In which all involved find themselves eyes-deep in the sorts of trouble to which each individual is best suited.

After this all was over, thought Peter, he was going to have to talk to Oreius about training in the thick of the forest. He was literally accustomed to the fields of battle – even the training yards were cleared of any debris. It was an absolute shame that their current foes had not seen fit to gather in a large grassy plain, so that both sides could more conveniently try to hack each other to bits.

Beneath him his mount, a handsome Talking Horse by the name of Galthis, gathered his muscles and leapt. Peter raised Rhindon in his hand, and with a shout he sunk it deep into the first enemy he found. From there he had no time for anything else. He was past thinking – past doing anything but attacking and defending, each in their turn, as Oreius had taught.

Beside him Edmund's arm raised and fell in concert with Peter's own, his brother's sword also spattered with gore. Ordilan, at Edmund's back, acquitted himself well although he had trained with rapiers and was new to the Narnian style of broadsword and shield. He and Edmund had worked out rather a convenient way of defending Phillip: Ordilan was right-handed, but Edmund had trained to be ambidextrous. Each fought to the side of their shield-arm, and between the two Phillip was as safe as a Horse could be in battle.

The assorted rabble in the woods – but where had they come from? – growled and shrieked against the onslaught of Narnians. Peter, in flickering moments of being able to think between enemies, noted the presence of several types of creature that had been considered extinct in Narnia, ever since the defeat of the Witch.

In the air the five griffons led by Axet had much to do, even though their effect on the battle was limited by the thick forest canopy. Their view of things from above was invaluable to the rest of the army, and each had been assigned a captain to direct. They wheeled in the air, screaming instructions to those below, and it worked as well as it had every other time – until Axet himself was shot down. It was one of the Ettins who'd done it, with a vicious, primitive throwing spear – a sharpened stick, or given the size perhaps a sharpened sapling – clear through his side. Axet dropped like a stone, screaming all the way.

"'Ware the spears!" Axet's second-in-command shrieked, and the four remaining griffons spun away.

-----

"That way!" shouted Lucy, guiding Aelf with a hard tug of the reins. "I saw someone fall. One of the griffons."

"Oogh," the Horse grunted. "I saw it, you don't have to break my neck. Who was it?"

"I can't tell in this damn light," Tumnus replied, shifting up to look over Lucy's shoulder. "Hurry! I can see him – I think – over there, Lucy, d'you see?"

"Yes," Lucy said, kicking a foot free of the stirrups. She swung a leg over Aelf's back.

Tumnus let go of his Queen, windmilling his arms to keep his balance. "What are you doing?"

"Both of you," Lucy said, clinging to Aelf's side now and balanced on one foot, "both of you, as soon as I get to the ground, you promise me you'll get out of here."

"What?"

"No!"

"You promise!" she shouted. "It's too dangerous!"

"But not for you?" Tumnus argued, gripping her arm.

"I can fight, you can't. I'll cure whoever that is and he will get me back. I'll meet you with the rest of the army."

"And if they're not—" Aelf trailed off.

"They will be!" Lucy twisted her wrist under Tumnus' hand, grasping his forearm firmly and locking his eyes with hers. "You two keep safe. Please. I'll be fine." Tumnus nodded solemnly and tightened his goat knees around Aelf's side. "Now go!" Lucy shouted, letting go, and whacking Aelf on the flank with her bow for good measure.

Tumnus turned himself as far as he could, suddenly unaware of the Horse under him, and watched Lucy until the forest swallowed her.

-----

"What is that?" Edmund shouted. "There, by those trees – no, who is that?"

Edmund's shock was understandable, because he had indeed seen something unusual: groups of Men, fighting bravely. Their armor was slapdash and inadequate, Edmund noticed, but they seemed to be defending themselves well.

"Your friends?" he asked Ordilan. "How did they get here?"

"I do not know, Sire, but I doubt they will stay here unless we help them."

"PETER!" Edmund shouted, looking for his brother. "PETER! Reinforcements, north-northwest!" He heard his call echoed by the captains who heard it: another convenient thing he'd persuaded Oreius to get the army to do.

In answer Edmund saw Rhindon wave twice, distinctly, above the crowd. Message recieved. Well enough.

"Come on then, Phillip," Edmund said. "They're Narnians."

-----

A horse in full-bore panicked flight thinks of little else: its body is designed well for motion, and its quick mind can scan the surrounding countryside to find the best escape routes without it even being aware it does so. This is as true in our world as it is in Narnia: any experienced horseman can tell you that horses, as a rule, will fly instead of fight. Talking Horses still have this wildness inside them, and it takes many years of training before a Talking Horse can ignore that primal urge to flee at all costs.

A shame, then, that little Aelf had not had such training. Wholly unaware of the shouting Faun on his back, Aelf led them both on a wild chase through the forest, and it wasn't until the noise stopped that he realized he'd lost Tumnus somewhere along the way.

Aelf stood with his head down, his forelegs splayed to keep his balance. His breath came from him in great steaming puffs, matched only by the steam rising from his flanks. Far in the distance, he could hear the horns and shouts of battle. Closer to him he could hear water, and though he felt dreadfully thirsty moving any further was quite beyond him. His armor, fine as it was, felt quite heavy by now and beneath it his sweaty skin itched horribly.

Eventually Aelf regained his wind. He lifted his fine-boned head and sniffed, testing the scents on the strangely cold wind. The smell of water matched the direction the sound came from, and a few minutes' exploring found the small grey-speckled Horse up to his knees in a small creek. He drank, but not greedily – everybody knows that the best way to make oneself sick is follow a lot of exertion with a full belly of cold water – and after that merely stood in the creek, allowing the cool water to soothe his hooves.

From here shame overtook him: even with all his armor he was a fine mockery of a war horse. He had not only lost his Queen, he'd lost her Faun as well, all the while racing madly to save his own hide. He knew, as did all Horses, that panic was not an easy thing to overcome, but still Aelf felt he had behaved badly.

It was clear to him that the only thing to do was to go back and collect them both. He would find his Queen, they would find her Faun, and from there they would, he hoped, find the battle won and the Narnians celebrating. After that a good currying would not go amiss – it did itch terribly under the armor.

Aelf set his ears back and bravely turned towards the sound of battle. He had failed once, but he would not do it again.

It did little to soothe the Horse's conscience when, much later, Tumnus explained he hadn't even seen the tree branch until after it had knocked him from Aelf's back.

-----

"My lady," the Griffon rasped in his odd voice, "you must leave. I cannot protect you—" he shifted uncomfortably in the mud, gasping as a fresh wave of pain overtook him.

"Nonsense," Lucy said, rather a bit louder than she'd wished, but sometimes being loud is better than sounding terribly frightened. "I have my cordial here."

Axet shook his feathered head. "The spear is deep, Lady. It has killed me."

"Not yet it hasn't," she argued senselessly. "I can pull it out and have the cordial to you in a moment, just a moment."

"To pull it out would be a kindness, my Queen," said the griffon, "as you would then send me to Aslan all the quicker."

"No," Lucy said, again a trifle too loud, "because from here you and I are going home and Aslan's country can wait! Tell me how to get it out." She set her chin, and glared at the Griffon's coppery eyes, and had he not been in such dire straits Axet would have tilted his head and opened his beak, smiling in the way birds do.

"Do not twist it," the griffon gasped. "Out the same angle as in."

Lucy nodded and knelt at the griffon's side, the abraded flesh now frighteningly swollen and black with blood. Lucy felt pale and faint at the sight. She lightly rested her shaking hands on Axet's side and took a deep breath. She had heard stories – the most memorable involved an accidental dart in a buttock, though her brothers each swore it had happened to the other – but Lucy had never pulled anything larger than a splinter from a living, breathing, aching body.

Lucy pulled the small knife from her belt and cut a good length of cloth from her skirt. She folded it into a pad and laid it aside, to place on the wound after the hateful spear was gone. She loosened the bottle's stopper – not completely, for fear that Axet would move and spill the precious cordial – but close enough so that it could be opened in a flash.

"Sideways," she said to herself, examining the wooden shaft. She held her hands over it and mimed the motion it would take to remove the thing. She adjusted her position and pantomimed again. She placed a trembling hand on the spear – and Axet screamed. "I'm sorry!" she shouted, releasing the thing as though it were on fire, unaware that she had begun to cry.

"Do it," Axet panted, "no matter how I may cry out. Do it quickly. Please. The worst is behind and Aslan is ahead."

"No," Lucy said thickly, sobbing in earnest. She placed her hands on the spear shaft and beneath her Axet moaned. "He isn't!" Her hands slipped on the blood-slick spear. "He wants you to live," she shouted, bracing both feet and tightening her grasp, "and so do I!" She pulled up and backwards with all her might – beneath her the tortured Axet howled with unimaginable pain – and with a terrible tearing noise the hateful thing came free.

Lucy staggered backwards with the force of her mighty heave, and as she dropped the spear she too hit the ground. She scrambled back towards Axet, catching the bottle of cordial as she went. With slippery hands Lucy fumbled the stopper out of the cordial, and one shining drop fell into Axet's open mouth. She corked the bottle quickly, and carelessly dropped it on the ground behind her, then gathered the cloth pad and pressed it into the wound.

The cloth stained darker and darker with blood, but none seeped past it, and only when she shifted her weight to add more pressure to the thing was she aware of the sudden silence. Axet had stopped screaming, and so had Lucy.

The silence held, and Axet remained still. Lucy bowed her head to her hands.

-----

Peter had heard it, had seen it all, had spoken with one of the men involved and still could not believe what he saw. The battle was quickly ending: with the lucky appearance of the Galmans the enemy had found itself with one too many vulnerable sides.

It had been some time since he'd left Galthis' back in favor of his own two feet: the larger enemies had mostly been dealt with and in close quarters Peter preferred to stand on his own.

One side of Peter's mind, detached from the strenuous efforts of his body, understood it in an abstract way. The Galmans had been there at the right time, and how did that old adage go? The enemy of my enemy, or something of the like. No time to remember it now.

Unfortunately – for Peter's ability to reason, at least – it was his body that found itself fighting back-to-back with a Galman stranger. His mind and his body had a short but intense argument about this, and once his mind won Peter accepted the man's presence but found himself acting, utterly, like the sort of clueless prat Edmund often accused him of being.

"Who are you?" Peter gasped over his shoulder.

"My name is Irlian. Who the devil are you?"

"I am Peter, King of Narnia."

"We will see," the man said, dispatching yet another foe and stepping away from Peter.

"What?" Peter yelped, startled – and only when he paused at this he realized that the battle, at least around him, seemed to be over. The assorted Narnians were checking themselves and each other, and the Galman men had withdrawn into a close group. Peter noticed, not disapprovingly, that they had not put away their weapons: he would hope his own soldiers would do the same, surrounded by an unknown and much larger army that may not be friendly.

"That lad there," the man calling himself Irlian shouted, "calls himself a king of Narnia!"

"He's just a whelp!" one of the others shouted.

"Calls himself a King?"

"I am," Peter said, "High King of this country under Aslan, who is King over us all." He turned, shifting Rhindon in his hand. "I know who you are and from where you have come. I am willing to ignore this slight against our person and welcome you as friends."

The response from the Galmans was the one Peter had not expected. He had thought they might apologize, or attack; he was ready for either one. What he hadn't expected was cruel, mocking laughter.

"Our King died, boy," another Galman said, "a hundred years ago. More than. Nobody survived that battle."

The assorted Narnian army, meanwhile, Talking Beasts and Fauns and Satyrs and Centaurs, had gathered around in a loose circle. When the man finished speaking, a cacophony of disagreement and insults arose. Oreius raised a hand for silence, which was obeyed; he then looked to Peter for further instruction.

Peter, for all his skills and talents, had never been at such a loss.

Back behind the close-crowded ring of Narnians, Edmund turned to Ordilan.

"I was afraid of that," the older Man said.

"He's going to get himself killed," Edmund muttered to himself. "Come on, Phillip. Got to rescue my idiot brother again."

-----

The darkness cleared, after what seemed a brief eternity. Tumnus had never before felt aware of the passing of time while he slept, or of the length of dreams – but this time, although he had not dreamed, he felt as though he'd slept as long as the trees had during the enchanted winter.

He was first aware of a strong pain, somewhere off-center and slightly behind his forehead. He touched his hand to the place and winced; his fingers came away reddened with sticky blood, though his hand seemed blurred and vague. He ground the heel of that hand into an eye, trying to clear away any grime, but his vision stayed foggy, shot through with flickering patches of light. Something shifted in the distance, with a rasp and a clunk not unlike hoof beats, but Tumnus was nearly deafened by the sound of his own heartbeat in his ears and could hardly tell one from the other.

He tried to sit up next, and that was the mistake: he had his man-body no more than halfway up before the ground tilted alarmingly and began to spin under him, so that he fell as limply as a rag-doll.

"I'm not dead," he told himself, "because being dead can't possibly hurt this much." He took a deep breath next. He could breathe and that was a great relief. The strange shuffling noises in the background continued, but since nothing bad happened Tumnus assumed he could safely ignore them. He stretched his arms and legs, flexed his fingers, and then stretched along his back. Nothing felt broken, although many places felt sore, and getting all the various parts of his person to move with coordination seemed rather beyond him.

The other problem was that the ground would not stop whirling beneath him. Tumnus, as all Narnians do, thought of the world as a large flat place. (You and I live on a world shaped like a ball, but Narnia is a different thing altogether.) It was, therefore, quite alarming to feel the entirety of the world spinning under his back. He tried to get up, or to move himself, and only succeeded in flopping over onto his side.

"I'm not dead," he repeated to himself. "That's the important part. Not dead, and not broken – ugh—" he stretched again "—mostly not broken. But not dead. World's gone spinny but I'm alive in it."

"No less dead than I," someone responded.

The shuffling noise that Tumnus had thus far ignored resolved itself into the sound of hoof beats. A shadow fell over Tumnus, obscuring what little light remained. With great effort, Tumnus turned his head, and followed a gnarled and ancient pair of cloven hooves up to a face older than the forest.

"Father," he said reverently. "Have you come to take me home?"

"You do not think you are there now?"

Notes:

On the difficulties of battle: I can't do action. I'll leave that to the incomparable Elecktrum, and hope you all can forgive me. In my defense, Jack always skipped the proper fighting bits too. For all the battles in the stories of Narnia, we never read much about actual fighting.

On the chapter name: well, there's a storm, and they're in the woods. Narnians seem fairly prosaic about how they name their battles.

On events that may seem to resemble precipices: I've been holding onto these bits for MONTHS. Y'all don't even know how fun it is to finally have this bit posted. This all was originally supposed to happen -- oh, a good six chapters ago. Then things kinda grew.

Coming up next we've got rather a lot of discussion. Should be fun. Stay tuned...