunaprisma’s second crossbow bolt. One of the other mice had misinterpreted Edmund’s orders and sent up the signal for help; when Queen Susan and the back-up party had arrived in the castle courtyard, it had been to find themselves trapped in the same deathtrap Caspian had warned them about in the war council. They’d barely escaped with their lives, and they certainly hadn’t managed to escape the men Miraz sent after them.
“My queen, any Narnian would have done the same, I assure you!” Reepicheep chirps. “Why, ask anyone here – well, perhaps not anyone,” he adds, “some of us have no sense of initiative –”
“Some of you have a little thing called common sense, you mean?” Peta snarls. “I should certainly hope so, or I’d fear for the future of Narnia much more than I do right now, and I’m a little more worried than I’d ever hoped to be. No one else was stupid enough to try and go against my orders and try and attack Lord Miraz. You’ve brought this war down on our heads; you’ve done exactly what we were trying to avoid. Now he knows there’s an army out there; now he thinks there’s been an attempt on his life by my order. It’s not just petty theft, highway robbery, and vandalism anymore; now it’s high treason, rebellion, and open war. Now Miraz knows exactly where the How is; where we’re hiding, and I daresay he’s marshalling his armies as he speak. I daresay they’ll be at the How in a week, and then you’ll know exactly what it’s like to be under siege, which we are certainly not prepared for, not by any definition of the word.”
“Your majesty, I sought only to do what should have been done –”
“Should have been done?” Peta spits disbelievingly. “Are you questioning my orders, Reepicheep? What should have been done was that you should have followed your orders; if you’d done so, a dozen good Narnians wouldn’t be dead right now, and the Telmarines wouldn’t be marching straight towards our front door!”
Reepicheep’s long tail lashed the air behind him. “That monster Miraz and all his brood have been party to a thousand murders in Narnia, my friends and my family, and he should pay for his crimes! I do not expect you to understand such a thing –”
“No, possibly because I understand that personal revenge and the duty you owe to Narnia are two completely different things!”
“Humans –” Reepicheep begins.
“Think very carefully on what the next words out of your mouth are going to be,” Peta interrupts, “because I’m already imprisoning you and relieving you of your command. You don’t want to know what else I can come up with.”
Reepicheep’s eyes go wide, his tail flat, his ears up. “What?” he says blankly, then, “You cannot –”
“Don’t tell me what I can and cannot do,” Peta says. “Now. Did you want to finish whatever it was you were saying a moment ago about humans?” She raises her eyebrows, and the movement reopens the cut on her face. Bright blood beads up against the thick black smear of dried blood caking the side of her face, and someone – Caspian doesn’t know who – growls.
Everything about Reepicheep – even the feather stuck through the circlet on his head – droops. “No, my queen,” he murmurs. “Though I still believe I did what was best for Narnia.”
“Well, you can muse on that during your imprisonment,” Peta says. “If you’re lucky, the siege will have broken by the time I let you out. Take him away.”
A pair of badgers come forward to seize Reepicheep’s arms, and Reepicheep pulls away. He raises his chin. “A knight of Narnia should not be led away like a common criminal,” he says. “I will go willingly, under my own power.”
“You’re not a knight of Narnia,” Peta says, “but fine. Go. If he tries to run, kill him.”
“Your majesty!” Reepicheep’s second in command, a mouse named Peepiceek, squeaks in horror. “You cannot mean – I mean, surely you cannot believe that Reepicheep would so ignoble a thing as run –”
“He did so ignoble a thing as ignore my orders so, no, I don’t know what he’d do,” Peta says coldly, “but congratulations on your promotion. You have command of the mice now, and try not to abuse it the way your predecessor did.”
Peepiceek’s mouth opens and closes a few times – in horror, Caspian’s assuming, or maybe it’s surprise – and he turns helplessly towards his erstwhile captain, at the edge of the circle of watching Narnians and bracketed by the two badgers. “My captain, I did not ask –”
“I have faith in you, Peepiceek,” Reepicheep says kindly. “Keep them safe until my return. And now, my queen, I take my leave of you, with your permission.” He sweeps a bow.
“Make sure you take his sword away,” Peta adds dryly, and the badgers look at each other in horror before Reepicheep unbuckles his sword-belt, wraps it around the blade of his rapier, and hands it over.
When Reepicheep’s been taken away, Peta runs a hand over her face, looks at the fresh blood on her fingers, and then at the semi-circle of silent Narnians. “What are you all standing around for?” she demands. “There’s an army marching this way, and all they’d like is to see every last one of you very, very dead. Show’s over; now go back to your duties.”
They begin to disperse in groups of twos and threes, the whispers beginning and spreading like wildfire in a dry field. For a moment Peta looks pained, then she reaches up to pull her hair out of its braid and goes over to her brother and sisters, standing silent next to Caspian.
“Get yourself to a healer, Ed,” she says. “Just because I have to dress someone down for being an idiot doesn’t mean you have to stand around with a fresh, bloody wound and a broken arm.”
“I couldn’t,” Edmund says, his voice very dry. “You had all the healers standing around here listening to you yell at Reepicheep, and it’s not bad enough for Lu’s cordial.”
“Unless of course I happen to need your sword-arm, though why I’d need that – oh, wait, there’s a war –”
“There’s going to be a siege, and you and I both know it,” Edmund corrects grimly. “Broken arm isn’t going to make a difference one way or another that way.”
Peta shakes her head. “Lu can splint your arm, if none of the Narnian healers will see you or suit you,” she says, and Edmund nods before Lucy grabs his good hand and drags him away.
The High Queen turns her attention to her sister. “Su –” she begins, and Susan smiles at her wryly.
“It’s just like old times,” she says, her voice fond. “New idiots, of course, but otherwise very like.”
Peta grins at her and pats her arm. “Good shooting, little sister,” she says. “Get some rest; I’ll let you know if anything comes up.”
“Get some rest yourself,” Susan says, and then she’s gone too, leaving Peta alone with Caspian.
She smiles at him, her expression tired. “You did very well, Prince Caspian,” she says. “Though,” she adds, “you might see through to staying on your horse in a fight.”
Caspian finds himself smiling back. “It’s been a long time since I’ve ridden bareback, and without reins at that,” he says. “And I never learned combat that way.”
“Well, you’ll learn here,” Peta assures him. “Thanks for coming at a moment’s notice.”
“I wasn’t aware I had a choice in the matter.”
“Then I suppose you made the right choice,” she says. On a whim, Caspian reaches out to wipe the fresh blood from her face, his hand cupping her cheek as he does so, and Peta turns her face up towards him.
“Caspian,” she says. Just his name; nothing more.
She reaches up with one hand and curls her fingers around his wrist, but doesn’t pull away. Her eyes have gone wide again, and before his sense of self-preservation can get the better of him, Caspian leans forward and closes the bare distance between him.
Peta’s lips are just as soft beneath his as he thought they might be, but the kiss is little more than her sharp intake of breath, shock and surprise and the quick, intoxicating brush of her tongue against his before she pulls away.
“Caspian,” she breathes, her eyes wide and very, very blue. She lets go of his wrist with a jerk and takes a step back, one hand going to her lips, and then she says abruptly, “I have to go. You should get some sleep,” and walks away quickly.
It takes Caspian a moment to realize he’s breathing hard, panting like he’s run a marathon, and that he can still taste Peta on his lips – blood and wine, mostly. He looks down at his hand, the smear of blood on the ball of his thumb, and the five neat marks on his wrist where Peta had grabbed him.
-
-
In the morning – or early in the afternoon, rather; by the time they’d gotten back and roused the rest of the How there had already been light in the sky, the sun beginning to dawn in the east – Peta’s all sharp angles and business. The blood gone from her face, the cut through her eyebrow has faded to a red, ugly weal that’s shocking against her dark tan and golden hair. She paces back and forth in front of the Stone Table with her hand on her sword, sober in brown leather. She doesn’t look at Caspian.
“The majority of the Telmarine army is made up of infantry,” she says, “and the one advantage we have is that the Rush is between us and Telmarine-occupied Narnia. Miraz is going to have to move his troops across the Rush if he wants to take the How, and there are only so many places he can do that. The one he wants is Beruna, and I know you’ve been there, although why you didn’t see fit to engage in a little sabotage along with your petty theft is a question I haven’t heard answered and a problem we’re going to rectify. We’re riding out tonight and we’re going to destroy that camp.”
“What?” Trumpkin splutters, and then the cave descends into shouting.
“Shut up!” Peta yells, her clear soprano carrying easily. “Shut up right this instant, because you didn’t bring me here to question my decisions. Is that clear?”
The shouting stops, mostly, or at least dies down to whispers and groans.
“Your majesty,” Asterius says, “nearly all of Miraz’s forces are gathered at Beruna, simply waiting for the bridge to be completed; we cannot challenge that –”
“I didn’t say we were going to attack them, I said we were going to destroy that camp. Sabotage, gentlemen,” Peta says. “Guerilla warfare. We’re going to find every last resource they have at that camp, and we’re going to take it away from them. We’re going to raid their store-tents, their weapons stashes, we’re going to take their horses, and last of all, but most importantly, we’re going to burn that bridge. Let Miraz try crossing the Rush then.”
-
-
“I think I’m getting better at riding bareback,” Caspian says, and the horse he’s riding snorts.
“No, you’re not,” he says. “You sit like a sack of potatoes. Weight more forward, Telmarine. I’m not built like one of your Telmarine destriers, and you’re hurting my back. That’s better. Don’t grip my mane. I’m Sebird, by the way, and you should be extremely honored you’re riding me because it’s been more than a thousand years since a talking horse let a human on his back, especially a Telmarine. Especially one of the Caspians, good lord.”
Caspian blinks in astonishment, but says politely, “It is very good to meet you, and I am. Honored, I mean.”
“You’re also talking too much,” Peta says, her mare ghosting up beside them. “Would you like the Telmarines to hear us coming from a mile away? That’s rather counter to the point.”
“We’re farther away than that,” Sebird says. “Besides, it was all his fault.”
“What?” Caspian says indignantly, surprised to find himself bemused and a little pleased. Blame or not – well, it’s better than being ostracized by the Narnians.
Peta laughs softly. “Just keep telling yourself that, soldier,” she says. “And we’ve made good time; we’ll be at the river soon, and sound carries well over water.” She guides her mare away, and Caspian tries to suppress his glow of satisfaction.
“What are you gloating about, Telmarine?” Sebird grumbles. “We haven’t done anything yet. And besides, you’re going to have to be a damn sight luckier than you are to mount her –”
“I am right here,” Peta calls back out of the darkness, sounding more amused than insulted. “Watch your words, Sebird; you never know who might be listening.”
Caspian, blushing furiously, can’t help but smile at Sebird’s hastily muttered apology. He pats the horse’s neck, and Sebird shakes his head. “Oh, shut up, Telmarine,” he grumbles, and then falls silent.
It’s a small group, fast-moving, and Caspian’s surprised to be here at all. He, Peta, and Queen Susan are all riding talking horses, with another half-dozen riderless behind them; Glenstorm’s centaur troop is here as well, along with a handful of great cats and talking dogs and wolves. Within the baskets on their haunches the centaurs are bearing along with them Reepicheep’s former troop of mice, now commanded by Peepiceek, and a number of other small talking Narnians – moles, squirrels, skunks, a few badgers. This is a Telmarine camp, and Caspian’s surprised to be a part of this raid at all, given the High Queen’s and King Edmund’s words the other day. But the High Queen must trust him – that, or she’s giving him a chance to earn that trust, and he doesn’t want to let her down. He gave her the information about this camp, everything that he knows about the make-up of Telmarine war-camps (though this isn’t really a war-camp, and he doesn’t know that much anyway; it’s not something he was necessarily expected to know, though he’d somehow managed to absorb more than he’d thought from Glozelle’s lessons) and the men that are likely to be here. It may not be as accurate as he hopes – he doesn’t know exactly what’s going on, and since this is supposed to more a building project than a war-camp – well, they’ll see how good his information is, and he can only hope for the best and pray to the little gods that he hasn’t failed miserably, and that Miraz hasn’t increased the guard significantly since the failed attack on the castle.
They ford the River Rush as quietly as they can, in ones and twos, the better part of a mile down from the camp. The splashing of their passage is nearly unheard, and Caspian thanks the little gods that it’s a dark night, the moon covered by clouds that seem to offer no threat of rain; he can’t feel any moisture in the air.
There are Telmarine guards at the perimeter of the camp, and Peta and Susan slip off their horses. Caspian stays where he is; his role in this has been explained to him, and he’s not to go anywhere alone just yet. The distrust gnaws at him, but there’s nothing he can do about that, and Reepicheep’s example is a good excuse not to try any of the thrilling heroics, remnants of mostly forgotten legends about the great Telmarine heroes of the past, that flit through his mind.
The two women return a moment later, Peta’s dagger in her hand and Susan’s bow in hers, and mount up again. Caspian sees the dead guards as they slip through the hole in the perimeter – Susan hasn’t left her arrow behind, but the second guard is smaller than him, and his throat is slit.
Once they’re within the camp bounds – surprisingly, shockingly quiet for such large creatures – the Narnians separate and slip away in ones and twos to follow their orders, Peta and Susan directing them with hand signals. Caspian dismounts, pats Sebird’s neck – the horse whuffles in his hair, and it’s surprisingly reassuring – and follows Peta as Susan clasps her wrist briefly before vanishing between two tents, a badger at her heels.
The supply tents aren’t quite where he’d thought they were, but Peta doesn’t chide him for it, just puts his hand over his mouth when he opens it to apologize. There are guards on the supply tents and wagons – there hadn’t been when he’d been here last with the Narnians, and this is the fruit of that night’s labor – and they sneak around the back, Peta’s hunting knife in her hand, Caspian’s dagger in his. Caspian reverses his dagger in his hand and hits the guard on the right hard just behind the ear, catching the man as he crumples and lowering him to the ground, and then looks up to see Peta across from him wiping her knife clean on the guard’s sleeve. End it, she mouths at him, and Caspian shakes his head. He shouldn’t have to kill good men if he doesn’t have to, and he doesn’t; whoever this guard is and whatever he might try to do in the upcoming battle – and there will be a battle at some point; he has no choice in that matter, and it’s certain – he’s harmless now, harmless and incapacitated.
Peta scowls at him and comes over, kneeling down beside him and socketing her hunting knife just beneath the man’s chin. Caspian grabs her shoulder, but too late. Her eyebrows go up, testing him, and he lets go of her, sheathing his dagger as he straightens. He unlatches the back of the wagon as quietly as he can, trying to muffle the click of the metal, and Peta comes over to help him. They roll the barrels of lamp oil out one by one, and from the wagon over to the shadowed monolith of the half-completed bridge and the machines standing silent over it. The guards here are dead – shot, Caspian sees when he turns one body over, and the arrows removed. Queen Susan isn’t leaving behind any evidence of exactly who’s been here.
They work the stoppers out of the barrels and roll them over the bridge, spilling lamp oil across the split logs as they go. It takes four barrels before Peta signals him to stop, and then they roll the last two barrels over towards the lumber that hasn’t yet been added to the bridge and cover that in oil as well, abandoning the barrels there. She glances up at the sky; Caspian follows her gaze, and sees the circling black shapes of the three griffins above, carrying firepots in their claws to drop at her signal.
She catches his wrist and pulls him along with her, back towards the supply wagons, where a pair of beavers are determinedly wrecking the wooden wheels on the wagons as a number of other Narnians carry off everything they can get their hands on. Peta braces a hand on Caspian’s shoulder as she stands on tiptoe to see into one wagon, then nods to the Narnians around her before dragging him along to the weapons tents.
There are more dead guards here, their necks twisted at odd angles. A young centauress stands before the tent with a crossbow in her hands; Peta catches her eye and motions towards the tent with her hands. The centauress nods, drops her crossbow to hang at her side, and ducks into the tents. Another centaur emerges a moment later, the baskets on his flanks bulging with weapons, and Peta nods in approval.
She turns toward Caspian, standing on tiptoe to bring her lips to his ear, and he bends his head obediently. “Commander’s tent,” she breathes, barely any sound at all, and he nods before leading her away.
It seems unbelievable that the guards here, still alive, awake, and patrolling, haven’t noticed any disturbance. Caspian hopes desperately that they’ve struck just after the changing of the guard rather than before, because they’ve been here nearly an hour already, and when the guard changes – bodies are a little hard to explain, as are the two dozen Narnians steadily robbing the camp blind.
Peta looks at the guards, then at Caspian. She tilts her head towards them, and when he blinks at her, confused, she touches the front of his brigandine lightly and he understands what’s she’s saying: he’s dressed like a Telmarine and he looks like a Telmarine – well, he is a Telmarine – and he should be able to approach without raising an alarm. So long as they don’t recognize him for who he really is, and really, his face isn’t that well-known; Miraz had done his best to keep him under wraps and within the castle bounds.
He nods his understanding of her request, and she gestures again with one hand, touching her chest. She’ll go around and surprise the one guard from behind; he’ll take the other from the point. Caspian nods again, resists the sudden and strange urge to kiss her – now isn’t the time – and straightens his shoulders before he steps out of the shadows and into the open area in front of the commander’s tent. The air is still tonight; there’s no way to tell who it is, not in the dark and with the banners drooping. He hopes it’s not anyone he knows very well, or one of his father’s supporters (though the majority of those men are all long-dead or vanished, murdered by Miraz years ago).
The guards’ hands go to their swords as he approaches, then relax. “What news, brother?” asks one of them. “Is there some trouble across the river, or word from the castle?”
“None whatsoever,” Caspian says, resting his hand on his sword-hilt. “Just a walk-through.”
“That’s not scheduled for another hour now,” says the second guard, his eyes narrowing a little in suspicion. At Caspian’s accent maybe, and he curses himself silently, because he sounds like a noble, had never thought he should bother sounding otherwise, and common soldiers don’t speak like that.
“Lord Miraz’s orders,” he says, trying to roughen his voice. “Direct from the castle. Haven’t you heard? The schedules are all changing up.”
“No, we hadn’t heard,” says the second heard, and opens his mouth just as Peta buries her sword in his heart.
Caspian draws his sword and swings in the same movement, slashing half-through the other guard’s neck. He only gets out a gurgled shout before he slides to the ground.
Peta pulls her sword free and straightens, cutting through the cords that bind the tent flaps closed. Caspian follows her in, keeping his sword drawn. She crosses to the bed without hesitation, and puts her sword-blade at the sleeping man’s throat.
“Glozelle?” Caspian whispers as the general’s eyes snap open.
“Your highness,” Glozelle says slowly, his gaze flickering towards him. “It is good to see you safe, all rumors of your demise aside.”
“I thought my uncle was still saying I’d been kidnapped,” Caspian says uncertainly.
“Yes,” Glozelle says. “Well. From what I can see, it would be a most irregular kidnapping, though I suppose stranger things have happened to your family.”
“Having a nice conversation?” Peta asks. “So sorry to interrupt. General Glozelle, I’m assuming.”
“You assume correctly, madam,” Glozelle says, looking back at her. There’s no flicker of surprise in his gaze, not even when he takes in the curves of breasts and hips beneath her men’s clothes. “It seems you have me at a disadvantage.”
“It seems I do,” Peta agrees. “And because of that, you’re going to tell me everything I want to know, and I’ll make your death quick.”
“Your majesty –” Caspian protests.
For a moment Glozelle looks startled, and then he says, “Save your breath, your highness. You are lucky enough to have escaped your uncle’s attack with your life; I’d rather your luck not run out.”
“My luck?” Caspian says bitterly, ignoring the sharp glare Peta throws at him. “It wasn’t my uncle who aimed a crossbow at my bed and pulled the trigger; I believe that would have been you and your men.”
“It was,” Glozelle agrees, “and I can only hope you can forgive me for following my orders, your highness.”
“Are you also the one that told my uncle that your men died in the raid three nights ago?” Caspian demands, staring at the healing weal on Glozelle’s face. He hadn’t even seen Glozelle the night they’d been here; he hadn’t known Glozelle was commanding here, or he might have –
He would have killed him; he’s sure of that, tried to return the favor that Glozelle had offered him the night his cousin had been born. His grip tightens on his sword and he steps forward toward the bed.
“Caspian,” Peta says flatly. She doesn’t snap the word; she doesn’t have to. The tone of her voice makes it more than clear it’s an order, and Caspian halts automatically.
“May I know the name of the woman who has me at sword-point?” Glozelle inquires politely.
Peta leans down, her face very close to his, although her sword doesn’t waver, and says against the side of his face, “The name is Peta the Magnificent, High Queen of Narnia.” She straightens. “Now tell me how many men Miraz has.”
“Far more than you can muster, I assure you,” Glozelle says, his voice calm. He doesn’t seem at all surprised to find a legend stepped out of thin air to stand beside him, a sword that’s as much of a legend as Peta herself at his throat. Caspian has always envied the man his preternatural calm, and he still does. He’s tight with tension, vibrating with it, and he’s suddenly very aware of everything around him; the faint sounds outside the tent as the Narnians continue on with their raid, the sword beside Glozelle’s bed, the precariousness of their situation, trapped in the heart of the Telmarine camp with no easy way out except death.
His eyes on Peta, Caspian steps around the opposite side of the bed to pick up Glozelle’s sword, and sees Peta glance at him and nod in approval. He puts the sheathed blade down carefully on the folding table in a corner of the tent and reaches for the map there, stopping only when he sees the counters on it. He looks up at Peta with wide eyes and gestures to it.
“What?” she says, attention distracted as she looks over, and Glozelle snatches his hand out from beneath his pillow and buries a dagger in her side.
“Peta!” Caspian screams as her sword falls from her hand, her mouth opening in shock and surprise. He leaps for her, but Glozelle already has a sword – a second sword – in his hand, and Caspian barely manages to get his blade between it and Peta as he swings toward her.
The man’s barefoot and in shirtsleeves and hose, and he’s still a better swordsman than anyone Caspian’s ever met. Caspian parries desperately, trying to protect Peta as she clutches at the wound in her side, and Glozelle advances on him. He’s toying with him, Caspian realizes abruptly, because there are a dozen times when he could have struck easily through Caspian’s blocks.
“What are you doing?” he demands. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Peta bite the side of her hand and grasp the dagger in her other hand, yanking it free.
“You should run,” Glozelle tells him calmly as his sword slices a cut down the side of Caspian’s cheek. “Run as far as you can, your highness, and don’t look back. You will die if you stay in Narnia any longer.”
“This is my country,” Caspian insists, his sword too slow to avoid the kiss of steel as Glozelle’s blade nicks the side of his face.
“Then come back when you have an army to support your claims,” Glozelle says, knocking the sword from Caspian’s hand as he traps him between the tent wall and his own body. “Take a horse, leave this place – I’ll buy you the time – but you have to go, your highness.”
Once – before he’d seen the Narnians and heard Queen Susan’s horn split the air and looked the High Queen Peta in the eye – he might have agreed. Now he’d rather slit his own throat. “You’ll have to kill me first,” he says.
“Bad plan,” Peta says, and buries Glozelle’s dagger between his shoulderblades. She’s not tall enough to get a good angle and the blade doesn’t go deep; Glozelle half-turns, and Caspian dives for his sword as Glozelle hits Peta across the face with the hilt of his sword. She stumbles backwards, fumbling for the knife on her belt, and Glozelle raises his sword.
“No!” Caspian yells, which is when the guards burst in. He tackles Peta around the waist as crossbow bolts skim the air over their heads, and Glozelle shouts, “You idiots! Lord Miraz wants them alive!”
“Lion,” Peta mutters, voice muffled against Caspian’s shoulder, and shoves at him ineffectually before he scrambles up, sword raised.
Distantly, he realizes he can taste blood; the wounds on his face, maybe. He puts himself between Glozelle and the Telmarine crossbowmen and Peta. Outside he can hear shouts, the clash of swords; the rest of the camp has been roused.
“General,” he whispers.
Glozelle meets his eyes. “Go,” he says.
“What?” Caspian says, startled, and then Glozelle’s sword flashes, his men dying with their surprise still fresh on their faces.
Caspian doesn’t hesitate again. He turns to find Peta swaying on her feet, her sword in one hand and her other hand pressed to the wound in her side. There’s blood pouring down her face where Glozelle hit her. “Come on,” he says, and helps her sheathe her sword so he can put one of her arms over his shoulder, letting her lean on him heavily as he half-carries her out of Glozelle’s tent.
Outside, the camp is in chaos. The flames from the burning bridge are leaping high into the sky and soldiers are running back and forth, shouting. He doesn’t see any Narnian.
“Good,” Peta says, her voice starting to slur. “They got away.”
“Which we also need to do,” Caspian reminds her, and sheathes his sword before he scoops her up into his arms. She’s surprisingly light, and he feels the hitch in her breath as she curses. They need to get into the woods; that’s the closest they’re going to get to safety at this juncture.
There’s enough madness – some of the Telmarines are trying to put out the flames, others merely to contain them, still others are trying to organize enough to look for the saboteurs, and Caspian hopes sincerely they got back over the river in time and without too any casualties – that their retreat goes unnoticed. He puts Peta down behind a huge tree whose trunk is at least his height in diameter, and she lifts her fingers from the wound in her side to her face and says, “Caspian, you have to –”
“Right,” Caspian says, ripping at the bottom of his shirt. Peta fumbles at the buttons on her jerkin and finally gets it open. Beneath, her red shirt is stained dark with blood.
He’s never had to bandage a wound before, and his hands shake as he does so – so much blood, how can she possibly survive this – but Peta gasps instructions through clenched teeth, and he finally sits back and stares forlornly at his bloody hands.
“Thanks,” Peta says weakly. “Why did he –”
Caspian shakes his head. “He was – he taught me how to hold a sword, and he’d always –”
“Oh,” Peta says. “He likes you, then.” She tilts her head back against the tree trunk, breathing hard through her mouth. “Thank you,” she says again, and then, “Come here.”
Caspian goes to her, close enough that he can feel her breath on his face and hear her sharp pants, the hitch in every breath, and then she curves a hand around the back of his neck and pulls his head down to hers, mouth open beneath his. She kisses him for a long time, all tongue and teeth and the taste of shared blood between the two of them, and then she pulls back, wincing.
“On account,” she says, and Caspian realizes he’s straddling her lap, knees braced on either side of her hips and nudged up against the tree, and flushes.
He sees her smile. “I think your friend broke my nose,” she adds. “Haven’t done that in a while; I forgot what it feels like.”
“He’s not my friend,” Caspian says. He settles on the ground beside her, hard and uncomfortable, and adjusts his scabbard.
“Do me a favor?” Peta asks softly.
Caspian looks at her face – bruised, cut, smeared with blood, her lips swollen – and says, “Anything.”
She smiles again, wincing a little around the edges of it. “Give me my sword,” she says, and Caspian leans across her to wrap his fingers around the golden hilt of the sword of Narnia and draw it.
She takes it from him and lays it across her lap, then raises her head to kiss him again, hard and quick and sure. “Just in case,” she says against his mouth, and he curls his fingers around her sword-hand as he sits back. She leans her head on his shoulder and Caspian prays to every god he’s ever heard of that the Narnians find them before the Telmarines do.
-
-
He falls asleep, or thinks he does, because the next thing he knows is Trumpkin shaking him awake. Caspian’s hand closes on his sword-hilt, the blade unsheathed across his lap, before he recognizes the dwarf, and he croaks, “Peta –”
From beside Trumpkin Queen Susan is all pale skin, dark hair, and big eyes; for some reason, in the pale light of early dawn, she looks surprisingly like her sister. “She’s alive,” she says, cradling Peta against her shoulder. “She’s lost a lot of blood. We have to get her back to Lucy now.”
Caspian can’t see what Lucy will be able to do for Peta, but getting her back to the How is a better option that leaving her here to die. He gets up slowly, every muscle in his body aching, and sheathes his sword before reaching for Peta.
Queen Susan gives him an alarmed look, but relinquishes her hold on her sister and lets Caspian lift her up in his arms, Peta’s head lolling slackly against his shoulder. It’s only Susan, Trumpkin, and two horses in the wood; Susan says, absently, “Thank Aslan, I was afraid –” and stops abruptly as she leans down to pick up Peta’s fallen sword, curling her long fingers around the hilt awkwardly.
One of the horses kneels down so that Caspian can mount up and says anxiously, “Will she be all right?”
“I think so,” Susan assures him, which doesn’t sound particularly reassuring, and Caspian adjusts until he can grip with his knees – his arms are occupied with Peta, and he can’t reach the horse’s mane for a second grip – before the horse rises.
Queen Susan takes Trumpkin up before her, and she looks anxiously at Caspian before urging her horse forward.
It’s a rough journey. They’re hours away from the How already, and they’ve been out all night; the horses are tired and carrying double. There are Telmarine patrols up and down the Rush, and Susan stares at the river with her mouth set grimly before she urges them further down; they can’t cross here, so close to Beruna. They finally manage to ford the river three miles away, where the water runs fast and deep and the horses are swept sideways with every step they take. By the time they make it to the other side, they’re soaked to the skin and shivering, but Susan urges them forward anyway.
When they’re halfway to the How, two centaurs ghost out of the woods. Caspian’s horse, Aegla, raises his head tiredly and says only, “You couldn’t make some noise?” before letting his head fall, breath coming in sharp, heavy pants.
“King Edmund has sent out patrols,” the centaur in the lead – Caspian thinks his name might Leafducca – says, eyeing Susan with concern. “Has something gone amiss?”
Susan closes her eyes for a moment. “Please just tell me the majority of my people got back to the How on schedule,” she says, opening her eyes again.
“Aye, but when you did not return, the king sent us out to search for you – even on the other side of the river if need be.”
“Good,” Susan says. “I thought he’d get the idea; he certainly has enough experience with it. Look, we need to get back to the How as soon as possible; my sister’s badly wounded –”
“The High Queen?” the second centaur asks in alarm, and peers at Caspian suspiciously.
“Let’s consider the fact that my sister Lucy is supposed to be safe and sound back in the How,” Susan snaps, tone too tired for most of the sting to stick. “Which sister exactly do you think it is? And let’s not delay any further; the bleeding’s stopped for now, but I’m afraid that the wound might reopen –”
“Of course, your highness,” Leafducca says. “We will escort you –”
“No,” Susan says, and stares at him flatly. It takes Leafducca a moment to understand her meaning, and his eyes go wide in shock and surprise.
“Your majesty, you cannot possibly mean – not in a thousand years has any human –”
“My sister,” Susan says, “your queen, the High Queen of Narnia, is going to die unless she makes it back to the How now. Unless you happen to have a problem with that, in which case, I’m not particularly in a mood to be merciful.”
“No, your majesty, of course not,” Leafducca says, practically tripping over the words in his hurry to get them out, and Susan nods shortly. She dismounts from her horse and comes over to Caspian as Aegla goes to his knees again, and together they get Peta on Leafducca’s back. Susan mounts up behind her, holding her sister in place against her body, and nods to Caspian.
“I’ll see you back at the How,” she says, and then Leafducca leaps away, leaving Caspian alone with two horses, Trumpkin, and a young centaur who’s clutching his crossbow a little too tightly for comfort and glaring accusingly at Caspian.
“We’ll walk from here,” Trumpkin declares, and both horses drop their heads and breathe sighs of relief.
“Thank the Herdsman,” Aegla says. “Thank Aslan. No offense, Prince, but you’re heavy, and I don’t have much experience carrying humans around like one of your dumb Telmarine horses.”
“None taken,” Caspian says.
“Stop talking and start moving,” Trumpkin barks, and Caspian forces his weary legs to move, striding forward and trying not trip over tree roots that seem to have appeared out of thin air specifically to trip him.
“Stop that,” Aegla hisses the third time Caspian stumbles.
“It’s not my fault,” Caspian says, startled, and Aegla snorts.
“I’m not talking to you,” he says. “Sorry to disappoint.”
After that, there aren’t nearly so many tree roots, and Caspian stares suspiciously at the tall trees around him and doesn’t have anything to say.
It’s twilight by the time they make it back to the How, and the sight of the hump of stone has never been so welcome. As they break from the treeline, after passing the perimeter guard (who’d expressed shock and surprise to see them alive), a pair of great cats leap forward out of the grass.
“Queen Susan and King Edmund want to see you,” Hilzarie declares, sitting back on her haunches to look up at Caspian. She’s beautiful, sleek and strong, and the setting sun turns her grey and black fur golden. “Not you,” she adds to Trumpkin and the horses. “Just you,” she says to Caspian.
He rubs a hand over his face, feeling stubble and dried blood scrape at his palm. “All right,” he says. “Where are they?”
“In the table room,” Hilzarie says. “I’ll take you.”
He’s aware of the eyes on him as he enters the How, hundreds of Narnians all wondering at his late arrival. None of them say anything, but Caspian can guess at what they’re thinking, and it must boil down to once a Telmarine, always a Telmarine.
“I’ll leave you here,” Hilzarie says at the entrance to the cavern, and Caspian nods. His sleeves are dry with blood, and they crackle when he reaches up to push his hair out of his face before going in.
The room is lit along the walls as it always is now, fire burning brightly and eternally in the round trenches that run the length of the cavern. Queen Susan is asleep on the steps leading up to the top of the standing stones, her head on her brother’s knee and King Edmund’s arm around her shoulders. When Caspian comes in, the king raises a finger to his lips and shifts Susan so she’s lying down across the steps before he comes over to Caspian.
“What do you have to say?” he asks softly.
Caspian shakes his head. “There are no excuses,” he says. “Something went wrong.”
“Obviously,” Edmund says. His tone is flat, neutral. “Do you know what?”
There’s a tight, sick feeling in the pit of Caspian’s stomach; he can’t see why King Edmund would be asking him these questions if things hadn’t gone even worse than Caspian had assumed. If Peta didn’t make it back to the How alive, if the Telmarines had captured or killed the majority of the Narnians, if they’d lost the supplies they’d been sent to gather, if the bridge hadn’t burned – there are so many things that could have gone wrong that Caspian hadn’t even begun to think of until now.
“No, my lord,” he says. “The High Queen was wounded by my – by General Glozelle; I should have made sure that he was not armed.”
“Yes, you should have,” Edmund agrees. “Peta’s still unconscious; do you want to tell me exactly what happened after you left the How?”
Despite the phrasing, it’s not a question, and the tone of his voice is so like that of Miraz dressing him for some slight or another – real or imagined – that Caspian feels his shoulders draw in and his head go down, his gaze flickering down towards the dirt beneath his boots. “Of course, my lord,” he says, as he’s said to his uncle a hundred times, and does so. He dredges up every detail he can remember; the only thing he leaves out is Peta’s kiss, because – well, because Edmund is Peta’s oldest male relative, and it’s inappropriate behavior for a Telmarine lady. Doubtless different for a Narnian one, or at least for the High Queen, but Caspian’s not willing to implicate her in something that may well be his own fault.
“All right,” Edmund says when he’s finished. For the first time he looks tired, and for a minute the mask he’s been wearing fades and he looks like a boy again, a little lost, the strain starting to wear at him, and Caspan could almost feel sorry, almost feel just so slightly superior – and then Edmund draws his shoulders up and his back straight, and Caspian is looking at the king of Narnia, not the boy. Edmund runs his good hand over his face and says, voice rueful, “It’s just that I didn’t know what happened after you and Peta got separated from the rest of the Narnians, and like I said, she’s still unconscious, sleeping off the aftereffects of Lu’s cordial. She’ll be fine in the morning; Su got her back a few hours ago.”
“I am glad to hear it,” Caspian says sincerely, and Edmund gives him a thin but genuine smile.
“You know I’ll be talking to her in the morning,” he warns. “If anything you’ve said doesn’t match up –”
Caspian can’t hide his alarm, but Queen Susan laughs a little wryly from behind Edmund. “If Peta thinks that you’re responsible somehow, it won’t be us you’ll have to worry about,” she says, as Caspian looks over Edmund’s shoulder to see her sitting up, elbows braced on her knees. “I’m sorry I had to leave you back there,” she adds. “That was ungracious of me, but I thought you’d be found sometime before you – well, sometime before you got back to the How. Obviously not.”
“Obviously,” Caspian agrees, and tries to hide his yawn. “My apologies, my lady.”
“No offense taken,” Susan says. “Get some food and sleep, your highness. You look like you’ve been through the wars.”
“Thank you, my lady,” Caspian says, and manages a credible impression of a bow before he nearly falls over. Edmund catches his elbow to steady him.
“I thought you might like to know that Peta was the worst casualty,” he adds. “There were a few other injuries, but none life-threatening, and we got almost everything we went for over the river. The rest of it won’t be any good to the Telmarines, either.” He smirks a little, and there’s that quick flash of the boy again. The plan had been Peta’s, but she and Edmund and Susan had talked it out with Caspian sitting with them, offering what knowledge of the camp’s layout as he had.
“What about the bridge?” Caspian asks anxiously, because that was their primary concern. If the bridge didn’t fire – or didn’t burn completely – then it might as well have been for nothing.
“Ashes,” Susan says smugly. “You should have seen the look on the commander’s face when he finally got a look at it. I think he wanted to cry.”
“My uncle will not be happy with him,” Caspian murmurs, and feels a little twinge of pity for Glozelle – but Glozelle has tried to kill him more than once, and sparing his life the one time hardly makes up for that. Although he can’t help but wonder why Glozelle would do so – Glozelle, who’s always been loyal to Miraz, who had the almost unbelievable luck of rising from common birth to the position of an officer in Miraz’s personal guard, and now to grand commander of the Telmarine army. Sentimentality hardly seems an adequate explanation.
Edmud grins. “I doubt it,” he says. “Get some sleep, Prince Caspian. Long day tomorrow.”
*
tbc
go to part three
(no subject)
Date: 2011-12-11 10:05 am (UTC)I am enjoying this a great deal. Nuance and politics and Peta. *grins*
(no subject)
Date: 2011-12-12 04:49 am (UTC)