Chapter Ten: At the Point of a Sword

"Ed, pay attention!" Peter barked.

"What?" Edmund swung his eyes back towards his older brother. Peter was red in the face and panting for breath--much like Edmund himself was--and he had lowered his sword to his side as he clutched his knee with his other hand for support.

"Have you been paying attention at all?" Peter asked.

Edmund blushed profusely and could not help but flicker his eyes back over to the area of the grassy plains where Jasmine and Caspian could be seen talking and laughing together. He fought back a growl in his throat and snapped his head back to his brother.

"Yes," he replied instantly.

"You just nearly decapitated me!" Peter bellowed. "If you meant to do that then please tell me what I did so that I can apologize before Su has to bury me."

"Sorry Pete," Edmund said, "I suppose I just get a little too into these training sessions."

"Don't worry," Peter told him, "It's a good thing I'm no novice or you surely would have knocked my head off my shoulders though."

Edmund gave a weak chuckle. "Yeah," he said, "Maybe."

"Let's take a break," Peter continued, "I've nearly forgotten just how hot Narnian summers can get..."

Edmund agreed to this suggestion at once and the two sat on the grass, both breathing heavily from the heat and the exhilaration of their match.

As soon as he sat down, he immediately looked back over to the further side of the fields and his eyes fell on a young woman with long, flowing black hair. Each time he thought of it, every time the idea simply imposed upon him, he could not help but wonder whether he did fancy Jasmine. There was just something about this girl... She didn't giggle incessantly and annoyingly like the other girls that Edmund had seen before, she did not flatter her person or hold herself in a higher esteem than others, and she certainly was no coward in the face of difficulties. Each and every one of her qualities brought him closer to the idea first thought of by Lucy... Edmund fancied their newest companion, Jasmine.

"Ed, everything all right?" Peter asked.

"Hm?" Edmund looked back up and immediately turned pink. "Oh. No, nothing. Everything's just fine..."

"You've been awful quiet lately," Peter persisted.

He chooses now to play the big brother role?!

"I'm fine, Pete," Edmund told him. "Really I am."

"Well look sharp," Peter said, glaring over his brother's shoulder. "Here comes the Prince."

Edmund turned his head so sharply that it ached his neck and he firstly came eye-to-eye with Jasmine as she followed Caspian down to the two Kings. As soon as he saw her, he felt a blush creeping up on him and looked away before she could notice

"Hello Edmund, Peter," Caspian greeted jovially upon reaching them.

"Caspian," Peter grunted.

"Hello," Edmund told him, hopeful to make up for his brother's rudeness. Peter wasn't normally such a prig, but he went out of his way to be sometimes, it seemed.

"What would you say to a spar?" Caspian asked him. "It seems that we might as well make ourselves prepared, shouldn't we?"

Edmund looked at Peter and found him staring determinedly in another direction, clearing intent on ignoring Caspian. "Sure," he responded, turning back towards the Prince.

"Excellent," Caspian replied. "I've heard great things about the swordsmanship of King Edmund. I do hope not to be disappointed." The corners of his lips rose in a smile that seemed to challenge Edmund.

But Edmund wasn't in the mood to be overly friendly towards Caspian right now. Particularly when he'd stolen the company of Jasmine nearly all day. "I guess we'll just see," he muttered. He rose from his spot on the grass and went to a spot a fair ways away from where Caspian stood. Both unsheathed their swords, which glinted in the late day's rays of the sun and reflected back into their eyes, as they prepared for the match.

Caspian was the first to make his move. He took the offensive rather aggressively--something Edmund noticed that was ironically similar to Peter's fighting style--and brought his sword to swiftly clang against Edmund's as he barred it in front of his body just at the right moment. Edmund found that his mild annoyance towards Caspian suddenly turned to anger and he answered with several swift and hard blows of his own. And so the battle continued, both landing forceful strikes against the others sword and neither relenting.

It came to the point that Edmund was beginning to think it might be a draw, but then he looked back where he had been sitting with Peter and found his brother gone but saw Jasmine watching the spar with interest gleaming in her eyes.

He couldn't let her see him get beaten by Caspian--such a fool she might think he was! Edmund gritted his teeth and held his sword upright and steady as a rock before advancing on Caspian again. He threw his entire body into each and every swing of his sword and landed many hits. Within moments, he had the point of his sword to Caspian's throat and the man had dropped his own.

"I see that the tales are true," Caspian told him, looking down at Edmund's blade with a pleased eye. "Such a swordsman you are."

Edmund panted and glared from the sudden explosion of energy but drew his sword from Caspian's neck. "Thanks," he told him. Edmund's darkened eyes swung back over to Jasmine and saw that she was watching him now, definitely him and not Caspian. But instead of the shining admiration that he had been expecting--even hoping for--her mouth was hanging slightly open and her eyes were wide with something that looked horribly like fear.

Edmund darted his eyes away from her as soon as he could and walked swiftly back in the direction of the How.

---

"Ed, what happened?"

Susan plopped herself on the wooden bench that Edmund sat on, just next to him and stared at him with wide eyes.

"What do you mean?" Peter asked, who sat opposite of his younger brother. "I didn't think I had done him that much damage during our match..."

"No, not that," Susan told him quickly. She turned face back on Edmund again. "I have it from a centaur that you had a particularly tense training session with Caspian today. Is that true?"

"Possibly," Edmund said. "Why does it matter? He wanted to spar, so we sparred."

"The centaur mentioned that you looked rather frightening," Susan said. "What has he ever done to you?"

"Noth--"

"I'll tell you what he's done," Peter said, cutting through Edmund's sentence--though he did not mind and was quite fine with it. "He's a Telmarine, Su."

"Oh stop being ridiculous, Peter," Lucy said from his side, "It shouldn't matter that he's a Telmarine. Besides, that isn't what makes Edmund upset with him."

"So you are upset with him?" Susan asked.

Lucy! Edmund growled in his throat and made a mental note to never ever let Lucy get into his head again.

Edmund shrugged. "He doesn't bother me any."

"Oh come now, Edmund," Lucy said with a cheerful smile. She turned to Susan. "He doesn't like Caspian because he doesn't get any attention from the girls like the Prince does."

LUCY! Oh why, why did Lucy have to be so perceptive?

"Oh," Susan said with a giggle. She looked back at Edmund and smiled. "That's so cute, Ed. I suppose it is high time that you've started getting interested in girls. Are there any in particular that you have your eye on?"

In the face of this question, Edmund would have given anything to be at the end of his own sword just now.

"Not in particular," he replied, looking down to his food and busying himself with eating his dinner, hopeful to successfully evade the topic.

"Jasmine is a very nice girl," Lucy said. "What do you think of her, Ed?"

Edmund looked back up and found Lucy innocently smiling back at him. A beatific smile like an angel, a devious mind like a demon.

"She's nice," he told her.

"She is very pretty," Peter said, "Even if she is a Telmarine..."

Susan rolled her eyes. "Must you keep on with that?"

But Edmund jumped at the opportunity to turn the conversation away from him. "Looking for a Queen already?" Edmund taunted. "Haven't even been here a week yet..."

"No," Peter told him. He gave a smirk at Edmund. "Not me."

Edmund scowled at his brother and took to eating once more, intent on ignoring them completely this time.

---

After his dinner was done, Edmund wished to escape the endless taunts of his siblings and took to finding that escape outdoors. He came out of the How when the night was already coming upon them and he began to walk down to the fields, hoping to clear his head before bed.

As he walked, Edmund spotted a figure further out on the fields before the How, sitting upon the ground and watching the sun as it fell under the rolling hills. The figure was undeniably a woman with dark hair and pretty features. His stomach clenched and he felt a feeling in it. A...giddy, whooping feeling.

I have gone absolutely, completely, and utterly insane. That's it, Edmund said to himself, I must be insane...

But no matter his sanity or his lack thereof--which he was believing was more the case as each second passed--Edmund walked a few steps ahead of him. But he stopped; he hung back to watch the peaceful scene of a girl watching the setting sun. Nothing to intervene in her moment's quiet, just her.

The sun finally came to it's low position down to the crease in the world where the sky met its beginning on a pallet of green and the earth met its end at the rise of a blue expanse. Carefully, just ever so carefully, he loped forward until he was standing just behind her. And he only stood there. Just stood there and watched.

Jasmine was humming to herself and he could just make out her voice floating through the air's warm currents to his perking ears. Such a sweet melody indeed. He could listen to it forever and never go tired of this song that came from her lips. He just stood there for a time that even he didn't know--it could have been minutes, it could have been hours... Jasmine's humming came to an end much too soon for him. He smiled to himself and, before he could be caught, he walked back to the How and went inside. Thankfully, she did not see him at all.

That night, Edmund fell to sleep with the whispers of a dusk's song tickling at his ears. They sound caressed him gently and he wore such a smile that night as he drifted to sleep that not even the taunts of his siblings could dampen his spirits.