Narnia fic: Carpetbaggers Chapter IV, Part 14 (5000 words)
Chapters I and II are here.
Chapter III and earlier parts of Chapter IV are here.
*
The sun was high overhead, and although the rooms at the top of the tower were dim, the heat was stifling. Below, voices echoed in the courtyard and hallways as Beaver and others searched through the rooms, tallying and cataloging the quite enormous amount of material the Witch had compiled. No wonder Bruno had seized the castle as soon as the opportunity presented itself: it was a treasure-trove of foodstuffs, trade goods, and raw materials, all of which could be traded or distributed for Bruno's benefit.
It was all so much that Peter was forced to wonder why the Witch had accumulated it all. She hadn't decorated the castle in gilt, or furnished it with ornate art. She hadn't dressed herself in jewels or luxurious clothing, nor had she purchased loyalty from her subjects with her largesse. In fact, she had, by all reports, gone out of her way to keep them miserable. It was a conundrum, and Peter longed for Edmund and Susan to come help him solve it.
He shrugged and swiped his sweaty forehead against the sleeve of his shirt, before tugging open yet another heavy wooden door. This door had been hidden behind stacks of barrels and crates, and when opened, led to a small room piled with bales wrapped in rough cloth and bound with leather straps. Peter raised an eyebrow: whatever this was, it wasn't food. Was it goods shipped in, or something the Witch had planned to use for trade? The room had a particular familiar smell: a little musty, reminding him more than anything of his grandmother Nell, but Peter couldn't place why it reminded him of her.
With the door ajar, there was enough light to see his way well enough. Peter stepped into the room and drew his dagger. It was the work of barely a minute to cut the leather bonds on the nearest bale and saw through the wrapping about the outside.
Some minutes later, there were shouts in the courtyard, cries of greeting and welcome. These sounds were followed by the clatter of hoofprints on the paving stones, and then the rumbling voices of Centaurs and at least one Wolf.
Peter sat on the floor under the window, in a spot where he could see the door to the storeroom. He didn't move, even when he heard his own name called. The sun moved in the sky, just enough that the light came in through the window and illuminated his filthy hand resting on his thigh. He hadn't put away the knife. He turned it over, and watched the light reflect off the blade.
"Aye, king, I think I saw your brother upstairs," said a voice clearly from the floor below. Peter didn't stir.
Quiet footsteps, softer than a Faun's clickety tread, came up the stairway, and then stopped at the doorway. "Pete!" said Edmund in suprise. "Didn't you hear us?"
Peter didn't look up from the knife. It was preferable to watch the knife than the storeroom. "I heard."
"Are you hurt?" Edmund was across the room in an instant, and on his knees, gripping Peter's arms. "What's wrong?"
Finally Peter looked up. Edmund had a black eye and looked like he'd lost some hair on the side of his head, but he seemed otherwise unharmed, merely worried. He'd left off his cuirass and was wearing just a torn and filthy tunic over his breeches. He'd given up his boots entirely, though, and was now barefoot. "Lose your boots?" Peter asked.
"What?" Edmund looked down. "Oh, no, they just fell apart on the march back. I hope I can talk someone into making me more. Maybe there is some leather here we can use?" He looked around the room hopefully.
Peter nearly gagged, and he wrenched away from Edmund, stumbling to his feet.
"What? What is it?" Edmund jumped up as well, putting out a hand to support him. "Pete, are you all right?"
One hand on the wall, Peter leaned over, fighting the nausea. At length, he straightened, and without looking at his brother, he pointed to the storeroom with the point of his knife. "I found that," he said in explanation, and didn't turn to watch as Edmund went to investigate.
There was a long silence. Peter heard the rustling as Edmund examined the open bale, and then his brother's sharp indrawn breath as he came to the same realization Peter had. He stood without moving, leaning against the cool stone wall, until his brother came out. As Edmund crossed the room, he passed through the ray of sunlight under the window: the light revealed fresh tear-tracks on his face.
Edmund sank down on the floor next to Peter and put his face in his hands. Peter concentrated on breathing; he was pretty sure he wouldn't vomit anymore, but he didn't want to be seen weeping, even by Ed. He was High King, and this was far from the worst thing he was going to need to handle.
"She was going to sell them," Edmund said, finally, muffled behind his hands. "The furs."
Peter nodded, unable yet to speak. The smell, so familiar, choked him: the smell of their grandmother's treasured mink coat. She brought it out only at holidays, or in the coldest winter weather. Susan had always loved to stroke the soft fur.
But the furs in the bales weren't mink--or weren't only mink. They were spotted, striped, and parti-colored. Cheetah and Lynx, Rabbit and Wolf, Beaver and Badger. Rich and thick and lovely, so carefully cured and packaged for shipping to some far-away land, where the purchasers couldn't hope to know that the original owners had been thinking, feeling, Talking Beasts.
"Do you think Bruno knew?" Edmund asked after a moment.
Peter swallowed hard, and pushed himself away from the wall. "No," he said. "He would have said something, I think--he was angry enough at me to say anything, and it would have come out."
"Lion's Mane, Pete," said Edmund, staring at his hands in his lap. "I don't think we can tell anyone. It's too horrible."
"No," said Peter. "I don't think we can."
"Not even the girls?" Edmund's face was pale and unhappy.
Shaking his head, Peter crossed the room and shut the storeroom door firmly. "Especially not the girls. Lucy would ... come to think of it, I don't know what Lucy would do. I saw her pull a knife on one of Bruno's Dwarfs yesterday, Ed. She was amazing."
Edmund took the change of topic as it was meant, and after wiping his face once more, put up a hand for Peter to pull him up from the floor. "She didn't kill him, did she?"
Peter put a hand on his shoulder. "No, he's fine. Listen, Ed, I didn't think--are you all right? Here, I mean?" He waved the other hand around, indicating their surroundings. Not even eight weeks ago, Edmund had been shackled in one of these rooms.
"I'm OK," Edmund said, shrugging. "Just don't send me down to the dungeons." He gave Peter a quick smile that looked only partly forced.
"I won't, but I do have something I need you and Lucy to do." Someone was going to have to bury the bodies of the other children.
*
"Peter!" Susan's voice echoed in the small hall, where Peter was carrying one end of a heavy crate, while Torvus struggled with the other. It was full of weapons, but it had jammed in the doorway and they were on their third attempt to get it out of the castle before giving up and just taking everything in it one at a time.
The end of the crate slipped in Peter's sweaty hands, and he grunted as a splinter dug into his thumb. "Busy here, Susan... No, turn more left, no the other left--" he directed Torvus. Finally, with a huff of satisfaction from its bearers, the crate slipped through the doorway with only an inch to spare. Peter just missed trapping his arm between the crate and the door, and followed Torvus out through the great hall and into the courtyard before dumping the crate on the cobbled ground with a clunk.
"Ow," he said mildly, grinning at the Faun. "Was that the last one?"
"I think so, king," said Torvus, and then stepped out of the way as one of the Centaurs lifted the crate they had struggled with and swung it easily up to his shoulder. "Put that with the materiel, not the food," he called after the Centaur, who twitched his tail in acknowledgement.
"Peter!" said Susan again, and tugged at Peter's arm. "Come with me, you have to see this!"
"Go, king, I will finish up here," said Torvus, with half a bow, and Peter swiveled to follow Susan, who was already leading him around the wall of the keep and into what they'd been calling the back gardens. (Of course, the Witch had had no gardens, but it was an empty area between the keep and the outer walls: what else could it be?) She disappeared around one corner, then another, and Peter finally emerged into a sunny and overgrown yard, with flowering vines crawling up the outside wall and bees humming in the air. Against the far side was a jumble of tools and supplies piled against a half-built stone wall: part of a shed or stall that had been left unfinished.
Susan stood in the center of the garden, facing the unfinished shed, her fists clenched at her sides. She had not yet bathed after the march from Whiterush Vale: dust and sweat were smeared on her cheek, and her oversized tunic was spotted with grime and blood. "Peter, look," she said, and pointed at the shed. "Look!" Her voice shook.
It was just a stone wall. Peter walked closer. A stone wall, made of the same grey stone all the rest of the castle was; he put a hand on it, and then jerked it back with an oath. "Good Lord!"
It was stone, but the wall was made from many smaller pieces of stone, irregularly-shaped and fitted together and then mortared in place. The stone that Peter had touched ended in something that looked like a canine nose. Next to it was a roundish stone with a prickly surface, like a hedgehog's back; below that, clearly distinguishable, the broad underside of a bear's paw.
"I'm right, aren't I?" said Susan, from behind him. Her voice shook. "It's what I thought."
Peter nodded, still staring at the wall. Most of the individual stones were small enough for Peter to pick up in two hands, and some were even smaller: they all had sharp, raw edges, as though they had been shattered with some great force. At the unfinished end a single curved horn stuck out: a cow's, or a Minotaur's, he guessed. The wall was some ten feet long and a foot wide, abandoned at about waist-height. He turned around slowly, but there was no more loose stone in the garden.
"We--Aslan never came back here, that morning," Susan said, her voice thick. "I would have remembered. And I--could even Aslan have done anything about this? Oh, Peter--" she wrapped her arms around him and wept into his shoulder.
They stood there for what seemed to Peter like a long time, although it was probably just a few minutes. The shadows in the garden lengthened, and Susan wept, and Peter felt himself growing very cold, although they were in the sun. The walls and grass and flowers around them seemed to recede into the distance; his pulse thrummed in his ears, growing louder and louder, like the pounding of a military drum. All right! he thought. I hear you now.
"Susan," he said, his throat dry and his voice raspy, and pulled away from her so he could see her face. "Come on, now. We have work to do."
She smeared the tears away with the heel of her hand. "Work!" she protested. "But--"
"Yes, work. Let's go." He took her hand and towed her along, ignoring whatever she was saying: he couldn't really hear it, anyway, because of the drumming in his head. They came out into the front courtyard and found Torvus and Edmund elbow-deep in a barrel of arrows. Lucy was nowhere in sight: someone would have to find her.
"Edmund," Peter snapped. Edmund looked up, his expression of inquiry switching quickly to concern. Peter didn't wait for the question: he couldn't wait, the need to act was becoming desperate. "I need the rest of this all moved outside, and everyone out of the castle. Make it happen."
"Susan," he went on, as brusquely as he had with Edmund, "find Lucy and keep her with you. Then get all the prisoners together, settle them out in the field with a strong guard. Things are going to be... busy here shortly."
He could feel her eyes and Edmund's on him, could see the frown between her brows. But instead of challenging him, they exchanged glances, and nodded. "Where are you going, Pete?" asked Edmund, as he picked up a stone to hammer the lid back on the barrel.
"I'm going to light a fire."
Edmund's eyes widened: his sure movements became brisk and efficient. And Susan left the courtyard at a run.
The storerooms on the lower levels had contained quite a lot of supplies, including several small barrels of cooking oil, which were not too large to carry under one's arm. Peter didn't think the oil tasted like anything much, but it was oil: it would burn. The castle was built of stone, yes, but also wood: wood supports and beams, wood floors and furniture, wood underneath the slate roofs. He just needed to find the best place to start it.
Chewing his lip, Peter looked around the great hall, which was tall and windowless, with a few pieces of furniture at the inner end, including the Witch's "throne". There, he thought, and carried his barrel over to the tall seat. He put the barrel down and levered the bung out with his dagger. It was a small piece of light wood, about the size of his thumb; he tossed it over his shoulder and picked the barrel back up, tilting it so a dollop of oil came out and poured into a smooth puddle on the seat of the Witch's chair.
The oil was a clear yellow-green. Peter smiled grimly and tilted the barrel back upright, just enough so a thin drizzle streamed from the opening. Keeping the barrel at that angle as best he could, he made a loop through the entire first floor of the castle. He didn't have to go through every room, but he wanted to make sure he covered a lot of ground.
Then he went upstairs and did it again; and then again; and then went up into the towers, trailing oil behind him on the narrow wooden stairs. Coming down the stairs in the west tower, he slipped on the oil and nearly broke his neck--a last-second grab with his free hand at the window saved him. Gasping, and a little shaky with adrenaline, he stood for a moment and peered out the window.
The sun was low in the sky: from this angle he could see the shadows of the towers stretching east over the fields. People were still going in and out the castle gateway, but there was a great pile of supplies and equipment growing, a good hundred yards out in the meadow. He couldn't see Susan or Lucy, but he could see the prisoners: two dozen or so figures mostly seated on the ground, surrounded by Centaurs and Fauns. Good: he liked his Dwarfs fine, but they were clannish, and if a cousin was among the prisoners, he didn't want to put any of his own to guard them, just in case.
The last tower was the tallest, the one where he'd found the furs. Peter up-ended the barrel over the furs, soaking them, and with a strength fueled by the rage he'd been throttling back, he split the barrel apart and cast the wood around the room. "Be at peace in Aslan's Country, my brothers and sisters," he said, breathing heavily. "You are avenged."
The flint and steel that the Dwarfs of Pattering Hill had given him were clumsy in his hands. He had to strike nearly a dozen times before the first spark sprang off and landed on the oil-soaked burlap. It fizzled out; Peter struck again and again, and then, at last, it caught. A tiny flame arose, the smell of the burning oil and cloth pungent in the small room. Peter stood, watching, as it spread, the oil feeding it: in seconds the flame was the size of his hand, and then his head, and then it covered the entire top of the bale and was over a foot high. Peter nodded with satisfaction and left the room, leaving the door wide open.
Halfway down the stairs, on the landing, he stopped and took out the flint and steel again. This time it went faster, and as he clattered down the steps below he could see the light from the flames on the ceiling above. He came all the way down, crossed to the west tower, and lit another fire on the third-floor landing. When he looked out the window as he came back down, he saw smoke billowing out of the top of the central tower.
He lit a fire in the scullery, broke open another oil barrel and rolled it down the stairs to the dungeons and threw a torch after it, and finally found himself back in the great hall. The smoke was pouring down the stairs now, and rolling out of the doorways into the large central room. Smoke gathered in the rafters.
There was shouting outside; he heard Edmund's voice. "Peter! Peter!" He supposed it was time to leave. But first he had one last fire to set.
The door crashed open and the rush of air sucked even more smoke into the room. Peter couldn't even see who was at the door, but it didn't matter. He struck a spark and it flew off and landed perfectly on the oil-soaked seat of the throne. It was very hot now: he could feel the sweat pouring down his face and neck, and the smoke was burning his eyes.
A hand seized his shoulder and jerked him around. Edmund, his eyes wild, was shouting, but Peter wrenched away to check on his fire. Ah! It had caught, and now a small flame was licking up the tall back of the seat. In moments, the entire chair would be ablaze. He smiled, and looked at Edmund, and then a cloud of smoke wrapped itself around them, obliterating the room and choking the breath in their lungs, and Peter realized, quite suddenly, that he might have killed them both.
*
In later years, when these early days were half-legend to most Narnians, those few who had fought at the Battle of Whiterush Vale were often asked to tell the children about how High King Peter burned down the Witch's castle, and emerged from the fire followed by his brother, with the flames shooting into the sky behind them. They always made it sound heroic and dramatic, the tall golden-haired king with his sword on his back, silhouetted by the furiously burning castle as the sun went down behind the mountains in the west.
What Peter remembered was crawling to the door on his hands and knees, pulling Edmund for a space and then Edmund pulling him; getting lost at least once and almost ending up in the anteroom; and the two of them tumbling head-first down the short flight of steps into the relatively clear air of the courtyard. And the sound: the roar of the fire itself, the flames hungrily eating everything consumable in the castle, and the horrifying groan as the west tower began to topple inwards. Peter didn't realize what it was, but Edmund looked up, and his mouth dropped open, and he grabbed Peter's shirt and dragged him along the cobblestones until Peter scrambled to his feet.
They came staggering out of the castle gate, holding one another up, covered in soot and coughing so hard Peter realized later he had sprained a muscle: he couldn't laugh comfortably for days afterwards. There wasn't an inch of exposed skin that was clean, and Susan stared at them in horror for a long moment before dashing forward to take Edmund's other side.
With her help, and Tumnus supporting Peter, they came away from the castle to a safe spot out in the field, where Lucy was waiting, with the cordial, clean clothes, and--blessedly--clean water for washing. When they had finally stopped coughing, had drunk enough water to wash the taste of the fire out of their mouths, Peter carefully eased his filthy shirt off. He stared at it in his hands: even in the dim evening light, he could see the charred holes where sparks had landed on his back as they fled the castle.
"Well," said Edmund, painfully, and took another drink of water from the mug Lucy had offered. "That was stupid."
"But necessary," Peter replied. It had to be done: the castle was a taint on Narnia, a blight that, if left standing, could have spread outwards to ruin everything they were working for. The grief and horror permeating the place could only be cleansed if the entire edifice was taken down, stone by stone. He wasn't sure how to say that, though: it was all tangled up with the drumming in his ears, which could have been Aslan's voice--or so he hoped, unless it was just his own unmanageable anger. He just knew that it had to be done, and now the rage was gone, leaving an unfamiliar certainty in its place.
He looked around; the camp was settling in for the evening, with fires leaping up around the field, and Narnians passing back and forth with equipment and food. Rhea lay nearby, watching him with bright eyes. Peter desperately wanted something to eat, and then to sleep around the clock, but there was one last thing he had to do tonight. And it wasn't something he could hand off to one of his siblings: this, too, was for the High King.
"I see that look on your face," said Lucy from beside him. "You aren't going anywhere until you drink this, wash your face, and put on a clean shirt." She thrust a bowl into his hands.
"Do I have a clean shirt?" Peter asked plaintively.
*
"I don't think this is a good idea," said Susan. She had washed her face as well, but the flickering firelight showed Peter the strain and exhaustion of the last few days. Just a day ago, he realized, she had been near to death. "They're our enemies, I don't want you that close to them."
Peter raised an eyebrow. "Didn't you go talk to them by yourself just yesterday?"
She flushed, and shot an angry glance at Edmund, who just shrugged. "Yes, but I'm no threat, and I'm not the High King!"
"I'll be fine. Besides, I'm not going unarmed." Peter reached back, ignoring the stiffness in his arms and the stab in his ribs, and drew Rhindon. The gold pommel gleamed in the darkness, catching light from all the fires around. "And you can keep an eye on things from out here."
"I will!" she said, and turned back to their campsite, presumably to fetch her bow.
"Be safe," said Edmund quietly, and stepped back as well.
Peter nodded to the Centaurs guarding the prisoners and stepped past them into the circle where the prisoners were being held. It was, he realized, a bit unfair of him to put them all together, because there were two quite distinct groups: the Narnians who had held the castle for Bruno and assaulted Lucy; and the Rebels, those remnants of the Witch's army that had survived and surrendered at the Battle of Whiterush Vale. There was little sympathy between these two groups, and they had separated, leaving an empty space in the center of the great circle.
Perfect. Peter walked to a spot near the center of the circle, sword in hand, and sank as gracefully as he could down into a cross-legged position. He lay Rhindon on the ground in front of him, crosswise.
When he looked up, he saw that all the prisoners were watching him. He had positioned himself so that most of them were in front of him: a great arc of faces and suspicious eyes, with a gap in the middle. On the one side were the thirty or so Rebels; on the other about a dozen members of the Western Narnian Patrol. Stag and Wolf and Dwarf on one side; Ogre and Minotaur, Goblin and Hag on the other. (None of the Harpies had surrendered, Edmund had said, with a grimace.)
"I am Peter," he said, speaking hoarsely, but as clearly as he could through the damage the smoke had done to his throat. He could not pitch his voice to carry past this small crowd of prisoners, but then he didn't mean to. If he kept his voice quiet, they would have to attend to him, and that was what he needed. "Peter High King of Narnia, by grace of Aslan, and Lord of Cair Paravel." At that, they stirred, and one of the Wer-wolves gave a mocking laugh.
"Jadis is dead," he said, gesturing to the still-burning ruins of the castle, "and that Narnia with her. But we are not without challenges, in this reborn Narnia. Jadis' Winter is over, but the natural round of seasons is begun again, and there is frost already in the high country. Do we have enough food set aside to feed all the children? Do we have homes for all the Narnians returned from exile?
"Jadis' ice and snow no longer protects our borders, and the Giants have already begun to press against us in the north. We may have enemies on the west and south, who will see our strife and disorganization, and take the opportunity to invade. After one hundred years of isolation, who knows what has transpired in the outer world?
"We need information, supplies, industry and organization. Soldiers and messengers and farmers and herders. Weavers and miners, smiths and carpenters and foresters. Traders and businessmen, shipwrights and sailors.
"There is no room now for Narnians who think only of their own clans, their own people, their own needs. We must all work together to rebuild, or we shall assuredly all fail on our own--and Aslan will take Narnia away from us, who could not protect her, and give her to someone who can."
He stopped and looked around. The light was poor, but there were enough fires and torches that he could meet every eye. Some of them met his gaze levelly; others sneered; others looked away, mostly down. The Stag Peter had spoken to yesterday (was it only yesterday?) nodded to him, his glossy horns catching the light as he dipped them.
"This is my proposal to you. You have until Aravil sets to come to me at the edge of the circle there, and give me your oath. If you do that, all debts shall be held paid." That got their attention, and not just the prisoners': there was a gasp and a thud from the guards, as if someone had dropped a spear. Peter swallowed painfully and went on. "I shall take your oath, and give you mine, and as you deal honorably with me, so shall I and all of Narnia deal with you. But mark me--" here he looked around again, catching every eye he could. "This is only for tonight.
"If you choose not to give your oath to me tonight, and thereby to Narnia, you shall no longer be of Narnia. You will be escorted to the border and set free there, to find your own way in the Western Wild. You will be outlaw in Narnia, forbidden to return."
The prisoners shifted again, the Dwarfs looking at one another, and one of the Minotaurs lowed uncertainly. Peter smiled grimly. "Make your choice. But know that this oath is binding: you shall swear by your blood in Aslan's name, and Rhindon, here, shall answer to oath-breakers. If you cannot take oath to Narnia with your whole heart, better you should live in the wilderness."
It was done. Peter sat quietly for a few more breaths, and then took the sword again into his hand and stood smoothly. At the edge of the circle, he saw Edmund staring at him, brows drawn. "Come to me," Peter said to the prisoners, and walked away to where the guards and his siblings waited.
"How many hours is that?" Peter asked quietly, leaning unobtrusively (or so he thought) against Edmund. Exhaustion was like a lead weight on his shoulders. "Until Aravil rises?"
"Aravil rises before midnight, king," rumbled Stormcoat from behind him. "It will not be long. And see, here is your first recruit." And Stormcoat was right: the Stag from the Patrol was already approaching the line of guards, his head lowered uncertainly.
"Someone get a chair," said Susan, coming up to Peter and pressing her lips to his cheek. "It's going to be a long night."
In the end, all four of the Pevensies were there for the first formal oath-taking of their reign, seated on logs and stones and crates of supplies as, in trickles over the next four hours, fully half of the prisoners swore themselves to Narnia under Peter High King. Susan, Edmund, and Lucy sat as witnesses as Peter drew the hand (or paw or foot) of the oath-taker along Rhindon's edge, and smeared his own blood with theirs as they recited the oath.
Rhindon grew slowly dimmer in the torchlight as bloodstains spread across its shining blade. But in the morning, the stains were all gone, and that too became part of the tale that was later told.
*
And that, my friends, is the end of Chapter IV. ::collapses:: Every chapter gets longer: at this rate Chapter V will be a novel in itself.
Crossposted from DW, where there are
comments; comment here or there.
Chapter III and earlier parts of Chapter IV are here.
*
The sun was high overhead, and although the rooms at the top of the tower were dim, the heat was stifling. Below, voices echoed in the courtyard and hallways as Beaver and others searched through the rooms, tallying and cataloging the quite enormous amount of material the Witch had compiled. No wonder Bruno had seized the castle as soon as the opportunity presented itself: it was a treasure-trove of foodstuffs, trade goods, and raw materials, all of which could be traded or distributed for Bruno's benefit.
It was all so much that Peter was forced to wonder why the Witch had accumulated it all. She hadn't decorated the castle in gilt, or furnished it with ornate art. She hadn't dressed herself in jewels or luxurious clothing, nor had she purchased loyalty from her subjects with her largesse. In fact, she had, by all reports, gone out of her way to keep them miserable. It was a conundrum, and Peter longed for Edmund and Susan to come help him solve it.
He shrugged and swiped his sweaty forehead against the sleeve of his shirt, before tugging open yet another heavy wooden door. This door had been hidden behind stacks of barrels and crates, and when opened, led to a small room piled with bales wrapped in rough cloth and bound with leather straps. Peter raised an eyebrow: whatever this was, it wasn't food. Was it goods shipped in, or something the Witch had planned to use for trade? The room had a particular familiar smell: a little musty, reminding him more than anything of his grandmother Nell, but Peter couldn't place why it reminded him of her.
With the door ajar, there was enough light to see his way well enough. Peter stepped into the room and drew his dagger. It was the work of barely a minute to cut the leather bonds on the nearest bale and saw through the wrapping about the outside.
Some minutes later, there were shouts in the courtyard, cries of greeting and welcome. These sounds were followed by the clatter of hoofprints on the paving stones, and then the rumbling voices of Centaurs and at least one Wolf.
Peter sat on the floor under the window, in a spot where he could see the door to the storeroom. He didn't move, even when he heard his own name called. The sun moved in the sky, just enough that the light came in through the window and illuminated his filthy hand resting on his thigh. He hadn't put away the knife. He turned it over, and watched the light reflect off the blade.
"Aye, king, I think I saw your brother upstairs," said a voice clearly from the floor below. Peter didn't stir.
Quiet footsteps, softer than a Faun's clickety tread, came up the stairway, and then stopped at the doorway. "Pete!" said Edmund in suprise. "Didn't you hear us?"
Peter didn't look up from the knife. It was preferable to watch the knife than the storeroom. "I heard."
"Are you hurt?" Edmund was across the room in an instant, and on his knees, gripping Peter's arms. "What's wrong?"
Finally Peter looked up. Edmund had a black eye and looked like he'd lost some hair on the side of his head, but he seemed otherwise unharmed, merely worried. He'd left off his cuirass and was wearing just a torn and filthy tunic over his breeches. He'd given up his boots entirely, though, and was now barefoot. "Lose your boots?" Peter asked.
"What?" Edmund looked down. "Oh, no, they just fell apart on the march back. I hope I can talk someone into making me more. Maybe there is some leather here we can use?" He looked around the room hopefully.
Peter nearly gagged, and he wrenched away from Edmund, stumbling to his feet.
"What? What is it?" Edmund jumped up as well, putting out a hand to support him. "Pete, are you all right?"
One hand on the wall, Peter leaned over, fighting the nausea. At length, he straightened, and without looking at his brother, he pointed to the storeroom with the point of his knife. "I found that," he said in explanation, and didn't turn to watch as Edmund went to investigate.
There was a long silence. Peter heard the rustling as Edmund examined the open bale, and then his brother's sharp indrawn breath as he came to the same realization Peter had. He stood without moving, leaning against the cool stone wall, until his brother came out. As Edmund crossed the room, he passed through the ray of sunlight under the window: the light revealed fresh tear-tracks on his face.
Edmund sank down on the floor next to Peter and put his face in his hands. Peter concentrated on breathing; he was pretty sure he wouldn't vomit anymore, but he didn't want to be seen weeping, even by Ed. He was High King, and this was far from the worst thing he was going to need to handle.
"She was going to sell them," Edmund said, finally, muffled behind his hands. "The furs."
Peter nodded, unable yet to speak. The smell, so familiar, choked him: the smell of their grandmother's treasured mink coat. She brought it out only at holidays, or in the coldest winter weather. Susan had always loved to stroke the soft fur.
But the furs in the bales weren't mink--or weren't only mink. They were spotted, striped, and parti-colored. Cheetah and Lynx, Rabbit and Wolf, Beaver and Badger. Rich and thick and lovely, so carefully cured and packaged for shipping to some far-away land, where the purchasers couldn't hope to know that the original owners had been thinking, feeling, Talking Beasts.
"Do you think Bruno knew?" Edmund asked after a moment.
Peter swallowed hard, and pushed himself away from the wall. "No," he said. "He would have said something, I think--he was angry enough at me to say anything, and it would have come out."
"Lion's Mane, Pete," said Edmund, staring at his hands in his lap. "I don't think we can tell anyone. It's too horrible."
"No," said Peter. "I don't think we can."
"Not even the girls?" Edmund's face was pale and unhappy.
Shaking his head, Peter crossed the room and shut the storeroom door firmly. "Especially not the girls. Lucy would ... come to think of it, I don't know what Lucy would do. I saw her pull a knife on one of Bruno's Dwarfs yesterday, Ed. She was amazing."
Edmund took the change of topic as it was meant, and after wiping his face once more, put up a hand for Peter to pull him up from the floor. "She didn't kill him, did she?"
Peter put a hand on his shoulder. "No, he's fine. Listen, Ed, I didn't think--are you all right? Here, I mean?" He waved the other hand around, indicating their surroundings. Not even eight weeks ago, Edmund had been shackled in one of these rooms.
"I'm OK," Edmund said, shrugging. "Just don't send me down to the dungeons." He gave Peter a quick smile that looked only partly forced.
"I won't, but I do have something I need you and Lucy to do." Someone was going to have to bury the bodies of the other children.
*
"Peter!" Susan's voice echoed in the small hall, where Peter was carrying one end of a heavy crate, while Torvus struggled with the other. It was full of weapons, but it had jammed in the doorway and they were on their third attempt to get it out of the castle before giving up and just taking everything in it one at a time.
The end of the crate slipped in Peter's sweaty hands, and he grunted as a splinter dug into his thumb. "Busy here, Susan... No, turn more left, no the other left--" he directed Torvus. Finally, with a huff of satisfaction from its bearers, the crate slipped through the doorway with only an inch to spare. Peter just missed trapping his arm between the crate and the door, and followed Torvus out through the great hall and into the courtyard before dumping the crate on the cobbled ground with a clunk.
"Ow," he said mildly, grinning at the Faun. "Was that the last one?"
"I think so, king," said Torvus, and then stepped out of the way as one of the Centaurs lifted the crate they had struggled with and swung it easily up to his shoulder. "Put that with the materiel, not the food," he called after the Centaur, who twitched his tail in acknowledgement.
"Peter!" said Susan again, and tugged at Peter's arm. "Come with me, you have to see this!"
"Go, king, I will finish up here," said Torvus, with half a bow, and Peter swiveled to follow Susan, who was already leading him around the wall of the keep and into what they'd been calling the back gardens. (Of course, the Witch had had no gardens, but it was an empty area between the keep and the outer walls: what else could it be?) She disappeared around one corner, then another, and Peter finally emerged into a sunny and overgrown yard, with flowering vines crawling up the outside wall and bees humming in the air. Against the far side was a jumble of tools and supplies piled against a half-built stone wall: part of a shed or stall that had been left unfinished.
Susan stood in the center of the garden, facing the unfinished shed, her fists clenched at her sides. She had not yet bathed after the march from Whiterush Vale: dust and sweat were smeared on her cheek, and her oversized tunic was spotted with grime and blood. "Peter, look," she said, and pointed at the shed. "Look!" Her voice shook.
It was just a stone wall. Peter walked closer. A stone wall, made of the same grey stone all the rest of the castle was; he put a hand on it, and then jerked it back with an oath. "Good Lord!"
It was stone, but the wall was made from many smaller pieces of stone, irregularly-shaped and fitted together and then mortared in place. The stone that Peter had touched ended in something that looked like a canine nose. Next to it was a roundish stone with a prickly surface, like a hedgehog's back; below that, clearly distinguishable, the broad underside of a bear's paw.
"I'm right, aren't I?" said Susan, from behind him. Her voice shook. "It's what I thought."
Peter nodded, still staring at the wall. Most of the individual stones were small enough for Peter to pick up in two hands, and some were even smaller: they all had sharp, raw edges, as though they had been shattered with some great force. At the unfinished end a single curved horn stuck out: a cow's, or a Minotaur's, he guessed. The wall was some ten feet long and a foot wide, abandoned at about waist-height. He turned around slowly, but there was no more loose stone in the garden.
"We--Aslan never came back here, that morning," Susan said, her voice thick. "I would have remembered. And I--could even Aslan have done anything about this? Oh, Peter--" she wrapped her arms around him and wept into his shoulder.
They stood there for what seemed to Peter like a long time, although it was probably just a few minutes. The shadows in the garden lengthened, and Susan wept, and Peter felt himself growing very cold, although they were in the sun. The walls and grass and flowers around them seemed to recede into the distance; his pulse thrummed in his ears, growing louder and louder, like the pounding of a military drum. All right! he thought. I hear you now.
"Susan," he said, his throat dry and his voice raspy, and pulled away from her so he could see her face. "Come on, now. We have work to do."
She smeared the tears away with the heel of her hand. "Work!" she protested. "But--"
"Yes, work. Let's go." He took her hand and towed her along, ignoring whatever she was saying: he couldn't really hear it, anyway, because of the drumming in his head. They came out into the front courtyard and found Torvus and Edmund elbow-deep in a barrel of arrows. Lucy was nowhere in sight: someone would have to find her.
"Edmund," Peter snapped. Edmund looked up, his expression of inquiry switching quickly to concern. Peter didn't wait for the question: he couldn't wait, the need to act was becoming desperate. "I need the rest of this all moved outside, and everyone out of the castle. Make it happen."
"Susan," he went on, as brusquely as he had with Edmund, "find Lucy and keep her with you. Then get all the prisoners together, settle them out in the field with a strong guard. Things are going to be... busy here shortly."
He could feel her eyes and Edmund's on him, could see the frown between her brows. But instead of challenging him, they exchanged glances, and nodded. "Where are you going, Pete?" asked Edmund, as he picked up a stone to hammer the lid back on the barrel.
"I'm going to light a fire."
Edmund's eyes widened: his sure movements became brisk and efficient. And Susan left the courtyard at a run.
The storerooms on the lower levels had contained quite a lot of supplies, including several small barrels of cooking oil, which were not too large to carry under one's arm. Peter didn't think the oil tasted like anything much, but it was oil: it would burn. The castle was built of stone, yes, but also wood: wood supports and beams, wood floors and furniture, wood underneath the slate roofs. He just needed to find the best place to start it.
Chewing his lip, Peter looked around the great hall, which was tall and windowless, with a few pieces of furniture at the inner end, including the Witch's "throne". There, he thought, and carried his barrel over to the tall seat. He put the barrel down and levered the bung out with his dagger. It was a small piece of light wood, about the size of his thumb; he tossed it over his shoulder and picked the barrel back up, tilting it so a dollop of oil came out and poured into a smooth puddle on the seat of the Witch's chair.
The oil was a clear yellow-green. Peter smiled grimly and tilted the barrel back upright, just enough so a thin drizzle streamed from the opening. Keeping the barrel at that angle as best he could, he made a loop through the entire first floor of the castle. He didn't have to go through every room, but he wanted to make sure he covered a lot of ground.
Then he went upstairs and did it again; and then again; and then went up into the towers, trailing oil behind him on the narrow wooden stairs. Coming down the stairs in the west tower, he slipped on the oil and nearly broke his neck--a last-second grab with his free hand at the window saved him. Gasping, and a little shaky with adrenaline, he stood for a moment and peered out the window.
The sun was low in the sky: from this angle he could see the shadows of the towers stretching east over the fields. People were still going in and out the castle gateway, but there was a great pile of supplies and equipment growing, a good hundred yards out in the meadow. He couldn't see Susan or Lucy, but he could see the prisoners: two dozen or so figures mostly seated on the ground, surrounded by Centaurs and Fauns. Good: he liked his Dwarfs fine, but they were clannish, and if a cousin was among the prisoners, he didn't want to put any of his own to guard them, just in case.
The last tower was the tallest, the one where he'd found the furs. Peter up-ended the barrel over the furs, soaking them, and with a strength fueled by the rage he'd been throttling back, he split the barrel apart and cast the wood around the room. "Be at peace in Aslan's Country, my brothers and sisters," he said, breathing heavily. "You are avenged."
The flint and steel that the Dwarfs of Pattering Hill had given him were clumsy in his hands. He had to strike nearly a dozen times before the first spark sprang off and landed on the oil-soaked burlap. It fizzled out; Peter struck again and again, and then, at last, it caught. A tiny flame arose, the smell of the burning oil and cloth pungent in the small room. Peter stood, watching, as it spread, the oil feeding it: in seconds the flame was the size of his hand, and then his head, and then it covered the entire top of the bale and was over a foot high. Peter nodded with satisfaction and left the room, leaving the door wide open.
Halfway down the stairs, on the landing, he stopped and took out the flint and steel again. This time it went faster, and as he clattered down the steps below he could see the light from the flames on the ceiling above. He came all the way down, crossed to the west tower, and lit another fire on the third-floor landing. When he looked out the window as he came back down, he saw smoke billowing out of the top of the central tower.
He lit a fire in the scullery, broke open another oil barrel and rolled it down the stairs to the dungeons and threw a torch after it, and finally found himself back in the great hall. The smoke was pouring down the stairs now, and rolling out of the doorways into the large central room. Smoke gathered in the rafters.
There was shouting outside; he heard Edmund's voice. "Peter! Peter!" He supposed it was time to leave. But first he had one last fire to set.
The door crashed open and the rush of air sucked even more smoke into the room. Peter couldn't even see who was at the door, but it didn't matter. He struck a spark and it flew off and landed perfectly on the oil-soaked seat of the throne. It was very hot now: he could feel the sweat pouring down his face and neck, and the smoke was burning his eyes.
A hand seized his shoulder and jerked him around. Edmund, his eyes wild, was shouting, but Peter wrenched away to check on his fire. Ah! It had caught, and now a small flame was licking up the tall back of the seat. In moments, the entire chair would be ablaze. He smiled, and looked at Edmund, and then a cloud of smoke wrapped itself around them, obliterating the room and choking the breath in their lungs, and Peter realized, quite suddenly, that he might have killed them both.
*
In later years, when these early days were half-legend to most Narnians, those few who had fought at the Battle of Whiterush Vale were often asked to tell the children about how High King Peter burned down the Witch's castle, and emerged from the fire followed by his brother, with the flames shooting into the sky behind them. They always made it sound heroic and dramatic, the tall golden-haired king with his sword on his back, silhouetted by the furiously burning castle as the sun went down behind the mountains in the west.
What Peter remembered was crawling to the door on his hands and knees, pulling Edmund for a space and then Edmund pulling him; getting lost at least once and almost ending up in the anteroom; and the two of them tumbling head-first down the short flight of steps into the relatively clear air of the courtyard. And the sound: the roar of the fire itself, the flames hungrily eating everything consumable in the castle, and the horrifying groan as the west tower began to topple inwards. Peter didn't realize what it was, but Edmund looked up, and his mouth dropped open, and he grabbed Peter's shirt and dragged him along the cobblestones until Peter scrambled to his feet.
They came staggering out of the castle gate, holding one another up, covered in soot and coughing so hard Peter realized later he had sprained a muscle: he couldn't laugh comfortably for days afterwards. There wasn't an inch of exposed skin that was clean, and Susan stared at them in horror for a long moment before dashing forward to take Edmund's other side.
With her help, and Tumnus supporting Peter, they came away from the castle to a safe spot out in the field, where Lucy was waiting, with the cordial, clean clothes, and--blessedly--clean water for washing. When they had finally stopped coughing, had drunk enough water to wash the taste of the fire out of their mouths, Peter carefully eased his filthy shirt off. He stared at it in his hands: even in the dim evening light, he could see the charred holes where sparks had landed on his back as they fled the castle.
"Well," said Edmund, painfully, and took another drink of water from the mug Lucy had offered. "That was stupid."
"But necessary," Peter replied. It had to be done: the castle was a taint on Narnia, a blight that, if left standing, could have spread outwards to ruin everything they were working for. The grief and horror permeating the place could only be cleansed if the entire edifice was taken down, stone by stone. He wasn't sure how to say that, though: it was all tangled up with the drumming in his ears, which could have been Aslan's voice--or so he hoped, unless it was just his own unmanageable anger. He just knew that it had to be done, and now the rage was gone, leaving an unfamiliar certainty in its place.
He looked around; the camp was settling in for the evening, with fires leaping up around the field, and Narnians passing back and forth with equipment and food. Rhea lay nearby, watching him with bright eyes. Peter desperately wanted something to eat, and then to sleep around the clock, but there was one last thing he had to do tonight. And it wasn't something he could hand off to one of his siblings: this, too, was for the High King.
"I see that look on your face," said Lucy from beside him. "You aren't going anywhere until you drink this, wash your face, and put on a clean shirt." She thrust a bowl into his hands.
"Do I have a clean shirt?" Peter asked plaintively.
*
"I don't think this is a good idea," said Susan. She had washed her face as well, but the flickering firelight showed Peter the strain and exhaustion of the last few days. Just a day ago, he realized, she had been near to death. "They're our enemies, I don't want you that close to them."
Peter raised an eyebrow. "Didn't you go talk to them by yourself just yesterday?"
She flushed, and shot an angry glance at Edmund, who just shrugged. "Yes, but I'm no threat, and I'm not the High King!"
"I'll be fine. Besides, I'm not going unarmed." Peter reached back, ignoring the stiffness in his arms and the stab in his ribs, and drew Rhindon. The gold pommel gleamed in the darkness, catching light from all the fires around. "And you can keep an eye on things from out here."
"I will!" she said, and turned back to their campsite, presumably to fetch her bow.
"Be safe," said Edmund quietly, and stepped back as well.
Peter nodded to the Centaurs guarding the prisoners and stepped past them into the circle where the prisoners were being held. It was, he realized, a bit unfair of him to put them all together, because there were two quite distinct groups: the Narnians who had held the castle for Bruno and assaulted Lucy; and the Rebels, those remnants of the Witch's army that had survived and surrendered at the Battle of Whiterush Vale. There was little sympathy between these two groups, and they had separated, leaving an empty space in the center of the great circle.
Perfect. Peter walked to a spot near the center of the circle, sword in hand, and sank as gracefully as he could down into a cross-legged position. He lay Rhindon on the ground in front of him, crosswise.
When he looked up, he saw that all the prisoners were watching him. He had positioned himself so that most of them were in front of him: a great arc of faces and suspicious eyes, with a gap in the middle. On the one side were the thirty or so Rebels; on the other about a dozen members of the Western Narnian Patrol. Stag and Wolf and Dwarf on one side; Ogre and Minotaur, Goblin and Hag on the other. (None of the Harpies had surrendered, Edmund had said, with a grimace.)
"I am Peter," he said, speaking hoarsely, but as clearly as he could through the damage the smoke had done to his throat. He could not pitch his voice to carry past this small crowd of prisoners, but then he didn't mean to. If he kept his voice quiet, they would have to attend to him, and that was what he needed. "Peter High King of Narnia, by grace of Aslan, and Lord of Cair Paravel." At that, they stirred, and one of the Wer-wolves gave a mocking laugh.
"Jadis is dead," he said, gesturing to the still-burning ruins of the castle, "and that Narnia with her. But we are not without challenges, in this reborn Narnia. Jadis' Winter is over, but the natural round of seasons is begun again, and there is frost already in the high country. Do we have enough food set aside to feed all the children? Do we have homes for all the Narnians returned from exile?
"Jadis' ice and snow no longer protects our borders, and the Giants have already begun to press against us in the north. We may have enemies on the west and south, who will see our strife and disorganization, and take the opportunity to invade. After one hundred years of isolation, who knows what has transpired in the outer world?
"We need information, supplies, industry and organization. Soldiers and messengers and farmers and herders. Weavers and miners, smiths and carpenters and foresters. Traders and businessmen, shipwrights and sailors.
"There is no room now for Narnians who think only of their own clans, their own people, their own needs. We must all work together to rebuild, or we shall assuredly all fail on our own--and Aslan will take Narnia away from us, who could not protect her, and give her to someone who can."
He stopped and looked around. The light was poor, but there were enough fires and torches that he could meet every eye. Some of them met his gaze levelly; others sneered; others looked away, mostly down. The Stag Peter had spoken to yesterday (was it only yesterday?) nodded to him, his glossy horns catching the light as he dipped them.
"This is my proposal to you. You have until Aravil sets to come to me at the edge of the circle there, and give me your oath. If you do that, all debts shall be held paid." That got their attention, and not just the prisoners': there was a gasp and a thud from the guards, as if someone had dropped a spear. Peter swallowed painfully and went on. "I shall take your oath, and give you mine, and as you deal honorably with me, so shall I and all of Narnia deal with you. But mark me--" here he looked around again, catching every eye he could. "This is only for tonight.
"If you choose not to give your oath to me tonight, and thereby to Narnia, you shall no longer be of Narnia. You will be escorted to the border and set free there, to find your own way in the Western Wild. You will be outlaw in Narnia, forbidden to return."
The prisoners shifted again, the Dwarfs looking at one another, and one of the Minotaurs lowed uncertainly. Peter smiled grimly. "Make your choice. But know that this oath is binding: you shall swear by your blood in Aslan's name, and Rhindon, here, shall answer to oath-breakers. If you cannot take oath to Narnia with your whole heart, better you should live in the wilderness."
It was done. Peter sat quietly for a few more breaths, and then took the sword again into his hand and stood smoothly. At the edge of the circle, he saw Edmund staring at him, brows drawn. "Come to me," Peter said to the prisoners, and walked away to where the guards and his siblings waited.
"How many hours is that?" Peter asked quietly, leaning unobtrusively (or so he thought) against Edmund. Exhaustion was like a lead weight on his shoulders. "Until Aravil rises?"
"Aravil rises before midnight, king," rumbled Stormcoat from behind him. "It will not be long. And see, here is your first recruit." And Stormcoat was right: the Stag from the Patrol was already approaching the line of guards, his head lowered uncertainly.
"Someone get a chair," said Susan, coming up to Peter and pressing her lips to his cheek. "It's going to be a long night."
In the end, all four of the Pevensies were there for the first formal oath-taking of their reign, seated on logs and stones and crates of supplies as, in trickles over the next four hours, fully half of the prisoners swore themselves to Narnia under Peter High King. Susan, Edmund, and Lucy sat as witnesses as Peter drew the hand (or paw or foot) of the oath-taker along Rhindon's edge, and smeared his own blood with theirs as they recited the oath.
Rhindon grew slowly dimmer in the torchlight as bloodstains spread across its shining blade. But in the morning, the stains were all gone, and that too became part of the tale that was later told.
*
And that, my friends, is the end of Chapter IV. ::collapses:: Every chapter gets longer: at this rate Chapter V will be a novel in itself.
Crossposted from DW, where there are
comments; comment here or there.