Call Down the Rain
Disclaimer: I do not own Fire Emblem or any of its characters.
Warning: Contains battle scenes, character death, some mildly bad language.
***
Macedon is dying. Red waters lap against beaches strewn with death-- shells, bones, and skeins of weeds, all turned colorless beneath the sun. The plateau above the beach is but dry dust bound together by a netting of desiccated roots. Even the great forests of Macedon suffer; the trees are failing where they stand, their upper branches patched with brown decay. This deep into winter, two moons past the turning of the sun, the mountains should be touched with a soft and pale green, and fragile flowers should bloom in every crevice of rock. The beach should be alive with flocks of birds, white and black and steel-gray, and not encrusted with the metallic gleam of carrion flies. It is a judgment upon a tyrant and a usurper; the soul of the king is bound to the land, and Michalis through his crimes has damned not only himself but all his domain.
For six seasons now, the rains have not swept in during the waning days of autumn. First it could be tolerated as simply one more misfortune to fall on Macedon-- just another bad year, followed by another, followed by a third. In this seventh year of King Michalis, the curse upon the land is evident to all but the most deluded, to all but those who still believe that the Dragon King is the only guarantor of Macedon's future. As Catria runs her fingers through the dust of her homeland, she sees a land that has no future. The red sun she glimpses briefly over the sea at dawn is no star of hope, and it soon disappears into the clouds that hover over Macedon. The clouds are as dark as the smoke of a burning village, smoke tainted by pitch and the fat of the dead. Catria has seen these skies before, seen these clouds swollen with a promise of rain that never falls.
All this day promises is death. The Macedonian forces, a mixture of cavalry and the famed Dragoons of the Air, are given the chance to stand aside. A herald of the League is sent to enemy lines with a message whose terms are clear: disperse and we will not chase you, join us and we will welcome you, choose to battle with us and we can offer no mercy. The first two options are rejected decisively; Macedon has chosen battle, and the League acts swiftly to choose the hour. Dry branches crack as the forests erupt; ballista bolts sing through the air, while dragons and pegasi burst through the canopy of trees. Catria follows her elder sister into the skies, and their youngest sister follows in turn. To the north, she sees silhouettes against the clouds, the shapes of Macedonian dragonknights answering the call to battle.
An ordinary pegasus knight would never dare to face the Dragoons of the Air, but Catria knows herself as the finest pegasus knight in these skies. More than that, the core of her being is the granite core of Macedon itself. She is born of Macedon, trained in Macedon, and she now fights for Macedon, even as other Macedonians die on her lance. Her devotion to this parched land is greater than the Dragoons' faith in King Michalis. Her pegasus Deino, linked to Catria by that ineffable bond that joins the pegasus to its rider, responds with equal fervor, and Deino spins and dives and loops around the larger and less agile war-dragons of the Macedonian forces. They dance just out of the Dragoons' reach as Catria deals out death with her javelin, an unassuming weapon only worth the skill of its user. She strikes for the League and the prince who leads it, for Macedon and the princess who would have lifted it out of these dust-strewn days of false glory and into a future of peace and stability. She strikes for herself and her sisters. They have gambled everything on this campaign; Palla, Catria, and Est swore their lives over to their beloved commander, and Princess Minerva in turn placed her trust in the Prince of Altea. With Minerva gone, the three sisters fulfill their vows by serving Prince Marth as they served their own commander. Catria has not forgotten, will never forget, the final words of her princess: "Marth... save Macedon."
Save Macedon from its king, save Macedon from itself. Save Macedon from the very indifference of heaven. These are no high and empty words about vanquishing all evil; this is the basic imperative of their being. They must somehow restore life to this spurned land that cannot lift itself from its damnation. And so when Catria leans in against Deino's neck, digs in her spurs and sends them both spiraling down, all of this and more guides her hand. Every drop of blood she sends to darken the soil of Macedon is for them.
*
Catria, so close to the clouds, likely feels the change before any other; a single drop of water strikes her on the nose. She looks up into the swirling clouds and another drop lands on her cheek, then another on the back of her hand. Raindrops soon ping against her armor, and water beads up in Deino's mane and trickles through Catria's own hair. This initial spatter is their only warning before the skies above her open in a cold torrent.
The black clouds over Macedon now yield seven years' worth of rain in a matter of hours. Water flows at first in rivulets along the surface of the dust, then mingles with the dust to turn the plateau into a morass. Horses founder in the mire, the artillery cannot move forward, and the soldiers become confused, mistaking friend for enemy as all bright colors vanish beneath a coating of pale mud. Catria sees the confusion from her vantage point in the air; she darts in to rescue one comrade from danger at the hands of an ally, then rushes to save another from an enemy mage who has crept in too close to the League's main force. She has the advantage of clear vision and speed, but those advantages fade beneath the unceasing fall of water. Deino struggles, and they can no longer outperform the Air Dragoons. Rain does not penetrate a dragon's scales, and dragon wings are not weighed by the water the way the feathers of a pegasus are burdened. Catria looks up to see Palla flying with ease against the clouds, her lance poised to bring down another opponent, and Catria regrets her own limitation. Catria might be the finest pegasus knight alive, but there are greater things to aspire to, should she survive this day.
Even a dragonknight is not immune to lightning. Great bolts sear the skies to the north, followed by deafening claps of thunder, and it almost seems the gods mock the fizzling displays of the mages. The aerial battle falls apart now, as fliers of both sides scatter to save their own lives. Catria brings down one last Dragoon, snapping her javelin in the process, and flies for the cover of the trees. There, Catria waits until the center of the storm passes over them and the lightning and thunderclaps no longer hit in the same instant. The pause comes at an opportune time, she thinks, as it allows Deino some time to recover. After she can count three seconds in between the light and the thunder, she arms herself with a spare lance and she and Deino sail forth again. The first dragonknight she sees, to her delight, wears emerald-green armor instead of Macedonian red.
"Ah, Catria. Good to see you." Palla, ever the soldier, almost fully conceals her relief at seeing her sister alive and whole.
"I could say the same, Captain." She holds her position, waiting for her sister to direct her next move.
"The battle appears to be ours. Sweep the field for any remnants of the enemy," Palla orders her. "Give what aid you can to our survivors. I will search for Est."
"Aye, Captain." Straightforward orders, nothing out of the usual. After battle, the knights of the air must race against the scavenger birds to find their companions.
*
Deino shakes the water from her wings, and they set off again through the rain. Soldiers, horses, war-dragons all lie below, sunken in a sea of mud. An artilleryman, so coated in filth that Catria cannot tell which he is, drags his ballista toward the camp; he is using his precious weapon to haul the dead. He does not look up as Catria goes past him, and she sees him wipe yet more mud from his eyes, lower his head against the rain, and strain forward like an ox with a plough. The dead girl in his makeshift cart is identifiable only by her streaming hair. Catria registers the death on that mental ledger that holds too many names already and continues her course northeast. A few hundred yards away, two bowmen, known to her by their quivers, are struggling to pull a cavalier free from the remains of his mount. Catria is low enough that she can see the slain man's face; the shock of recognition causes her to snap the reins without thinking, and Deino carries her up and away. Seconds pass before she regains even some of her wits, enough time to cause her own death were battle still raging. Her mind has gone nearly blank, and she thinks only that she must dive back down and help. Before she can pass that intention to Deino, Catria takes control of herself again as her training overrides the wayward impulses of the heart. The fallen knight is neither an enemy nor a survivor; to go down to him would be outside her orders.
Catria continues her lonely circuit; the battlefield seems so quiet now, without the clang of metal on metal, without the scream of wounded dragons or the crackle of unholy fire. Even the the thunder and lighting have ceased for the time being as the storm's center drifts to sea. Below her the men are beginning to emerge from their shells of mud. A suit of armor, brown below the waist yet green above, moves at half-speed, weighed down by the smaller person borne awkwardly in its arms. A foot-soldier in azure raises his banner to the heavens in defiance of the rain. Another pegasus knight, wearing armor pink as cherry-blossom, surfaces briefly above the treetops, then disappears again. It should be Catria's duty as a sister to fly to Est and see that she is well, but the duty of a knight holds her fast. Est lives and flies free, and so is not Catria's concern.
The strange quiet falls apart once more as great limbs, rotted through their cores, crash down from the towering trees. The tumult of men has ceased for the moment but the unrestrained forces of nature rush in to fill the void of silence. Fresh bolts of lightning scour the sky. Rain-choked gullies spill their muddy contents down the cliffs, and brown water mixes with the red tide to turn the seas the color of old blood. Boulders suspended for eons in the cliff walls are dislodged by the flood and tumble onto the beach. Catria sees all this and more, sees the horror of this particular battle set in perspective against the agonies of the tormented land. She accepts the knowledge without finding comfort in it; she is growing tired. Deino flies lower, flies more slowly, with each circuit, as her waterlogged wings can carry them no higher, no faster.
The air is chilly-- this is after all the nadir of winter-- but Catria's fingers still feel, her legs are still secure in the saddle. She is numb on the inside; her mind feels nearly blank, and her heart seems to beat at half its normal rate. She and Deino have become like insects trapped in a pool of resin, beating at air that thickens around them until they are held in a still and silent prison, clear as glass and hard as any stone.
From within this crystalline prison Catria sees a puddle of blue, like a fallen fragment of sky, just south of the fortification where the Macedonian cavalry made its final stand. She does not think, as it seems she cannot think, but she guides Deino into a slow descent with motions that seem beyond her own conscious control. She brings Deino down a short distance away, and approaches with lance at the ready in case any of the men scattered about are not quite dead. None stir, and as Catria creeps closer to the fortification, she finds the corpse of a paladin blocking her path. A rapier protrudes at an angle from his gut; its bell-guard overflows with water, and beads of rain travel the exposed length of the blade to trickle down upon the impaled man. She knows this man; he cut a noble figure in life, with a domed forehead and stately mane of gray hair. In death, he belongs to the mud. Catria ignores him, for a few paces away is the owner of that rapier.
He lies supine, his cloak twisted beneath him as though he fell on his side and then rolled to face the sky. He makes a splash of color against the ground, and it appears the mud cannot touch him, though more likely the rain has simply washed it away. Rain plashes against his face, which seems to her as pale as the empty shells that litter Macedon's shores. In the gloom and the wet, his hair almost appears black, and the stains through his tunic are nearly black as well.
Her first impulse is to retrieve the rapier, but she cannot treat him as she would an ordinary soldier; the man must come before his weapon, however dear that weapon. Catria goes to him, thrusts her lance into the mud to mark the spot where he fell, and drops to her knees alongside him. She strips off her gloves and presses her fingers to his throat; life still pulses faintly there, and she shakes him gently and calls out to him. When his title fails to rouse him she resorts to his name alone. She sees his eyelashes flicker, sees his head turn a fraction.
"Damn...." An exhalation of despair. The sound of his voice somehow ruptures the glassy sphere around her, and suddenly Catria is thinking, feeling, moving as though her own life depends on her actions. Sluggish rain-soaked Catria becomes a soldier once more, a soldier who knows that battle doesn't truly end when the last enemy is taken. She is nimble and efficient, collected and resourceful, and she has a delicate task in her hands. She is no healer and her supplies are low, but she does what she can, measuring out each drop of vulnerary for best effect while murmuring apologies for the stinging pain her treatments must cause. When she is done, Catria finds the prince regarding her with the calm of that dreamlike state that sometimes accompanies complete exhaustion.
"Catria... you come from a harsh land."
The observation raises a smile in her. But it is not for her to reply in kind; she must give him her report.
"We have the field. It is a good day, my lord."
"A good day?" She can see the gray clouds reflected in his eyes. "Good for the crows... and the vultures."
She places her hand over one of his; his fingers are chilled and unresponsive. A mage could summon the warmth of fire, a cleric could send healing energy flowing into his still hand, but Catria can do nothing but share the meager warmth of her own rain-slick palm. She cannot lift him, and even if she could her poor exhausted Deino could not bear the both of them, so she must simply remain with him until some other finds them both. Then again, she must somehow communicate to him, even in this low moment, the magnitude of what has already been done. She scoops up a little of the sodden earth, places it in his palm, and gently forces his fingers to close around it.
"A blessed day. You have brought the rain to Macedon."
It looks for a moment as though he might smile at her, but he abandons the attempt halfway. A few seconds pass, then his eyes close. The rain continues to fall on them both, making a sharp sound against metal, a dull sound against cloth. The sound of raindrops on mortal flesh lies somewhere in between. Catria's hand is fast over his, and the conquered soil streams from their fingers.
Catria tips back her head and gazes up into the rain. Water flows down her face-- into her eyes, between her lips, down her neck to fill the hollow of her throat. It is beautiful.
* The End *
[Author's Notes: It's Catria and Marth, but not really Catria/Marth. More like Catria/Macedon. This wasn't dumped under Romance for a reason. It also wasn't filed under Tragedy for a reason. The germ of this was a scene from my WIP "Interregnum" that just didn't fit the overall story. I took the Catria-flashback and reworked it into a standalone. For those of you who worry over such things, the dead cavalier was Catria's Support Bonus Buddy-- Cain or Frey, depending on the reader's preference. Same thing with Draug and his Little Archer Buddy. As for the long-haired dead girl, Caeda haters can pretend that it's Caeda, but it's really Linde. I left the death list vague so it wouldn't distract from the basic thrust of the story.
Many thanks to El Nino1 for the constructive feedback!]