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bedlamsbardI believe this marks the beginning of the part I wrote after finishing NaNo 2008, so this was written several months later in January 2009.
Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four | Part Five
*
He wakes up with Peta’s warm weight pressed against his back, her arm wrapped around his waist. “Mmmph,” she says when he stirs. “Go back to sleep.”
“Sorry, Peta,” King Edmund says, and Caspian raises his head to see him leaning against the wall by the door, arms crossed over his chest. “Not an option. Not for you either, Caspian, unless you know something we don’t.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Caspian assures him as he and Peta scramble out of his bedroll, reaching for their boots and leather jacks.
“Telmarines trying a sneak attack. What do you want to do?”
Peta does up the buckles on her jerkin and picks up her sword-belt. “Wake the How, but quietly. Don’t tip them off that we know they’re coming, unless of course whoever’s on watch already did that. How far out are they?”
“At the tree line and getting closer by the minute,” Edmund reports.
Peta nods, settling her sword-belt on her hips. “All right. I’ll meet you up top in five.”
Edmund leaves without another word and Peta curses under her breath, hands busy as she binds up her hair in a knot at the back of her neck. “I was hoping we’d have another few days before Miraz tried anything,” she murmurs to Caspian. “And I was hoping he wouldn’t be this smart.”
“I didn’t think he was this smart,” Caspian tells her.
She turns toward him and runs her hands down the front of his brigandine the same way she had before the failed ambush, fingers quick and nimble as she checks the buckles down the front. “Don’t bother with chainmail,” she tells him. “We’re going to be very quiet.”
“We are?” Caspian asks, raising his eyebrows.
Peta leans her head back and grins at him, daring and a little reckless. “The thing about a surprise attack,” she says, “is that if your enemy happens to notice that you’re sneaking up, then it can be very easy to ambush the ambushers.”
Caspian blinks, puzzling that out, then gets her meaning. He grins back at her. “I see.”
“The only thing is that I have to sincerely hope we have at least a handful of troops up to the task,” Peta informs him lightly, then stands up on tiptoe to kiss him on the mouth. “Thanks for the talk, by the way. Sorry for sneaking into your bedroll. I meant to make it up to you in the morning.”
“Well, if this is over by morning,” Caspian suggests, raising his eyebrows, and she smacks him in the arm, laughing a little.
“Let’s go scorch some Telmarine tail, shall we?” she suggests.
Susan and Edmund are already up on the highest level of the How when they arrive, spread out on their bellies and sharing the one viewing glass they have back and forth. Susan has her quiver on her back and her bow beside her; Edmund’s wearing his sword-belt.
“Down,” Peta murmurs to Caspian, and they both drop down to squirm out onto the ledge beside her siblings. Edmund passes the glass to Peta without prompting and she puts it to her eye, peering down. Caspian turns her head to see her lips moving silently as she counts. After a moment, she passes it to him.
He closes one eye to see better, propping himself up on his elbow as he squints through the glass. Miraz’s strike team is small, maybe two dozen men moving stealthily through the tall grass in front of the How. More wait just behind the tree line; he catches the glint of moonlight off armor and tack.
Peta puts her lips against his ear and whispers, “The first men want to kill any guards we have, overwhelm our defenses, that sort of thing. The rest will attack at a signal. If it’s any relief, the officers probably still have orders to take us alive.”
“The officers?” he murmurs back.
“The men down there are probably handpicked, and they probably have orders to give no quarter,” she tells him. “He doesn’t want you to come out of this alive, Caspian.” She motions her siblings back, and they crawl backwards on their bellies until they reach the safety of the How.
Caspian clears his throat. “Why give the officers one set of orders and the foot-soldiers another?” he asks.
“The officers are nobles,” Susan says, sounding a little bored. “Probably they have parents on the council, or other relatives, or patrons. Miraz doesn’t want the people he depends on to keep his throne to know that he set up the heir’s betrayal. And I’m sure he wants to at least fake the likelihood of a fair trial.” She reaches back over her shoulder to count the arrows in her quiver with her fingers, lips moving a little.
Peta turns to her brother. “Get me Trumpkin, Glenstorm, Peepiceek, Asterius, and the pack leaders for the great cats and the canines.”
Edmund nods and flits off.
Downstairs, the rest of the How is coming to life, Narnians appearing from out of the holes in which they’ve wedged themselves. The How is big enough to hold the army twice over, but there are parts of it that no one wants to sleep in – not just the portions damaged from the earthquake, but places where the walls close in too tightly, where the shadows are just a little too dark, where there are murmurs that may just be the wind scraping along the walls of the cave – or may be something else, something worse, after all. In its worst times, the How gives off an impression of not being entirely friendly, of patiently harboring the Narnians up until the moment when something (inevitably) will snap and go very wrong. It reminds Caspian a little of the oldest parts of Castle Telmar, the original castle built by Caspian the Conqueror, and the crypts beneath, holding the bones of a dozen Telmarine kings and their families. Haunted, run the stories, and Caspian won’t deny them, even though his uncle has always scoffed at them. Legends, truth, myth, reality – he has learned something here, after all.
Peta’s voice is soft and sure when she speaks, carrying easily as the Narnians go quiet. There’s the soft clink of metal on metal as someone stirs, but otherwise they’re silent, listening a little as she explains their plan.
“Are you sure that we shouldn’t –” someone says, and they’re quickly hushed.
Peta dismisses them with a short sharp motion of her right hand, her left on her sword-hilt, rubbing small circles over the lion’s head there. She crosses the cavern to join her siblings and Caspian. “I need you with the healers, Lu,” she says. “Just in case.”
And then, as if to belie the seriousness of the setting, she tucks her hand into Caspian’s elbow and tilts her head up at him, grinning like a girl at her first ball. He blinks at her.
“Possibly,” she says, “we need to start going on better dates.”
-
-
“Someone inform me exactly why no one’s been grazing around the How?” had been the last thing Peta said before she pulled a soft wool cap on over her bright hair, shaking her head to make sure it stayed in place. “We’re going to have to remedy that.”
The good thing about the high grass – nearly hip-high, in some places – is that it conceals them as well as the Telmarines. Caspian crawls along the ground, eeling himself forward with his sheathed sword held in both hands before him. Peta’s to one side of him, a little ways away; on the other side is the snow leopard Hilzarie. Lucky Hilzarie; she has the benefit of being able to stand at her usual height without being seen. There a dozen other Narnians out here, King Edmund and Queen Susan among them; Caspian couldn’t see them even if he knew where to look. Even without the natural camouflage that some of the Narnians have, the grass is too tall and except for some of the talking animals, they’re all hugging the ground. The Telmarines aren’t doing the same thing, which lets them move faster, but also makes them more visible.
He resists the urge to look back over his shoulder at the How. Glenstorm and Asterius have most of the Narnian fighting force concealed just within the outer cavern; Lucy and Trumpkin have the archers and crossbowmen hidden up on the numerous ledges and near the arrow-slits on the higher parts of the How. He’s looked back before; he can’t see them, and he knows where they are.
He sees Peta raise her fist at the same time he sees a Telmarine soldier’s black boots and dark leather greaves appear through the grass a few paces in front of him. He doesn’t need Peta’s signal to stop crawling, his breath caught in his throat. His heartbeat suddenly seems very loud.
Peta turns her head up and down the rough semi-circle of Narnians – he and she are roughly in the center, with Edmund and Susan at either side to prevent the Telmarines from going anywhere except forward or back. Very slowly, she draws the sword from the sheath she’s holding in front of her, the same way Caspian is, and shifts to slip the sheathe into the loops on her belt. She nods to Caspian and he does the same. They hadn’t come out here with naked steel because she’d been afraid that the glint of starlight or moonlight off steel would alert the Telmarines; this is more trouble, but it won’t give the Telmarines more than a few seconds of warning.
She looks at Caspian and nods, then turns her head and nods to the satyr on her other side. Caspian nods in turn to Hilzarie, and she does the same, the gesture spreading on down on both sides of the line.
He started counting at Peta’s nod, his lips moving silently as he mouths the numbers, and tenses himself for what’s to come.
Five…six…seven…
The Telmarine soldier takes a step forward, then another, close enough that Caspian can count the studs on the skirts of his brigandine.
Ten…eleven…
He reaches down, very slowly, and draws his dagger from the sheath on his hip.
Fifteen…sixteen…seventeen…
One more step and the Telmarine’s going to step on him.
Twenty.
Peta surges upwards out of the grass with a shout, swinging her sword in a wide arc that strikes a Telmarine’s head from his shoulders. Caspian has his sword through the heart of the Telmarine soldier in front of him, the man’s eyes wide with surprise before they go blank, and Caspian grits his teeth and pulls his blade free, bracing his foot on the man’s chest so he can get the leverage he needs, grunting a little with the effort.
He blocks a second Telmarine’s sword stroke with the blade of his dagger, knocking the sword aside so he can slash in a butterfly arc across the man’s unprotected face, blood spattering hot across his cheeks. Caspian spins on his heel, looking for another enemy, for someone else to fight, but the last standing Telmarine falls even as he watches, tumbling down with one of Queen Susan’s arrows in his back as he runs for the woods and the Telmarine forces waiting there.
For a moment the Narnians are silent and still, waiting with fangs bared and weapons raised. Susan has another arrow on her bowstring. Then Peta thrusts her sword into the air and shouts, “Is that all you can throw at us, you cocksuckers?” and bares her teeth like the wolf growling beside her.
It’s enough provocation for the mounted officer among the trees to shout his infantrymen into action, spurring his horse forward while he lowers his lance in a cavalryman’s charge.
“At them, Narnians!” Peta shrieks, and breaks into a run.
Caspian finds himself running with her, the great cats and the canines easily outpacing the humans, and behind them the thundering sound of hoofbeats as the rest of the Narnian army pours out of the How. Above, the whistling sound of a hundred shafts loosed at once; the arrows hit just before the two armies clash.
Caspian parries a sword-stroke, lashes out back-handed with his dagger and slashes across another soldier’s chest with his sword. Beside him, Hilzarie rips out a man’s throat; on his other side, Peta is a blur of flashing steel and golden hair spilling out of its knot, cleaving through men like a butcher through meat.
Blood and gore and guts; he pauses for a moment and tastes iron in his mouth, then spins and tosses his dagger up, catching it by the tip and throwing it smoothly from the side. Peta raises her sword in salute and turns the move into a wide butterfly sweep that sends a soldier falling sideways as she steps away, kicking a man’s knees out from beneath him and taking his head off in the same stroke.
Dead and dying all around him; Caspian turns blindly, seeing a centaur on the ground spitted by the officer’s lance, a faun trying to hold its intestines in with both hands, a tiger sprawled out in the tall grass seemingly without a mark on him. He slams the hilt of his sword into a Telmarine’s face and sweeps his feet out from under him, dropping down to one knee to bury his sword in the man’s chest.
“Caspian!” Edmund bellows, and grabs him by the back of his collar, hauling him backwards as a sword slashes through the space where his head had just been.
The officer gallops past, shield on his left arm, sword in his right hand, and wheels his horse around.
“Break!” Edmund yells. “God damn it, Caspian, break!”
They throw themselves to either side as the horse thunders between them. Out of nowhere a wolf springs, jaws fixing in the horse’s neck. The animal screams in pain and goes tumbling over sideways, the officer spilling out of the saddle and scrambling to his feet. He buries his sword in the wolf’s neck and yanks it free.
Caspian snatches his sword up and breaks into a run, tackling the officer from the side and getting an arm around him from behind, trying to get his sword blade against the man’s throat before he accidentally cuts his head off or something equally unfortunate.
Thankfully, the officer stops moving and Caspian hisses in his ear, “Call off your men. Do it!” He presses his sword blade up harder, feeling the skin give and break, and the officer’s sharp gasp.
“Stop – stop!” he says. “All right!”
Caspian pulls his sword back, just a little, as the officer gropes for the horn on his saddle and puts it to his mouth. The first sound out is a flat blat, and then he makes it sing, the patterns for fall back and return to base.
The remaining Telmarines start to disengage and pull back, retreating to the woods, and the Narnians give a shout of victory and start to chase them.
“No!” Peta bellows. “Don’t follow them! Stop!”
Caspian looks up to see the pursuers stop, waffling for a moment in surprise before they turn back. He knocks the sword away from the officer and lets the man up, surprised to find himself panting great, ugly breaths.
Hilzarie comes up from the side, blood smeared across her face and paws, and bares her teeth delicately at the Telmarine officer. “I’ll sit on this one,” she says.
“Thanks,” Caspian says. He wipes the blade of his sword across the front of his trousers and sheathes it, looking up to see the officer staring at him.
“Your majesty,” he says uncertainly. “Prince Caspian.”
Caspian just nods, suddenly too exhausted to say anything. He turns away, looking for Peta or Edmund or Susan – someone – and sees Peta kneeling down, nearly hidden amidst a patch of untrampled grass. He goes over to her, staggering a little, and stops as King Edmund pulls her to her feet.
He’s too far away to hear what they’re saying together, but he sees Peta’s face go white and then red before she snaps something at her brother. He can read Susan’s lips when she comes up beside them, though: she says, “Stop it!” and Peta and Edmund both subside, Peta turning away.
There’s a fierce, unexpected burst of joy in his chest when he sees her see him, her face lighting up and then relaxing in relief. “Caspian,” she says quietly, and puts an arm around his neck, pulling his head down to rest their foreheads together, a brief moment of peace. “That was good thinking,” she adds, pulling away. Her hands slide down to rest on his wrists, light and sure. “Otherwise we would have had to kill them all.”
“Are you all right?” he asks.
Peta nods and reaches behind her back, passing him his dagger. “You misplaced this,” she says. “Now,” she adds, “I suppose we should get this mess cleaned up.”
-
-
The butcher’s bill is worse than Peta had expected; Caspian can tell by the look on her face, which goes very blank, like a slate suddenly wiped clean. She doesn’t say anything, though; just listens in silence and goes to see each of the wounded, murmuring a few words to them, grasping their hands or paws briefly before she moves on.
Caspian has a bad cut down his left arm from shoulder to elbow; he has no memory of getting it and ends up staring at it in blank confusion as a dwarf bonesetter sews it up. He’s the last person Peta comes to, leaning against a cave wall and scraping a whetstone over his sword blade, trying to ignore the burn in his shoulder.
“Stop that,” Peta says, taking the whetstone away. “You’re just going to damage your arm more.” She slumps down next to him and puts her head on his good shoulder.
He turns his head to kiss her lightly on the mouth; she tips her head up to deepen the kiss, just for a moment.
“What was it your brother said to you?” he asks.
Peta shakes her head. “He told me I was an idiot and I was damned lucky I hadn’t got the lot of us killed. And some other things that weren’t nearly as polite.” She bites her lip. “I underestimated how many of them there were, I forgot that this isn’t an army full of trained soldiers, and I lost my temper. I fucked up.” She gives Caspian an edge of a smile. “As I think I’ve said recently, I do that a lot.”
“No,” Caspian begins, and Peta shakes her head.
“I can’t have this conversation here,” she says, straightening, and reaches out to give him a hand up.
Caspian gets up, staggering a little from blood loss and exhaustion, and sheathes his sword. Peta twines her fingers lightly with his as she draws him away towards the stairs, just the very tips of their fingers, then pulls away. She rubs the edge of her thumb over a splash of blood on her cheek.
He’s leaning on her shoulder by the time they get to the upper levels and she kicks open the door of her room, pushing him carefully down onto her bedroll. She rises to light the burnt-out torches in their sconces, then closes the door and comes back to him, unbuckling her sword-belt and wrapping it around her sword sheath.
Caspian’s still wearing his sword-belt, but he’s lost his brigandine somewhere. He sits up to watch her, but Peta pushes him back down, straddling his thighs as she undoes the knot on his belt and pulls it loose, setting it aside.
“How bad’s the pain?” she asks, leaning down and bracing herself on her elbows, face a few inches from his.
“Bad,” Caspian says, and leans up to kiss her chin. “Getting better.”
Peta laughs a little, softly, and Caspian slides a hand up beneath her shirt to slide over the smooth skin of her back. She bends her head to kiss him full on the mouth, long and slow and a little careful, her hands working at the base of his shirt. He lifts up so that she can pull it off over his head, hissing a curse through his teeth at the stab of pain – no painkillers here.
Her skin is soft and familiar, sharp with the taste of her sweat when Caspian kisses the base of her neck and the dip of her collarbone. They get the rest of their clothes off, Caspian swearing a little as the movement jars his wound, and then he’s in her and they’re moving together, Peta clutching at his hair and making the sweetest little gasping noises Caspian has ever heard.
She arches up against him as she comes, scraping her nails down his back. He bites down hard on her shoulder when he comes, not quite sure if he’s drawn blood or if he split open his lip somewhere.
Afterwards, Peta puts her arm around his neck, her lips briefly light on his forehead, like a benediction. “I’m glad you’re not dead,” she says.
-
-
The next day they’re out in the meadow clearing the bodies away – one mass grave as far away from the How as they can haul the Narnian dead; they stack the Telmarine dead on the far side of the How. It’s hard, dirty, miserable work; it’s a hot, sunny day, and Caspian and Edmund strip off their shirts. Peta and Susan don’t; their shirts stick to their bodies, dripping with sweat, and they bundle their hair back off their faces. If the Narnians are surprised to see their king and queens working with the rest of them, they don’t show it; they’re too concerned with their dead.
Around noon, three Telmarine riders come out of the woods, an officer with a white flag on his lance and two cavalrymen. Caspian pulls himself up, hand falling to his sword-hilt – weapons are the one thing they’re not disregarding right now – and sees the Narnians do the same.
Peta waves them down and strides forward. Edmund follows, pulling his shirt on over his head. A few feet from Caspian, Susan strings her bow and nocks an arrow.
Peta and Edmund speak with the officer for a few minutes, then Peta nods and turns around, coming back to them. Edmund stays where he is, hand on his sword. By now there are a handful of other Narnians with their bows in their hands, watching the Telmarines warily.
“They’re going to take their dead back,” Peta announces. “They’ll be gone by sundown.”
“What about the lieutenant?” Caspian asks. “Chabier?”
“Him they’ll pay for,” she says. “Do you think we could find something to do with the money?”
“Food, weapons, medical supplies,” Susan says. “I suppose Edmund or I could sneak across the river and into one of the towns. We can pass,” she adds. “You can’t. And Caspian’s face is known.”
“Good,” Peta says lightly. “I wouldn’t want to keep him around, anyway.”
-
-
The Telmarines come and take their dead and their living; the Narnians bury their dead. Peta’s shorter-tempered than usual in the following weeks, restless and sleepless, and her siblings watch her warily. She beats the hell out of her siblings and Caspian in training, drives the Narnians so hard that they start to complain, a little glassy-eyed from shock and surprise.
Edmund catches her arm once, coming out of the cavern they use for training. “You are aware that we’re fighting a war here, aren’t you?” he asks her softly, but loud enough that Caspian can hear him a few paces away. “They’re not going to do anyone any good if they’re too tired to fight.”
“They’re not going to win a war if they’re not trained,” she tells him, pulling free, and drags Caspian up to their room.
Miraz doesn’t do anything, just sits and waits, his men creeping closer and closer to the How.
“We can’t just sit here,” Nikabrik grumbles. “We have to attack them!”
“I’m sorry,” Peta snaps. “Do you have an active death wish? Because that’s what’s going to happen if we attack them.”
Susan pulls her away before she can say anything else.
One morning Peta wakes him up by being violently sick in a bucket in a corner of the room.
Caspian pushes himself up on his elbow. “Are you all right?” he asks, even though the answer to that particular question seems to be obvious.
“Clearly not,” Peta says, her voice muffled, and throws up again.
Caspian gets out of bed and goes over to hold her hair out of her face, bracing her shoulders as she dry-heaves. “Are you sick?” he asks a little while later, when Peta’s stopped throwing up and instead seems content to sag limp against his shoulder, her head lolling against his.
“Aslan’s mane, I hope not,” she says. “It’s probably just something I ate, Aslan knows there’s not enough food to go around and some of what we have left doesn’t store well.”
“I’m all right,” he feels compelled to point out.
She punches him lightly in the shoulder. “I’m really hoping the flu’s not going around, because the last thing we need is a disease outbreak. Try and look on the bright side with me, Caspian.”
He doesn’t see Peta for the rest of the day, too busy drilling with the Narnian infantry and then the crossbowmen until he aches all over.
“I’d kill to be back at Castle Telmar,” he tells Edmund and Lucy over a meager dinner.
“Missing having someone else do all the work?” Edmund inquires, an arch tone to his voice. He raises an eyebrow to match it, his expression challenging.
Caspian doesn’t take the bait. “Hot baths,” he says. “There are hot springs beneath the castle. Always warm, and you can always get a hot bath.”
“What I wouldn’t give for a soak,” Lucy says, a little wistfully.
“Where’s the High Queen?” Caspian asks after a few minutes. “I haven’t seen her since this morning.”
“She and Su have gone out to scorch the Telmarines’ tails,” Edmund says. “They’ll probably be back by morning, unless they happen to bring down trouble on us.”
-
-
Peta crawls into bed with him sometime in the early morning hours, warm and smelling a little of smoke and steel. Caspian shifts to accommodate her, wrapping an arm around her waist before kissing her forehead and drifting back to sleep.
He wakes up to the sound of retching for the second time in two days. Peta holds her hair back with one hand and keeps the bucket steady with the other. Caspian doesn’t bother asking if she’s all right, just dresses silently and goes over to her, smoothing his palms over her hands to hold back her hair.
“Thanks,” she gasps, and keeps throwing up.
It goes on for a long time; Peta switches to dry-heaving after a few minutes, her body shaking against Caspian’s as he braces her. After a while she leans back against him and says weakly, “I think I’m done for now.”
Caspian leans over and picks up a waterskin, passing it to her in silence. She pulls the cap off with her teeth, then rinses out her mouth and spits into the bucket. “Thanks,” she mutters.
“Maybe you should see your sister,” Caspian offers. “If you’re sick.”
“I’m not sick,” Peta says furiously, turning on him, and then, “Sorry. I’m sorry. I hate this. I have to go talk to Susan.” She snatches up her boots and sword belt and storms out of the room without bothering to put them on.
Caspian sits back on his heels, a little puzzled, and then gets up to take the bucket outside and empty it.
Summer has turned into early autumn and the air is cooler now than it had been before, the leaves on the trees fading from green to burnished shades of red and gold. Out in the field, Susan and a troop of centaurs are galloping back and forth, shooting at a set of human-shaped targets set in the ground. Caspian stops to watch them. They gallop in a single-file circle, continuously moving and continuously shooting.
“Good!” he hears Susan call when they’ve emptied their quivers, her voice bright and eager. “Very good.” She nudges her horse to the target and starts plucking arrows out.
Caspian finishes scrubbing the bucket clean in the stream that runs behind the How and goes back inside, pressing himself against a wall as a group of fauns and satyrs runs past, Hilzarie and a wolf named Longclaw at their heels.
“Come on!” Longclaw barks. “What’s wrong with you, do you think you’re back in your beloved caves chasing rats? Run faster! You’re a disgrace to the High Queen!” He and Hilzarie chase them out into the sunlight.
Caspian hears Edmund’s bemused laughter. “And to think I used to want to join the Army.”
He turns his head to see the king coming down the hall, his arms full of bright mail and scarlet fabric. “The army?” he inquires politely.
“Before Narnia, in England,” Edmund explains. “If you think they’re bad –” he tilts his head towards the entrance, “– you should have seen the drill sergeants in the old Narnian army. When the army was training in the field outside Cair Paravel they were so loud that I swear you could hear them from the castle.”
He nods at the bucket. “You or Peta?”
He hesitates, but she hadn’t told him not to say and Edmund should know if his sister is sick. “Peta.”
Edmund’s eyes narrow. “Just today?”
“Yesterday too. She said – something she ate, or –”
“It’s probably that,” Edmund says, maybe a little too quickly.
“Probably,” Caspian nods. “What do you have there?”
“Peta’s armor, from Cair Paravel,” he explains. “She sent me back to get it a few days ago. Mine too – chances are we’ll want it soon. Of course,” he adds a little bitterly, “even without the thirteen hundred year gap, we haven’t actually used these sets for more than a decade now, so it’s not in perfect condition. I’m off to see the armorer.”
“Will you talk to Peta?” Caspian asks, a little hesitantly.
“I’ll talk to her.”
Caspian goes to put the bucket back in their room, then goes back down to the cavern that’s been serving as kitchen and mess to find something to eat. There’s fresh-baked bread – no butter, but someone’s found honey – and plums. He takes two of those, and three slices of bread, talking with Reepicheep and Peepiceek when the mice come up to him.
Reepicheep has been out of his cell for months now, and he’s a little quieter than he had been before. He doesn’t wear a feather behind his ear anymore. Peepiceek still seems a little embarrassed about his position as chief of the mice, though he fits into the role a little better than he had when Peta had first given it to him.
Afterwards, Caspian goes down to the armory to pick up a crossbow and a quiver full of quarrels. He meets his crossbowmen on a different archery range than the one Susan had used for her cavalry archers
They’re better now, after months of training; they nearly always hit the target, or at least come close to it. Caspian watches and shouts encouragement when it’s needed, correction when the action calls for it.
“They’re getting better,” Peta says from behind Caspian. “One could almost take them for trained soldiers.”
“Almost,” Caspian agrees, turning his head to grin at her. “How are you doing?”
She narrows her eyes at him. “You’re the third person to ask me that today, not counting you asking me this morning. Did you tell Edmund?”
“He’s your brother,” Caspian says, a little awkwardly.
“He is,” Peta agrees. “A fact that has not been called into question.”
They eye each other for a few moments without speaking, their silence broken by the shouts of the Narnian crossbowmen.
“I’m fine,” Peta says finally. “There’s nothing wrong with me.”
“You’ve been sick for two mornings now,” Caspian points out. “That doesn’t seem very –”
“Your majesty!” All the crossbows twang at once, like a badly tuned orchestra, and Peta and Caspian both turn to see the mounted Telmarine scout jerk in the saddle, both he and his horse screaming in pain.
“Stop!” Peta scouts, drawing her sword and racing forward.
“Bows down!” Caspian barks, following Peta, his own sword in his hand now.
The horse is already dead, collapsed and trapping its rider beneath it, and the man is close to it, blood bubbling up between his lips as he coughs out his last breaths. His eyes are wide and scared, and he’s younger than Caspian.
Peta puts her sword through his heart. “He doesn’t know anything,” she says to Caspian, pulling her blade free and wiping it clean with a handful of grass. “Damn.” She looks up at him with wide eyes. “I have a bad feeling about this. Miraz is going to try something, and soon.”
-
-
But he doesn’t. The entire How is on high alert for the better part of a week, and while their scouts – talking birds, mostly, and a few small rodents – report increased activity in the Telmarine camp, Miraz doesn’t make a move on the How.
“I swear to God, I am ten minutes from ordering an airstrike on the camp myself,” Peta growls, pacing back and forth in their room. Her hair’s loose around her shoulders, shockingly bright against her dark red shirt.
Caspian sits cross-legged on their bedroll and watches her. He’s cleaning his dagger, the steel bright beneath the cloth.
“I’m sick of this blasted waiting,” she continues. “It’s autumn and he’s got an army of farmers, don’t they have to get the crops in? What’s he thinking? I know that some of the officers are thinking the same thing; Susan’s gotten intelligence that says just that. Doesn’t Miraz realize that if he doesn’t get his troops back to their homes they won’t be able to eat come winter? Doesn’t he realize where his food comes from?”
“I’m sure my uncle knows, but I rather doubt he cares,” Caspian points out.
“Clearly not,” she snaps. “At least it’s an advantage for us; his men are going to start missing their families and their homes, they’re not going to be quiet so intent on killing us. I mean, that’s going to change when the actual fighting starts, but until then –” She waves her hands wildly in the air, grimacing, and then comes over to drop down next to him, twisting to avoid the hilt of his sword.
Caspian sheathes it and sets it aside. He cups Peta’s cheek in one hand, turning her head towards him, and leans in to kiss her. She twines her fingers in her hair and pulls him in, teeth clicking quietly against his for a moment before she pushes him down.
She spreads him out on the blankets, kissing the edge of his jaw, the line of his neck, the shadow of his collarbone. He drags his fingers over the scar across her ribs, then lower.
“Caspian.” Her voice is soft. She presses him down into the blankets.
-
-
“Peta. Caspian.”
He opens his eyes to see Edmund leaning down low over them, a torch in one hand. Peta’s already reaching for her sword, but she stops halfway there, pushing herself up.
“What is it?”
“Security breach,” Edmund says, and Peta curses under her breath as he continues. “He doesn’t seem like much of a threat, but Reepicheep’s got him locked up in the red cave downstairs. The guards caught him trying to sneak into the How. Not very good at it; they caught him at the trees. He’s asking for Caspian.”
“For me?” Caspian says, surprised, at the same time Peta says, “For him?”
“If we have another Caspian here, I’ll be very surprised,” Edmund says dryly.
They dress quickly and buckle on their sword belts over their shirts, not bothering with jerkins. Peta pulls her hair back into a tail at the back of her head; it’s long enough that it’s loose around her shoulders. It makes her look younger.
“At least I haven’t thrown up yet,” she murmurs to Caspian under her breath.
“There is that,” he agrees, and stifles his yawn with his hand. It’s either extremely early or extremely late, and at the rate they work themselves – and with their diminishing food store; the Telmarines aren’t the only ones grumbling about not stocking up for winter; any animals that hibernate are starting to get a little frantic too – they need every minute of sleep they can get. Food is sleep; sleep is food.
Peta bumps his shoulder companionably with hers as they go out into the hall, and in the brighter light here, even Edmund looks a little frazzled, his face drawn and his dark hair mussed. It’s late and they’re tired, and Edmund has it worse than Peta; the Narnians go to him before they go to the High Queen.
Around them, the How is quiet, only a few of the creatures that favor the night over the day stirring. The night guards tend to be made up of some such – owls and Black Dwarves, minotaurs, bats. Creatures that had once upon a time served the White Witch, and when they’d volunteered for the position Peta had given one harsh laugh and then given it to them. A leopard prowls past them in the halls, nose low to the ground and tail drooping; it lifts its head as they pass, pausing before it goes on its way.
The mice are crowded along the door to the red cave. Peta nods to them and says, “We’ll take it from here,” the dismissal clear in her voice as they nod and return to their patrols.
Edmund pulls the door open and goes in, flitting around the edge of the cave to light the torches that sit dark in their sconces. Only one has been lit before, but he sets them all to burning, bringing the cave to a light nearly as bright as day.
Caspian glances at Peta, but she motions him in, crossing her arms over her chest as she leans against the doorframe. He steps past her and inside, frowning a little at the small, stout man kneeling in the centaur of the floor, his back to them and his hands bound behind him.
He’s thinner than he had been before. “Professor?” Caspian says, surprised. “Professor Cornelius?”
Doctor Cornelius twists around in surprise, unbalancing himself, and Caspian rushes forward to steady him before he falls over.
“My prince!” he exclaims. “I had not thought – so you are here, after all, and the rumors are false. I had hoped that they were and that you were here, and safe.”
“Safe enough,” Caspian assures him, drawing his dagger to cut the ropes binding him. “I had hoped as much for you, but I feared the worst when you could not be found in the castle. How have you come here, so far from the castle?”
“It makes a poor story,” Cornelius says, stumbling a little as Caspian helps him to his feet. “King Miraz suspected that I had helped you with your escape and had me imprisoned for conspiring against the throne – for your kidnap, he called it then. I languished in the castle dungeons for months – I watched the army march from my cell. And then a few weeks ago Miraz ordered me brought here, to his camp, in order to question me regarding the legends and stories of old Narnia.”
“He knows those well enough himself,” Caspian says, a little curious.
Cornelius shrugs. “Perhaps not so well as he thought. Still, he brought me here, and I have been in his war camp for some time now. I was only able to escape this past night; my guards have been long away from their homes, and they have grown lax. I thought only of coming here and throwing myself on the mercy of the Narnians even if you were not among them.”
“But I am,” Caspian says, and smiling. “So you don’t have to hope that they will accept a Telmarine after all.”
“No,” Peta says from behind him. “But he does have to worry about me.”
Caspian turns to face her. “I spoke to you of my professor, the man who saved my life –”
“Yes, you did,” Peta agrees. “And while I suppose I have reason to be grateful for the former, and while I do trust your judgment, I am curious about why Miraz decided to bring his traitorous nephew’s traitorous tutor all the way out here to the back of beyond, which also happens to be a warzone home to the very heart of the Narnian resistance.” She tilts her chin up, watching Cornelius with cool blue eyes. She never looks at Caspian like that anymore, he realizes belatedly; he hadn’t noticed until now.
“I fear I do not know your name, my lady,” Cornelius says. “And I had not expected to find another human here; Narnians seldom accept even half-humans, and you seem to be a fullblood –”
“I assure, I and my siblings are entirely human,” Peta says. “Or haven’t the rumors spread that far yet?”
For a moment, Cornelius is quiet, blinking at her in confusion, and then his eyes go very wide. “High Queen Peta!” he exclaims, and then he murmurs, “Forgive me, I did not think that the horn would summon you –”
“Who did you think it would summon?” Peta asks, tilting her head to one side curiously. “I wouldn’t have thought there were particularly a lot of options.”
Cornelius shakes his head. “I had not thought so far, your highness. Giving my prince that horn was a vain hope at most; I thought that perhaps it would serve as some token to allow safe passage through Narnian territory. Only in my wildest dreams did I think that it would truly summon you back from beyond the abyss –”
“Your token nearly got your prince killed,” Peta says.
“Queen Susan’s horn also saved my life,” Caspian points out. “Your majesty, perhaps this conversation be continued somewhere more comfortable.”
Peta glances toward him and raises her eyebrows. “Half an hour ago I was asleep. That’s more comfortable. But we’re up now, so we might as well stay that way for the time being.” She glances back at Cornelius, then over his head towards Edmund.
“Food and drink?” the king says softly.
Cornelius’s eyes go wide; he makes a sharp movement and then restrains himself. “Guesting rights!” he exclaims. “I had not thought that such customs were still followed, or even known outside of history books.”
“We predate the history books,” King Edmund says. “Peta?”
She’s silent.
“Your majesty, I trust Professor Cornelius with my life,” Caspian says. Surely Peta can’t think that Cornelius is here as a spy, or that Miraz would trust him with such a mission – or that there was a less likely spy than Cornelius.
“I don’t,” Peta says flatly. But she tilts her head to the side and finally adds, “We can spare something, I suppose. Ed, take him to the kitchens, will you? Caspian, you and I are going to have a talk.” She turns and walks out of the cavern.
Caspian hesitates, but follows after a moment, leaving Cornelius and Edmund behind.
Peta draws him aside into one of the smaller side caverns, empty except for a stock of small round Telmarine shields stacked against the wall. “Caspian, look at me,” she orders.
“Peta, you can’t possibly think that he’s here on Miraz’s orders,” Caspian says before she can say anything else. “He saved my life.”
“He saved your life,” Peta says. “Months ago, and a long time before I and my siblings were ever in the picture.”
“What are you getting at?” Caspian asks uncertainly.
“Why save your life?” she demands. “What did he hope to accomplish by that? Is his loyalty to you, to the old king, or to someone else entirely?”
“Does it matter? He saved my life when my uncle tried to have me killed. Why would he do that unless he meant to work against my uncle?”
“Any number of reasons,” Peta says. “Listen to me: you trust him. You’re familiar with him. You’re comfortable with him. That’s not common sense talking, that’s your memory talking. Things change, Caspian. You’ve changed, he’s changed. Who knows what or who he’s working for now?”
“I trust him,” Caspian says.
“That makes one of us,” Peta says. “Where are you going?”
Caspian turns away from the cave entrance to look at her, frowning. “To go see my professor, of course.”
“You’d be better off going back to sleep,” Peta says. “You won’t see him until morning at the very least.”
“What are you talking about?” he demands, staring at her. “Of course I’m going to see him. He’s my professor.”
“I’m not letting you near him,” Peta says, and leaves him behind, standing alone in the cave and staring blindly at the wall.
-
-
He doesn’t go back to sleep – can’t, too restless and uneasy. Instead he goes up to the upper levels of the How, sitting on the ledge and watching the sun come up, touching the hilt of his sword with light fingers and thinking back on the past few months.
He trusts Professor Cornelius, does and always has. Peta’s insistence that he not do so is nonsensical, ridiculous; if there’s anyone among the Telmarines he can trust, it’s his professor.
Caspian sheathes his sword with a rasp of metal on leather and stares out at the woods blindly. Then the rising sun gleams off steel – a lot of steel – the points of the long ten foot lances Telmarine cavalry carry, the heavy crossbows of the archers, the helmets of the infantry, the huge wooden monoliths of the Telmarine siege engines. Banners leap and blaze in the breeze.
Caspian leaps to his feet, his sword clenched tightly on his fist; on the other side of the ledge, the faun guard curses. Horrified shouts rise up from the lower levels of the How and the field below, where early morning training is going on. Narnians stop and stare, some groping for their weapons.
“Go and get the High Queen,” Caspian orders, and the faun goes.
Peta and her siblings, along with Trumpkin, Nikabrik, and Trufflehunter, are up on the ledge within a few minutes, fingering their weapons and looking out on the scene below grimly.
“So,” Susan says, “Miraz has finally decided to make his move.”
“This is going to end,” Peta says. “Now.” She turns around and goes back inside, and after a few moments the others follow her.
Caspian stays on the ledge for a few minutes, staring out at the field below – his uncle’s army, his people. Coming to kill him.
He goes inside.
They’re meeting downstairs in the table room, as usual. Edmund, Susan, and Lucy are sitting on the edge of the Stone Table; Trufflehunter, Nikabrik, and Trumpkin are sitting on one set of stairs; Asterius and Glenstorm standing against the walls. Peta is nowhere in sight. Caspian stands still for a few minutes until Reepicheep and two other mice escort Professor Cornelius in.
“I’ll take him,” Caspian says quietly, approaching, and Reepicheep nods and scampers off to take a position next to Lucy on the table.
He guides Cornelius to a seat on a second set of steps. “Have they treated you well?” he asks.
“Better than King Miraz would have if our positions were reversed,” Cornelius informs him. “I was questioned; I expected no less.” He tilts his head towards the three royals on the Stone Table. “They are very young.”
“They are older than they appear,” Caspian says. “But you were not mistreated?”
Cornelius favors him with a patient look. “Don’t worry for me, my prince, I faced worse in the cells of Miraz’s castle.”
“Were you hurt?” Caspian asks anxiously. “Did my uncle –”
“He kept me in the cells, no more,” Cornelius assures him.
They look up as Edmund gets to his feet and says, “I’m going to go find Peta; she should have been here by now,” before leaving the room.
“What is she like, this Narnian queen?” Cornelius asks. “Is she truly the High Queen of legend?”
“Of legend?” Caspian repeats. “She’s human, no more and no less. A great warrior, a great leader, a great queen – but human, not myth made flesh.”
Cornelius turns his gaze suddenly on him. “You are in love with her,” he observes.
Caspian looks away.
His professor catches his arm and pulls him back, his grip like iron through the thin fabric of Caspian’s shirt. “Do you know what it is you risk, my prince? She and her siblings have no love for Telmarines or Telmarine princes; they have no reason to put you on your throne.”
“It’s not my throne anymore,” Caspian says. “It was never my throne.”
“You are the Crown Prince of Telmar, the rightful king –”
“This is Narnia and they are her rightful sovereigns,” Caspian says. “Our people are newcomers compared to them. I will not steal her throne.”
“They abandoned Narnia once already, do you truly think they will not do so again? Do you want to trust this country to them?” His expression is sharp, a little angry, and stubborn. “Do you realize what you could be, my prince? The greatest of contradictions – the Telmarine who brought peace to Narnia.”
Caspian pulls his arm free. “They did not abandon Narnia,” he insists. “And you have no idea what you’re speaking of. You haven’t been here. You don’t know them at all.” He looks up as Peta and Edmund come in, forestalling any reply Cornelius might have.
Peta’s pale and a little shaky; she pulls away from the support of her brother’s arm as they come in. “Sorry for the delay,” she drawls, pushing her hair back from her face and hooking it behind her ears.
“We can’t withstand a siege,” Peta says. “Not with those Telmarine siege machines, and even without those, we’re outnumbered.” She tilts her chin up, grinning a little bit. “We’re going to have to get creative. And we’ll need some more help.”
“Who exactly are you planning on calling on?” Nikabrik demands. “Archenland? Calormen? They’re certainly not going to help, unless of course you’re planning on giving them chunks of good Narnian land.” He glares at her.
“Of course not,” Peta says calmly. “Why bother with foreigners when we can get Narnians to do it better?”
The entire room stares at her blankly.
“What are you talking about?” Trumpkin says at last. “There is no one else; anyone that would come is already here. Who else can you possibly mean?”
“The trees, of course,” Peta says. “Lu, do you think you could go about waking them up for me?”
“I did try the once,” Lucy says, a little hesitantly. “And I didn’t really get anywhere.”
“Things have changed since then,” Peta says confidently. She grins at her sister.
“I don’t think Miraz is going to give us the time we need for Lucy to get all the way out into the deep woods,” Edmund points out. “What are you thinking, Peta? Back around Lantern Waste or the woods on the eastern seaboard?”
“The seaboard,” Peta says. “Lantern Waste is a little too close to Telmarine territory for my comfort. Lu will have to pass the Telmarine scouts to get out to the seaboard, but she’d have worse to go through getting to Lantern Waste, and I think our chances might be better the nearer to Cair Paravel we are. What do you say, Lu? Back towards the Cair, or inland, around Lantern Waste and the lamppost?”
“When we were coming here from Cair Paravel, I could almost hear them,” Lucy says. “That was why I was out in the woods when you ran across Caspian – or Caspian ran across you, I mean. I thought I’d heard them. I thought I’d heard Aslan,” she adds, a little more quietly. Edmund puts an arm around her shoulders in a brief hug, and Lucy leans against his shoulder for an instant before pulling away.
“Kites and kettledrums!” Trumpkin exclaims, springing to his feet. “This is your plan? Sending a little girl out into the darkest parts of the forest, alone?”
Peta raises her eyebrows at him. “Well,” she says, “we could of course surrender immediately, but I’m not particularly fond of that option.”
“And she won’t be alone,” Susan says.
Peta turns her gaze on her sister, looking faintly surprised, and Susan just shrugs.
Trumpkin ignores them both as he approaches Lucy. “Haven’t enough of us died already?” he asks, sounding heartbroken.
“The plan is for the majority of us not to die,” Edmund says dryly.
Lucy clears her throat. “I know it must sound like fairytales to most of you, but it’s real, it is,” she insists. “This is what we know. This is Narnia. I can wake them and we can win this. It’s not a suicide mission.”
From the expression on Trumpkin’s face, he’s not convinced. Caspian’s not entirely sure he disagrees with the dwarf, because the Telmarine core of him shudders at the thought of the woods – dark, doomed, haunted, cursed – but he went into those woods and he came out again alive and unscathed and the better man for it, and perhaps something dwells there after all, something that can help them win this war.
“Then I’m coming with you,” Trumpkin declares.
“No,” Lucy says, her expression kind but set. “We need you here. You need to hold the Telmarines off until Su and I get back.”
“And how exactly are you planning to do that?” he exclaims. “You can’t think you can hold them off in pitched battle, even with all the extra training you’ve had this lot doing –”
“Like he knows any better,” Nikabrik mutters under his breath.
“No, this is true,” Peta says. “I was actually thinking –”
“Your majesty, if I may,” Cornelius says suddenly from beside Caspian.
Peta looks at him and raises her eyebrows, but nods once.
“Miraz may be a tyrant,” he continues, “and I assure you, no one knows this better than me! – but as king he is subject to the traditions and expectations of his people.” He pauses significantly.
What is he talking about? Caspian can’t think of a single Telmarine tradition that would apply here. He turns his head and stares at his professor blankly.
“Go on,” Peta says.
“There is one in particular that may buy us some time,” Cornelius says. “A direct challenge – from one sovereign to another – single combat to the death, an ancient and honorable Telmarine tradition that has been passed down for many years –”
“No!” Caspian exclaims, leaping to his feet. “No, you cannot!”
There’s a strange, unfamiliar smile on Peta’s face. “Sit down, Caspian,” she says.
He stays standing and crosses the floor to catch her arm and pull her toward him. “My uncle is a master swordsman,” he says. “One of the best in Telmar, in Narnia. If you fight him, he will kill you.”
“You’re very sweet, Caspian,” Peta says. “And your uncle may be the best swordsman in Telmar, but I’ve never been beaten.”
“Peta, please,” he begs, “don’t make me watch you die.”
Her eyes narrow, then she jerks her arm free of his grip. “The only person you’re going to watch die is your uncle,” she says, “and unless you still have some particular attachment to him, that shouldn’t bother you at all.”
“Peta,” Caspian says again, “please −”
“Set it up please, Ed,” she says calmly to her brother, then dismisses the meeting.
Caspian’s dimly aware of the Narnians leaving, murmuring to each other, but he’s too caught up in his own horror to pay much attention. Peta, may the little gods help them, Peta. When he looks down at his hands, it’s to realize they’re shaking.
“Caspian,” Peta says when they’ve gone. She catches his chin in one strong swordswoman’s hand, callused from months of practice at sword and staff and bow, and pulls his head down to meet her eyes. “Don’t you ever challenge my authority again,” she says. “Is that understood?”
He swallows. “Yes,” he manages to choke out. “But, Peta, my uncle – he’ll kill you.”
“He’ll try,” she corrects. “Believe it or not, Caspian, my plan doesn’t actually involve dying on the end of your uncle’s sword.”
“It may happen whether or not you plan for it,” Caspian says.
“I know,” Peta says calmly. “Cost of doing battle. Caspian, I am very, very good at what I do, and there is a reason I’m here. It’s not just to look pretty or to be a figurehead. I’ve been doing this since I was fourteen. The first time ‘round, I mean. Anyway,” she adds, “I’m not going to lose.”
“You are too certain,” Caspian says.
“Uncertainty leads to hesitation and hesitation leads to getting people killed,” Peta says promptly. “That was the first thing I learned. Well, the second. The first was, ‘stick them with the pointy end.’”
Surprised, Caspian lets out a sharp bark of laughter and Peta grins at him. She lets her hand drop down to rest lightly on her sword hilt, her grip sure and familiar. “Caspian,” she says again, “I am very, very good at exactly one thing, and that’s fighting. It makes up for all the other stuff I’m bad at.”
He smiles a little – he’s meant to – but it’s tinged with sorrow and panic. “My uncle is one of the best swordsmen in Telmar,” he says again. “Don’t do this, Peta. Find some other way.”
She tilts her head to the side. “Can you think of one?”
He bites his lip. “No. But still – there must be something that does not –”
“Caspian,” she says, “we are at war. People fight, people die. I’d be fighting anyway. This gives us a chance. And besides,” she adds pointedly, tilting her chin up, “I always did like single combat better than straight-out battle anyway. People tend to underestimate me.”
*
tbc
go to part seven
Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four | Part Five
*
He wakes up with Peta’s warm weight pressed against his back, her arm wrapped around his waist. “Mmmph,” she says when he stirs. “Go back to sleep.”
“Sorry, Peta,” King Edmund says, and Caspian raises his head to see him leaning against the wall by the door, arms crossed over his chest. “Not an option. Not for you either, Caspian, unless you know something we don’t.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Caspian assures him as he and Peta scramble out of his bedroll, reaching for their boots and leather jacks.
“Telmarines trying a sneak attack. What do you want to do?”
Peta does up the buckles on her jerkin and picks up her sword-belt. “Wake the How, but quietly. Don’t tip them off that we know they’re coming, unless of course whoever’s on watch already did that. How far out are they?”
“At the tree line and getting closer by the minute,” Edmund reports.
Peta nods, settling her sword-belt on her hips. “All right. I’ll meet you up top in five.”
Edmund leaves without another word and Peta curses under her breath, hands busy as she binds up her hair in a knot at the back of her neck. “I was hoping we’d have another few days before Miraz tried anything,” she murmurs to Caspian. “And I was hoping he wouldn’t be this smart.”
“I didn’t think he was this smart,” Caspian tells her.
She turns toward him and runs her hands down the front of his brigandine the same way she had before the failed ambush, fingers quick and nimble as she checks the buckles down the front. “Don’t bother with chainmail,” she tells him. “We’re going to be very quiet.”
“We are?” Caspian asks, raising his eyebrows.
Peta leans her head back and grins at him, daring and a little reckless. “The thing about a surprise attack,” she says, “is that if your enemy happens to notice that you’re sneaking up, then it can be very easy to ambush the ambushers.”
Caspian blinks, puzzling that out, then gets her meaning. He grins back at her. “I see.”
“The only thing is that I have to sincerely hope we have at least a handful of troops up to the task,” Peta informs him lightly, then stands up on tiptoe to kiss him on the mouth. “Thanks for the talk, by the way. Sorry for sneaking into your bedroll. I meant to make it up to you in the morning.”
“Well, if this is over by morning,” Caspian suggests, raising his eyebrows, and she smacks him in the arm, laughing a little.
“Let’s go scorch some Telmarine tail, shall we?” she suggests.
Susan and Edmund are already up on the highest level of the How when they arrive, spread out on their bellies and sharing the one viewing glass they have back and forth. Susan has her quiver on her back and her bow beside her; Edmund’s wearing his sword-belt.
“Down,” Peta murmurs to Caspian, and they both drop down to squirm out onto the ledge beside her siblings. Edmund passes the glass to Peta without prompting and she puts it to her eye, peering down. Caspian turns her head to see her lips moving silently as she counts. After a moment, she passes it to him.
He closes one eye to see better, propping himself up on his elbow as he squints through the glass. Miraz’s strike team is small, maybe two dozen men moving stealthily through the tall grass in front of the How. More wait just behind the tree line; he catches the glint of moonlight off armor and tack.
Peta puts her lips against his ear and whispers, “The first men want to kill any guards we have, overwhelm our defenses, that sort of thing. The rest will attack at a signal. If it’s any relief, the officers probably still have orders to take us alive.”
“The officers?” he murmurs back.
“The men down there are probably handpicked, and they probably have orders to give no quarter,” she tells him. “He doesn’t want you to come out of this alive, Caspian.” She motions her siblings back, and they crawl backwards on their bellies until they reach the safety of the How.
Caspian clears his throat. “Why give the officers one set of orders and the foot-soldiers another?” he asks.
“The officers are nobles,” Susan says, sounding a little bored. “Probably they have parents on the council, or other relatives, or patrons. Miraz doesn’t want the people he depends on to keep his throne to know that he set up the heir’s betrayal. And I’m sure he wants to at least fake the likelihood of a fair trial.” She reaches back over her shoulder to count the arrows in her quiver with her fingers, lips moving a little.
Peta turns to her brother. “Get me Trumpkin, Glenstorm, Peepiceek, Asterius, and the pack leaders for the great cats and the canines.”
Edmund nods and flits off.
Downstairs, the rest of the How is coming to life, Narnians appearing from out of the holes in which they’ve wedged themselves. The How is big enough to hold the army twice over, but there are parts of it that no one wants to sleep in – not just the portions damaged from the earthquake, but places where the walls close in too tightly, where the shadows are just a little too dark, where there are murmurs that may just be the wind scraping along the walls of the cave – or may be something else, something worse, after all. In its worst times, the How gives off an impression of not being entirely friendly, of patiently harboring the Narnians up until the moment when something (inevitably) will snap and go very wrong. It reminds Caspian a little of the oldest parts of Castle Telmar, the original castle built by Caspian the Conqueror, and the crypts beneath, holding the bones of a dozen Telmarine kings and their families. Haunted, run the stories, and Caspian won’t deny them, even though his uncle has always scoffed at them. Legends, truth, myth, reality – he has learned something here, after all.
Peta’s voice is soft and sure when she speaks, carrying easily as the Narnians go quiet. There’s the soft clink of metal on metal as someone stirs, but otherwise they’re silent, listening a little as she explains their plan.
“Are you sure that we shouldn’t –” someone says, and they’re quickly hushed.
Peta dismisses them with a short sharp motion of her right hand, her left on her sword-hilt, rubbing small circles over the lion’s head there. She crosses the cavern to join her siblings and Caspian. “I need you with the healers, Lu,” she says. “Just in case.”
And then, as if to belie the seriousness of the setting, she tucks her hand into Caspian’s elbow and tilts her head up at him, grinning like a girl at her first ball. He blinks at her.
“Possibly,” she says, “we need to start going on better dates.”
-
-
“Someone inform me exactly why no one’s been grazing around the How?” had been the last thing Peta said before she pulled a soft wool cap on over her bright hair, shaking her head to make sure it stayed in place. “We’re going to have to remedy that.”
The good thing about the high grass – nearly hip-high, in some places – is that it conceals them as well as the Telmarines. Caspian crawls along the ground, eeling himself forward with his sheathed sword held in both hands before him. Peta’s to one side of him, a little ways away; on the other side is the snow leopard Hilzarie. Lucky Hilzarie; she has the benefit of being able to stand at her usual height without being seen. There a dozen other Narnians out here, King Edmund and Queen Susan among them; Caspian couldn’t see them even if he knew where to look. Even without the natural camouflage that some of the Narnians have, the grass is too tall and except for some of the talking animals, they’re all hugging the ground. The Telmarines aren’t doing the same thing, which lets them move faster, but also makes them more visible.
He resists the urge to look back over his shoulder at the How. Glenstorm and Asterius have most of the Narnian fighting force concealed just within the outer cavern; Lucy and Trumpkin have the archers and crossbowmen hidden up on the numerous ledges and near the arrow-slits on the higher parts of the How. He’s looked back before; he can’t see them, and he knows where they are.
He sees Peta raise her fist at the same time he sees a Telmarine soldier’s black boots and dark leather greaves appear through the grass a few paces in front of him. He doesn’t need Peta’s signal to stop crawling, his breath caught in his throat. His heartbeat suddenly seems very loud.
Peta turns her head up and down the rough semi-circle of Narnians – he and she are roughly in the center, with Edmund and Susan at either side to prevent the Telmarines from going anywhere except forward or back. Very slowly, she draws the sword from the sheath she’s holding in front of her, the same way Caspian is, and shifts to slip the sheathe into the loops on her belt. She nods to Caspian and he does the same. They hadn’t come out here with naked steel because she’d been afraid that the glint of starlight or moonlight off steel would alert the Telmarines; this is more trouble, but it won’t give the Telmarines more than a few seconds of warning.
She looks at Caspian and nods, then turns her head and nods to the satyr on her other side. Caspian nods in turn to Hilzarie, and she does the same, the gesture spreading on down on both sides of the line.
He started counting at Peta’s nod, his lips moving silently as he mouths the numbers, and tenses himself for what’s to come.
Five…six…seven…
The Telmarine soldier takes a step forward, then another, close enough that Caspian can count the studs on the skirts of his brigandine.
Ten…eleven…
He reaches down, very slowly, and draws his dagger from the sheath on his hip.
Fifteen…sixteen…seventeen…
One more step and the Telmarine’s going to step on him.
Twenty.
Peta surges upwards out of the grass with a shout, swinging her sword in a wide arc that strikes a Telmarine’s head from his shoulders. Caspian has his sword through the heart of the Telmarine soldier in front of him, the man’s eyes wide with surprise before they go blank, and Caspian grits his teeth and pulls his blade free, bracing his foot on the man’s chest so he can get the leverage he needs, grunting a little with the effort.
He blocks a second Telmarine’s sword stroke with the blade of his dagger, knocking the sword aside so he can slash in a butterfly arc across the man’s unprotected face, blood spattering hot across his cheeks. Caspian spins on his heel, looking for another enemy, for someone else to fight, but the last standing Telmarine falls even as he watches, tumbling down with one of Queen Susan’s arrows in his back as he runs for the woods and the Telmarine forces waiting there.
For a moment the Narnians are silent and still, waiting with fangs bared and weapons raised. Susan has another arrow on her bowstring. Then Peta thrusts her sword into the air and shouts, “Is that all you can throw at us, you cocksuckers?” and bares her teeth like the wolf growling beside her.
It’s enough provocation for the mounted officer among the trees to shout his infantrymen into action, spurring his horse forward while he lowers his lance in a cavalryman’s charge.
“At them, Narnians!” Peta shrieks, and breaks into a run.
Caspian finds himself running with her, the great cats and the canines easily outpacing the humans, and behind them the thundering sound of hoofbeats as the rest of the Narnian army pours out of the How. Above, the whistling sound of a hundred shafts loosed at once; the arrows hit just before the two armies clash.
Caspian parries a sword-stroke, lashes out back-handed with his dagger and slashes across another soldier’s chest with his sword. Beside him, Hilzarie rips out a man’s throat; on his other side, Peta is a blur of flashing steel and golden hair spilling out of its knot, cleaving through men like a butcher through meat.
Blood and gore and guts; he pauses for a moment and tastes iron in his mouth, then spins and tosses his dagger up, catching it by the tip and throwing it smoothly from the side. Peta raises her sword in salute and turns the move into a wide butterfly sweep that sends a soldier falling sideways as she steps away, kicking a man’s knees out from beneath him and taking his head off in the same stroke.
Dead and dying all around him; Caspian turns blindly, seeing a centaur on the ground spitted by the officer’s lance, a faun trying to hold its intestines in with both hands, a tiger sprawled out in the tall grass seemingly without a mark on him. He slams the hilt of his sword into a Telmarine’s face and sweeps his feet out from under him, dropping down to one knee to bury his sword in the man’s chest.
“Caspian!” Edmund bellows, and grabs him by the back of his collar, hauling him backwards as a sword slashes through the space where his head had just been.
The officer gallops past, shield on his left arm, sword in his right hand, and wheels his horse around.
“Break!” Edmund yells. “God damn it, Caspian, break!”
They throw themselves to either side as the horse thunders between them. Out of nowhere a wolf springs, jaws fixing in the horse’s neck. The animal screams in pain and goes tumbling over sideways, the officer spilling out of the saddle and scrambling to his feet. He buries his sword in the wolf’s neck and yanks it free.
Caspian snatches his sword up and breaks into a run, tackling the officer from the side and getting an arm around him from behind, trying to get his sword blade against the man’s throat before he accidentally cuts his head off or something equally unfortunate.
Thankfully, the officer stops moving and Caspian hisses in his ear, “Call off your men. Do it!” He presses his sword blade up harder, feeling the skin give and break, and the officer’s sharp gasp.
“Stop – stop!” he says. “All right!”
Caspian pulls his sword back, just a little, as the officer gropes for the horn on his saddle and puts it to his mouth. The first sound out is a flat blat, and then he makes it sing, the patterns for fall back and return to base.
The remaining Telmarines start to disengage and pull back, retreating to the woods, and the Narnians give a shout of victory and start to chase them.
“No!” Peta bellows. “Don’t follow them! Stop!”
Caspian looks up to see the pursuers stop, waffling for a moment in surprise before they turn back. He knocks the sword away from the officer and lets the man up, surprised to find himself panting great, ugly breaths.
Hilzarie comes up from the side, blood smeared across her face and paws, and bares her teeth delicately at the Telmarine officer. “I’ll sit on this one,” she says.
“Thanks,” Caspian says. He wipes the blade of his sword across the front of his trousers and sheathes it, looking up to see the officer staring at him.
“Your majesty,” he says uncertainly. “Prince Caspian.”
Caspian just nods, suddenly too exhausted to say anything. He turns away, looking for Peta or Edmund or Susan – someone – and sees Peta kneeling down, nearly hidden amidst a patch of untrampled grass. He goes over to her, staggering a little, and stops as King Edmund pulls her to her feet.
He’s too far away to hear what they’re saying together, but he sees Peta’s face go white and then red before she snaps something at her brother. He can read Susan’s lips when she comes up beside them, though: she says, “Stop it!” and Peta and Edmund both subside, Peta turning away.
There’s a fierce, unexpected burst of joy in his chest when he sees her see him, her face lighting up and then relaxing in relief. “Caspian,” she says quietly, and puts an arm around his neck, pulling his head down to rest their foreheads together, a brief moment of peace. “That was good thinking,” she adds, pulling away. Her hands slide down to rest on his wrists, light and sure. “Otherwise we would have had to kill them all.”
“Are you all right?” he asks.
Peta nods and reaches behind her back, passing him his dagger. “You misplaced this,” she says. “Now,” she adds, “I suppose we should get this mess cleaned up.”
-
-
The butcher’s bill is worse than Peta had expected; Caspian can tell by the look on her face, which goes very blank, like a slate suddenly wiped clean. She doesn’t say anything, though; just listens in silence and goes to see each of the wounded, murmuring a few words to them, grasping their hands or paws briefly before she moves on.
Caspian has a bad cut down his left arm from shoulder to elbow; he has no memory of getting it and ends up staring at it in blank confusion as a dwarf bonesetter sews it up. He’s the last person Peta comes to, leaning against a cave wall and scraping a whetstone over his sword blade, trying to ignore the burn in his shoulder.
“Stop that,” Peta says, taking the whetstone away. “You’re just going to damage your arm more.” She slumps down next to him and puts her head on his good shoulder.
He turns his head to kiss her lightly on the mouth; she tips her head up to deepen the kiss, just for a moment.
“What was it your brother said to you?” he asks.
Peta shakes her head. “He told me I was an idiot and I was damned lucky I hadn’t got the lot of us killed. And some other things that weren’t nearly as polite.” She bites her lip. “I underestimated how many of them there were, I forgot that this isn’t an army full of trained soldiers, and I lost my temper. I fucked up.” She gives Caspian an edge of a smile. “As I think I’ve said recently, I do that a lot.”
“No,” Caspian begins, and Peta shakes her head.
“I can’t have this conversation here,” she says, straightening, and reaches out to give him a hand up.
Caspian gets up, staggering a little from blood loss and exhaustion, and sheathes his sword. Peta twines her fingers lightly with his as she draws him away towards the stairs, just the very tips of their fingers, then pulls away. She rubs the edge of her thumb over a splash of blood on her cheek.
He’s leaning on her shoulder by the time they get to the upper levels and she kicks open the door of her room, pushing him carefully down onto her bedroll. She rises to light the burnt-out torches in their sconces, then closes the door and comes back to him, unbuckling her sword-belt and wrapping it around her sword sheath.
Caspian’s still wearing his sword-belt, but he’s lost his brigandine somewhere. He sits up to watch her, but Peta pushes him back down, straddling his thighs as she undoes the knot on his belt and pulls it loose, setting it aside.
“How bad’s the pain?” she asks, leaning down and bracing herself on her elbows, face a few inches from his.
“Bad,” Caspian says, and leans up to kiss her chin. “Getting better.”
Peta laughs a little, softly, and Caspian slides a hand up beneath her shirt to slide over the smooth skin of her back. She bends her head to kiss him full on the mouth, long and slow and a little careful, her hands working at the base of his shirt. He lifts up so that she can pull it off over his head, hissing a curse through his teeth at the stab of pain – no painkillers here.
Her skin is soft and familiar, sharp with the taste of her sweat when Caspian kisses the base of her neck and the dip of her collarbone. They get the rest of their clothes off, Caspian swearing a little as the movement jars his wound, and then he’s in her and they’re moving together, Peta clutching at his hair and making the sweetest little gasping noises Caspian has ever heard.
She arches up against him as she comes, scraping her nails down his back. He bites down hard on her shoulder when he comes, not quite sure if he’s drawn blood or if he split open his lip somewhere.
Afterwards, Peta puts her arm around his neck, her lips briefly light on his forehead, like a benediction. “I’m glad you’re not dead,” she says.
-
-
The next day they’re out in the meadow clearing the bodies away – one mass grave as far away from the How as they can haul the Narnian dead; they stack the Telmarine dead on the far side of the How. It’s hard, dirty, miserable work; it’s a hot, sunny day, and Caspian and Edmund strip off their shirts. Peta and Susan don’t; their shirts stick to their bodies, dripping with sweat, and they bundle their hair back off their faces. If the Narnians are surprised to see their king and queens working with the rest of them, they don’t show it; they’re too concerned with their dead.
Around noon, three Telmarine riders come out of the woods, an officer with a white flag on his lance and two cavalrymen. Caspian pulls himself up, hand falling to his sword-hilt – weapons are the one thing they’re not disregarding right now – and sees the Narnians do the same.
Peta waves them down and strides forward. Edmund follows, pulling his shirt on over his head. A few feet from Caspian, Susan strings her bow and nocks an arrow.
Peta and Edmund speak with the officer for a few minutes, then Peta nods and turns around, coming back to them. Edmund stays where he is, hand on his sword. By now there are a handful of other Narnians with their bows in their hands, watching the Telmarines warily.
“They’re going to take their dead back,” Peta announces. “They’ll be gone by sundown.”
“What about the lieutenant?” Caspian asks. “Chabier?”
“Him they’ll pay for,” she says. “Do you think we could find something to do with the money?”
“Food, weapons, medical supplies,” Susan says. “I suppose Edmund or I could sneak across the river and into one of the towns. We can pass,” she adds. “You can’t. And Caspian’s face is known.”
“Good,” Peta says lightly. “I wouldn’t want to keep him around, anyway.”
-
-
The Telmarines come and take their dead and their living; the Narnians bury their dead. Peta’s shorter-tempered than usual in the following weeks, restless and sleepless, and her siblings watch her warily. She beats the hell out of her siblings and Caspian in training, drives the Narnians so hard that they start to complain, a little glassy-eyed from shock and surprise.
Edmund catches her arm once, coming out of the cavern they use for training. “You are aware that we’re fighting a war here, aren’t you?” he asks her softly, but loud enough that Caspian can hear him a few paces away. “They’re not going to do anyone any good if they’re too tired to fight.”
“They’re not going to win a war if they’re not trained,” she tells him, pulling free, and drags Caspian up to their room.
Miraz doesn’t do anything, just sits and waits, his men creeping closer and closer to the How.
“We can’t just sit here,” Nikabrik grumbles. “We have to attack them!”
“I’m sorry,” Peta snaps. “Do you have an active death wish? Because that’s what’s going to happen if we attack them.”
Susan pulls her away before she can say anything else.
One morning Peta wakes him up by being violently sick in a bucket in a corner of the room.
Caspian pushes himself up on his elbow. “Are you all right?” he asks, even though the answer to that particular question seems to be obvious.
“Clearly not,” Peta says, her voice muffled, and throws up again.
Caspian gets out of bed and goes over to hold her hair out of her face, bracing her shoulders as she dry-heaves. “Are you sick?” he asks a little while later, when Peta’s stopped throwing up and instead seems content to sag limp against his shoulder, her head lolling against his.
“Aslan’s mane, I hope not,” she says. “It’s probably just something I ate, Aslan knows there’s not enough food to go around and some of what we have left doesn’t store well.”
“I’m all right,” he feels compelled to point out.
She punches him lightly in the shoulder. “I’m really hoping the flu’s not going around, because the last thing we need is a disease outbreak. Try and look on the bright side with me, Caspian.”
He doesn’t see Peta for the rest of the day, too busy drilling with the Narnian infantry and then the crossbowmen until he aches all over.
“I’d kill to be back at Castle Telmar,” he tells Edmund and Lucy over a meager dinner.
“Missing having someone else do all the work?” Edmund inquires, an arch tone to his voice. He raises an eyebrow to match it, his expression challenging.
Caspian doesn’t take the bait. “Hot baths,” he says. “There are hot springs beneath the castle. Always warm, and you can always get a hot bath.”
“What I wouldn’t give for a soak,” Lucy says, a little wistfully.
“Where’s the High Queen?” Caspian asks after a few minutes. “I haven’t seen her since this morning.”
“She and Su have gone out to scorch the Telmarines’ tails,” Edmund says. “They’ll probably be back by morning, unless they happen to bring down trouble on us.”
-
-
Peta crawls into bed with him sometime in the early morning hours, warm and smelling a little of smoke and steel. Caspian shifts to accommodate her, wrapping an arm around her waist before kissing her forehead and drifting back to sleep.
He wakes up to the sound of retching for the second time in two days. Peta holds her hair back with one hand and keeps the bucket steady with the other. Caspian doesn’t bother asking if she’s all right, just dresses silently and goes over to her, smoothing his palms over her hands to hold back her hair.
“Thanks,” she gasps, and keeps throwing up.
It goes on for a long time; Peta switches to dry-heaving after a few minutes, her body shaking against Caspian’s as he braces her. After a while she leans back against him and says weakly, “I think I’m done for now.”
Caspian leans over and picks up a waterskin, passing it to her in silence. She pulls the cap off with her teeth, then rinses out her mouth and spits into the bucket. “Thanks,” she mutters.
“Maybe you should see your sister,” Caspian offers. “If you’re sick.”
“I’m not sick,” Peta says furiously, turning on him, and then, “Sorry. I’m sorry. I hate this. I have to go talk to Susan.” She snatches up her boots and sword belt and storms out of the room without bothering to put them on.
Caspian sits back on his heels, a little puzzled, and then gets up to take the bucket outside and empty it.
Summer has turned into early autumn and the air is cooler now than it had been before, the leaves on the trees fading from green to burnished shades of red and gold. Out in the field, Susan and a troop of centaurs are galloping back and forth, shooting at a set of human-shaped targets set in the ground. Caspian stops to watch them. They gallop in a single-file circle, continuously moving and continuously shooting.
“Good!” he hears Susan call when they’ve emptied their quivers, her voice bright and eager. “Very good.” She nudges her horse to the target and starts plucking arrows out.
Caspian finishes scrubbing the bucket clean in the stream that runs behind the How and goes back inside, pressing himself against a wall as a group of fauns and satyrs runs past, Hilzarie and a wolf named Longclaw at their heels.
“Come on!” Longclaw barks. “What’s wrong with you, do you think you’re back in your beloved caves chasing rats? Run faster! You’re a disgrace to the High Queen!” He and Hilzarie chase them out into the sunlight.
Caspian hears Edmund’s bemused laughter. “And to think I used to want to join the Army.”
He turns his head to see the king coming down the hall, his arms full of bright mail and scarlet fabric. “The army?” he inquires politely.
“Before Narnia, in England,” Edmund explains. “If you think they’re bad –” he tilts his head towards the entrance, “– you should have seen the drill sergeants in the old Narnian army. When the army was training in the field outside Cair Paravel they were so loud that I swear you could hear them from the castle.”
He nods at the bucket. “You or Peta?”
He hesitates, but she hadn’t told him not to say and Edmund should know if his sister is sick. “Peta.”
Edmund’s eyes narrow. “Just today?”
“Yesterday too. She said – something she ate, or –”
“It’s probably that,” Edmund says, maybe a little too quickly.
“Probably,” Caspian nods. “What do you have there?”
“Peta’s armor, from Cair Paravel,” he explains. “She sent me back to get it a few days ago. Mine too – chances are we’ll want it soon. Of course,” he adds a little bitterly, “even without the thirteen hundred year gap, we haven’t actually used these sets for more than a decade now, so it’s not in perfect condition. I’m off to see the armorer.”
“Will you talk to Peta?” Caspian asks, a little hesitantly.
“I’ll talk to her.”
Caspian goes to put the bucket back in their room, then goes back down to the cavern that’s been serving as kitchen and mess to find something to eat. There’s fresh-baked bread – no butter, but someone’s found honey – and plums. He takes two of those, and three slices of bread, talking with Reepicheep and Peepiceek when the mice come up to him.
Reepicheep has been out of his cell for months now, and he’s a little quieter than he had been before. He doesn’t wear a feather behind his ear anymore. Peepiceek still seems a little embarrassed about his position as chief of the mice, though he fits into the role a little better than he had when Peta had first given it to him.
Afterwards, Caspian goes down to the armory to pick up a crossbow and a quiver full of quarrels. He meets his crossbowmen on a different archery range than the one Susan had used for her cavalry archers
They’re better now, after months of training; they nearly always hit the target, or at least come close to it. Caspian watches and shouts encouragement when it’s needed, correction when the action calls for it.
“They’re getting better,” Peta says from behind Caspian. “One could almost take them for trained soldiers.”
“Almost,” Caspian agrees, turning his head to grin at her. “How are you doing?”
She narrows her eyes at him. “You’re the third person to ask me that today, not counting you asking me this morning. Did you tell Edmund?”
“He’s your brother,” Caspian says, a little awkwardly.
“He is,” Peta agrees. “A fact that has not been called into question.”
They eye each other for a few moments without speaking, their silence broken by the shouts of the Narnian crossbowmen.
“I’m fine,” Peta says finally. “There’s nothing wrong with me.”
“You’ve been sick for two mornings now,” Caspian points out. “That doesn’t seem very –”
“Your majesty!” All the crossbows twang at once, like a badly tuned orchestra, and Peta and Caspian both turn to see the mounted Telmarine scout jerk in the saddle, both he and his horse screaming in pain.
“Stop!” Peta scouts, drawing her sword and racing forward.
“Bows down!” Caspian barks, following Peta, his own sword in his hand now.
The horse is already dead, collapsed and trapping its rider beneath it, and the man is close to it, blood bubbling up between his lips as he coughs out his last breaths. His eyes are wide and scared, and he’s younger than Caspian.
Peta puts her sword through his heart. “He doesn’t know anything,” she says to Caspian, pulling her blade free and wiping it clean with a handful of grass. “Damn.” She looks up at him with wide eyes. “I have a bad feeling about this. Miraz is going to try something, and soon.”
-
-
But he doesn’t. The entire How is on high alert for the better part of a week, and while their scouts – talking birds, mostly, and a few small rodents – report increased activity in the Telmarine camp, Miraz doesn’t make a move on the How.
“I swear to God, I am ten minutes from ordering an airstrike on the camp myself,” Peta growls, pacing back and forth in their room. Her hair’s loose around her shoulders, shockingly bright against her dark red shirt.
Caspian sits cross-legged on their bedroll and watches her. He’s cleaning his dagger, the steel bright beneath the cloth.
“I’m sick of this blasted waiting,” she continues. “It’s autumn and he’s got an army of farmers, don’t they have to get the crops in? What’s he thinking? I know that some of the officers are thinking the same thing; Susan’s gotten intelligence that says just that. Doesn’t Miraz realize that if he doesn’t get his troops back to their homes they won’t be able to eat come winter? Doesn’t he realize where his food comes from?”
“I’m sure my uncle knows, but I rather doubt he cares,” Caspian points out.
“Clearly not,” she snaps. “At least it’s an advantage for us; his men are going to start missing their families and their homes, they’re not going to be quiet so intent on killing us. I mean, that’s going to change when the actual fighting starts, but until then –” She waves her hands wildly in the air, grimacing, and then comes over to drop down next to him, twisting to avoid the hilt of his sword.
Caspian sheathes it and sets it aside. He cups Peta’s cheek in one hand, turning her head towards him, and leans in to kiss her. She twines her fingers in her hair and pulls him in, teeth clicking quietly against his for a moment before she pushes him down.
She spreads him out on the blankets, kissing the edge of his jaw, the line of his neck, the shadow of his collarbone. He drags his fingers over the scar across her ribs, then lower.
“Caspian.” Her voice is soft. She presses him down into the blankets.
-
-
“Peta. Caspian.”
He opens his eyes to see Edmund leaning down low over them, a torch in one hand. Peta’s already reaching for her sword, but she stops halfway there, pushing herself up.
“What is it?”
“Security breach,” Edmund says, and Peta curses under her breath as he continues. “He doesn’t seem like much of a threat, but Reepicheep’s got him locked up in the red cave downstairs. The guards caught him trying to sneak into the How. Not very good at it; they caught him at the trees. He’s asking for Caspian.”
“For me?” Caspian says, surprised, at the same time Peta says, “For him?”
“If we have another Caspian here, I’ll be very surprised,” Edmund says dryly.
They dress quickly and buckle on their sword belts over their shirts, not bothering with jerkins. Peta pulls her hair back into a tail at the back of her head; it’s long enough that it’s loose around her shoulders. It makes her look younger.
“At least I haven’t thrown up yet,” she murmurs to Caspian under her breath.
“There is that,” he agrees, and stifles his yawn with his hand. It’s either extremely early or extremely late, and at the rate they work themselves – and with their diminishing food store; the Telmarines aren’t the only ones grumbling about not stocking up for winter; any animals that hibernate are starting to get a little frantic too – they need every minute of sleep they can get. Food is sleep; sleep is food.
Peta bumps his shoulder companionably with hers as they go out into the hall, and in the brighter light here, even Edmund looks a little frazzled, his face drawn and his dark hair mussed. It’s late and they’re tired, and Edmund has it worse than Peta; the Narnians go to him before they go to the High Queen.
Around them, the How is quiet, only a few of the creatures that favor the night over the day stirring. The night guards tend to be made up of some such – owls and Black Dwarves, minotaurs, bats. Creatures that had once upon a time served the White Witch, and when they’d volunteered for the position Peta had given one harsh laugh and then given it to them. A leopard prowls past them in the halls, nose low to the ground and tail drooping; it lifts its head as they pass, pausing before it goes on its way.
The mice are crowded along the door to the red cave. Peta nods to them and says, “We’ll take it from here,” the dismissal clear in her voice as they nod and return to their patrols.
Edmund pulls the door open and goes in, flitting around the edge of the cave to light the torches that sit dark in their sconces. Only one has been lit before, but he sets them all to burning, bringing the cave to a light nearly as bright as day.
Caspian glances at Peta, but she motions him in, crossing her arms over her chest as she leans against the doorframe. He steps past her and inside, frowning a little at the small, stout man kneeling in the centaur of the floor, his back to them and his hands bound behind him.
He’s thinner than he had been before. “Professor?” Caspian says, surprised. “Professor Cornelius?”
Doctor Cornelius twists around in surprise, unbalancing himself, and Caspian rushes forward to steady him before he falls over.
“My prince!” he exclaims. “I had not thought – so you are here, after all, and the rumors are false. I had hoped that they were and that you were here, and safe.”
“Safe enough,” Caspian assures him, drawing his dagger to cut the ropes binding him. “I had hoped as much for you, but I feared the worst when you could not be found in the castle. How have you come here, so far from the castle?”
“It makes a poor story,” Cornelius says, stumbling a little as Caspian helps him to his feet. “King Miraz suspected that I had helped you with your escape and had me imprisoned for conspiring against the throne – for your kidnap, he called it then. I languished in the castle dungeons for months – I watched the army march from my cell. And then a few weeks ago Miraz ordered me brought here, to his camp, in order to question me regarding the legends and stories of old Narnia.”
“He knows those well enough himself,” Caspian says, a little curious.
Cornelius shrugs. “Perhaps not so well as he thought. Still, he brought me here, and I have been in his war camp for some time now. I was only able to escape this past night; my guards have been long away from their homes, and they have grown lax. I thought only of coming here and throwing myself on the mercy of the Narnians even if you were not among them.”
“But I am,” Caspian says, and smiling. “So you don’t have to hope that they will accept a Telmarine after all.”
“No,” Peta says from behind him. “But he does have to worry about me.”
Caspian turns to face her. “I spoke to you of my professor, the man who saved my life –”
“Yes, you did,” Peta agrees. “And while I suppose I have reason to be grateful for the former, and while I do trust your judgment, I am curious about why Miraz decided to bring his traitorous nephew’s traitorous tutor all the way out here to the back of beyond, which also happens to be a warzone home to the very heart of the Narnian resistance.” She tilts her chin up, watching Cornelius with cool blue eyes. She never looks at Caspian like that anymore, he realizes belatedly; he hadn’t noticed until now.
“I fear I do not know your name, my lady,” Cornelius says. “And I had not expected to find another human here; Narnians seldom accept even half-humans, and you seem to be a fullblood –”
“I assure, I and my siblings are entirely human,” Peta says. “Or haven’t the rumors spread that far yet?”
For a moment, Cornelius is quiet, blinking at her in confusion, and then his eyes go very wide. “High Queen Peta!” he exclaims, and then he murmurs, “Forgive me, I did not think that the horn would summon you –”
“Who did you think it would summon?” Peta asks, tilting her head to one side curiously. “I wouldn’t have thought there were particularly a lot of options.”
Cornelius shakes his head. “I had not thought so far, your highness. Giving my prince that horn was a vain hope at most; I thought that perhaps it would serve as some token to allow safe passage through Narnian territory. Only in my wildest dreams did I think that it would truly summon you back from beyond the abyss –”
“Your token nearly got your prince killed,” Peta says.
“Queen Susan’s horn also saved my life,” Caspian points out. “Your majesty, perhaps this conversation be continued somewhere more comfortable.”
Peta glances toward him and raises her eyebrows. “Half an hour ago I was asleep. That’s more comfortable. But we’re up now, so we might as well stay that way for the time being.” She glances back at Cornelius, then over his head towards Edmund.
“Food and drink?” the king says softly.
Cornelius’s eyes go wide; he makes a sharp movement and then restrains himself. “Guesting rights!” he exclaims. “I had not thought that such customs were still followed, or even known outside of history books.”
“We predate the history books,” King Edmund says. “Peta?”
She’s silent.
“Your majesty, I trust Professor Cornelius with my life,” Caspian says. Surely Peta can’t think that Cornelius is here as a spy, or that Miraz would trust him with such a mission – or that there was a less likely spy than Cornelius.
“I don’t,” Peta says flatly. But she tilts her head to the side and finally adds, “We can spare something, I suppose. Ed, take him to the kitchens, will you? Caspian, you and I are going to have a talk.” She turns and walks out of the cavern.
Caspian hesitates, but follows after a moment, leaving Cornelius and Edmund behind.
Peta draws him aside into one of the smaller side caverns, empty except for a stock of small round Telmarine shields stacked against the wall. “Caspian, look at me,” she orders.
“Peta, you can’t possibly think that he’s here on Miraz’s orders,” Caspian says before she can say anything else. “He saved my life.”
“He saved your life,” Peta says. “Months ago, and a long time before I and my siblings were ever in the picture.”
“What are you getting at?” Caspian asks uncertainly.
“Why save your life?” she demands. “What did he hope to accomplish by that? Is his loyalty to you, to the old king, or to someone else entirely?”
“Does it matter? He saved my life when my uncle tried to have me killed. Why would he do that unless he meant to work against my uncle?”
“Any number of reasons,” Peta says. “Listen to me: you trust him. You’re familiar with him. You’re comfortable with him. That’s not common sense talking, that’s your memory talking. Things change, Caspian. You’ve changed, he’s changed. Who knows what or who he’s working for now?”
“I trust him,” Caspian says.
“That makes one of us,” Peta says. “Where are you going?”
Caspian turns away from the cave entrance to look at her, frowning. “To go see my professor, of course.”
“You’d be better off going back to sleep,” Peta says. “You won’t see him until morning at the very least.”
“What are you talking about?” he demands, staring at her. “Of course I’m going to see him. He’s my professor.”
“I’m not letting you near him,” Peta says, and leaves him behind, standing alone in the cave and staring blindly at the wall.
-
-
He doesn’t go back to sleep – can’t, too restless and uneasy. Instead he goes up to the upper levels of the How, sitting on the ledge and watching the sun come up, touching the hilt of his sword with light fingers and thinking back on the past few months.
He trusts Professor Cornelius, does and always has. Peta’s insistence that he not do so is nonsensical, ridiculous; if there’s anyone among the Telmarines he can trust, it’s his professor.
Caspian sheathes his sword with a rasp of metal on leather and stares out at the woods blindly. Then the rising sun gleams off steel – a lot of steel – the points of the long ten foot lances Telmarine cavalry carry, the heavy crossbows of the archers, the helmets of the infantry, the huge wooden monoliths of the Telmarine siege engines. Banners leap and blaze in the breeze.
Caspian leaps to his feet, his sword clenched tightly on his fist; on the other side of the ledge, the faun guard curses. Horrified shouts rise up from the lower levels of the How and the field below, where early morning training is going on. Narnians stop and stare, some groping for their weapons.
“Go and get the High Queen,” Caspian orders, and the faun goes.
Peta and her siblings, along with Trumpkin, Nikabrik, and Trufflehunter, are up on the ledge within a few minutes, fingering their weapons and looking out on the scene below grimly.
“So,” Susan says, “Miraz has finally decided to make his move.”
“This is going to end,” Peta says. “Now.” She turns around and goes back inside, and after a few moments the others follow her.
Caspian stays on the ledge for a few minutes, staring out at the field below – his uncle’s army, his people. Coming to kill him.
He goes inside.
They’re meeting downstairs in the table room, as usual. Edmund, Susan, and Lucy are sitting on the edge of the Stone Table; Trufflehunter, Nikabrik, and Trumpkin are sitting on one set of stairs; Asterius and Glenstorm standing against the walls. Peta is nowhere in sight. Caspian stands still for a few minutes until Reepicheep and two other mice escort Professor Cornelius in.
“I’ll take him,” Caspian says quietly, approaching, and Reepicheep nods and scampers off to take a position next to Lucy on the table.
He guides Cornelius to a seat on a second set of steps. “Have they treated you well?” he asks.
“Better than King Miraz would have if our positions were reversed,” Cornelius informs him. “I was questioned; I expected no less.” He tilts his head towards the three royals on the Stone Table. “They are very young.”
“They are older than they appear,” Caspian says. “But you were not mistreated?”
Cornelius favors him with a patient look. “Don’t worry for me, my prince, I faced worse in the cells of Miraz’s castle.”
“Were you hurt?” Caspian asks anxiously. “Did my uncle –”
“He kept me in the cells, no more,” Cornelius assures him.
They look up as Edmund gets to his feet and says, “I’m going to go find Peta; she should have been here by now,” before leaving the room.
“What is she like, this Narnian queen?” Cornelius asks. “Is she truly the High Queen of legend?”
“Of legend?” Caspian repeats. “She’s human, no more and no less. A great warrior, a great leader, a great queen – but human, not myth made flesh.”
Cornelius turns his gaze suddenly on him. “You are in love with her,” he observes.
Caspian looks away.
His professor catches his arm and pulls him back, his grip like iron through the thin fabric of Caspian’s shirt. “Do you know what it is you risk, my prince? She and her siblings have no love for Telmarines or Telmarine princes; they have no reason to put you on your throne.”
“It’s not my throne anymore,” Caspian says. “It was never my throne.”
“You are the Crown Prince of Telmar, the rightful king –”
“This is Narnia and they are her rightful sovereigns,” Caspian says. “Our people are newcomers compared to them. I will not steal her throne.”
“They abandoned Narnia once already, do you truly think they will not do so again? Do you want to trust this country to them?” His expression is sharp, a little angry, and stubborn. “Do you realize what you could be, my prince? The greatest of contradictions – the Telmarine who brought peace to Narnia.”
Caspian pulls his arm free. “They did not abandon Narnia,” he insists. “And you have no idea what you’re speaking of. You haven’t been here. You don’t know them at all.” He looks up as Peta and Edmund come in, forestalling any reply Cornelius might have.
Peta’s pale and a little shaky; she pulls away from the support of her brother’s arm as they come in. “Sorry for the delay,” she drawls, pushing her hair back from her face and hooking it behind her ears.
“We can’t withstand a siege,” Peta says. “Not with those Telmarine siege machines, and even without those, we’re outnumbered.” She tilts her chin up, grinning a little bit. “We’re going to have to get creative. And we’ll need some more help.”
“Who exactly are you planning on calling on?” Nikabrik demands. “Archenland? Calormen? They’re certainly not going to help, unless of course you’re planning on giving them chunks of good Narnian land.” He glares at her.
“Of course not,” Peta says calmly. “Why bother with foreigners when we can get Narnians to do it better?”
The entire room stares at her blankly.
“What are you talking about?” Trumpkin says at last. “There is no one else; anyone that would come is already here. Who else can you possibly mean?”
“The trees, of course,” Peta says. “Lu, do you think you could go about waking them up for me?”
“I did try the once,” Lucy says, a little hesitantly. “And I didn’t really get anywhere.”
“Things have changed since then,” Peta says confidently. She grins at her sister.
“I don’t think Miraz is going to give us the time we need for Lucy to get all the way out into the deep woods,” Edmund points out. “What are you thinking, Peta? Back around Lantern Waste or the woods on the eastern seaboard?”
“The seaboard,” Peta says. “Lantern Waste is a little too close to Telmarine territory for my comfort. Lu will have to pass the Telmarine scouts to get out to the seaboard, but she’d have worse to go through getting to Lantern Waste, and I think our chances might be better the nearer to Cair Paravel we are. What do you say, Lu? Back towards the Cair, or inland, around Lantern Waste and the lamppost?”
“When we were coming here from Cair Paravel, I could almost hear them,” Lucy says. “That was why I was out in the woods when you ran across Caspian – or Caspian ran across you, I mean. I thought I’d heard them. I thought I’d heard Aslan,” she adds, a little more quietly. Edmund puts an arm around her shoulders in a brief hug, and Lucy leans against his shoulder for an instant before pulling away.
“Kites and kettledrums!” Trumpkin exclaims, springing to his feet. “This is your plan? Sending a little girl out into the darkest parts of the forest, alone?”
Peta raises her eyebrows at him. “Well,” she says, “we could of course surrender immediately, but I’m not particularly fond of that option.”
“And she won’t be alone,” Susan says.
Peta turns her gaze on her sister, looking faintly surprised, and Susan just shrugs.
Trumpkin ignores them both as he approaches Lucy. “Haven’t enough of us died already?” he asks, sounding heartbroken.
“The plan is for the majority of us not to die,” Edmund says dryly.
Lucy clears her throat. “I know it must sound like fairytales to most of you, but it’s real, it is,” she insists. “This is what we know. This is Narnia. I can wake them and we can win this. It’s not a suicide mission.”
From the expression on Trumpkin’s face, he’s not convinced. Caspian’s not entirely sure he disagrees with the dwarf, because the Telmarine core of him shudders at the thought of the woods – dark, doomed, haunted, cursed – but he went into those woods and he came out again alive and unscathed and the better man for it, and perhaps something dwells there after all, something that can help them win this war.
“Then I’m coming with you,” Trumpkin declares.
“No,” Lucy says, her expression kind but set. “We need you here. You need to hold the Telmarines off until Su and I get back.”
“And how exactly are you planning to do that?” he exclaims. “You can’t think you can hold them off in pitched battle, even with all the extra training you’ve had this lot doing –”
“Like he knows any better,” Nikabrik mutters under his breath.
“No, this is true,” Peta says. “I was actually thinking –”
“Your majesty, if I may,” Cornelius says suddenly from beside Caspian.
Peta looks at him and raises her eyebrows, but nods once.
“Miraz may be a tyrant,” he continues, “and I assure you, no one knows this better than me! – but as king he is subject to the traditions and expectations of his people.” He pauses significantly.
What is he talking about? Caspian can’t think of a single Telmarine tradition that would apply here. He turns his head and stares at his professor blankly.
“Go on,” Peta says.
“There is one in particular that may buy us some time,” Cornelius says. “A direct challenge – from one sovereign to another – single combat to the death, an ancient and honorable Telmarine tradition that has been passed down for many years –”
“No!” Caspian exclaims, leaping to his feet. “No, you cannot!”
There’s a strange, unfamiliar smile on Peta’s face. “Sit down, Caspian,” she says.
He stays standing and crosses the floor to catch her arm and pull her toward him. “My uncle is a master swordsman,” he says. “One of the best in Telmar, in Narnia. If you fight him, he will kill you.”
“You’re very sweet, Caspian,” Peta says. “And your uncle may be the best swordsman in Telmar, but I’ve never been beaten.”
“Peta, please,” he begs, “don’t make me watch you die.”
Her eyes narrow, then she jerks her arm free of his grip. “The only person you’re going to watch die is your uncle,” she says, “and unless you still have some particular attachment to him, that shouldn’t bother you at all.”
“Peta,” Caspian says again, “please −”
“Set it up please, Ed,” she says calmly to her brother, then dismisses the meeting.
Caspian’s dimly aware of the Narnians leaving, murmuring to each other, but he’s too caught up in his own horror to pay much attention. Peta, may the little gods help them, Peta. When he looks down at his hands, it’s to realize they’re shaking.
“Caspian,” Peta says when they’ve gone. She catches his chin in one strong swordswoman’s hand, callused from months of practice at sword and staff and bow, and pulls his head down to meet her eyes. “Don’t you ever challenge my authority again,” she says. “Is that understood?”
He swallows. “Yes,” he manages to choke out. “But, Peta, my uncle – he’ll kill you.”
“He’ll try,” she corrects. “Believe it or not, Caspian, my plan doesn’t actually involve dying on the end of your uncle’s sword.”
“It may happen whether or not you plan for it,” Caspian says.
“I know,” Peta says calmly. “Cost of doing battle. Caspian, I am very, very good at what I do, and there is a reason I’m here. It’s not just to look pretty or to be a figurehead. I’ve been doing this since I was fourteen. The first time ‘round, I mean. Anyway,” she adds, “I’m not going to lose.”
“You are too certain,” Caspian says.
“Uncertainty leads to hesitation and hesitation leads to getting people killed,” Peta says promptly. “That was the first thing I learned. Well, the second. The first was, ‘stick them with the pointy end.’”
Surprised, Caspian lets out a sharp bark of laughter and Peta grins at him. She lets her hand drop down to rest lightly on her sword hilt, her grip sure and familiar. “Caspian,” she says again, “I am very, very good at exactly one thing, and that’s fighting. It makes up for all the other stuff I’m bad at.”
He smiles a little – he’s meant to – but it’s tinged with sorrow and panic. “My uncle is one of the best swordsmen in Telmar,” he says again. “Don’t do this, Peta. Find some other way.”
She tilts her head to the side. “Can you think of one?”
He bites his lip. “No. But still – there must be something that does not –”
“Caspian,” she says, “we are at war. People fight, people die. I’d be fighting anyway. This gives us a chance. And besides,” she adds pointedly, tilting her chin up, “I always did like single combat better than straight-out battle anyway. People tend to underestimate me.”
*
tbc
go to part seven