The last time Peter had been this cold, the winter had been enchanted to last forever, and not even the giants dared to cross their borders. Something about snow when there ought to be grass, and barren trees when they ought to have been baring fruit and flowers put them off. It would have discouraged Peter too, if he had known any better.
Now that winter only occurred when winter ought to occur, and had for several years in a row, the giants thought Narnia a better place than the mountains they came from to raise their families. Maybe it was warmer in the winter and there was more food, or maybe they didn't even know that they had, as a whole, been slowly migrating south the entire winter, but either way, the giants had to go. Marshwiggles make good food for giant kind, and the one or two who had thought they would even make it to Cair Paravel to inform their Kings and Queens of the new predators venturing out of the mountains to snack on their families, well they were sure that if they, Lion willing, made it home in one piece there would be no home to return to, all the other marshwiggles eaten up before anything could be done.
Peter attempted to assure them that they would return home safely, and that he, Peter, the High King of Narnia himself, would go to help protect the marshes and to push the giants back into giant country. The marshwiggles, sodden creatures that they were, just sighed and thanked Peter for his concern, but told him that there was no use coming up just get eaten himself.
Edmund wondered, after the marshwiggles left, whether they shouldn't just let the giants have them, and deal with the consequences later, yet, when the time came to traipse through the snowy mountains with fifty good men to shove the giants out of Narnia and to discourage any further attempts to eat Narnians for dinner, Edmund was right by Peter's side, grumbling about the wind and the snow the whole way.
"The next time, Peter," Edmund complains, slipping a little on a patch of ice. "The next time you decide to hike through the mountains in the dead of winter, you can bloody well leave me at home." He stumbles again, landing on his knees in the snow. "Lion's mane," he swears. Peter sighs, stops, and gives Edmund a hand up.
"You volunteered, Ed," Peter reminds him.
Edmund gives a noncommittal grunt. "Then next time," Edmund continues. "Say, 'Edmund, you hate snow, the mountains, and marshwiggles. You should stay at home with the girls."
"You don't hate marshwiggles," Peter says with a sigh brushing the snow off his gloves. His fingers ache from the cold and he stuffs his hands in his armpits.
"Yeah, well, they exhaust me," Edmund groans. He's completely soaked from his tumble in the snow, his cheeks are bright red, and Peter thinks, though he can't be sure, that his lips are starting to turn blue. "So just next time…" Edmund's voice trails off in the wind and Peter sighs.
"I'll try to remember that," he says. He's exhausted, but he looks back again at Edmund, a couple of steps behind him, and he can see that, even though he's miserable –soaked to the bone, cold, tired of walking all day –there's a hint of a smile on his blue lips, and Peter can't help but smiling too.
Although, the color that Edmund is turning is slightly alarming and the sun is a nasty reddish color very low on the horizon. It looks, from here, like the peaks of the trees of the Western Woods are on fire. "We'll stop soon, Ed," Peter promises.
Almost as soon as Peter says it, the whole army hears it, and there's a sigh of relief. Oreius trots up to Peter, with a great amount of difficulty; his hooves and his size weren't meant for snowy mountains.
"Your Majesty," he says. "We heard you plan to stop for the night."
"As soon as we can find a place to stay dry, Oreius, I promise," Peter says, laughing at Oreius's roughness marred by the hope of finding a place to sleep.
"And a place to warm ourselves, I hope," he adds. Peter nods, and Oreius bows, but he doesn't leave them, mostly because, as they climb the mountain, there's no place for him to go.
The sun keeps sinking and they keep climbing. The temperature drops and the snow starts falling harder, and Edmund's grumbling becomes more earnest.
Peter's almost given up hope to find someplace dry to sleep and Edmund's whisper, "Peter, I'm too cold," is very, very quiet, and without any of the chipper chiding from earlier.
"Okay," he says, and slows his pace to walk shoulder to shoulder with his brother. He brushes up against him. "Soon, Ed, I promise. We'll build a fire, and get some dinner and go to sleep, sound good?" Edmund nods. Edmund, Peter reminds himself, is just fourteen, the same age Peter was when they came to Narnia, and Edmund, whose always hated the cold and has hated it even more since they came to Narnia, has walked further in the two days they've been out than Peter could have walked in a whole week at that age. Edmund is usually so grown up –at least as grown up as Peter –that sometimes, it's easy to forget that he isn't.
Peter looks behind him and sees the Narnians trudging dutifully along, but they too are soaking wet and shivering and Peter can't think of anything to do but pray that they find someplace to camp soon, so that instead of fifty good men, he doesn't end up with fifty tired deserters and one weary little brother who didn't seem overly interested in negotiating with giants in the first place.
"Aslan, please," he begs under his brother as he struggles forward with the rest of his soldiers.
It seems that no sooner does he say it, does he spot a cliff that overhangs the mountain a little ways in front of him. It's high enough to accommodate the tallest of them, and deep enough that it's practically a cave. At least deep enough to shelter the Narnians from the wind and the snow for a few hours. A ripple of relief flows through the group, and Peter and Edmund collapse once they're out of the snow.
The next morning is bright, clear, and mercifully warm. Oreius stands at the edge of their shelter, squinting into the rising sun. He leaves hoof prints in the fine layer of snow when he lifts up his feet. He does not so much as look over when he hears Peter rise and come to stand next to him.
"Did you sleep easy, General?" Peter asks, turning his back to the sun, watching over his army. Oreius grunts in response, but his gruffness makes Peter smile. "I believe that Aslan will make the rest of the journey much easier for us," he continues.
"Yes, Your Majesty," Oreius agrees. "It's not much further to go now, until we come to giant country." Oreius's voice is heavy and calm, and he turns at last to look Peter in the face. "Are you ready to face them, my King?" His eyes glint in the sunlight, and Peter sees the same ferocity in his face as when he first met him –ready, and a little bit hungry, to lay down his life for Narnia, for her King, and for Aslan.
"I've come to negotiate with giants, Oreius," Peter reminds him. "You and Ed have come to fight them."
Oreius smiles wider and he laughs. "Giants, even the rational ones, do not negotiate, my Lord. We just want to be prepared, nothing more."
Peter laughs a little, too, and then, he and Oreius go about readying the rest of the Narnians for the march ahead of them.
It's comfortably warm by the time they're on the move again, and Peter and Edmund take the lead. It's a bit longer than Peter had anticipated, but they are close enough by nightfall that marshwiggles receive them, very kindly in their way, and Peter speaks to the leader of all of them, though she wouldn't call herself much of a leader, and she'll probably be eaten by the giants before she can do much in the way of leading.
And if she's not eaten, she's sure that something else horrific shall happen, but, she tells Peter with a grimace, it won't stop her from trying.
"On the topic of leaders, do the giants seem to have one?" Peter asks her.
She smiles, like she's been told a really bad joke. Peter can't be sure whether or not he's ever seen one of her kind smile before, thin lips stretched peculiarly over her froglike face. "The giants," she whispers, like she's telling Peter and Edmund the joke, but it's the sort of joke that is in bad taste, and can only be told in certain company. She even laughs, which shocks Edmund. "They certainly look like men, but they aren't at all. At least, not these giants. Further north, perhaps, you could offer them gold or protection, but not threaten –certainly not threaten –those giants perhaps, but these giants–" she shudders with the thought, but then she laughs again. "They want land and food."
"We can offer both elsewhere," Peter points out, but she shakes her head of straw hair.
"You've come to protect us, if you can, Sons of Adam," she says, still laughing, grimly. "And you will die trying, but so will I."
"You will fight, if it comes to it?" Peter asks.
"I will, when it does, though it may be hopeless, as my family and friends believe it to be," she says. "They may be right, but I speak for the marshwiggles, so I will fight for them, too."
"You are an inspiration, Riverash," Edmund tells her bluntly. She is –strong willed and melancholy, and the most optimistic marshwiggle either of them have ever met.
"Just to you," she says. "My Kings. The rest find me foolish to believe in our survival, though that is why I now lead them."
"Then to them, too," Peter assures her. "They may just not know it yet."