This'll be the last one with Gaffgarion, as well as the last one with Delita and Ovelia together, for a while:
Vignette 4 – Bastards, Useless or Otherwise
"You know, I'm not convinced that that's just a wild chocobo, after all - I'm sure I've seen it somewhere before." Ramza said to Alicia, who smiled back at him questioningly.
"WARK!" The raucous cry came from near the mercenary leader.
"Get this vicious bugger away from me!" Gaffgarion's mood was not noticeably better than the night before, even though they now had the pack animal he'd wanted.
"Sir, if you'll just refrain from shouting so loudly near him, he'll probably calm down." Ramza called from where he was working on their travel rations with Alicia, near the fire. Ladd finally managed to haul the thoroughly ruffled chocobo away from Gaffgarion and settled him down on the far side of their camp, though only after Gaffgarion had told Ramza to "shut up, you useless bastard."
"If he doesn't let up, there'll be no wine left by tomorrow night and then he'll really be in a bad mood." Ramza said almost under his breath.
"This isn't a really bad mood?" Alicia asked, incredulous.
"No, this is just a fairly bad mood - same as last night – and, believe me, you don't want to see a really bad one! Unfortunately, you probably will - I don't think we can make it to civilisation before tomorrow night. Don't worry, I'll be the one who gets the brunt of it for not getting enough wine."
"Why would you remain in that man's employ, even for as short a time as you have?" She asked, voice barely above a whisper.
"Believe me, I've frequently asked myself the same thing." He said with a grimace.
He knew the answer, of course. Partly it was easier and... simply better to have someone else giving the orders; he never wanted to be responsible for the lives of others again. Partly, Ramza believed that he really deserved this treatment – oh, not from Gaffgarion - but, more generally, he felt that this sort of abuse was about all he merited. He'd allowed Tietra and Delita to die... no, no, he'd allowed Tietra to die, then he'd walked away, convinced Delita was dead, without even trying to find out if he really was. He wished he knew how Delita had survived and got out from under the rubble that should have killed him.
The blame for Juliana's death, and the others' expulsion from the Akademy, he also felt rested entirely on his head – he'd persuaded them to come along with him and Delita in the abortive attempt to rescue Tietra. He'd not only got Juliana killed, which he always tried hard not to think about, but he'd blighted the hopes and dreams of the others. Ophellia, for instance, had once confided her ambition to become the first ever female Colonel in the Order, and even if she had never achieved that, he remembered the girls discussing the possibility of joining the Lionsguards, more than once. All of that hope, all of their plans had been killed on the same day as Tietra and Juliana.
Alicia watched the haunted look in the boy's eyes and wondered why, if it was so bad staying with Gaffgarion, Ramza didn't just walk away... or perhaps there was more to this. She laid a sympathetic hand on his, and he looked at it for a long moment, then looked up at her, with a smile that didn't quite touch his eyes.
Gaffgarion had gone to bed with the last wineskin, or so they thought, until Ladd produced one from his pack with a wink and a conspiratorial grin. He made as if to open it. Ramza practically tackled him to the ground to take it from him.
"Don't you dare! That skin could save me at least two "useless bastards" tomorrow night. Sorry ladies." Ramza covered his mouth with his hand and looked guilty, remembering his language a little too late. Alicia laughed.
"Well it's not as if we haven't heard it, continually, from your master over the last few days." she said. Ramza, particularly, looked affronted at the word 'master', though Ladd continued to seem unsettled by it too as Alicia went on.
"Why is that one such a favourite for you, anyway? He uses a much greater variety of insults for everyone else." Ramza blushed slightly as he poured water for himself from a canteen into a leather tankard, before he answered.
"I'm never quite sure which of my many failings has led to it being coupled with "useless" so often, but always being called "bastard" is mostly my fault." He saw Agrias' raised eyebrow and blushed more. He wished fervently that he'd not admitted to that, but now he'd started he felt he had no option but to tell the truth.
"Very early in our... association... Gaffgarion was in one of his fouler moods and he called me that a couple of times. So I decided to try to be clever about it. I told him that while I'd always hated the term, I could hardly challenge it, since it wasn't, in fact, entirely inaccurate. Stupidly, I thought it might shut him up. The mistake, of course, was to tell him I hated it. I've been "useless bastard" or sometimes "stupid bastard" or occasionally "naive little bastard", ever since." He gave a deep sigh.
"Nobleman's son, born on the wrong side of the blanket?" Lavian asked quietly. Ramza shut his eyes as he nodded. It isn't a lie, he told himself, it is a shade sophistical, but it isn't untrue... not about my birth, anyway.
"Hmm. 'Born on the wrong side of the blanket' - I haven't heard that one in a while. Yes, that is one of the politest ways of putting it, certainly." He shifted restlessly, as he spoke. It was the truth, just not the entire truth, he told himself again.
"But still a nobleman's son and, I presume, brought up like it, which explains some things." Lavian said.
"So's Ladd, and he's indisputably legitimate." Ramza pointed out.
"Yeah, but the fourth son of a Baron and we're seriously unimportant, unlike some people." Ladd put in lazily. Agrias thought she saw a quick movement out of the corner of her eye. Ramza kicking Ladd?
"Some people?" Agrias asked quickly – perhaps one of the pair might just come out and say what she had been dying to ask about for two days. Probably not, especially after that kick.
"Er, well, yeah. I mean, you are one of the Lesalia Oakses, aren't you? And though not quite up there with yours, even Lady Alicia's family is still pretty lofty compared to mine."
"My father's a merchant." Lavian said quietly.
"Yeah, but he's not exactly grubbing around trading in low-grade agricultural produce, is he? Finest silks, exotic perfume, foreign spices, that sort of thing. Besides, your husband was from a noble family, wasn't he?"
Lavian's eyebrows shot up. Even though she had talked and even flirted with Ladd, she was certain that she'd never mentioned that she had been widowed only a couple of weeks before the armistice was signed. Since she was only twenty-one, most people assumed she was still an unmarried girl, especially as her wedding ring was on a chain around her neck under her clothes, not on her finger. It wasn't that she didn't want to acknowledge her marriage to Ivan, but the ring always caught on her gauntlets, so she always left it off when she was on duty, or if she might need to fight; she hadn't worn it since they'd met Ladd and Ramza.
"What did you do - research all of our families before coming to Orbonne?" She asked suspiciously. Ramza was the one who shook his head, glancing at his friend with a grin.
"Ladd likes to play the brainless muscle, but he actually has one heck of a memory for all sorts of inconsequential detail about... well... practically everything, but people mostly. Though, basically, he's just nosy and he likes to gossip." Ignoring Ladd's indignant looks, he lay back on the ground, his hands linked behind his head. Suddenly he sat up again.
"I know where I've seen that chocobo before!" He said. "His name's Boco, and he used to belong to Wiegraf Folles... I hope this doesn't mean Wiegraf's dead." Ramza had always felt that with a just a little more good will on both sides that that conflict could have been resolved peacefully long before it reached the crisis point. He'd always felt that Wiegraf was an honourable man who they could have treated with, and he still felt a large measure of guilt for having killed his sister in the conflict. Perhaps oddly, that guilt had multiplied after Tietra...
"Does that mean you were part of the Corpse Brigade?" Agrias suddenly asked, one hand actually going to her sword hilt.
"What? Are you kidding?" Ramza looked outraged. Ladd, inexplicably began to laugh, covering his eyes with one hand. Agrias shot him a confused glare.
"How would you know what Folles' chocobo looked like, if you weren't one of his men?" She asked.
"I saw it a few times during the campaign against the Corpse Brigade. And before you ask, yes I did get close enough to be able to identify it." He pulled the high neck of his jerkin down on one side, revealing a thin scar that was only just visible in the firelight.
"Peck wound, from that vicious beast. I'm inclined to take Ser Gaffgarion's view of the bird, now that I've recognised it."
"Ah don't be like that, he likes you... now." Ladd said with some reproach.
"Until the next time he decides to try to pierce my jugular." Ramza sounded disgruntled.
"So how did you end up taking part in the campaign against the Corpse Brigade?" Agrias asked, with a certain scepticism.
"Still think I'm some sort of assassin, my Lady?" Ramza asked with a sigh. Truth be told, Agrias didn't know what to make of the boy. He started to speak again, without further prompting.
"You know that they had disbanded so much of the army, after the war, that when the Corpse Brigade rose up the Northern Sky couldn't field enough men?"
"Yes, Ramza, I may be part of the royal honour guard now, but I used to be a regular soldier with the Northern Sky, remember? I do try to keep abreast of these things." Her voice held a wealth of asperity.
"I know, my Lady, but you've been stuck away in that monastery for, what? Over two years?" He asked.
"I was guarding Princess Ovelia, not living as an anchorite." She replied caustically.
"Sorry... but then you must have heard that they called up all of the students from the final year of the Gariland Akademy and formed them into small squads to supplement the army." He said, keeping his own tone mild.
"Yes, I did hear. One went rogue, didn't it?" She asked. He paused, before replying.
"Something like that," he said, with a slight wince, "but... anyway, I was in my final year at the Akademy and I was one of the cadets called up. Nothing strange about it." He shrugged.
Fair enough, Agrias thought. She was pretty sure, now, that they really were Gariland Akademy alumnae and Ramza was the right age. This time, she might as well believe him.
"Boco it is then." She said, wishing it would come to her just why Ramza had a vague sense of familiarity. Hopefully it might strike her, in the same way as Boco's identity had come to Ramza. As it began to rain, those who weren't on watch headed quickly for their tents.
Eight miles ahead, on the plains around the Zeirchelle river.
The muffled sound of large drops thumping onto the canvas above her head woke Ovelia.
"Ser Delita." She called. "You can't sleep out there; that rain sounds really heavy. You need to bring your bedroll in here." After a few moments, the tent flap opened a little and the vague shape of his head poked through in the darkness. The light of the campfire was dying quickly in the rain.
"I don't want to intrude, Princess, and you can't possibly want me in there." He said.
"At the moment, you are the only thing that stands between me and potentially being slaughtered by hoards of roving goblins, like we saw today. You becoming ill after getting soaked through benefits no-one." Her voice was very carefully neutral.
"So glad you care, Princess." He said drily, with a sigh.
Today they had been very polite to one another, each wary after the previous evening. She hadn't slept much, the night before; she hated to admit it, but there were aspects of his tale that were very plausible; that thought had kept her wide awake until near dawn. She heard and felt, more than saw, his bedroll land within inches of hers. It was a tiny tent; there was little choice about such proximity. It took a few minutes for him to settle himself in the dark, but eventually he seemed to have finished all of his preparations.
Lying so close to him in the dark was strangely... intimate. She suddenly felt very self-conscious, but oddly able to say things she couldn't in the light, even that of the campfire.
"Ser Delita?"
"Mmm?"
"I'm going to spend my entire life as a puppet for one ambitious man or another, aren't I?" She heard him sigh.
"I wish I could say "no"." His voice was quiet, it sounded weary and, perhaps, a little sad.
To her own surprise, she began to cry. In the darkness, she felt a hand on her arm. It fumbled downwards and took her hand. She gripped it as if her life depended on it.
"These aren't just selfish tears." She sobbed. "I don't want that as my life, true enough, but I also don't want anyone else to have to die merely because I exist. There is going to be a war - people are going to die because of me, aren't they?"
"No!" His voice was intense, with more than a hint of anger and bitterness as he continued. "There is going to be a war because selfish power-hungry men care more for self-aggrandisement than for the lives of anyone else. That is always the reason for war, it seems to me."
"But I'll be part of the reason it has to happen, won't I?" Her voice was still tremulous.
"Not exactly. You'll be part of the excuse. But if it wasn't you, they'd find a different excuse, I promise you that."
"Cold comfort." She said. They lay silent for a few moments, still hand-in-hand, as her tears subsided.
"Princess Ovelia?" He said quietly. His voice tentative, he went on.
"I apologise for what I said... the way I sneered at your ignorance, last evening. You were right. How could I expect a girl who has grown up so very sheltered to have any depth of understanding?"
"I wish I did understand, perhaps if I did, I could see a way out of this." Her voice still held the remnants of tears.
"I don't think there is one." He said.
"What if I didn't exist any more? Would that save lives?" She asked. There was a long silence.
"If this is leading up to you asking me to help you kill yourself, I won't do it. I didn't rescue you from Larg's lackeys just to have you martyr yourself so futilely." He said in a harsh tone.
"K-kill myself? No! Why in Ivalice...?" She trailed off – perhaps her words could have suggested that.
"My apologies, it seemed like the sort of quixotic nonsense a naïve chit might think of." He said. There was a moment's silence.
"Naïve Chit?" She gave a derisive laugh. "You must be considered a real charmer by the women who know you!"
"I noticed on the first night that you have a hidden streak of sarcasm, Princess. It makes you a little more... real. I apologise for "chit"... And some woman have found me charming, I'll have you know!" He sounded just slightly indignant. Unseen in the dark, she smirked a little but her tone when she next spoke was withering.
"The deaf, stupid ones, I presume?"
The moment of silence was more prolonged this time. Then she heard him laugh and mutter "touché, Princess". He lifted the hand she had almost forgotten he was holding and raised it to his lips, brushing a light kiss over the knuckles. She gasped and quickly snatched her hand away, glad that in the darkness he could not see the blushes, which the heat in her cheeks told her must have turned her face crimson. When she eventually spoke, her voice was very quiet.
"Those questions, they were leading up to me asking you to let me go. I can disappear, never to be seen again. If I can't be found, I can't be fought over." She waited, tense.
"Where would you go?" His inquiry was deceptively casual.
"I don't know, exactly. I need to think about the specifics, but I thought that, as a girl used to the ways of the cloister, I could find a small secluded nunnery and take holy orders. I can tell them I'm an orphan, a minor knight's only daughter, without dowry or skills to make my own way in the world. That's believable enough, I think, and half-true... in the essentials. And ladies join holy orders every day for similar reasons." She heard him give another small laugh.
"You'd lie your way into a convent?" His tone was disbelieving, slightly amused too, perhaps.
"I'd have to confess to the Mother Superior, eventually, I suppose, once I was certain of her."
"Telling anyone would just increase the risk of discovery. Besides, would you actually want to be a nun?" There was a long pause.
"No, not really - but I can't think of a better option for a gentlewoman with no skills and no money." There was another pause.
"If I thought it could work, I might even let you try it." Of course, she didn't know him well, but she didn't think that tone was completely sincere. His next words, unfortunately had more of the ring of truth.
"They'd hunt you down, both Larg and Goltanna. Neither are entirely stupid and they are both advised by clever men. They'd think of convents eventually and one or other of them would find you. If it's Larg's men, you'd die; if Goltanna's, you'd be back to being the puppet but, almost certainly, with considerably shortened strings." He paused, then his tone becoming gentle. "I'm sorry, Princess, I truly am, but you don't have the political background to see all of the implications of your idea... Besides, you're far too beautiful to be locked up in a nunnery permanently. It would be a terrible waste." She could hear the smile that must be on his face in those last words. It annoyed her.
"Do not mock me!"
"Mock you? I was paying you a compliment!" His tone sounded genuinely indignant - she didn't believe it.
"You were being sarcastic." She said stiffly.
"I really wasn't." He sounded weary again. She didn't know what to say, so decided it was best to ignore that.
"All right, if you are so clever, at least politically, tell me, Ser Delita, what would you do, if you were me?" Her voice held a thread of bitterness.
"In the short term, survival always has to be the goal. However much you want to change your situation, you achieve nothing if you don't survive to do it. I don't know how fully you believe me about this whole situation, yet, but, right now, your best bet for survival really is coming with me. What is it you would like, for the longer term?" He seemed genuinely interested in her wishes. Dared she trust to that?
"Selfishly, all I really want is not to be the princess any more... Since I have no choice about that, I'd like a little real power... not for myself, you understand. I want the power to change things, stop the corruption, the brinkmanship over trifles, the willingness to spend men's lives like so much pocket change. I'd like peace and prosperity for the whole kingdom, contentment for the people. Easily achieved ambitions, wouldn't you say?" The bitterness of her tone had increased throughout that speech.
"You have very honourable instincts, Princess, but we both know that power will never be yours as long as you are the pivotal pawn who everyone merely talks up as the Queen. Would that you could have your wishes. Perhaps there is a way, but I don't yet see clearly how to achieve it."
"What way?" She sounded eager and fearful.
"You'd need to find someone who shares your dreams and who has enough honour to cut your strings or, at least, hold them lightly and share political power with you. This would probably work best if that someone were also a potential husband for you, I'd guess, though that certainly isn't essential. It would have to be someone with the political and military might to effect the changes you want and a willingness to share some of his power with you, just as he would share yours." His voice was musing.
"Since we are making the list of attributes for my mythical perfect husband, perhaps I can add that, personally, I'd like him to be young, handsome, kind and generous. Oh, and I'd like him to love me and honour me above all other women." She heard Delita bark a laugh.
"I was serious. I can't think of anyone, yet, who can fully meet my description, but perhaps a dark horse will emerge. It isn't impossible."
"It's a pipe-dream."
"Probably." He said softly.
"Why am I even talking to you? We should both be asleep." She said, slightly petulantly.
"Goodnight then, Princess." He said with a sigh.
She turned on her side, pillowing her cheek on her hand – incidentally, she realised as she drifted off, it was the one he had kissed.
Author's Note:
Ramza really needs to learn that "engage brain before opening mouth" is a useful set of instructions for all occasions. It may take a while...
So is Delita a complete bastard, who is planning to take advantage of a naïve young girl as soon as he can, or is he himself a troubled young man who is acting out of pain and grief? Or can he be both? I'm still trying to decide, myself.