Guts told her about the tournament after she'd fed Griffith and for a second she was close to admonishing him.

For a second she thought of forgetting that everything done inside the ship was no more than mere distraction, passing the time, waiting for the next day, the next meal, the next anything that'd relieve the boredom, the anxiety, the looming knowledge that this seemingly endless voyage was for nothing.

Everything's been a mirage since they rescued Griffith.

Possibly before that.

Everything's been a mirage since she took up the sword to defend herself and follow Griffith without looking back.

She allowed her name to be written in one of the pieces of paper—a page ripped by her own hand from one of the ship logs—almost distractedly, though starkly aware of what this entailed.

Guts would not be competing, she knew this even before Guts and Griffith were appointed judges. She knew because she'd seen more than even those two had seen at their duel in the snow.

They looked the part, at least, of kings overseeing their court.

And maybe it was all in her mind, or maybe she just wanted it to be so, but when she and Judeau took the center of the circle Griffith nodded at her in recognition, in allowance. She still was his trusty right hand man, the one she'd been before Guts showed up. Her chest was hollow and tight and the only heartbeat she could feel was in her stomach. She felt suddenly like throwing up so she held her head high and turned her back away from Guts and Griffith, faced Judeau head on, watched his quietly surrendered face and had half a mind to tell him off. She disliked the idea of anyone giving up before the fight had even started, despised it. Perhaps because she'd found herself doing so out of tiredness, out of necessity, out of complacency, countless times before.

She'd given up on Griffith before there was even a need to, before the thought had formed itself clearly in her mind and her heart, because she was sure it had to be so. She told Guts as much and even he had tried in his own way to encourage her small dream.

Judeau withdrew his two short swords and waited for her to draw hers, the one she'd been brandishing for years, before lunging. At least he had enough in him to initiate the attack.

Casca noticed he carefully aimed for her legs so she aimed for his heart which had him retreating with surprise on his face and a smile that was more sad than wry.

The men booed his cowardice and his smile turned apologetic, aimed at them.

This angered her to no end. How dared he be paying attention to the others, keeping an ear out for things outside this, the matter at hand, their battle. Either he was really a fool or he wasn't taking her seriously. Never mind that this was simply a friendly duel, hurriedly organized in the midst of boredom, framed by salty air and rocking motions of waves. She hated to think there might be something in her—the part she'd tried to fight against so damn hard, the thing all the men used against her—that had sharpened, perhaps, with time, that had turned her from the strongest member of the Hawks to one Judeau and others pitied in battle.

It was a given that she was a woman, considered a woman. Sometimes she felt like a woman too. Sometimes she knew she existed outside of such ridiculous notions, man, woman, in a time before matter, before shape, before self, where she was neither and could do battle better than anyone who'd trapped themselves in the imaginary implications of their sex. But at the end of the day it was a given that she was a woman, she was told and reminded. She knew that that condition, which she supposed she had to bear quietly, was not to blame for the feelings she'd come to harbor towards Griffith. She knew it wasn't that easy, yet she'd let herself blame that and nothing else.

If only she'd been a man, she'd thought more than once or twice or a million times.

But she knew too that if she'd been a man she'd have held the same feelings, she could be sure, and would've perhaps suffered all the more for it.

So it angered her that Judeau was carefully aiming his strikes at her limbs. Her legs, her arms—not her hands as if not to knock the sword out of her hands—never her head or her torso. And that she was too focused on that anger to retaliate in more than a mock battle, almost a dance.

So she slashed in the only way she'd learned to—not like Judeau in a circus and not like the trained soldiers they fought—with her own anger driving inelegant and rough movements of her sword meant to kill and defeat and not entertain anyone, she was nobody's toy, she was no one's side show—the Strongest Woman in the World—she was not here for anything other than taking a kingdom by force and serving Griffith till the end.

She was a knight.

Her strike was effective, of course, as it should've been on Guts all those years ago, and Judeau dropped his swords, clothes torn in his chest, blood pouring from the recent wound, and a look of disbelief painted on his face. She'd seen that look in others before. As if surprised that a woman would be able to kill them, that they'd meet their end under a woman's hand, as if they'd never met any others like her even though she'd seen them with her own eyes, recognized in them the same doggedness of those who are told they are something and cannot change their fate and would not listen.

Anger subsided with victory and she almost instantly felt remorse.

The men clapped her shoulders and cheered for her but she kept watching Judeau, on the floor of the deck, holding onto his chest, his hand almost entirely covered in blood. She helped him up and walked him to where Kim waited to tend to his wounds, and she watched over the process in silence. She'd never say she was sorry but was aware that she'd been unfair, somehow.

Judeau's labored breath was all she heard for a while, despite another duel starting shortly after hers ended, and she kept her eyes on Kim's hand working to stitch the wound after cleaning it.

She turned once to watch Griffith and Guts but their eyes were on the battle—their hands still entwined as if it was a given for them too. The image brought back the kind of pain she thought she'd grow out of someday, the kind of pain she'd experienced in solitude, watching Griffith throw himself in harm's way for a simple soldier who'd joined barely a year ago, watching Guts forget himself and everyone else while desperately running to meet Griffith inside that tower.

"I'll walk ya to yer quarters," she told Judeau once he opened his eyes after the wound had been stitched. "Y'should rest, yeah?"

He nodded slowly, let her put his arm over her shoulders for support.

She'd been in the crew's quarters only about two times before, when Braid stabbed Olin to his death, and when there was a water leak they'd done their best to repair under the guidance of the navigator who grunted and mumbled to himself at their every move. She was there to keep the men from killing him in retaliation.

Most of the men slept in hammocks hanging from the ship's structure, others on piles of sheets and wool and clothes they'd secured with nails to the floor. It was an improvement from their days as thieves. Even as he was now Griffith somehow managed to lead them to better places than where they'd been before. It was obvious then that they'd follow him and no one else, that they'd been following him so long. He who did so much for them and asked only that they believed. The ship wasn't half bad. Even if this journey led nowhere they could always become pirates, the crew would manage, and the very name of them would strike fear in the hearts of the world.

She helped Judeau settle into his hammock, he was grimacing in pain with the effort, then stood at the side of it, watching him in silence before he opened his eyes and his mouth.

"You didn't need to bring me here. Don't feel sorry. Was a fair fight."

"Were ya holdin' back?"

Judeau tried laughing but he coughed and his features twisted in pain. Maybe she cut deeper than she thought initially. He shook his head.

"You'd notice if I did."

"Why were ya aimin' only for my limbs, then?"

His face went solemn and his eyes looked away from her, to a spot somewhere else. She resisted the urge to follow his line of vision, knowing there was nothing there but an opportunity not to have to look her in the eye.

"S'just."

He didn't finish the sentence, if it even was that and not a random thought that escaped through his lips. She watched the way his fingers were softly posed above his wound, protectively. He was good at giving advice and voicing her thoughts and she'd placed a large amount of trust in him but there was always something out of focus when they spoke, it had always been there, as if he wasn't being honest yet expected her to know what it was that he was hiding or twisting or pretending wasn't there. She'd resent the way he spoke to her sometimes, as if she wasn't catching all the meanings held by his words, if she didn't find the idea daunting and the task tiring. She had other things to worry about, always had had those, and she needed allies in honesty not ones who'd keep things veiled behind ambiguous hints she had no way of deciphering.

"What?"

Enough time had passed that she could be sure he wasn't going to give any answer if she didn't push it.

He looked at her, once again letting moments go by without a word, and then broke out into a smile.

"Why d'you ask?"

"Cos s'true. Y'were goin' only for my limbs."

"Ah."

"Ah," she echoed, not really intending to sound curt.

He sighed, exhaling loudly, flinching slightly because of, Casca imagined, the pain in his chest.

"The navigator says we should reach Inis Fáil in a couple days if the winds accompany us."

"Don't change—"

"Heard him say other stuff too, have you?"

"Stuff?"

"About Griffith."

Casca knew she should press with her original questions but Judeau used his silver tongue whenever he was letting her know she should be aware of something he'd never spoken aloud.

"It's bad for morale," Judeau continued on that line.

"If what he says riles 'em up, makes them leave, they shouldn't be here anyway. Never shoulda been. S'best if they're gone. Let 'im talk."

"Heh, that's our Commander."

She could feel herself deflating, her desire to ask the questions and get the answers stepping back from what was at the forefront. Again, she felt so tired she could faint from exhaustion, give up on every little thing just for the chance of resting. She battled much more than just other humans, she should be allowed a respite, at least once.

Slowly she retreated from the quarters and was about to climb up the stairs back onto the deck when Judeau spoke up.

"Wasn't pityin' you. I didn't wanna go for your stomach."

"Why?" she turned around, narrowing her eyes.

"I think you know why."

She didn't reply. She didn't wanna give the matter more thoughts, none at all. This was yet just another given, that she had the kind of body that would have room for this kind of thing, this kind of life. She didn't ask for this, she hadn't wanted it before when all she thought was of being a sword, and now her mind slowly changed despite herself. But she rebelled against the notion that she could use this to make Guts look her way. Disgusting, that would be. To use this—that which she'd fought against, that condition she knew didn't set her aside from any one of the men—to have his eyes on her once more without the hesitation of his own unspoken, untouched, undecipherable feelings for someone else.

She grit her teeth.

"Don' say a word to anyone," she said with an even voice. "That's an order from yer Commander."

Even in the relative dark of the quarters she could make out his smile, which she knew was for himself.

"He doesn't know, huh? Guess I should've—" He smiled at her now. It was self effacing and irritating but she couldn't pinpoint the reason.

"Ya didn't need ta do that anyway. Whatever the reason. Wasn't a fair fight if ya were holdin' back."

"Ah, m'sorry."

She didn't reply and once again turned to climb the stairs. She didn't look back when Judeau spoke up again.

"Y'know if you don't wanna tell him. I'm sure there's volunteers to help. You don't need to be alone."

That night Casca pondered the words in the quiet solitude of the room she supposedly shared with Guts. She turned them over and dissected them and felt anger and loss and impatience forming around them. She didn't like the implications—of her own weakness, of her own need to cling to someone else, of her own inability to go on as they had before and have Guts and Griffith and herself approach their rotten bonds without her being a woman or having a womb she never asked for getting in the way or changing anyone's mind or having any sort of meaning.

She was a knight.

She didn't want to have any unfair advantage—or disadvantage—that stemmed solely from something that was completely out of her control. She was a knight and that was the life she knew. The life they all knew.


She was feeding Griffith his breakfast when it happened. It consisted of two barely boiled egg with soft pieces of bread floating in the almost liquid yolk and white mix. Rickert prepared the eggs like this because it made them easier for Griffith to swallow. She wished she knew whether Griffith appreciated the gesture or resented their treating him with so much caution, treading so lightly.

Before preparing him for the meal she'd spoken about the second day of the tournament—she'd be fighting Riguel who'd also passed on to the second round—but then had promptly closed her mouth and tried not to think about that one time days, maybe weeks ago, when Griffith had inadvertently slapped the bowl off her hands.

On the second to last spoonful he turned away from her, his eyes somewhere far from the ship, out the window. She looked too and spied large rocky cliffs dropping onto the sea, topped by emerald green, green grass that surrounded a tiny but clearly visible stone structure—a castle, maybe, or a church—and tiny bird like monoliths—the Holy See's symbols, surely—dotting one of the cliffsides as if to indicate those that'd died there, maybe fallen to their death.

Griffith opened his mouth and his voice came out in the pattern of vowels straining his vocal chords, his wounded throat. She wondered if maybe he'd inhaled smoke, on top of all the other things he'd had to endure, forced to withstand the oppressive heat of a fire burning in an enclosed space, the smoke filling up his lungs until unconsciousness. She wondered why she would ever think of that.

"Is that—?"

Her question was answered by two knocks on the door, short and soft. It was Rickert, she knew before opening, there at the door with joy and apprehension.

"This is my homeland."


Following Rickert's suggestions, and his own knowledge of the island, the navigator slowly sailed them along its coast until they found a beach of rocky sand called Cuas an Ghainimh he and Rickert agreed was the best spot for them to enter the island, for it was uninhabited yet stood close to Tara, where they'd find the Hill of Kings and the fairies. Before ordering the anchors to be dropped and finalizing his instructions to the crew he called for Casca, his liaison with the bunch of criminals that had basically taken him hostage, to remind her this was as far as he went. That had been the deal they'd struck when they'd taken over his ship back in Port Royal. This was the end of the line for him. He said it more than once, perhaps in fear that she'd back down on her words and forbid him from leaving. But she repeated herself, told him they'd leave him there once they departed the island, with what they needed. He made her give her word.

Stupid, of course, and sentimental—but they all dealt in sentimentality really following lofty dreams and codes of honor—yet she felt grateful, that he'd trust her word. She'd heard men whom she'd given her word to say it amounted to nothing, as if the mouth of a woman was somehow different from theirs, as if they were not the same bag of meat and bones and red blood and inevitable death. She was grateful all the same.

She shouldn't have been.

She understood as much when she stood over the corpse of the navigator, on the beach, his blood staining the sand, streaming slowly down a rock, trickling down to the sea.

Griffith—who had somehow, she divined, ordered the death—watched her closely when Guts—who had dealt the blow with his usual professionalism—posed his hand on her shoulder and told her "Too dangerous otherwise."

Casca wanted to reprimand herself for her lack of foresight. A promise like the one she'd made was a lie the moment she'd first uttered it, the moment she'd first told the man he'd be allowed to leave them after he led them to Inis Fáil. Somehow the merry quiet of their days at sea, even with all the obstacles in the way, had warped her mind enough, led her thoughts astray, far away enough from the battlefield or the urgency of being fugitives, to forget almost everyone around them was an enemy. Under the skin of every single person they came across potentially hid a traitor that'd lead Midland and other allied nations' armies their way to rip them apart like Wyald had almost managed to. This respite, floating on water in a wooden coffin, was nothing but that, an evasion they'd do well not to forget might be for no reason.

Griffith at least kept his wits about him.

At least he was there.

Still she felt sadness gripping every one of her organs from the inside. To think after all those years of mindless violence she'd withstood and sometimes enjoy that it'd be this simple act, this simple life, that'd make her feel this kind of regret watching the bloodstained sand and the lifeless eyes of the man who'd led them here. She knelt to close them with her hands and whisper encouragement. Saying she was sorry she'd lied would've been insulting.

"This really yer island, boy?" Gaston stood atop a rock, looking around himself with a hand placed above his eyes. "Far prettier than where I grew up. I never woulda left if I'd grown up here."

Casca watched Rickert nervously laugh, shrug his shoulders, and say he just wanted to see more.

She shuddered thinking maybe people would think her hometown beautiful too, think her a fool for leaving. She too looked around the rocky beach, the expanses of grass, the slopes in the distance, and somehow, for the first time in the entire journey she believed they'd entered another realm, she believed an elf would greet them at the Hill of Kings and lead them towards Griffith's salvation. She hadn't even felt that way when whatever that sea creature was appeared, not even when Wyald had grasped Griffith's frail body in his monstrous hand, not even when she'd agreed to board the ship with them. It was frightening and dreadful and not at all the kind of hopeful expectation she had wanted to anticipate. A howling wind shook the emerald gold fields of barley and they all stood silently on the beach, the corpse of the navigator still at their feet, as they watched the scenery before them, the sun setting slowly to signal the end of this day.