Fic: Beneath These Skies - 7/7 (BBC Sherlock + Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance)
Title: Beneath These Skies
Rating: R
Wordcount: 4.5k this part, 37k overall
Betas: vyctori, seijichan, lifeonmars, hiddenlacuna
Disclaimer: Do not own.
Summary: An ex-soldier-turned-healer, a priest, and an unhorsed knight flee for their lives after the invasion of their homeland. John didn't expect the road to safety to be easy, but the addition of a petite mage and a scowling former prisoner to their small band opens his eyes to horrors beyond imagining.
Warnings: blood, violence, references to torture, references to mutilation, references to past rape and threats of rape (no rape occurring during the course of the story), fantasy racism (racism toward magical creatures), war, suicide contemplation.
Prologue: Flight to the Border
Chapter One: A Fight in the Dark
Chapter Two: Behind Enemy Lines
Chapter Three: A Friend Lost
Chapter Four: Besieged
Endgame: Strength and Stratagem
Epilogue: Upon Solid Ground
“Senior officers in the keep, it looks like,” one of the cats reports. “They’ve barricaded themselves in. We have some men clawing at the door, shouldn’t take long.” John thinks his name is Anderson but isn’t sure. The cat holds still long enough for John to heal him, and that’s the important part. All of the laguz are quivering with energy, the sack of the fort well underway. It’s never a siege without sacking at the end, even for laguz. The rules of humanity become less exclusive at that realisation. The majority of the loot is food and cloth, no metal.
“And Sherlock?” Lestrade asks. John’s hovering is hardly subtle.
A shrug. “The scent’s muddled. He might have been killed in the frenzy. Wingless crow surrounded by human blood? He’s probably dead.”
“Or he’s in the keep,” John says, now wishing he’d let Anderson bleed.
“Or he’s in the keep,” Lestrade acknowledges.
“That’ll be interesting when we break through,” Anderson muses.
“Tell them you’ll let a priest see to their dead,” John suggests to Lestrade. Suggests only. He’s not quite angry or stupid enough to do more. “Ask if they still have the blind one, because you know he won’t run off.”
“I’ll be there for the charge in,” Lestrade says. “If he’s in there, I’ll keep him safe. We don’t need any more tricks.”
That’s not a good way to think when fighting a war. John doesn’t say it, but it might show on his face. He might let it show, and Lestrade grunts in something like amusement.
“Tell Donovan if you want to keep the horse,” Lestrade says, a clear dismissal if John’s ever heard one. “If not, he’s dinner.”
“I’ll keep the horse,” John says.
“Tell Donovan.”
John does as he’s bid, and then he’s kept busy. The laguz in need of healing come to him with staves stolen from the fort’s supplies. It would almost seem like payment if John didn’t keep depleting them. A small medical area gradually develops around John on the glacis, more of the laguz present to stare at him in suspicion rather than to be healed. By the afternoon, John trembles with exhaustion, mental and physical. His stomach makes a go at eating itself, unfed for nearly a full day.
Only a day? It has been only a day. Yesterday, they were besieged. Yesterday, Sherlock was human. Today, John is soon to be the only human left alive.
At last, someone thinks to feed him. Horse meat is a tough chew if anything ever was, but it is cooked, not raw as he’d feared. He eats his late lunch of meat and meat alone as quickly as he can, jaw aching, mind numb, and that’s when he hears a hawk cry out.
John looks around before he thinks to look up. He waves, an unreal moment, and Mrs Hudson swoops across the ditch without acknowledging him. John jogs up the glacis, causing more than one resting tiger to raise its, no, his head.
Across the ditch, Mrs Hudson hugs a man, her wings beating the air above the brown-clad arms holding her aloft. When he sets her down, she could be laughing or crying or both. They both could be. John can see him nodding, nodding, eyes upon her face, and when Sherlock looks across the glacis, John’s an intruder, a trespasser despite the length and depth of the ditch between them.
John lifts his hand.
Sherlock does not.
John turns around, climbs down the glacis, and goes back to work.
The laguz take to it poorly when he tends to the dead, but he doesn’t let that stop him. He finds Brian, eventually. It looks like it was a quick death. Snapped necks usually are, regardless of the claw marks.
Brian is heavy, no longer warm but still limp. He is the first John attempts to drag. It’s not very far to the ditch. The body tumbles down when dropped and lies sprawled, not restful in the slightest. John climbs down and arranges him. His quiet prayer includes the names of Brian’s wife and daughters. John climbs back up.
The laguz watch him. Only when John begins to speak of rotting corpses, feral dogs and death-born plagues do they begin to shift the bodies themselves.
Fortunately, it is a very large ditch.
Come nightfall, they sleep outside. There’s nowhere truly clean, within the fort or without, and John scavenges a few familiar items by torchlight before returning to Edmund’s horse. The reins tied loosely to a tree, the horse hasn’t moved and its gear lies untouched. The horse has a name, one John knows he’s heard, but he can’t recall it. John places the saddle bag upon the removed saddle. Within it is Brian’s shaving kit, along with a few other odds and ends of practical value. Some gold, because the future is large and wide, and the dead don’t frequent markets.
Scraping at the ground, Edmund’s horse whinnies in the near-dark.
“You and me both,” John agrees.
One-handed, he rolls out the pilfered bedroll onto the ground, the torch held high in the other. There’s an absence of noise from the wood around him: once again, John is a spectacle.
He waves out the torch, sticks the cool end firmly into the ground, and settles down for the night out of trampling range of his new horse. Somehow, he sleeps.
By midmorning, bodies and dirt fill the ditch. The glacis is now a small knoll, and will give a nasty shock to whoever tries to dig there. The headstone of the mass grave is a giant grotesque joke: pulled from its hinges, the broken main gate stands tall in the shifted soil. The strength of tigers is not to be underestimated, it warns. All of the doors of the fort have been torn off, every last one.
“Aren’t you meant to say a few words?” Donovan prompts, less a reminder, more a jibe.
John takes it to heart anyway. He goes to the mound, folds his hands, and closes his eyes. When he goes to walk away, he finds he has an audience, a ring of watchers.
“Some of them didn’t want to fight,” he says. “That didn’t matter then, and I’m not sure it matters now. But they were forced to, and no one can force them again. The relief I have living, they have in death. For them, I pray.” He bows his head, waits a moment, and then resumes walking. The laguz get out of his way. Perhaps one cat or another looks thoughtful, or perhaps that’s simply the eternal expression of a cat.
Yet more of the unending horse meat passes for a light lunch before the Gallian army begins to move out. Compared to the Daein army, they have a scarcity of supplies. Unlike the Daein army, the soldiers themselves pull the carts. Tigers step into harnesses on all fours and pad southward with little more than a grumble.
John watches from a distance until Donovan appears, heralded with a shimmer of purple light. “What human supplies are valuable?”
“Sorry? You mean in the fort?” he asks. Her expression is answer enough. “Right, the fort. We don’t want to leave any weapons behind. It’s a waste, but the tomes could burn. Everything else will have to be carried away or buried. Or left out in the rain, I suppose. I imagine you’ve already taken all the food.”
She shows him to the remaining carts and the jumble of loot contained therein.
John asks, “Do you want me to explain what’s the best stuff, or should I have at it?”
“Have at it,” Donovan says, waving him forward.
She watches, of course, because none of the laguz want to leave John unsupervised with sharp objects. It’s hardly the worst way John’s been watched in recent days. John unpacks and sorts, organises and reloads. The rhythm to it is steady and calming. Metal feels good in his hands.
“Are you planning on selling or using?” John asks as his back begins to ache.
“Selling. Laguz don’t need weapons,” Donovan scoffs.
“No, why bother when there are so many human refugees to be armed, hm?” a familiar voice sneers.
John looks up sharply.
Sherlock doesn’t look at him, his gaze trained on Donovan.
“Complaints, crow?” Donovan sneers back.
“None. Though I do imagine your superiors will be miffed if you don’t inform them of your haul.”
Donovan rolls her eyes. “Right, because any of the advance guard will get to the capital within a week.”
“No, but Mrs Hudson does happen to be flying. Let her leave remotely before dark tonight, and she’ll be there by tomorrow evening.” Something dreadful pulls at the corner of his mouth and Sherlock shrugs disparagingly. “Hawks. So slow.”
“Compared to what?” Donovan asks.
Sherlock’s face becomes marble, his eyes flint. His gaze shifts to Donovan’s tail, then back to her face.
Donovan looks away. Her tail twitches to lie down along the back of one leg.
“I thought as much,” Sherlock states.
Sherlock turns to go, and John asks, “What kind of refugees?”
Halted in profile, Sherlock doesn’t look at him. There’s negative space to him now, an empty expanse riding upon his back.
“If they’re untrained, I should be packing the lighter weapons. The better stuff takes more skill to use. Do we have archers? Spearmen?”
“No idea,” Sherlock says, not looking at him.
“A bit of everything, then.”
“If you like.”
John nods. He swallows. “Do you know if Mike and Bill--”
Sherlock walks away.
“Sherlock won’t talk to me,” John tells Mrs Hudson once Donovan feeds her the weaponry report. He tells her in lowered tones, speaking softly as they hug goodbye.
“He’s a prideful one,” she answers. “Won’t let anyone see him broken, and now he can’t help it. Try to take care of him, if he’ll let you. Say I made you, if that helps.”
“I will,” John promises, but it sits on him poorly.
She flies away soon after. John watches her vanish beyond the trees, then watches a while longer still. He thinks of the man from the dungeon, falling on his face for looking to the sky.
John manages to track him down before sunset. Finding the one man without a tail isn’t terribly difficult. Getting Sherlock to meet his gaze, however, is.
“Look, are you going to sulk the entire way back to Gallia?” John asks. “Because I was going to let you ride the horse. Not that I mind, you know, assisting the blind, but putting you in a saddle seems simpler.”
Sherlock glares at him for the first time in two, possibly three days.
“Unless you’d rather be chucked into a cart,” John adds. “Won’t be space for you there until more of the provisions are used up, though, so you might want to try the horse.”
“I don’t need help walking!” Sherlock spits.
“You can’t see in the dark, you tit!” John shouts. “Those great big things called trees, they’re not half hard when you walk face-first into one. Do you want to ride on the horse or not?”
Sherlock folds his arms over his chest. “Fine.”
“Fine?”
“Yes, fine!”
“Good,” John says and promptly walks away.
Bits of the army keep moving out at different times, a gradual process that continues through the night. It gives new meaning to the expression “as difficult as herding cats”. Come morning, the last of the supply train moves out. The orders are given to take what they can carry and abandon the rest.
John leaves the armour. He keeps the sword.
Once at the Sea of Trees, a self-sacrificing sigh sounds behind John.
“If I must,” Sherlock allows, and then seems to expect John to help him mount.
John’s having none of it. “You’re the tall one. You climb up.”
Sherlock huffs and sighs and strains, but once successfully mounted, looks immensely proud of himself. He holds onto the saddle.
Reins in hand, John leads him forward.
It’s a long walk.
“I hate this forest,” Sherlock whinges. “I hate it, I hate it, I hate it--”
“Heard you the first time!” Donovan shouts back.
“And the fifth!” Lestrade adds.
With the hand not holding the reins, John reaches up to pat Sherlock on the knee.
Sherlock swats at the top of John’s head.
John fends him off easily, and when he looks up, the other man is grinning into the dark.
They bunk down together at night. Sherlock complains about saddle soreness. Life continues on until John can think of it as normal.
“You could have warned me,” John says as Sherlock hobbles along behind him, holding onto the saddle with one hand rather than riding.
“About what?”
“About the giant bloody bird coming to pluck me off the roof.”
“John, that is no way to talk about Mrs Hudson.”
“No it isn’t, but you still could have warned me.”
“No,” Sherlock answers.
John glares over his shoulder at him, certain Sherlock will get the idea if not the actual image.
“If I’d warned you, you might have refused,” Sherlock explains.
John shakes his head and looks forward.
“John?”
“I wouldn’t have.”
“I know that now,” Sherlock says.
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
Well then. “Good.”
A week brings them through the forest, possibly less than a week. “Six days,” Sherlock supplies before John can voice his question. “Even beast laguz are faster than humans.”
“Beorc,” John corrects.
Sherlock scoffs. “We only call the good ones that.”
“Speaking of,” John says. “Mike and Bill? And Molly, where’d they get to?”
Sherlock’s mouth sets into a hard line.
“What?” His stomach drops. “They’re not dead, are they?”
Sherlock sighs. “They’re alive.”
“Don’t sound so relieved! And don’t scare me like that, you arse. Where are they?”
“They’re with the other Crimean refugees. There aren’t many.”
“Is Gallia offering Crimea aid, then?” John asks.
“Possibly. I wouldn’t count on much.”
“Even the chance of it,” John says.
Sherlock makes a noise close to a laugh and very much like derision. “Enlisting again, John?”
“At this rate, I’ve already been in half the armies in the known world,” John says. “Why stop?”
“Why not indeed,” Sherlock murmurs. “I would have thought you’d want to leave Gallia. There are ways into Begnion. Lestrade trusts you enough to let you use them.”
“After all the trouble getting here?” John asks. “I might as well stay a while.”
Sherlock acknowledges this with a shrug.
“What about you?” John asks.
Sherlock looks at him blankly. As if the question is too idiotic to acknowledge. Or, as the tension in the man’s body would imply, as if the question has no answer.
“Not back to Begnion?” John asks. “I know you’ve a job to finish, but you could take, I don’t know. A vacation. Not that, you know, being impressed into armies and thrown into dungeons isn’t well and good, but variety can be nice. You could stay here, at least until the war’s over. Though, well. With the trail twenty years old and now a war in the middle of it, it doesn’t make much sense for you to go back to Begnion at all, really.”
Sherlock manages to hold the frown, but the tension in his hunched shoulders eases. “I’ll consider it,” he says.
“All I’m asking,” John promises.
The Gallian army splits into smaller battalions once in Gallia proper, and John and Sherlock stay with Lestrade’s. John takes to walking on foot, his warhorse playing the role of pack mule now that Sherlock can see. The laguz seem more relaxed when John isn’t on horseback, and when a few hours of riding leads to saddle soreness, John is more than willing to humour them.
“We need more training,” Lestrade says to him, apropos of nothing. “We know the basics of how beorc fight, but we need much more than that.”
“Is that what I’m for?” John asks.
“If you’d like to be.” A speculative sort of trust matches the words. “There’s a chance we’ll be fighting Daein more in the days to come. They claim we’re hiding your sodding princess.”
“Are you?” Mrs Hudson had said the princess had moved on to Begnion already.
“Hell if I know. Looks more like an excuse to keep expanding territory.”
John nods. “It does, a bit. About the training: I could go look around the Crimean refugee camp, see if anyone else wants to volunteer. You lot need to know how to fight mages. Less on the killing them, more on the dodging spells bit.”
Lestrade gives him a bemused grin. “If you think you can get my soldiers to practice without clawing anyone’s head off, be my guest.”
Right then. “I can try. Where are the refugees?”
“I’ll have Donovan take you,” Lestrade replies.
“Thanks.”
Lestrade looks at him oddly. “You’re the one offering to help, not me.”
“They killed my people too,” John says simply.
One of Lestrade’s ears pricks towards John. A slight nod, and they speak no more, quiet in understanding.
Donovan drops him off at the edge of the camp, preferring to hang back out of sight. Choosing to remain with Lestrade-as well as John’s horse-Sherlock obviously shares that preference, possibly the first thing he’s had in common with Donovan.
After a little over a week surrounded by laguz, the Crimean refugee camp is jarring in the extreme. Rough buildings and haphazard tents line footpaths and frame campfires. A small corral of stacked tree limbs holds in a half a dozen horses, largely draft animals. There are, bizarrely, three cows. John can’t imagine how anyone managed to bring cows through the Sea of Trees while the Daein army was trampling through it, but that’s Crimeans. The chickens make a bit more sense. The cats-actual cats, not laguz cats-are hardly a surprise.
The surprise is the hug from behind that lifts him off his feet, hauling him up into the air kicking and cursing. “Bill, you wanker!” He hits his heels against metal greaves.
Bill laughs and drops him, and they swear at each other to their hearts’ content. John goes for a second hug, a real one, and there’s a bit of a tussle in which John’s lower centre of gravity keeps his feet on the ground. They slap each other’s backs, percussive thumps of the hand against cloth and metal.
“You need to stop this nearly dying thing,” Bill tells him. “It’s getting difficult to keep track of.”
“Sorry for the inconvenience.”
“You’d better be.”
“Oh, I promise I am,” John assures him. “Where’s Mike?”
Mike is bustling about inside the largest tent, a structure larger than some cottages, or even some cottages put together. It’s an impromptu hospital, no mistake about it. Upon seeing John, he makes a frantic noise, arms full of folded linens, and keeps making it until he shoves the linens off onto Bill. Rather than hugging, there is a good deal of confused gaping and excited gesturing. John laughs and goes in for the hug on his own, and Mike seems a bit calmer for John’s solidity.
“Did you get lost coming out too, then?” Mike asks. “We barely got out ourselves without our human compass.”
John frowns. “Sorry?”
Mike and Bill’s faces fall in unison.
“I thought you knew,” Mike says.
“The Daein army took him, John,” Bill explains.
“Oh, that,” John says. “No, I... I know that. I was there. We... That’s a surprisingly long story, come to think of it.”
“He’s alive?” Mike asks.
John nods.
“Huh,” says Bill with a complete lack of relief.
“Hold on, I’ll get Molly,” Mike says. “She’ll want to hear this.”
The hug from Molly is as quick as it is unexpected. She pulls back almost immediately and looks over John’s shoulder as if expecting Sherlock to appear behind him.
“He’s fine,” John tells her. “Hell of a trip, so he’s resting.”
“In camp?” Molly asks.
“Different camp,” John says.
Molly frowns. “But this is the only Crimean camp.”
John’s stomach makes an abrupt twist. “We were rescued by the Gallian army.”
Molly goes pale. “Are you sure he’s safe?”
“Molly,” Bill chides.
“Lestrade’s a good commander,” John says. “Sherlock’s under his protection. He’ll be fine.” As long as he stops tugging tails.
“That’s good to hear,” Mike says.
“Right, now tell us the rest of it,” Bill adds.
The story is short enough in the telling to make the experience feel like a lifetime in comparison. John details his flight from the Daein-occupied fort, but, beyond Mrs Hudson, mentions no other bird laguz. He refers to Sherlock by name and nothing else.
“Hell of a thing,” Bill says when John finishes. “We only had to walk out of the woods. Only took a few days.”
Molly shudders. Bit more than just a walk, it seems.
“More importantly,” Mike says, “have you heard about the princess? She’s real!”
“Born after Duke Renning was named heir to the throne, by the sound of it,” Bill adds. “That’s the excuse they’ve sent out for no one knowing about her. But King Gallia says she’s the real thing, and I don’t think the old lion would have a reason to lie.”
“Is she still in Gallia?” John asks.
“Nope,” Bill says. “The laguz managed to slip her and her escort back up north to a Crimean port. She’s sailing to Begnion for aid. By the sound of it, Daein closed off the port immediately after. But there is a way to follow. King Gallia has promised to send any beorc volunteers to Begnion through a secret way. We’ll have to be blindfolded for part of it, but we don’t have to sit and wait the war out.”
“Oh,” John says.
“If you want a break from fighting, you could still go,” Mike adds. “There’s sure to be a temple that would take us on. And Harry might be there, somewhere.”
Or she might not be. But what if she is?
“I’ll need to think about that,” John hears himself say. “Bit tired, don’t want to rush into anything. Already had a battle and a siege this month.”
“That’s fair,” Bill says, obviously confident of John’s decision.
“It’d be nice to be back in human civilisation,” Molly adds.
Where they frame and slaughter the defenceless, John doesn’t say. He hums instead and asks Mike if there’s anything around the impromptu hospital he can help with. A few hours pass that way, Bill and Molly wander off, and then John startles Mike with his farewells.
“Where are you going?” Mike asks, absolutely befuddled.
“Sherlock,” John explains with a shrug. “I told him I’d be back tonight.” A lie, but it’s only a little lie. Assuming he’d return, John had made no promises.
“He’s that close by?”
“Might be by now, yeah.”
“And... how are you getting to him?”
“I’ve a guide,” John says. “Should do, if she hasn’t left.”
“Laguz?”
“Yeah.”
Mike looks at him, at the sword at once so light and heavy upon his hip. “You look like a soldier again.”
“Feel a bit like one, too,” John agrees.
“So you’ll be keeping with Bill, then?” Mike asks. “Molly wants to find a new teacher, and I’d thought I’d go with her. Not that we wouldn’t love to have you along.”
“I don’t know,” John says. “Maybe.”
Mike laughs a little. “Now that’s a lie. You’ve already made up your mind, haven’t you?”
“Yeah,” John says. “You’re right. I have.”
“Thought as much,” Mike says.
“When does the camp move?”
“Not too long now. I’m not sure.”
“And some are staying?” John asks.
“The sick and the frightened, mostly. There’s a few who want to settle down, but the soil’s all wrong for ploughing. And it’s hardly our land, is it?”
“Everyone who can fight is leaving?”
“I hope so!” Mike says with something of a laugh.
John nods. “Right.” That’s him decided. Really decided. They’ll never need him in Begnion as much as they need him here. “I’ll be back to say goodbye before you lot move out.”
Mike blinks a bit.
“I’d better tell Bill, too.”
“What do you mean?” Mike asks.
John explains.
Mike argues.
John doesn’t budge.
Mike gets Bill.
Bill understands.
Very gradually, eternally concerned, Mike gives ground.
They make fresh goodbyes, but Bill walks out with him anyway. When John can’t find Donovan, he nearly groans and walks back to the Crimean camp. Bill stops him, pointing upward, and the cat stretches a bit before jumping down from the tree and rising on two feet.
“Is he with you?” Donovan asks.
“No,” John says.
“Yes,” Bill says. “I’ve trained with Gallian soldiers before, enough to know what I’m doing.”
“What, really?” John asks.
Bill cuffs his shoulder.
“No, I believe you know what you’re doing. But I... You’re coming? Staying, I mean.”
“Sounds like we’ve a pair of matching horses now,” Bill says. “Be a shame to deny my charger a friend. I’ll stay with Mike and Molly until they’re off, if you don’t mind.”
“Not in the least.”
“Good,” Bill says. This last hug sets a record. Three times in a day must exceed some sort of limit. Before pulling away, Bill whispers into John’s ear a single-worded question: “Birdman?”
John pulls back and meets Bill’s guileless gaze. John nods.
“He wasn’t exactly subtle,” Bill says. “Honestly, the night vision was a dead giveaway. And the internal compass wasn’t half a clue either.”
“Are you coming or not?” Donovan interrupts.
“Coming,” John says. “Sorry.” He lifts a hand in parting, and Bill does the same.
“See you soon, mate.”
“You too.”
John finds Sherlock brushing down the horse. They’ve taken to each other well, man and horse. John wonders if the wind feels different on horseback than it does on wing. He doesn’t ask.
“Well?” Sherlock demands, voice harsh, back turned.
“Bill’s staying too.”
Sherlock jerks around, head whipping over his shoulder. “What?”
“Bill’s staying too,” John repeats.
Sherlock’s eyes search his face, flicking across all of John’s features in the quest for some elusive answer.
“Bill knows about you,” John says.
Sherlock rolls his eyes. “Obviously.”
Brilliant, another thing Sherlock had failed to mention. “Then what’s the problem?”
“Nothing.”
“No, really.”
“Nothing,” Sherlock insists, turning back to the horse.
John takes the brush out of his hand and takes over.
Sherlock wanders off in a sulk, but he does wander back. “Here,” he says and thrusts out a pewter mug filled with something that could be soup or vomit. When everything around John’s mount smells like the horse, it’s difficult to tell.
John takes the mug and sniffs it from up close. Soup. Possibly vomited soup, but soup. “Cheers,” he says, then takes the first sip. Tastes like potatoes and squirrel meat. Possibly rabbit.
“Is there a reason you’re not following your future queen? You’re a loyal man, John.”
“Yeah,” John says.
Sherlock waits.
John drinks his soup.
“And?” Sherlock prompts.
John drains the mug and presses it back into Sherlock’s hands. “Thanks,” he says.
Sherlock looks away, discomfort and pleasure plain across his features. He clears his throat and murmurs, soft and sure, “You’re welcome.”
previous | end
Rating: R
Wordcount: 4.5k this part, 37k overall
Betas: vyctori, seijichan, lifeonmars, hiddenlacuna
Disclaimer: Do not own.
Summary: An ex-soldier-turned-healer, a priest, and an unhorsed knight flee for their lives after the invasion of their homeland. John didn't expect the road to safety to be easy, but the addition of a petite mage and a scowling former prisoner to their small band opens his eyes to horrors beyond imagining.
Warnings: blood, violence, references to torture, references to mutilation, references to past rape and threats of rape (no rape occurring during the course of the story), fantasy racism (racism toward magical creatures), war, suicide contemplation.
Prologue: Flight to the Border
Chapter One: A Fight in the Dark
Chapter Two: Behind Enemy Lines
Chapter Three: A Friend Lost
Chapter Four: Besieged
Endgame: Strength and Stratagem
Epilogue: Upon Solid Ground
“Senior officers in the keep, it looks like,” one of the cats reports. “They’ve barricaded themselves in. We have some men clawing at the door, shouldn’t take long.” John thinks his name is Anderson but isn’t sure. The cat holds still long enough for John to heal him, and that’s the important part. All of the laguz are quivering with energy, the sack of the fort well underway. It’s never a siege without sacking at the end, even for laguz. The rules of humanity become less exclusive at that realisation. The majority of the loot is food and cloth, no metal.
“And Sherlock?” Lestrade asks. John’s hovering is hardly subtle.
A shrug. “The scent’s muddled. He might have been killed in the frenzy. Wingless crow surrounded by human blood? He’s probably dead.”
“Or he’s in the keep,” John says, now wishing he’d let Anderson bleed.
“Or he’s in the keep,” Lestrade acknowledges.
“That’ll be interesting when we break through,” Anderson muses.
“Tell them you’ll let a priest see to their dead,” John suggests to Lestrade. Suggests only. He’s not quite angry or stupid enough to do more. “Ask if they still have the blind one, because you know he won’t run off.”
“I’ll be there for the charge in,” Lestrade says. “If he’s in there, I’ll keep him safe. We don’t need any more tricks.”
That’s not a good way to think when fighting a war. John doesn’t say it, but it might show on his face. He might let it show, and Lestrade grunts in something like amusement.
“Tell Donovan if you want to keep the horse,” Lestrade says, a clear dismissal if John’s ever heard one. “If not, he’s dinner.”
“I’ll keep the horse,” John says.
“Tell Donovan.”
John does as he’s bid, and then he’s kept busy. The laguz in need of healing come to him with staves stolen from the fort’s supplies. It would almost seem like payment if John didn’t keep depleting them. A small medical area gradually develops around John on the glacis, more of the laguz present to stare at him in suspicion rather than to be healed. By the afternoon, John trembles with exhaustion, mental and physical. His stomach makes a go at eating itself, unfed for nearly a full day.
Only a day? It has been only a day. Yesterday, they were besieged. Yesterday, Sherlock was human. Today, John is soon to be the only human left alive.
At last, someone thinks to feed him. Horse meat is a tough chew if anything ever was, but it is cooked, not raw as he’d feared. He eats his late lunch of meat and meat alone as quickly as he can, jaw aching, mind numb, and that’s when he hears a hawk cry out.
John looks around before he thinks to look up. He waves, an unreal moment, and Mrs Hudson swoops across the ditch without acknowledging him. John jogs up the glacis, causing more than one resting tiger to raise its, no, his head.
Across the ditch, Mrs Hudson hugs a man, her wings beating the air above the brown-clad arms holding her aloft. When he sets her down, she could be laughing or crying or both. They both could be. John can see him nodding, nodding, eyes upon her face, and when Sherlock looks across the glacis, John’s an intruder, a trespasser despite the length and depth of the ditch between them.
John lifts his hand.
Sherlock does not.
John turns around, climbs down the glacis, and goes back to work.
The laguz take to it poorly when he tends to the dead, but he doesn’t let that stop him. He finds Brian, eventually. It looks like it was a quick death. Snapped necks usually are, regardless of the claw marks.
Brian is heavy, no longer warm but still limp. He is the first John attempts to drag. It’s not very far to the ditch. The body tumbles down when dropped and lies sprawled, not restful in the slightest. John climbs down and arranges him. His quiet prayer includes the names of Brian’s wife and daughters. John climbs back up.
The laguz watch him. Only when John begins to speak of rotting corpses, feral dogs and death-born plagues do they begin to shift the bodies themselves.
Fortunately, it is a very large ditch.
Come nightfall, they sleep outside. There’s nowhere truly clean, within the fort or without, and John scavenges a few familiar items by torchlight before returning to Edmund’s horse. The reins tied loosely to a tree, the horse hasn’t moved and its gear lies untouched. The horse has a name, one John knows he’s heard, but he can’t recall it. John places the saddle bag upon the removed saddle. Within it is Brian’s shaving kit, along with a few other odds and ends of practical value. Some gold, because the future is large and wide, and the dead don’t frequent markets.
Scraping at the ground, Edmund’s horse whinnies in the near-dark.
“You and me both,” John agrees.
One-handed, he rolls out the pilfered bedroll onto the ground, the torch held high in the other. There’s an absence of noise from the wood around him: once again, John is a spectacle.
He waves out the torch, sticks the cool end firmly into the ground, and settles down for the night out of trampling range of his new horse. Somehow, he sleeps.
By midmorning, bodies and dirt fill the ditch. The glacis is now a small knoll, and will give a nasty shock to whoever tries to dig there. The headstone of the mass grave is a giant grotesque joke: pulled from its hinges, the broken main gate stands tall in the shifted soil. The strength of tigers is not to be underestimated, it warns. All of the doors of the fort have been torn off, every last one.
“Aren’t you meant to say a few words?” Donovan prompts, less a reminder, more a jibe.
John takes it to heart anyway. He goes to the mound, folds his hands, and closes his eyes. When he goes to walk away, he finds he has an audience, a ring of watchers.
“Some of them didn’t want to fight,” he says. “That didn’t matter then, and I’m not sure it matters now. But they were forced to, and no one can force them again. The relief I have living, they have in death. For them, I pray.” He bows his head, waits a moment, and then resumes walking. The laguz get out of his way. Perhaps one cat or another looks thoughtful, or perhaps that’s simply the eternal expression of a cat.
Yet more of the unending horse meat passes for a light lunch before the Gallian army begins to move out. Compared to the Daein army, they have a scarcity of supplies. Unlike the Daein army, the soldiers themselves pull the carts. Tigers step into harnesses on all fours and pad southward with little more than a grumble.
John watches from a distance until Donovan appears, heralded with a shimmer of purple light. “What human supplies are valuable?”
“Sorry? You mean in the fort?” he asks. Her expression is answer enough. “Right, the fort. We don’t want to leave any weapons behind. It’s a waste, but the tomes could burn. Everything else will have to be carried away or buried. Or left out in the rain, I suppose. I imagine you’ve already taken all the food.”
She shows him to the remaining carts and the jumble of loot contained therein.
John asks, “Do you want me to explain what’s the best stuff, or should I have at it?”
“Have at it,” Donovan says, waving him forward.
She watches, of course, because none of the laguz want to leave John unsupervised with sharp objects. It’s hardly the worst way John’s been watched in recent days. John unpacks and sorts, organises and reloads. The rhythm to it is steady and calming. Metal feels good in his hands.
“Are you planning on selling or using?” John asks as his back begins to ache.
“Selling. Laguz don’t need weapons,” Donovan scoffs.
“No, why bother when there are so many human refugees to be armed, hm?” a familiar voice sneers.
John looks up sharply.
Sherlock doesn’t look at him, his gaze trained on Donovan.
“Complaints, crow?” Donovan sneers back.
“None. Though I do imagine your superiors will be miffed if you don’t inform them of your haul.”
Donovan rolls her eyes. “Right, because any of the advance guard will get to the capital within a week.”
“No, but Mrs Hudson does happen to be flying. Let her leave remotely before dark tonight, and she’ll be there by tomorrow evening.” Something dreadful pulls at the corner of his mouth and Sherlock shrugs disparagingly. “Hawks. So slow.”
“Compared to what?” Donovan asks.
Sherlock’s face becomes marble, his eyes flint. His gaze shifts to Donovan’s tail, then back to her face.
Donovan looks away. Her tail twitches to lie down along the back of one leg.
“I thought as much,” Sherlock states.
Sherlock turns to go, and John asks, “What kind of refugees?”
Halted in profile, Sherlock doesn’t look at him. There’s negative space to him now, an empty expanse riding upon his back.
“If they’re untrained, I should be packing the lighter weapons. The better stuff takes more skill to use. Do we have archers? Spearmen?”
“No idea,” Sherlock says, not looking at him.
“A bit of everything, then.”
“If you like.”
John nods. He swallows. “Do you know if Mike and Bill--”
Sherlock walks away.
“Sherlock won’t talk to me,” John tells Mrs Hudson once Donovan feeds her the weaponry report. He tells her in lowered tones, speaking softly as they hug goodbye.
“He’s a prideful one,” she answers. “Won’t let anyone see him broken, and now he can’t help it. Try to take care of him, if he’ll let you. Say I made you, if that helps.”
“I will,” John promises, but it sits on him poorly.
She flies away soon after. John watches her vanish beyond the trees, then watches a while longer still. He thinks of the man from the dungeon, falling on his face for looking to the sky.
John manages to track him down before sunset. Finding the one man without a tail isn’t terribly difficult. Getting Sherlock to meet his gaze, however, is.
“Look, are you going to sulk the entire way back to Gallia?” John asks. “Because I was going to let you ride the horse. Not that I mind, you know, assisting the blind, but putting you in a saddle seems simpler.”
Sherlock glares at him for the first time in two, possibly three days.
“Unless you’d rather be chucked into a cart,” John adds. “Won’t be space for you there until more of the provisions are used up, though, so you might want to try the horse.”
“I don’t need help walking!” Sherlock spits.
“You can’t see in the dark, you tit!” John shouts. “Those great big things called trees, they’re not half hard when you walk face-first into one. Do you want to ride on the horse or not?”
Sherlock folds his arms over his chest. “Fine.”
“Fine?”
“Yes, fine!”
“Good,” John says and promptly walks away.
Bits of the army keep moving out at different times, a gradual process that continues through the night. It gives new meaning to the expression “as difficult as herding cats”. Come morning, the last of the supply train moves out. The orders are given to take what they can carry and abandon the rest.
John leaves the armour. He keeps the sword.
Once at the Sea of Trees, a self-sacrificing sigh sounds behind John.
“If I must,” Sherlock allows, and then seems to expect John to help him mount.
John’s having none of it. “You’re the tall one. You climb up.”
Sherlock huffs and sighs and strains, but once successfully mounted, looks immensely proud of himself. He holds onto the saddle.
Reins in hand, John leads him forward.
It’s a long walk.
“I hate this forest,” Sherlock whinges. “I hate it, I hate it, I hate it--”
“Heard you the first time!” Donovan shouts back.
“And the fifth!” Lestrade adds.
With the hand not holding the reins, John reaches up to pat Sherlock on the knee.
Sherlock swats at the top of John’s head.
John fends him off easily, and when he looks up, the other man is grinning into the dark.
They bunk down together at night. Sherlock complains about saddle soreness. Life continues on until John can think of it as normal.
“You could have warned me,” John says as Sherlock hobbles along behind him, holding onto the saddle with one hand rather than riding.
“About what?”
“About the giant bloody bird coming to pluck me off the roof.”
“John, that is no way to talk about Mrs Hudson.”
“No it isn’t, but you still could have warned me.”
“No,” Sherlock answers.
John glares over his shoulder at him, certain Sherlock will get the idea if not the actual image.
“If I’d warned you, you might have refused,” Sherlock explains.
John shakes his head and looks forward.
“John?”
“I wouldn’t have.”
“I know that now,” Sherlock says.
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
Well then. “Good.”
A week brings them through the forest, possibly less than a week. “Six days,” Sherlock supplies before John can voice his question. “Even beast laguz are faster than humans.”
“Beorc,” John corrects.
Sherlock scoffs. “We only call the good ones that.”
“Speaking of,” John says. “Mike and Bill? And Molly, where’d they get to?”
Sherlock’s mouth sets into a hard line.
“What?” His stomach drops. “They’re not dead, are they?”
Sherlock sighs. “They’re alive.”
“Don’t sound so relieved! And don’t scare me like that, you arse. Where are they?”
“They’re with the other Crimean refugees. There aren’t many.”
“Is Gallia offering Crimea aid, then?” John asks.
“Possibly. I wouldn’t count on much.”
“Even the chance of it,” John says.
Sherlock makes a noise close to a laugh and very much like derision. “Enlisting again, John?”
“At this rate, I’ve already been in half the armies in the known world,” John says. “Why stop?”
“Why not indeed,” Sherlock murmurs. “I would have thought you’d want to leave Gallia. There are ways into Begnion. Lestrade trusts you enough to let you use them.”
“After all the trouble getting here?” John asks. “I might as well stay a while.”
Sherlock acknowledges this with a shrug.
“What about you?” John asks.
Sherlock looks at him blankly. As if the question is too idiotic to acknowledge. Or, as the tension in the man’s body would imply, as if the question has no answer.
“Not back to Begnion?” John asks. “I know you’ve a job to finish, but you could take, I don’t know. A vacation. Not that, you know, being impressed into armies and thrown into dungeons isn’t well and good, but variety can be nice. You could stay here, at least until the war’s over. Though, well. With the trail twenty years old and now a war in the middle of it, it doesn’t make much sense for you to go back to Begnion at all, really.”
Sherlock manages to hold the frown, but the tension in his hunched shoulders eases. “I’ll consider it,” he says.
“All I’m asking,” John promises.
The Gallian army splits into smaller battalions once in Gallia proper, and John and Sherlock stay with Lestrade’s. John takes to walking on foot, his warhorse playing the role of pack mule now that Sherlock can see. The laguz seem more relaxed when John isn’t on horseback, and when a few hours of riding leads to saddle soreness, John is more than willing to humour them.
“We need more training,” Lestrade says to him, apropos of nothing. “We know the basics of how beorc fight, but we need much more than that.”
“Is that what I’m for?” John asks.
“If you’d like to be.” A speculative sort of trust matches the words. “There’s a chance we’ll be fighting Daein more in the days to come. They claim we’re hiding your sodding princess.”
“Are you?” Mrs Hudson had said the princess had moved on to Begnion already.
“Hell if I know. Looks more like an excuse to keep expanding territory.”
John nods. “It does, a bit. About the training: I could go look around the Crimean refugee camp, see if anyone else wants to volunteer. You lot need to know how to fight mages. Less on the killing them, more on the dodging spells bit.”
Lestrade gives him a bemused grin. “If you think you can get my soldiers to practice without clawing anyone’s head off, be my guest.”
Right then. “I can try. Where are the refugees?”
“I’ll have Donovan take you,” Lestrade replies.
“Thanks.”
Lestrade looks at him oddly. “You’re the one offering to help, not me.”
“They killed my people too,” John says simply.
One of Lestrade’s ears pricks towards John. A slight nod, and they speak no more, quiet in understanding.
Donovan drops him off at the edge of the camp, preferring to hang back out of sight. Choosing to remain with Lestrade-as well as John’s horse-Sherlock obviously shares that preference, possibly the first thing he’s had in common with Donovan.
After a little over a week surrounded by laguz, the Crimean refugee camp is jarring in the extreme. Rough buildings and haphazard tents line footpaths and frame campfires. A small corral of stacked tree limbs holds in a half a dozen horses, largely draft animals. There are, bizarrely, three cows. John can’t imagine how anyone managed to bring cows through the Sea of Trees while the Daein army was trampling through it, but that’s Crimeans. The chickens make a bit more sense. The cats-actual cats, not laguz cats-are hardly a surprise.
The surprise is the hug from behind that lifts him off his feet, hauling him up into the air kicking and cursing. “Bill, you wanker!” He hits his heels against metal greaves.
Bill laughs and drops him, and they swear at each other to their hearts’ content. John goes for a second hug, a real one, and there’s a bit of a tussle in which John’s lower centre of gravity keeps his feet on the ground. They slap each other’s backs, percussive thumps of the hand against cloth and metal.
“You need to stop this nearly dying thing,” Bill tells him. “It’s getting difficult to keep track of.”
“Sorry for the inconvenience.”
“You’d better be.”
“Oh, I promise I am,” John assures him. “Where’s Mike?”
Mike is bustling about inside the largest tent, a structure larger than some cottages, or even some cottages put together. It’s an impromptu hospital, no mistake about it. Upon seeing John, he makes a frantic noise, arms full of folded linens, and keeps making it until he shoves the linens off onto Bill. Rather than hugging, there is a good deal of confused gaping and excited gesturing. John laughs and goes in for the hug on his own, and Mike seems a bit calmer for John’s solidity.
“Did you get lost coming out too, then?” Mike asks. “We barely got out ourselves without our human compass.”
John frowns. “Sorry?”
Mike and Bill’s faces fall in unison.
“I thought you knew,” Mike says.
“The Daein army took him, John,” Bill explains.
“Oh, that,” John says. “No, I... I know that. I was there. We... That’s a surprisingly long story, come to think of it.”
“He’s alive?” Mike asks.
John nods.
“Huh,” says Bill with a complete lack of relief.
“Hold on, I’ll get Molly,” Mike says. “She’ll want to hear this.”
The hug from Molly is as quick as it is unexpected. She pulls back almost immediately and looks over John’s shoulder as if expecting Sherlock to appear behind him.
“He’s fine,” John tells her. “Hell of a trip, so he’s resting.”
“In camp?” Molly asks.
“Different camp,” John says.
Molly frowns. “But this is the only Crimean camp.”
John’s stomach makes an abrupt twist. “We were rescued by the Gallian army.”
Molly goes pale. “Are you sure he’s safe?”
“Molly,” Bill chides.
“Lestrade’s a good commander,” John says. “Sherlock’s under his protection. He’ll be fine.” As long as he stops tugging tails.
“That’s good to hear,” Mike says.
“Right, now tell us the rest of it,” Bill adds.
The story is short enough in the telling to make the experience feel like a lifetime in comparison. John details his flight from the Daein-occupied fort, but, beyond Mrs Hudson, mentions no other bird laguz. He refers to Sherlock by name and nothing else.
“Hell of a thing,” Bill says when John finishes. “We only had to walk out of the woods. Only took a few days.”
Molly shudders. Bit more than just a walk, it seems.
“More importantly,” Mike says, “have you heard about the princess? She’s real!”
“Born after Duke Renning was named heir to the throne, by the sound of it,” Bill adds. “That’s the excuse they’ve sent out for no one knowing about her. But King Gallia says she’s the real thing, and I don’t think the old lion would have a reason to lie.”
“Is she still in Gallia?” John asks.
“Nope,” Bill says. “The laguz managed to slip her and her escort back up north to a Crimean port. She’s sailing to Begnion for aid. By the sound of it, Daein closed off the port immediately after. But there is a way to follow. King Gallia has promised to send any beorc volunteers to Begnion through a secret way. We’ll have to be blindfolded for part of it, but we don’t have to sit and wait the war out.”
“Oh,” John says.
“If you want a break from fighting, you could still go,” Mike adds. “There’s sure to be a temple that would take us on. And Harry might be there, somewhere.”
Or she might not be. But what if she is?
“I’ll need to think about that,” John hears himself say. “Bit tired, don’t want to rush into anything. Already had a battle and a siege this month.”
“That’s fair,” Bill says, obviously confident of John’s decision.
“It’d be nice to be back in human civilisation,” Molly adds.
Where they frame and slaughter the defenceless, John doesn’t say. He hums instead and asks Mike if there’s anything around the impromptu hospital he can help with. A few hours pass that way, Bill and Molly wander off, and then John startles Mike with his farewells.
“Where are you going?” Mike asks, absolutely befuddled.
“Sherlock,” John explains with a shrug. “I told him I’d be back tonight.” A lie, but it’s only a little lie. Assuming he’d return, John had made no promises.
“He’s that close by?”
“Might be by now, yeah.”
“And... how are you getting to him?”
“I’ve a guide,” John says. “Should do, if she hasn’t left.”
“Laguz?”
“Yeah.”
Mike looks at him, at the sword at once so light and heavy upon his hip. “You look like a soldier again.”
“Feel a bit like one, too,” John agrees.
“So you’ll be keeping with Bill, then?” Mike asks. “Molly wants to find a new teacher, and I’d thought I’d go with her. Not that we wouldn’t love to have you along.”
“I don’t know,” John says. “Maybe.”
Mike laughs a little. “Now that’s a lie. You’ve already made up your mind, haven’t you?”
“Yeah,” John says. “You’re right. I have.”
“Thought as much,” Mike says.
“When does the camp move?”
“Not too long now. I’m not sure.”
“And some are staying?” John asks.
“The sick and the frightened, mostly. There’s a few who want to settle down, but the soil’s all wrong for ploughing. And it’s hardly our land, is it?”
“Everyone who can fight is leaving?”
“I hope so!” Mike says with something of a laugh.
John nods. “Right.” That’s him decided. Really decided. They’ll never need him in Begnion as much as they need him here. “I’ll be back to say goodbye before you lot move out.”
Mike blinks a bit.
“I’d better tell Bill, too.”
“What do you mean?” Mike asks.
John explains.
Mike argues.
John doesn’t budge.
Mike gets Bill.
Bill understands.
Very gradually, eternally concerned, Mike gives ground.
They make fresh goodbyes, but Bill walks out with him anyway. When John can’t find Donovan, he nearly groans and walks back to the Crimean camp. Bill stops him, pointing upward, and the cat stretches a bit before jumping down from the tree and rising on two feet.
“Is he with you?” Donovan asks.
“No,” John says.
“Yes,” Bill says. “I’ve trained with Gallian soldiers before, enough to know what I’m doing.”
“What, really?” John asks.
Bill cuffs his shoulder.
“No, I believe you know what you’re doing. But I... You’re coming? Staying, I mean.”
“Sounds like we’ve a pair of matching horses now,” Bill says. “Be a shame to deny my charger a friend. I’ll stay with Mike and Molly until they’re off, if you don’t mind.”
“Not in the least.”
“Good,” Bill says. This last hug sets a record. Three times in a day must exceed some sort of limit. Before pulling away, Bill whispers into John’s ear a single-worded question: “Birdman?”
John pulls back and meets Bill’s guileless gaze. John nods.
“He wasn’t exactly subtle,” Bill says. “Honestly, the night vision was a dead giveaway. And the internal compass wasn’t half a clue either.”
“Are you coming or not?” Donovan interrupts.
“Coming,” John says. “Sorry.” He lifts a hand in parting, and Bill does the same.
“See you soon, mate.”
“You too.”
John finds Sherlock brushing down the horse. They’ve taken to each other well, man and horse. John wonders if the wind feels different on horseback than it does on wing. He doesn’t ask.
“Well?” Sherlock demands, voice harsh, back turned.
“Bill’s staying too.”
Sherlock jerks around, head whipping over his shoulder. “What?”
“Bill’s staying too,” John repeats.
Sherlock’s eyes search his face, flicking across all of John’s features in the quest for some elusive answer.
“Bill knows about you,” John says.
Sherlock rolls his eyes. “Obviously.”
Brilliant, another thing Sherlock had failed to mention. “Then what’s the problem?”
“Nothing.”
“No, really.”
“Nothing,” Sherlock insists, turning back to the horse.
John takes the brush out of his hand and takes over.
Sherlock wanders off in a sulk, but he does wander back. “Here,” he says and thrusts out a pewter mug filled with something that could be soup or vomit. When everything around John’s mount smells like the horse, it’s difficult to tell.
John takes the mug and sniffs it from up close. Soup. Possibly vomited soup, but soup. “Cheers,” he says, then takes the first sip. Tastes like potatoes and squirrel meat. Possibly rabbit.
“Is there a reason you’re not following your future queen? You’re a loyal man, John.”
“Yeah,” John says.
Sherlock waits.
John drinks his soup.
“And?” Sherlock prompts.
John drains the mug and presses it back into Sherlock’s hands. “Thanks,” he says.
Sherlock looks away, discomfort and pleasure plain across his features. He clears his throat and murmurs, soft and sure, “You’re welcome.”
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