Black as Rat and Crow
For the Narnia Fan Fiction Revolution challenge, Color. Rated T because it's just easier that way.
Chapter 1: Pretty Silver Thread That Only A Bird Can See
Chapter 2: Yellow? Or Is It Kavossed?
Chapter 3: Purple Pink Rose, or What Happens In Archenland, Stays In Archenland
Still not King. Still don't own any of this.
Special thanks to Anastigmat, without whom this would not have been posted.
Chapter 2: Yellow? Or Is It Kavossed?
"Lu? You don't write Rat and Crow, do you?"
His sister snorted, the sound muffled as she struggled out of her mail shirt.
Peter was writing bent over a propped up stool in their makeshift camp. They were three nights out of Cair Paravel and on their way north to investigate reports of Ettin incursions at the border. The advance spies, their swift, far-seeing Raptors, had reported some flattened trees and boulders that looked to have been dropped or flung from a great, giant-sized height, but nothing else thus far. The Hounds gone to scent out the area had not yet returned.
"Ouch! Peter, would you?"
Lucy's hair always became entangled in the metal links of chain mail and she'd not found a solution for it. He put the writing charcoal down by the candle illuminating their cramped command tent and helped his sister tease her hair free.
"Thank you," she sighed and gently pulled the mail shirt the rest of the way over her head. Lucy was for more careful with her armor than with her other clothing, which looked to be last year's patchiest.
She looked around his shoulder at the parchment spread on the stool. "Barracan?" Lucy asked, reading the cipher he had written. "Is that the right code word? Doesn't Barracan mean The battle has begun?"
"Does it?" Peter replied turning back to the coded update that was to be his daily report to Edmund. "I thought Barracan meant All is well here."
Peter would rather review trade treaties involving cotton and chicken legs, negotiate border disputes between knife-wielding, ravenous, stinking hordes, settle marital disputes between Songbirds, and teach dancing to a score of stupid princesses pretending to be demure, than write a single line to his brother or sister from the road. He really loathed this cipher of Ed and Su's. He understood the need for it, he was glad they had developed it, but by the Lion, did his brother and sister have to make it so bloody complicated?
"I thought Crisp meant The battle has begun," he said.
"No," corrected Dalia, Peter's Cheetah Guard, from her watchful corner. "Crisp means Can you recommend a good cook?"
"I believe Yellow is the word you require, High King," said Briony, Lucy's She-Wolf Guard.
"Yellow?" Peter repeated, rubbing out Barracan. At this rate, he would put a hole in the note to Edmund. Peter did wonder if any Ettins could read a message much less have the wit to decode one. Still, High King or not, in matters of security, Peter did defer to the more suspicious minds of his brother and Susan, inconvenient and tedious though it was.
"Yes!" Lucy agreed. Thank you, Briony dear. Yellow does mean Battle has not yet been engaged." She paused. "I think."
Lucy was no better than he at Rat and Crow, always a problem when the two of them took to the field together and left the Concert of Minds behind.
A second opinion was warranted.
"Dalia?" Peter asked, looking to his personal advisor and sagacious confidant.
"I concur," the Cheetah said.
"Yellow it is then," Peter said, writing the word with a flourish. "What else?"
"We should tell King Edmund no enemy has yet been sighted," Briony offered.
"Oh! I know that one!" Lucy exclaimed. "It's Kavossed!"
Peter frowned. "I don't think so, Lu. I think Kavossed means Our compliments to your House in this season of joy."
Dalia offered, "I thought it meant, Supply wagons struck by lightning."
"I believe," Peter said, racking his weary mind for the appropriate coded phrase, "No enemy yet sighted is either Cargoose or Hurst." He looked to his assembled team who, noble, brave, and talented though they all were, nonetheless were Rats and Crows neither by pedigree nor inclination – for which daily he thanked the Lion most ardently. "Thoughts, my Friends?"
"I thought it was Kavossed," Lucy said frowning. With a shrug, she said, "Just write all three. and say, 'Don't remember which word means No enemy yet sighted.'"
Peter dutifully wrote out to Edmund, "Forgot if 'cargoose,' 'hurst,' or 'kavossed' means 'No enemy yet sighted.' Please advise. Regardless, condition is Yellow."
This message, Peter had to concede, would make his brother and Susan rather cross.
The Rat and Crow code comes from an article the fabulous Anastigmat sent to me from the New York Times regarding shorthand people once used when sending their telegrams – Twitter for an older generation. Cargoose in fact stood for It will be necessary to exercise caution and Kavoss meant A large number killed. Anastigmat concluded that such a code obviously belongs in the cipher of the Rats and Crows of the Narnian Intelligence Service in The Stone Gryphon vision of things and that Peter would of course try to use it but be befuddled by it.
For future reference, Happenstance means What happens in Archenland, stays in Archenland. To that end, the conclusion, Purple Pink Rose follows tomorrow.