To Freely Serve
Disclaimer: I do not own Fire Emblem or any of its characters.
Rated T for violence and offscreen character death.
Chapter Four: Abel Explains It All
"Look there, Norne. The Great Lea."
It was an ocean of tall grasses, waving in the wind just like ripples of green water. The grasses went on and on, as far as the eye could follow them. Norne felt sure that, if she ran into the Lea, the grass-tops would close right over her head, the same as the sea.
"I'd heard such a place existed, but I've never seen the like, sire."
"The Lea of Aurelis is the size of all Altea," said Prince Marth. "Half the grain harvested on Archanea comes from Aurelis. If this entire lea were planted with grain, and the grain shared with all the lands, none might ever go hungry again."
It sounded like a nice idea to Norne. It wasn't right, really, that Aurelis had so much fertile land while other kingdoms starved. Altea had been a nice place to live, to be sure, but in Talys they'd heard many tales of other lands, where the peasants chewed on roots and acorns just like hogs. In Talys, the poor got by sometimes by eating moss and seaweed. Camp rations seemed fine eating indeed compared with that.
They walked back to camp along the ridge of a hill. On one side of the ridge was the lea, on the other lay marshlands dotted by a chain of small ponds, like discs of pewter beneath the darkening sky.
"Do you notice anything odd about these marshes, Norne?"
"Well, we've been walking around for quite some time, and I've never seen or heard a living creature besides ourselves, sire. No birds, no frogs, not even any flies. Seems a bit strange to me."
"It is strange, Norne."
"Well, it's nearly dark, and seems cold for summer, so maybe all the creatures have gone off to bed." Norne didn't believe herself; even at this hour, there ought to be birds.
No birds greeted them in the morning, either. The air was calm and still, as though a blue basin had been set over them all. As they began to cross the Lea, Norne realized her impression of the place as somewhere to drown was spot-on. The Lea looked flat from above, but once you were down in it, you couldn't see too far ahead, or behind, or anywhere. With no trees and no clouds to mark the horizon, it was a place where a person could get lost standing still. Norne stopped short, wondering if any of them really knew where they were headed. She nearly bumped into Julian, the ex-Soothsire who was acting as Sister Lena's protector.
"Oops. Heh, sorry-"
"Sh." Julian cut off her apology. "Do you hear that?" And he tipped his head to the side like a dog straining to hear its master.
"Attack!" Norne thought it was Sir Abel crying out from the van, and Sir Cain echoed him a second later. Then came the shouts of Sir Jagen and Captain Ogma as they directed their men to get into position. Norne scurried to her place in the second line, right behind Draug and his great shield. She looked around to see where Prince Marth might be; he was a few paces away with the "crazy pirate" Darros guarding his back.
"I think Dolhr and its allies have realized we're not here to fight bandits," he said, and his smile almost made Norne feel ashamed that she'd been scared for a moment. This what what they were here for, after all- to take on the great cavaliers of Grust, and the sky-riders of Macedon, and every dragon inside and outside of Dolhr.
-x-
Aurelis was one big battle that went on for days, but a the end of it they'd beaten back the imperial alliance and had even more in their army than before- and only lost a single man in doing it all. Two, if they counted one of the Aurelian knights who died before Lord Hardin and the rest of his Aurelians could join up the Prince Marth's Altean army. But Norne hadn't known Bord from Talys very well- couldn't tell him apart from his brother, to be honest- and she hadn't known Sir Vyland at all, so she wasn't grieving much during the service. She still hadn't seen anything quite as bad as when the village in Talys was sacked and burned. Hadn't seen anything that made a great ball of rage form in her heart, anyway.
"The gods are with us," said Father Wrys.
"Must be," agreed Norne. The gods had to be looking out for the old priest, that was for sure. She wasn't sure how the little man kept going, but he'd made it across the Lea in his long robes in spite of himself.
Things were going splendidly, as they done exactly what they'd set out to do. They'd joined up with Lord Hardin's men, and successfully defended Aurelis against the imperial alliance, and even met Nyna, the last Princess of Archanea. She looked like a storybook princess to Norne's eyes, golden-haired and glittering; the princess and the King of Aurelis thanked them all with a rich meal and Norne went to bed stuffed full with white bread, roasted fowl, and cherry tarts. They didn't let Norne and the other common soldiers have everything served at the royal table, but even in Altea she'd never eaten bread that good.
The next day word spread amongst the Alteans that the princess Nyna had gone and made their prince the commander of all her armies, such as they were.
"Isn't that a little..." Norne searched long and hard for the right word. "Irregular? I mean, there're men here with twice the experience of our prince, men who've been fighting since before he was born."
"True, Norne," Sir Abel replied. "But these are times in which all the usual rules have gone right out the window. Our enemies aren't playing by the normal rules of engagement, either."
Sir Cain just snorted.
"He's the highest-ranked person in this alliance besides the princess Nyna. Of course he has the command."
Draug nodded- that was just the Way Things Were- and Norne would have been satisfied by that, except that Abel wasn't.
"I believe a lot of people had the reasonable expectation that Lord Hardin would be assuming command," Abel said, and Norne saw a trace of that little smile he used in thorny situations. "Including Prince Marth."
Cain shrugged.
"It's done, and Princess Nyna herself sealed the command with her emblem. It's a good thing for us, as it means the future of Altea won't be forgotten in all this tumult."
That was a good point. Their mission already had taken so many twisting turns that sometimes it seemed like they would never be getting home; with Prince Marth in charge of it all, they'd be sure to set foot in Altea again. Or die trying. There always was that little catch.
Cain went off pleased as pie about the new honors given their prince. Abel just shook his head.
"We all hold our prince in the highest affection and esteem, but Cain takes it to another level entirely," he said. "I think it's a little mad to give someone so young command over all the armies of Her Highness."
"He's done a fine job in the Lea," Draug said, and Norne just bobbed her head in agreement. That much fighting, and so few lost- it had to count for something.
"Mm. You and I both know it's not just how a man handles success that defines a commander. It's how he handles himself in defeat. We won't really know Prince Marth's measure as a commander until things go very wrong, and I'm not looking forward to the day."
Norne didn't say anything for a minute or so; maybe Abel did have something there, but she didn't really want to think about it. Instead, she waited until Sir Jagen summoned Draug for something-or-other and then asked Abel a question she'd been afraid to ask with Big D present. It was a stupid question, maybe, and she didn't mind so much if Abel thought she didn't know anything about anything.
"What's it mean, that Princess Nyna gave our prince that emblem? Does he have to marry her now?"
"Not really, Norne. It means that Her Highness made our prince her champion, and like any lady's champion he's bound now to serve her."
"Ah."
"From what I've read, the emblem carries a magical contract. Prince Marth can't fail the princess, and he can't back out of the contract if he wanted to."
"Huh? How'd you mean that?"
"There's an old story, from about two hundred years back, of a princess who gave the emblem to her champion at a time when the kingdom was under attack from sea-raiders from the west. Her champion fell in combat, and the princess stood over his body and told him he dare not die on her when there was work to be done. According to the legend, the champion got to his feet and finished the task." The laughter went out of Abel's eyes as he told the story. "Well, his wounds wouldn't heal, and after that he begged the princess to return him to an honorable death, and she did. The emblem wasn't used again for a century..."
Norne shivered. From the way Abel told that tale, it sounded as though there was something sinister about the Fire Emblem.
To Be Continued
Author's Note: This is not my 'standard' characterization for Cain, Abel, and a few other characters. For one, old story is old and this was written taking FE11 as a standalone game. For another, the existence of Norne and other "gaiden chapter" characters automatically made this story something of an AU to "real" Archanea canon in my mind. Hence the disparity. We apologize for the inconvenience.