Narnia fic: Carpetbaggers Chapter IV, Part 9 (3100 words)
Chapters I and II are here.
Chapter III and earlier parts of Chapter IV are here.
*
With a whoosh, the axe skimmed past his helmet with inches to spare. As it flew over, Edmund surged up and swung his sword upwards, using it more like a cricket bat than the weapons-master Silversharp would have approved. But it worked--he caught the Minotaur squarely in the crotch, and the creature howled and dropped to the ground, writhing in pain. It dropped its axe in its distress. Out of sympathy, Edmund hesitated an instant, then remembered that this Minotaur had just killed two Dwarfs before Edmund's eyes. He couldn't leave it alive to do that again. He cut its throat, and moved on.
He did not bother to clean his sword: it would be bloodied again soon enough. And at least his hands had stopped shaking.
The battle did not much resemble the last (and first) battle Edmund had fought in; this was much smaller, with fewer participants, and cramped into a shallow meadow bounded by a deep but narrow river on one side and a dense mixed forest at the other. It was neither as orderly nor as epic as the battle against the White Witch. It was also, frustratingly, not where Edmund had intended to fight, but he'd had little choice in the matter: the rebels had forced the issue, and come to meet the combined forces of Cair Paravel and the Western Narnian Patrol instead of waiting where they were supposed to.
No plan of battle survives contact with the enemy, the old maxim said, but it did at least assume contact with the enemy before one threw the plan of battle out the window. Edmund ground his teeth and plucked up a fallen spear, its shaft smeared with its owner's blood. He looked around and then dove back into the melee, following Fraxinus' gang as they charged a covey of Harpies savaging a Centaur.
The Harpies were the worst: Edmund had no air power, no Gryphons or Phoenix, merely a handful of messenger-birds and two Eagles. Nothing big enough to do much damage. He did, however, have Susan and her archers. He grunted approvingly as one of the Harpies took to the air and was promptly skewered by a red-fletched arrow.
The two forces were roughly matched in size, although to Edmund's inexperienced eye, the Rebels had the advantage in weight: there were several of those one-eyed giants (Cyclops? Fine, call them Cyclops), Minotaurs, and Ogres spread out across the field, most of them holding off determined assaults by Edmund's more lightly-armed forces. Off to the right, he saw Bruno and some of the Patrol taking on one of the Cyclops, but not doing a great job of it. The Grizzly was powerful and sneaky, but slow to react, and the Cyclops was taking advantage of that. Edmund shrugged: he was too far away to help, and if Bruno died, well, that might take care of one of their problems. (Lucy would be appalled at his calculating attitude, but Edmund rather suspected Susan would agree. She had ground distinctly unfond of Bruno during the morning's march.)
Fraxinus was a devil with a morning-star, and before Edmund caught up with him, he had driven most of the Harpies off the Centaur. He was one of Spearfast's sons, and his left rear leg was broken. He might be able to get off the battlefield, but he wouldn't be able to keep fighting like this.
Of course, as a Centaur, leaving the battle wasn't even on his mind. "Give me your spear, king," he said urgently. "I will guard your back." Oh, Aslan, not another one eager to die for Edmund's sake. Well, to blazes with that.
"No, you won't," said Edmund. "Head for the rise--Ilexus, you go with him. You can stay in one place and guard my sister." He tossed the bloody spear to the Centaur.
Not that Susan really needed any guarding, with Rhea by her side, but the command certainly perked the Centaur up, and he hobbled off with enthusiasm. He felt suddenly exhausted, as though he were forty years older than the Centaur.
There was a shout behind him. Edmund spun, Fraxinus leaped forward, bounding a good twenty feet on those goat legs, and the battle swept around them again.
Before the battle had started, Edmund had been even more frightened than he had been before the battle with the Witch. At one point on the march, when Bruno had gone off to consult with some of his people, Susan had looked at him, then squeezed his hand.
"You look green," she had said. She had looked only a little nervous herself, with her bow over her shoulder and her hair bound back, ready for battle.
"Oh, God," Edmund had muttered. "I'm going to be sick."
He wasn't, though, mostly because he had been unable to eat anything that morning. He felt ridiculous in the ancient boiled-leather hauberk and ill-fitting helmet, with his toes sticking out of his boots. No armor, no shield, no banners: just a hundred sturdy Narnians, led by a king in name only, who had only an academic idea of what he was doing. And Susan, for all her sharp wits and skill with the bow, had no better idea than Edmund did.
But there hadn't been much time to stew over the situation: even as Susan drew breath to reassure him, shouts broke out from the front of the line. "The Rebels!" one of the Centaurs bellowed. "The Rebels are upon us!"
"Aslan's Mane!" Edmund had sworn, and jumped for a low branch on a nearby tree, scrambling upwards so he could see to the front of their column as it wound along the narrow trail. "He's right! Susan, get your archers together. Looks like there's a clearing up ahead--I'm going to try to punch through, and get us some room."
Which they had accomplished, led by Spearfast and her sons, in a burst of energy powered in part by fear of being trapped and slaughtered among the trees; but Edmund's battle strategy, such as it had been, was in complete disarray. The battle now was, so far as Edmund could tell from the perspective of one surrounded by bloody madmen, complete chaos. The only thing he was sure of was that Susan and her archers were on a low rise to his rear, protected by a small squad of Dogs and Great Cats, and Rhea. Fraxinus and his squad stuck like glue to Edmund, watching his rear (and his sides, and usually his front too), but other than that Edmund had no clear idea what was going on in the rest of the battlefield. He didn't even know if the Rebels had a leader.
"I need a scout!" he shouted to Fraxinus, while dodging a wild swing from an Ogre. It was smaller than the one Peter had killed in the forest, but better armed: this one had an axe in one hand and a club in the other.
"For what?" shouted Fraxinus back, and stabbed with his spear at the Ogre. He missed, though: the Ogre was faster than expected, and its return lunge nearly took off Fraxinus' hand.
Edmund rolled his eyes and swung at the Ogre from behind: he missed the hamstring, but hit it hard enough behind the knee to send it staggering forward. "Intelligence! Are we losing or winning?"
Fraxinus seized the opportunity Edmund had given him, and swung his mace with dispatch, sending the Ogre to the ground, clutching at his ruined throat. "We're not running away, king, that must mean we're winning!" But when Edmund merely snarled at him, he shrugged and put a small pipe to his lips. The whistle he sounded was high and thin, almost too high for Edmund to hear, but then he was not its intended audience. Within moments a dark shape was winging to them over the battlefield, jinking around the Harpies making snatches at it, and at least once dodging an arrow from one of the rebel Dwarfs not killed in the first crash of battle.
The Magpie spiraled around them once, and came to a fluttering halt on Fraxinus' shoulder. "I hope this is important, did you see that Harpy, it nearly got me!"
"What's the situation?" asked Edmund, turning so he could keep an eye on Fraxinus' back. "Are we winning?" They were in a temporary lull, a pocket of quiet as the battle went on around them, but there was no one closer than ten yards for the moment. In the distance he saw arrows fly from a low rise, and a Harpy shrieked in rage, but he couldn't tell if they'd hit anything.
"We're not losing," responded the Magpie. Edmund stared at him balefully, and the Magpie gave a long-suffering sigh and launched himself into the air from Fraxinus' shoulder. Up he went, climbing fast, and then when he was out of arrow-range (if not out of range of the Harpies), he swung into a lazy circle, and then another. Edmund gritted his teeth and glanced around uneasily. He hated staying still while others were fighting, but he really did need to know the state of the battle before deciding what to do next.
At his feet was the body of a Red Dwarf Edmund recognized from last night's campfires. They'd come in from the south, some remote village in the hills that even Fraxinus had never heard of. The Dwarf (Edmund wished he could remember his name) had been gutted, and his sword, only a little longer than Peter's stone dagger, lay broken at his side. Edmund swallowed, grateful that he had not eaten breakfast, nor anything else since dawn. He looked around, realizing suddenly that he was desperately thirsty, and then the Magpie returned, coming to rest on his own shoulder this time.
"Well? How does it look?"
"It's a mess, king. Everyone's scattered all over, but there's a crowd of the Rebels forming off that way." The Magpie nodded to the northeast. "Looks like there's a Minotaur pulling them together. It'll be trouble for us." Scatterbrained the Magpies might be some of the time, but this one knew the gravity of his message, and he bobbed his head nervously when he finished speaking.
Edmund bit his lip, considering, but he really had few options.
"Look out!" shouted Fraxinus, and tackled Edmund as a Harpy swooped down on them. They landed in the mud next to the dead Dwarf, and the Harpy screeched with disappointment; it carried away with it Edmund's helmet, and some of his hair. Edmund pushed Fraxinus off and scrambled to his feet. His exhaustion was at least for the moment replaced by rage, or fear (it was hard to tell the difference).
"We pull back," he said, and spat out a mouthful of blood and trampled grass. "Get the word out: we're re-grouping at Susan's hill."
"Hill" was an overstatement, though: Susan had stationed her archers on a low rise at the edge of the trees, barely ten or twelve feet higher than the rest of the field. As their forces gathered around him, Edmund wiped his sleeve across his face, and stared out at the battleground.
The Magpie had been right: they weren't winning. There were more of the Rebels than of his own Narnians, even with the Patrol added to their numbers. And the Rebels were better armed, and more wild and vicious in their attacks--Edmund suspected they were fighting out of despair and revenge, rather than any real hope of victory. They had seen Aslan defeat the Witch, after all.
While Edmund's forces were pulling back, the Rebels continued to press them. As one group of Fauns and Dwarfs retreated, a Dog turned (foolishly or bravely, Edmund couldn't decide) to face a Cyclops that was in pursuit. As soon as it came within range, however, the Cyclops swung a great spiked club, and took the head off the Dog. Edmund swallowed, and another Dog nearby sent up a great howl.
"Archers!" Susan cried from behind him. "One flight, mid-range, on my line. Notch! Draw! Release!" A flight of arrows flew raggedly overhead, possibly a dozen of them, and fell amongst a crowd of Rebels approaching from the northeast, mostly Hags and Were-Wolves. Two of them fell, and several others roared in outrage. "Again!" shouted Susan, and another flight of arrows swept past, but fewer this time.
A large group of Rebels had gathered, just out of arrow range, in the middle of the meadow. All of the loyal Narnian fighters had pulled back now, or were injured and trapped somewhere in the field. A long-legged Cheetah stood next to Edmund, a low throaty growl quivering her whiskers. Beyond her was a Dwarf, wearing a Fisher around his shoulders like a stole, both of them covered in mud. To Edmund's right, Fraxinus had found a whetstone and was polishing a long knife he had stolen from one of the Rebels. Edmund liked Fraxinus: he was forthright in his wildness, not simple or naive like most of the other Fauns Edmund had met.
"This looks bad, king," said Fraxinus now, and pointed with his blade across the meadow. The large group of Rebels were beginning to approach, Minotaurs and Cyclops in the lead, and then they were moving faster and faster, clearly planning to break through the Narnian line.
"Brace yourselves!" bellowed Edmund, and hunkered down, wishing desperately for a shield.
The Rebels came with appalling speed, their feet and hooves hammering on the churned ground, splattering mud (and blood) all over as they charged. Maybe we should just let them through, realized Edmund, but there was no time for second thoughts, as the Rebels hit the Narnian line like a cannonball against a wooden palisade.
They broke through, of course. Even with Bruno the Grizzly anchoring one end of the Narnian line, they just didn't have the mass to withstand that charge, and the Narnians fell back, were brushed aside, or were simply overridden by the Rebels' assault. The center, inevitably, gave way, and the Minotaurs and Cyclops charged through, heading for the archers.
Edmund had been knocked down by a Cyclops' swinging fist; his head rang, but he struggled to his feet in time to meet the Rebels swarming in on the heels of the heavyweights. He stabbed a Hag in the belly and her scream nearly deafened him: he was still tugging his sword out when something slammed into his back with such force that he was thrown back down to the ground.
There was a fierce growl from above him, matched by an equally fierce snarl, and then the weight on his back was suddenly gone. "King? King, are you all right?"
Edmund put his left hand on the Hag's body and pushed himself over. At least he had not sliced himself open on his own sword, although it was a near thing. A bloody muzzle sniffed at him, wrinkling, and he realized it was Rhea who was standing over him, looking worried. Behind her, Fraxinus was fencing (brilliantly) with a Goblin of remarkable size.
"I'm fine," Edmund managed, still trying to catch his breath. It took him two tries to get up, and the second time he had to duck as an Ogre lunged for him. It would have caught him, too, if Rhea hadn't sunk her teeth in its arm. It howled and swung its mace at her, but she dodged it nimbly, and sliced open its arm. Given that useful a distraction, Edmund felt constrained to take advantage, and managed to hamstring the creature while its back was turned. It fell hard, spraying bloody mud all around.
"Well enough," said Rhea, over the writhing body of the Ogre. "But come! Your sister needs you--" And she turned and dashed away, to where the archers had been stationed, at the top of the rise.
Edmund followed her, ducking and weaving around knots of fighting. He couldn't tell how they were doing, but it didn't look good. He wondered how generals in England could possibly keep track of their own battles: it was a great confusion.
The archers had been hit hard, were still being hit, although several had fled into the nearby woods, followed by Hags and Wer-wolves. The rest were at the center of a roiling mob of fighters: Minotaurs, Cyclopses and Ogres, struggling with Dwarfs and Fauns and Dogs and Beasts of various types. The noise was unspeakable, and somewhere in there was Susan, with only a knife and Tumnus' worn leather hauberk to protect her.
Edmund looked around desperately, but there was no help. The Narnian line had broken, and aside from the melee on the rise, his forces were dispersed and scattered. He saw Bruno bounding down the rise on all fours, heading for the trees with a Goblin half his size chasing him. Fraxinus had killed his Goblin but was now being forced back by two Hags and a Minotaur, his face bloody and one arm hanging loose. As Edmund stood there, frozen with horrified indecision, one of the Ogres in the knot of fighters lurched backwards, and threw something over his shoulder, like a laborer tossing a piece of trash in his way.
It landed at Edmund's feet. But it wasn't trash: it was the Fisher he had seen earlier, now crumbled and broken.
They had lost.
Edmund had not believed it could happen, not truly. Aslan had defeated the Witch, and Susan had saved the Dwarfs, and they were building a new Narnia, bringing people together. It couldn't end this way. Aslan surely didn't mean it to end this way.
"King!" snapped Rhea at his elbow, and Edmund wheeled around. "This way!" She had found an opening in the knot of fighting, and thrust herself into it. It was no struggle at all to follow her, because fighting his way to Susan, and maybe dying in the attempt, was better than watching his little army crumble and die around him.
The melee was madness, as tightly-packed as the London Underground, mud slick underfoot and everywhere weapons, claws, teeth flashing and striking. Edmund stayed as low as he could, because he wasn't heavy enough to do any damage in these close quarters and there was no room for his sword. He drew his dagger with his left hand as he struggled past a Bear wrestling with a Dog, and was nearly knocked off his feet by the stench from a Hag being strangled by a Faun.
Rhea's tail was his guide through the mad scene, as though she knew where she was going. At last (although it was less than a minute after entering the melee) she stopped, and nosed at a figure on the ground, sprawled at the feet of a Cheetah. Edmund was pretty sure she said something to him, but he couldn't hear it in all the noise; he didn't need to, anyway.
Because it was Susan on the ground, her face very white and her side covered with blood.
Crossposted from DW, where there are
comments; comment here or there.
Chapter III and earlier parts of Chapter IV are here.
*
With a whoosh, the axe skimmed past his helmet with inches to spare. As it flew over, Edmund surged up and swung his sword upwards, using it more like a cricket bat than the weapons-master Silversharp would have approved. But it worked--he caught the Minotaur squarely in the crotch, and the creature howled and dropped to the ground, writhing in pain. It dropped its axe in its distress. Out of sympathy, Edmund hesitated an instant, then remembered that this Minotaur had just killed two Dwarfs before Edmund's eyes. He couldn't leave it alive to do that again. He cut its throat, and moved on.
He did not bother to clean his sword: it would be bloodied again soon enough. And at least his hands had stopped shaking.
The battle did not much resemble the last (and first) battle Edmund had fought in; this was much smaller, with fewer participants, and cramped into a shallow meadow bounded by a deep but narrow river on one side and a dense mixed forest at the other. It was neither as orderly nor as epic as the battle against the White Witch. It was also, frustratingly, not where Edmund had intended to fight, but he'd had little choice in the matter: the rebels had forced the issue, and come to meet the combined forces of Cair Paravel and the Western Narnian Patrol instead of waiting where they were supposed to.
No plan of battle survives contact with the enemy, the old maxim said, but it did at least assume contact with the enemy before one threw the plan of battle out the window. Edmund ground his teeth and plucked up a fallen spear, its shaft smeared with its owner's blood. He looked around and then dove back into the melee, following Fraxinus' gang as they charged a covey of Harpies savaging a Centaur.
The Harpies were the worst: Edmund had no air power, no Gryphons or Phoenix, merely a handful of messenger-birds and two Eagles. Nothing big enough to do much damage. He did, however, have Susan and her archers. He grunted approvingly as one of the Harpies took to the air and was promptly skewered by a red-fletched arrow.
The two forces were roughly matched in size, although to Edmund's inexperienced eye, the Rebels had the advantage in weight: there were several of those one-eyed giants (Cyclops? Fine, call them Cyclops), Minotaurs, and Ogres spread out across the field, most of them holding off determined assaults by Edmund's more lightly-armed forces. Off to the right, he saw Bruno and some of the Patrol taking on one of the Cyclops, but not doing a great job of it. The Grizzly was powerful and sneaky, but slow to react, and the Cyclops was taking advantage of that. Edmund shrugged: he was too far away to help, and if Bruno died, well, that might take care of one of their problems. (Lucy would be appalled at his calculating attitude, but Edmund rather suspected Susan would agree. She had ground distinctly unfond of Bruno during the morning's march.)
Fraxinus was a devil with a morning-star, and before Edmund caught up with him, he had driven most of the Harpies off the Centaur. He was one of Spearfast's sons, and his left rear leg was broken. He might be able to get off the battlefield, but he wouldn't be able to keep fighting like this.
Of course, as a Centaur, leaving the battle wasn't even on his mind. "Give me your spear, king," he said urgently. "I will guard your back." Oh, Aslan, not another one eager to die for Edmund's sake. Well, to blazes with that.
"No, you won't," said Edmund. "Head for the rise--Ilexus, you go with him. You can stay in one place and guard my sister." He tossed the bloody spear to the Centaur.
Not that Susan really needed any guarding, with Rhea by her side, but the command certainly perked the Centaur up, and he hobbled off with enthusiasm. He felt suddenly exhausted, as though he were forty years older than the Centaur.
There was a shout behind him. Edmund spun, Fraxinus leaped forward, bounding a good twenty feet on those goat legs, and the battle swept around them again.
Before the battle had started, Edmund had been even more frightened than he had been before the battle with the Witch. At one point on the march, when Bruno had gone off to consult with some of his people, Susan had looked at him, then squeezed his hand.
"You look green," she had said. She had looked only a little nervous herself, with her bow over her shoulder and her hair bound back, ready for battle.
"Oh, God," Edmund had muttered. "I'm going to be sick."
He wasn't, though, mostly because he had been unable to eat anything that morning. He felt ridiculous in the ancient boiled-leather hauberk and ill-fitting helmet, with his toes sticking out of his boots. No armor, no shield, no banners: just a hundred sturdy Narnians, led by a king in name only, who had only an academic idea of what he was doing. And Susan, for all her sharp wits and skill with the bow, had no better idea than Edmund did.
But there hadn't been much time to stew over the situation: even as Susan drew breath to reassure him, shouts broke out from the front of the line. "The Rebels!" one of the Centaurs bellowed. "The Rebels are upon us!"
"Aslan's Mane!" Edmund had sworn, and jumped for a low branch on a nearby tree, scrambling upwards so he could see to the front of their column as it wound along the narrow trail. "He's right! Susan, get your archers together. Looks like there's a clearing up ahead--I'm going to try to punch through, and get us some room."
Which they had accomplished, led by Spearfast and her sons, in a burst of energy powered in part by fear of being trapped and slaughtered among the trees; but Edmund's battle strategy, such as it had been, was in complete disarray. The battle now was, so far as Edmund could tell from the perspective of one surrounded by bloody madmen, complete chaos. The only thing he was sure of was that Susan and her archers were on a low rise to his rear, protected by a small squad of Dogs and Great Cats, and Rhea. Fraxinus and his squad stuck like glue to Edmund, watching his rear (and his sides, and usually his front too), but other than that Edmund had no clear idea what was going on in the rest of the battlefield. He didn't even know if the Rebels had a leader.
"I need a scout!" he shouted to Fraxinus, while dodging a wild swing from an Ogre. It was smaller than the one Peter had killed in the forest, but better armed: this one had an axe in one hand and a club in the other.
"For what?" shouted Fraxinus back, and stabbed with his spear at the Ogre. He missed, though: the Ogre was faster than expected, and its return lunge nearly took off Fraxinus' hand.
Edmund rolled his eyes and swung at the Ogre from behind: he missed the hamstring, but hit it hard enough behind the knee to send it staggering forward. "Intelligence! Are we losing or winning?"
Fraxinus seized the opportunity Edmund had given him, and swung his mace with dispatch, sending the Ogre to the ground, clutching at his ruined throat. "We're not running away, king, that must mean we're winning!" But when Edmund merely snarled at him, he shrugged and put a small pipe to his lips. The whistle he sounded was high and thin, almost too high for Edmund to hear, but then he was not its intended audience. Within moments a dark shape was winging to them over the battlefield, jinking around the Harpies making snatches at it, and at least once dodging an arrow from one of the rebel Dwarfs not killed in the first crash of battle.
The Magpie spiraled around them once, and came to a fluttering halt on Fraxinus' shoulder. "I hope this is important, did you see that Harpy, it nearly got me!"
"What's the situation?" asked Edmund, turning so he could keep an eye on Fraxinus' back. "Are we winning?" They were in a temporary lull, a pocket of quiet as the battle went on around them, but there was no one closer than ten yards for the moment. In the distance he saw arrows fly from a low rise, and a Harpy shrieked in rage, but he couldn't tell if they'd hit anything.
"We're not losing," responded the Magpie. Edmund stared at him balefully, and the Magpie gave a long-suffering sigh and launched himself into the air from Fraxinus' shoulder. Up he went, climbing fast, and then when he was out of arrow-range (if not out of range of the Harpies), he swung into a lazy circle, and then another. Edmund gritted his teeth and glanced around uneasily. He hated staying still while others were fighting, but he really did need to know the state of the battle before deciding what to do next.
At his feet was the body of a Red Dwarf Edmund recognized from last night's campfires. They'd come in from the south, some remote village in the hills that even Fraxinus had never heard of. The Dwarf (Edmund wished he could remember his name) had been gutted, and his sword, only a little longer than Peter's stone dagger, lay broken at his side. Edmund swallowed, grateful that he had not eaten breakfast, nor anything else since dawn. He looked around, realizing suddenly that he was desperately thirsty, and then the Magpie returned, coming to rest on his own shoulder this time.
"Well? How does it look?"
"It's a mess, king. Everyone's scattered all over, but there's a crowd of the Rebels forming off that way." The Magpie nodded to the northeast. "Looks like there's a Minotaur pulling them together. It'll be trouble for us." Scatterbrained the Magpies might be some of the time, but this one knew the gravity of his message, and he bobbed his head nervously when he finished speaking.
Edmund bit his lip, considering, but he really had few options.
"Look out!" shouted Fraxinus, and tackled Edmund as a Harpy swooped down on them. They landed in the mud next to the dead Dwarf, and the Harpy screeched with disappointment; it carried away with it Edmund's helmet, and some of his hair. Edmund pushed Fraxinus off and scrambled to his feet. His exhaustion was at least for the moment replaced by rage, or fear (it was hard to tell the difference).
"We pull back," he said, and spat out a mouthful of blood and trampled grass. "Get the word out: we're re-grouping at Susan's hill."
"Hill" was an overstatement, though: Susan had stationed her archers on a low rise at the edge of the trees, barely ten or twelve feet higher than the rest of the field. As their forces gathered around him, Edmund wiped his sleeve across his face, and stared out at the battleground.
The Magpie had been right: they weren't winning. There were more of the Rebels than of his own Narnians, even with the Patrol added to their numbers. And the Rebels were better armed, and more wild and vicious in their attacks--Edmund suspected they were fighting out of despair and revenge, rather than any real hope of victory. They had seen Aslan defeat the Witch, after all.
While Edmund's forces were pulling back, the Rebels continued to press them. As one group of Fauns and Dwarfs retreated, a Dog turned (foolishly or bravely, Edmund couldn't decide) to face a Cyclops that was in pursuit. As soon as it came within range, however, the Cyclops swung a great spiked club, and took the head off the Dog. Edmund swallowed, and another Dog nearby sent up a great howl.
"Archers!" Susan cried from behind him. "One flight, mid-range, on my line. Notch! Draw! Release!" A flight of arrows flew raggedly overhead, possibly a dozen of them, and fell amongst a crowd of Rebels approaching from the northeast, mostly Hags and Were-Wolves. Two of them fell, and several others roared in outrage. "Again!" shouted Susan, and another flight of arrows swept past, but fewer this time.
A large group of Rebels had gathered, just out of arrow range, in the middle of the meadow. All of the loyal Narnian fighters had pulled back now, or were injured and trapped somewhere in the field. A long-legged Cheetah stood next to Edmund, a low throaty growl quivering her whiskers. Beyond her was a Dwarf, wearing a Fisher around his shoulders like a stole, both of them covered in mud. To Edmund's right, Fraxinus had found a whetstone and was polishing a long knife he had stolen from one of the Rebels. Edmund liked Fraxinus: he was forthright in his wildness, not simple or naive like most of the other Fauns Edmund had met.
"This looks bad, king," said Fraxinus now, and pointed with his blade across the meadow. The large group of Rebels were beginning to approach, Minotaurs and Cyclops in the lead, and then they were moving faster and faster, clearly planning to break through the Narnian line.
"Brace yourselves!" bellowed Edmund, and hunkered down, wishing desperately for a shield.
The Rebels came with appalling speed, their feet and hooves hammering on the churned ground, splattering mud (and blood) all over as they charged. Maybe we should just let them through, realized Edmund, but there was no time for second thoughts, as the Rebels hit the Narnian line like a cannonball against a wooden palisade.
They broke through, of course. Even with Bruno the Grizzly anchoring one end of the Narnian line, they just didn't have the mass to withstand that charge, and the Narnians fell back, were brushed aside, or were simply overridden by the Rebels' assault. The center, inevitably, gave way, and the Minotaurs and Cyclops charged through, heading for the archers.
Edmund had been knocked down by a Cyclops' swinging fist; his head rang, but he struggled to his feet in time to meet the Rebels swarming in on the heels of the heavyweights. He stabbed a Hag in the belly and her scream nearly deafened him: he was still tugging his sword out when something slammed into his back with such force that he was thrown back down to the ground.
There was a fierce growl from above him, matched by an equally fierce snarl, and then the weight on his back was suddenly gone. "King? King, are you all right?"
Edmund put his left hand on the Hag's body and pushed himself over. At least he had not sliced himself open on his own sword, although it was a near thing. A bloody muzzle sniffed at him, wrinkling, and he realized it was Rhea who was standing over him, looking worried. Behind her, Fraxinus was fencing (brilliantly) with a Goblin of remarkable size.
"I'm fine," Edmund managed, still trying to catch his breath. It took him two tries to get up, and the second time he had to duck as an Ogre lunged for him. It would have caught him, too, if Rhea hadn't sunk her teeth in its arm. It howled and swung its mace at her, but she dodged it nimbly, and sliced open its arm. Given that useful a distraction, Edmund felt constrained to take advantage, and managed to hamstring the creature while its back was turned. It fell hard, spraying bloody mud all around.
"Well enough," said Rhea, over the writhing body of the Ogre. "But come! Your sister needs you--" And she turned and dashed away, to where the archers had been stationed, at the top of the rise.
Edmund followed her, ducking and weaving around knots of fighting. He couldn't tell how they were doing, but it didn't look good. He wondered how generals in England could possibly keep track of their own battles: it was a great confusion.
The archers had been hit hard, were still being hit, although several had fled into the nearby woods, followed by Hags and Wer-wolves. The rest were at the center of a roiling mob of fighters: Minotaurs, Cyclopses and Ogres, struggling with Dwarfs and Fauns and Dogs and Beasts of various types. The noise was unspeakable, and somewhere in there was Susan, with only a knife and Tumnus' worn leather hauberk to protect her.
Edmund looked around desperately, but there was no help. The Narnian line had broken, and aside from the melee on the rise, his forces were dispersed and scattered. He saw Bruno bounding down the rise on all fours, heading for the trees with a Goblin half his size chasing him. Fraxinus had killed his Goblin but was now being forced back by two Hags and a Minotaur, his face bloody and one arm hanging loose. As Edmund stood there, frozen with horrified indecision, one of the Ogres in the knot of fighters lurched backwards, and threw something over his shoulder, like a laborer tossing a piece of trash in his way.
It landed at Edmund's feet. But it wasn't trash: it was the Fisher he had seen earlier, now crumbled and broken.
They had lost.
Edmund had not believed it could happen, not truly. Aslan had defeated the Witch, and Susan had saved the Dwarfs, and they were building a new Narnia, bringing people together. It couldn't end this way. Aslan surely didn't mean it to end this way.
"King!" snapped Rhea at his elbow, and Edmund wheeled around. "This way!" She had found an opening in the knot of fighting, and thrust herself into it. It was no struggle at all to follow her, because fighting his way to Susan, and maybe dying in the attempt, was better than watching his little army crumble and die around him.
The melee was madness, as tightly-packed as the London Underground, mud slick underfoot and everywhere weapons, claws, teeth flashing and striking. Edmund stayed as low as he could, because he wasn't heavy enough to do any damage in these close quarters and there was no room for his sword. He drew his dagger with his left hand as he struggled past a Bear wrestling with a Dog, and was nearly knocked off his feet by the stench from a Hag being strangled by a Faun.
Rhea's tail was his guide through the mad scene, as though she knew where she was going. At last (although it was less than a minute after entering the melee) she stopped, and nosed at a figure on the ground, sprawled at the feet of a Cheetah. Edmund was pretty sure she said something to him, but he couldn't hear it in all the noise; he didn't need to, anyway.
Because it was Susan on the ground, her face very white and her side covered with blood.
Crossposted from DW, where there are
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