Well, it's been a long time since I posted anything on FanFiction. Eight years, since I began, and what an eight years it has been! I now have a lovely baby boy who is taking up a lot of my time, so I can't promise to update quite as often as I might like, but I will do my very best for you... I'm excited to be writing again! I would like to dedicate this fic to another good friend of mine, Andi Horton, who has not had the easiest start to the year. Hoping this does at least a little to cheer her up, and that the rest of you enjoy it too.
Chapter One - Peter
He was used to rising with the dawn, but this far North, the dawn came on far earlier than Peter would have liked. The watchmen had barely sounded the fourth hour of the morning when the cold, tendrils of light started to permeate the thin walls of his tent. Lord Darnan often advised him to line the walls with thicker furs, so that it might keep the light out, but Peter would not hear of it. The Giants of Ettinsmoor lived by no clock other than the sun, and if his enemy was awake and abroad, he must be, too.
Unwillingly, he dragged himself out of his low cot, beginning his morning stretches. The chill had managed to seep into him overnight, despite the soft, thick boots and fur-lined skins he had had to take to wearing underneath the mountainous bedclothes, making his limbs stiff. It was a ruinous cold; almost as bad as that he remembered when he had first come to Narnia, and the country was still under the thrall of the Witch. It made one's body rigid and awkward; made men clumsy with their swords because their fingers had frozen to the hilts. In addition, his body was aching with bruises and minor wounds from skirmishes with the giants. As Edmund had predicted, what had been intended to be peaceful mission of diplomacy was not working out as such. There had already been several violent encounters with the wild hordes of Harfang, and this was before he had even made it to the settlement to talk with their King. But, perhaps that was as well. Battle came far more easily to Peter than sitting around a counsel table. He was not the diplomat of the family – a fact he readily acknowledged – and, had it been a truly vital peacekeeping mission, Edmund himself would have been the one to come. The Kings and Queens of Narnia all had their strengths, and they played to them, though Peter doubted that even his brother's silver tongue could have gotten through to those grunting great hulks of muscle and hair. However, his brother was taken up with the far more important task of accompanying their sister South, to visit Rabadash of Calormen, so the task fell to him.
Ordinarily, he would not have resented it, but if he was honest with himself, there was no real reason for him to be here. The giants were occasionally a trouble to their Northern borders, it was true, but most of the Narnians who had tried to settle this far up the country had soon thought better of it and come back down South, where there were no dragons or giants to worry about, and the climate was less reminiscent of the dark days under the Witch. Now that he was here, it did seem a little foolish to have marched his men all this way to try to reason with a people who could not be reasoned with, and all for the sake of a strip of barren, almost wholly-abandoned Narnian soil.
He could tell that his Generals were starting to think the same, though they were all far too loyal to say so. Knowing he had led them on a fool's errand made Peter feel all the more irritable as he stripped off his shirt and broke the ice on the bowl of water his valet, Bors, had left out for him. Hissing, he quickly washed his face, neck, and under his arms, trying not to shiver. As he dried off on a scrap of towel, and shrugged his tunic on over his head, he looked up and found himself staring at his own reflection in the gilded mirror which was hung on the tent wall over his basin. Of all the trappings it seemed a King must travel with, even on the battlefield, a mirror seemed to Peter by far the most nonsensical. Though he maintained discipline, and forced himself to wash every day in icy water, both before and after practice, he had no time to be fussing over his appearance. Edmund would have said that it was important to look one's best when meeting foreign dignitaries, but the only dignitaries Peter met most of the time were more likely to take an interest in whether they could thrust their swords through the tiny gap between his helmet and gorget than whether the hair underneath had been brushed. And besides – seeing his reflection always made him think of home. How could it not, when he could see all three of his siblings, staring him in the face? There was Lucy's nose – his own slightly larger, but still the same profile; his eyes so similar in shape to Edmund's, though his own were bluish-green, while his brother's were almost black. And Susan's lips; the lips that he had last seen smiling from the deck of the Splendour Hyaline as she sailed off to visit the man she would likely marry; the man who, while he would come to live with them in Narnia, and take up a place as a royal consort of Cair Paravel, would take her away from them, as surely as anything.
That was why he was really here, wasn't it? Because he couldn't bring himself to face the idea that their time together, just the four of them, was coming to an end. Susan had wanted him to go with her to Calormen, on the trip that Edmund had joked would likely be her last maiden voyage. She had said she would feel much happier if he would be there, tohelp her make her decision. But, as far as Peter could see, the decision had already been made. He'd noticed Susan looking at Rabadash with that glowing admiration in her eyes – a look that she had only ever previously reserved for him. He had seen how his sister had clapped and looked thrilled during the celebratory tournament, when he had, against all instinct, followed Edmund's advice to throw a match and allow Rabadash to beat him at least once. Ordinarily, all of her concern and her support would have been for him, but now, Rabadash was the one wearing Susan's favour, and the only person who had cheered and whooped for him was Lucy.
Lucy, of course, had taken against Rabadash almost as strongly as Peter had, himself, although, as was always the way, she was far worse at concealing her feelings. By the end of the visit, she had been scowling so openly any time Rabadash's name was mentioned that Susan could not conceal her distress. Edmund had told her that if she couldn't keep her face from glowering, she ought to take it elsewhere. By contrast, nobody knew, or could even guess at the vitriol which seethed in Peter's heart when he thought of the Calormene Prince. He had been very careful of that. He had smiled and clapped magnanimously as his foe had stepped up to the podium to accept his prize at the tourney; he had made much of the beautiful stallion Rabadash had brought over for him - only one of the many fine gifts with which Rabadash had sought to weasel his way into Susan's affections. He had shaken the man's hand when he arrived, and clapped his shoulder when he left. No, nobody could ever criticise Peter's manners. But the dislike that rose up in him when he thought of that slimy, seven-faced princeling coming into their midst and upsetting everything they had built together almost took his breath away.
He had known he could not be trusted to go to Calormen. The visit from the Calormene delegation had almost finished him. So, he had done what he had never done before, and refused one of his siblings a request that was in his power to grant. Before he knew what he was doing, he had found himself telling Susan how urgent the issue of the giants had become, and how it really needed his personal attention. Besides, he had added, wanting to quell the look of disappointment on her face – she needed their best diplomat by her side, and that was Edmund, not him. Yes, Edmund would do a much better job of making sure the visit went well, and that the marriage contract went as much as possible in Narnia's favour. She would be much better off with their brother. All he, Peter, was good for was bashing a few giants into line. And Edmund would take care of her. Lucy could stay at Cair Paravel, and keep everything ticking over, and he would see her when she came back, flush with triumph, and ready to start planning her wedding. She had balked a little at that, going pink, and assuring him that the matter was far from decided. But he knew, and that smile and those cheerful words had cost him.
It had not been easy to muster the troops and march away to the North, knowing that Susan and Edmund would be going South to Rabadash the day after, but he had done it. His Generals were too faithful to question him, and while Edmund ordinarily would have called him out on the bluff about the giants, for some reason, this time, he didn't. He just let Peter go.
Now he was here, shivering as he pulled on his practice armour, going out to meet Bors in the cold, white dawn, for a practice session before another long and pointless day. They would spend the daylight hours scouting the landscape for signs of dragons, and inching their camp just a little closer to Harfang. He had exiled himself here, out of sheer pig-headedness, and rendered himself helpless to do anything to prevent the true crisis taking place a thousand leagues to the South. It was enough to make him hope that they stumbled upon a whole horde of rogue giants – aggressive ones who would give them no choice but to engage– anything to give him an outlet for the strange, irritable tension which flooded his body. A pointless battle seemed very apt. Always, before now, when he had ridden out to war, he knew there was a home to go to. Even when he had started to take Edmund and Lucy with him, there had still been Susan, waiting faithfully to welcome him back. She was home; had come to symbolise it, in his mind. Thinking of her, back at Cair Paravel, keeping daily life going had given purpose to the work he had to do. Every step felt lighter, every wound hurt less, when he had known he was fighting to protect the tender, and the innocent. Knowing his Gentle Queen was there keeping hearth and home together, raising the morale of their people, and always with something roasting on the spit, always with a hot bath a moment away from being drawn the instant she saw his banners on the horizon, had made home a very sweet prospect indeed.
Now, she was gone away, to tend to another man, and another country, and he could not get used to the feeling, even though he supposed he had always known this day would come. Suits had started coming for Susan mere days after their coronation, and they had kept on coming, thick and fast, ever since. Now, they had even started coming for Lucy, though at sixteen, she still seemed like a child to him. He would crumple them up in his fireplace without letting anyone know they had arrived. He knew that Lu was starting to wonder if the world considered her ugly, or mannish, because she rode out to war, and delighted in fighting and sports, but he couldn't bring himself to tell her the truth. Nobody else knew about the letters, and he didn't feel guilty in hiding them. In fact, he wished he had had the presence of mind to do the same when the first proposal came for Susan. They had been so young and green back then, though, that the thought had not even occurred to him. At the start of their reign, everything had been a puzzle, and it was easier back then to ask the others for help. He had called Susan to his study and the two of them had stared at that first letter, neither knowing quite what to say. The King of the Seven Isles wanted Susan to consider his second son as a potential husband. She had been sixteen years old. Not knowing what else to do, and wanting to be polite, they had invited the Prince to visit them, but the Prince himself evidently did not deem it necessary to return their courtesy. He had made his opposition to the match quite plain. In fact, the visit had been such an unmitigated disaster that he had hoped that might be an end to the whole thing. Susan had certainly never taken another suit seriously, since her humiliation at Prince Erech's hands. Until now.
What was it about this Rabadash that made him different? Was it his flowery compliments? The poetry? The constant, unending gifts? He had never thought his sister to be shallow, but he could not understand what else she could possibly see in the man. He supposed Rabadash might have been considered handsome, but he was also smarmy and unctuous. His every word had a double meaning, which Susan, who had never been a scholar, often failed to discern. He was... he was slimy, that was the only word for it. Lucy was right, even though Peter could never be seen to agree with her. No, he had to be polite, didn't he? Because Rabadash never put a foot wrong, there. That was really the worst of the blackguard – the Calormene Prince was such an expert with words and politesse that there was never anything one could openly object to. Peter was trained to search for the chink, that little weakness in a man's armour, yet during Rabadash's brief visit, he had been unable to find it – the small thing, the excuse that would have allowed him to reject the suit on his sister's behalf. There had been nothing he could do. So, likely, Susan would be wooed, and would marry, and Peter would have to learn to manage with a snake making itself at home in his own cosy little nest. He would have to get used to coming home from battle to find Rabadash there, lounging on Susan's couch, helping himself to her rose-flavoured candies, getting in the way. He would have to learn to love the man's children. He would have to accept that heirs to the four thrones of Narnia would be half Calormene. And, more than any of that, he would have to get used to sharing his sister with a man who wasn't half worthy of her.
Gaining the practice ring at last, Peter nodded stiffly to Bors who offered his sword without a word. Pulling the blade free from the scabbard, he listened with some satisfaction as the metal rang in the frigid air, and tilted his head from side to side, stretching out the muscles. His body servant did not keep him waiting long. Their swords clashed, and their breath blew white as they began to spar. Here, at last, was some respite from thinking, and Peter was grateful for it.