An Ugly Affair

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Losing Thornbut from among their number seemed to strike a sobering note for the Narnian party as they continued on their way. People spoke very little, and though Lucy did once think to ask after Corin, Edmund replied, quite rightly, that as long as he was not among the warriors that was all they needed to know, and after that they were quite solemn indeed.

When they at last came through the pass and started down to the lower ridge, all of Archenland lay spread out below them. It would have been a lovely sight and well worth looking at, had not it been so imperative that they reach the ridge in good time. Once there, Edmund called a halt and everybody began to sort themselves into the proper positions. The King gave his sister's hand a quick squeeze before she was lost to him, Cyclamen's massive bulk vanishing behind a pair of Giants and a panther as Lucy made her way toward the archers.

"Your Majesty." Greian, a Centaur who had helped the Queen improve her shooting once she had begun riding to certain battles, looked up from his bow and inclined his head to the young woman. Lucy nodded back, slipping from the saddle to slide her bow from her shoulder and throw off her cloak, freeing her arms for shooting. The bow she braced against her foot, flexing it with practiced ease, and once the weapon was strung Lucy lifted it to try her draw. She took no small measure of satisfaction in the sweet, mellow twang of the string.

All around her, the others did the same. A few younger archers wielded finely-crafted composite bows, or the same light recurve bow that Lucy carried, but most were armed with longbows. Longbows had the greatest range, but typically required the strength of a grown man to draw; Lucy had once demanded that Greian give her the chance to try one, and Greian, against his better judgment, had handed the Queen a longbow with a light draw weight and stood well back. Poor Lucy had suffered a nasty scrape along her bow arm when she lost her grip on the string, struggling to draw it, and had become quite content with her lot.

Now, satisfied with the suitability of her string, Lucy swung back up on Cyclamen and backed him neatly between Greian and a sombre-looking little Faun whose name eluded her, helmeted and armoured as he was. Settling herself in the saddle, she had to admit that Edmund had been right about Cyclamen being the wisest choice for this battle; the charger, so familiar with the machinations taking place around him, did little more than swivel his ears to listen for any commands Lucy might issue and flare his nostrils a few times, scenting the apprehension in the air. Aravir, in a similar situation, might well have done anything at all; with the seasoned animal standing firm beneath her, the Queen found she could exhale and will her shoulders to relax just a bit.

"Nothing wrong, I trust, Majesty?" Greian may or may not have offered the ghost of a smile; Lucy chose to believe he had, and smiled back.

"No indeed . . . or, rather, very soon there won't be." Then she looked ahead and squared her shoulders just a bit, because the horn had sounded clear across the late afternoon field, and the forces were off.

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Sitting a horse at full gallop isn't as tricky as it sounds, but neither is it quite as easy as some people make it look. When you try it in full battle-armour it can even be quite uncomfortable, so it was almost a relief for everyone to focus on the fast-approaching horde of Calormenes and the good work that was being accomplished by those on the Narnian side.

Up front, moving out to the left of the Narnian riders, the great Cats were speeding to their work with a terrible, silent sort of accuracy. Far faster than you might credit it they were in among the panicked horses of the dismounted Tarkaans, and with an efficient combination of snarls and swipes of heavy paws, they set to terrorising the poor creatures. Horse screams are a dreadful thing, particularly when the horses believe they are about to die, and when these are coupled with the hideous snarls and screams of panthers, leopards and the like, it is all terribly unpleasant. Had you been there to hear it, I am afraid you may have found it tricky to get a good night's sleep for at least a month after hearing them; the sounds of things dying are never very nice.

The marvellous thing about Talking Cats, though –about Talking Beasts of every sort– is that they are not like the poor, unreasoning beasts of our world; Aslan has made them quite different from regular animals, and in Narnia everybody treats them just as you would treat a person you passed on the street. Talking Beasts are every bit as sensible as you or I, so even when these Cats drew blood from the flanks of the Southern war horses, they were not driven into a mad frenzy as many creatures are at the scent of blood. Indeed, they very generously killed as few horses as possible. The remaining creatures they spooked well and truly, sending them wheeling away from the castle and into the Archenland valleys at a full gallop.

Although the poor horses were nearly with insensate with terror at the time, you may be pleased to hear that those who survived fared much better than many of their masters. Archenland is a lush, green land, full of good grazing and clear water, so that, what with one thing and another, the horses calmed very quickly once they were out of reach of the Cats and made themselves very comfortable until somebody could be bothered to go see about rounding them up again.

Those Tarkaans whose horses had not been driven off were already mounted, and under Rabadash's command they were charging straight for the oncoming Narnians. The remaining forces, deprived of their mounts, had little choice but to stay at the castle gate. For a very short time they continued their grim efforts to batter the portcullis, but this didn't last long. Almost at once they were set upon by the same Cats that had scattered their horses, and as the Calormene attackers fell or fled, a shout of triumph went up from within the castle. King Lune or one of his advisors must have seen the defeat of the rams'-men and ordered his men forth, for it was just minutes later that the chains whirred. With many ponderous creaks and groans the gates were raised, and Archenlandish fighters came rushing out in full force.

Meantime, the Narnians continued their charge at the mounted Calormenes. Edmund, tightening his knees around Irra to urge the horse forward, tried very, very hard not to think of Lucy, standing with the Narnian archers at his back. Logic told him, of course, that if the worst should happen she was in the best position to be removed from the field before any harm could befall her. Logic, however, plays precious little part in concern for loved ones, so it was no wonder that the Narnian King had to fight for a moment to regain a measure of clarity. Then the Calormenes were on them, and he thought of nothing else.

The Tarkaans Rabadash had chosen to fight with him were the fiercest sort, all of them hailing from the Eastern provinces of the Tisroc's Empire. From what Edmund had learned of Tarkaans who came from the Eastern provinces, first during his research of Calormene nobility and then during his stay in Tashbaan, he knew they were not the sort to take prisoners. Neither were they given to leniency; this was borne out when the first Tarkaan Edmund encountered gave no quarter in his attack, his scimitar flashing and gleaming dreadfully in the sun as he bent his every effort to cutting down the King.

Edmund, taking great exception to these efforts, gave back in kind. It would have been a thrilling sight had it not been such a near thing– the Calormene fighter made terrible faces and bared his teeth, and shouted some perfectly foul insults. The King, his jaw set in a manner much like that of his older brother, let the reins fall to the pommel of his saddle that he might guide Irra with knee and voice alone. This allowed him to get his shield up and grip his sword with better skill; it also gave him the balance he needed to do the thing properly, and yet, for all that the King put up an impressive show, it was an odd, daunting sort of fight.

A longsword, such as Edmund held, is a very direct sort of weapon. Unlike the scimitar, which is curved and can be of nearly any length and width the maker chooses, longswords are straight and heavy. For a mounted knight trying to keep a shield up, they make fighting imaginatively a difficult proposal at best. Edmund wasn't the only one who faced this problem– all around him, Narnians were finding they had to think very fast to alter their methods of defence.

The Narnian horses, taking cues from knees, voice, and subtle shifts in balance, did what best they could, but it was still very awkward going, especially for the Talking Horses; horses aren't born knowing what reins and legs mean, and all war-horses undergo a great deal of training before they are thought fit for battle. Talking Horses, though, never take any training in any sort of thing, since it is considered extremely offensive to ride a Talking Horse under any but the direst circumstances, so their riders had to shout to let them know what they wanted or rely on the horses to reason the thing out for themselves. It's no wonder, then, that facing the Calormenes was a tricky thing, or that it took the Narnians some precious time to get the hang of blocking these attacks.

It was really only great good fortune that gave the Narnians any advantage at all. Edmund realised it first, after he had rid himself of his first attacker and turned to meet another. All the Tarkaans, it seemed, had received very similar training in the scimitar. Edmund, blocking a vicious side-swing only just in time, realised that the same style Rabadash had demonstrated on the tournament field at Cair Paravel was evident in the way the Tarkaans came at them now. Always, it seemed, the Tarkaans opened with a grand and fearsome gesture, shouting and threatening as they did. Although in the opening assault the scimitar might be raised for a downswing or brought up from below, it would invariably be followed by a straight thrust and a vicious sweep from the side. With this realisation, everything else seemed to snap into place. The King's sword moved nearly of its own accord to parry the next blow, and finish off the attacker with one dreadful, direct thrust. Edmund then had only to spare a brief glance about him to see that his own knights and nobles were realising the same thing as he, and were finding it immeasurably easier to form some sort of defence against the patterned attack. After that it got much easier to parry blows with the Calormenes, even allowing for the difference in weaponry.

Of course, not all the Tarkaans fought with scimitars; the Narnians still encountered the odd rude surprise. Some Tarkaans seemed to prefer other weapons to the scimitar; several were armed with falchions or short, straight swords, a few wielded small battleaxes, and some carried spears. The spears were a particularly nasty affair, since you could only dodge them if you saw them coming, and they tended to come at you at an awful speed. If you didn't get your shield up in time, or your horse happened to be pressed too close to obey the cue to back or turn, you were in a pretty bad spot.

It was, Edmund would think later, perfectly idiotic of him to have left himself so open, but at the time he hadn't been thinking clearly. He had sighted Rabadash very near him some moments before, but the press of horses forced them apart. Now, sighting the Prince again and being wholly determined to have it out with the fellow, he made brutally short work of the Tarkaan facing him, dug his heels at Irra, and shouted the horse on.

Irra, seeing that there were far too many men, horses and flashing blades directly before him, prudently balked altogether, and backed up hard. Had he backed into an empty space it all might have come to nothing, but instead he backed into a horse, which took great aversion to this and delivered a sharp kick in reprimand. Irra spooked badly at the blow, and it took all of Edmund's focus to bring him under control again so he didn't see the spear coming until it was almost too late.

As Edmund calmed Irra, a thin, leering Calormene managed to get his horse right up beside them, and aimed his weapon at the King. It wasn't a long spear, which are used for more long-range fighting, but rather one of the dreadful, short spears used for close-range thrusts. Edmund didn't see it until it was scant inches from his left side; then the sun flashed down, bouncing off the gleaming point and alerting the King to the danger just seconds before it took his life.

With a cry of alarm he did the only thing he could– he dropped. There was no time to raise his shield, and doing so might have only deflected the weapon into the neck of his own horse. He hadn't thought all this through, of course, but rather had seen it all in a sort of blinding flash, and reacted accordingly, kicking off his right stirrup and dropping over to the left to land ingloriously on the ground.

"Urgh," moaned the King of Narnia, and got his feet under him as fast as he could, since a battle is no place to lie about feeling sorry for yourself. He had kept his grip on both sword and shield, which was just as well, since the first person he found facing him on rising was none other than Rabadash himself.

I wish I could say there had been some grand and glorious exchange of words between the two; maxims, perhaps, or, failing that, even a few pithy insults. But battles aren't like that –even duels are much uglier than some people would have you believe– and by this point, although Rabadash clearly had a few insults in him yet, Edmund was simply so sick and tired of anything and everything to do with Calormen that he just wanted to get the thing done and go home.

"Your sister–" Rabadash began, sneering, but Edmund, finding his patience had worn even thinner than he supposed, cut him off with a brutal slot-shot. He might even have had Rabadash's head clean off, had a nearby horse not bumped the Prince, knocking him back and out of the range of the blow. Edmund, of course, let Rabadash get back on his feet, but then he went after him again, and if the King was perhaps a bit more aggressive in his offensive than was his wont, I expect we can excuse him; he had had a very trying month.

Rabadash had clearly not expected an attack of this ferocity, and with good reason; it was nothing like Edmund's formal, stylised display on the tourney field. The King attacked and gave no quarter; it was really as dreadful and simple as that. Face dark and inscrutable under his helmet, Edmund drove the Calormene Prince back, all the way to the castle gate.

I expect Rabadash might have been finished off that very day, had not the duel been interrupted. Seeing his monarch so pressed, Ilgamuth of the Twisted Lip had attempted to finish Edmund off while his back was turned. This terrible thing might even have come to pass, had a young Archenlandish noble named Darrin not seen Ilgamuth rushing forward. Rather than attempting to intercept the attack, for which there really wasn't time, Darrin instead put a quick end to the attacker himself, and Ilgamuth fell forward, directly between Edmund and Rabadash.

The sudden appearance of a body rather interrupted their footwork, and both men dropped back in confusion. Then Rabadash, taking heart at Ilgamuth's cowardly example, thought to scramble up on a nearby mounting block (I'm afraid I don't know how it got there, but Rabadash, you may be sure, was very pleased to find it) and beleaguer Edmund from above. This might have gone very well for him, and very badly for Edmund, but he had forgotten about the Narnian archers on the far ridge. As five arrows flew at him in rapid succession, one of them nearly catching him full on the nose, he thought it best to leap down again.

With a fierce and dreadful howl (what, Edmund wondered, was the purpose in so much shouting? Didn't they know it wore them out that much faster?) Rabadash leaped from his mounting block.

"The bolt of Tash falls from above!" he crowed, but what ought to have been a fierce and glorious descent was rather badly spoilt by a hook protruding from the castle wall, just waiting for such an occasion. It caught Rabadash's hauberk so neatly you might have thought he planned it that way, and there he hung.

Now, Edmund likely meant to see directly to securing his defeated opponent, but before he could, another Tarkaan, whose face the King recognised but whose name eluded him, took this chance to make a rush at him. By this time Darrin was quite busy with a Tarkaan of his own, so he couldn't perform the same service he had with Ilgamuth, and Edmund was forced to confront the newcomer –Chlamash! he thought, with vague triumph. That had been the fellow's name, Chlamash. Whatever would Lucy have made of that?– on his own.

Chlamash was not as daunted by Edmund's direct, purposeful style of hand-to-hand as his Prince had been, so the duel took all of the King's focus, and in being absorbed by the new challenge, I am afraid he rather forgot about Rabadash for a time.

Fortunately it was not within the Prince's ability, hung up as he was, to take the same cowardly approach as had Ilgamuth (though had he not been so inconvenienced, I'm afraid he'd have come to it quickly enough) and instead he was obliged to hang there, rather ingloriously, and wait for people to remember him. It's not very nice, of course, to know one has been entirely forgotten, but in Rabadash's case I daresay it could not have done him anything but good.

It wasn't just Rabadash, however, that Edmund forgot. Indeed, as he fought the Tarkaan before him, he rather lost track of things all around him. It happens, of course, to all the best swordsmen; they become so caught up in the duel, the world about them just seems to slip away. To Edmund, the gradual surrender of those Tarkaans who had neither fled nor been killed was at very best a remote, peripheral event. For the King there was only the clank and jingle of his armour and mail, the slippery rustle and clink of Chlamash's robes and elaborate protective gear, and the dreadful slash, crash and squeal of his longsword blade against that of Chlamash's scimitar.

The Tarkaan, he realised, was a good and fierce fighter. He had not wasted breath or energy in shouting insults and threats, as most of the others seemed to do. He also seemed more inclined to improvise on the formal style of battle common to all the Tarkaans, and as the fight continued, Edmund found he was admiring his opponent almost in spite of himself. It was only as he came to this realisation that he also realised the battle around them had ceased; all was quiet, and those still standing were watching the two men locked in combat at the castle gate. Chlamash, it seemed, saw it too.

"Why do you not surrender?" Edmund asked kindly, and at hearing this, a flicker of emotion broke through the stony countenance of the warrior opposite him.

"What," he cried, delivering a vicious thrust that Edmund barely parried, "cast off my sword, only to be cut down like a dog? Never let it be said I allowed such a thing! I will die in battle, as befits my lineage! Only a noble death will ensure that my wives and daughters will burn offerings in my memory, and that my sons will remember me without shame."

"I won't cut you down," Edmund assured him, following his parry with a direct thrust that Chlamash blocked with some effort. "It is not our way to kill those who have surrendered to us; indeed, you have my word as a Knight and a King that if you will put up your sword, I will do everything in my power to see you restored to your family, your property and your homeland before three nights have passed."

It was clearly not in the code of Tarkaans to believe the word of Knights or Kings, but Chlamash seemed impressed all the same.

"Swear," he demanded, barely blocking Edmund's next thrust in time. "On the life of your brother, on the virtue of your sisters, swear to me it shall be so."

Edmund was startled to find that, again quite in spite of himself, he was feeling nothing but pity for a fellow who didn't know how to take somebody at his word. Even as he delivered another thrust, driving the man back against the castle wall, he shook his head and looked a little sad.

"Narnian men do not take such oaths," he said quietly. "My yes is my yes; my no is my no. But I will tell you this; as I love my brother, my sisters and my home, so do I love my honour. You can believe it shall be as I have said."

I do not know whether it was Edmund's gravity that so impressed the Tarkaan, or if the man's breath –which had been depleted by talking and fighting– had simply reached the point of giving out entirely. I choose, though, to believe it was something in Edmund's face that caused Chlamash to nod, just once.

"Very well," he said, "as you have spoken it, so may it be." When he threw his sword and shield to the ground, Edmund did not wait long in lowering his own.

"You have chosen well," he said, and in looking on the face of the King who stood before him, Chlamash knew it was so.

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"Oh for pity's sake," Lucy cried, "let me go!" She squirmed hard as Greian, wholly unperturbed, kept one broad hand locked respectfully but unyieldingly around the young Queen's wrist. Running through his fingers were Cyclamen's reins, thus keeping both Lucy and her mount anchored in place at the Centaur's side.

"Forgive me, your Majesty," he said politely, "but absolutely not."

"But it's over!" Lucy scowled, still struggling to free her hand. "Only look down there, won't you? All the Calormenes have laid down arms! Nobody's fighting anymore, they're all . . . what are they doing, anyhow?"

"It would seem to me, Madam, that they are all looking at some object on the wall of the castle. I cannot quite make out what it is."

"Well," Lucy said briskly, still wiggling in a valiant effort to work her wrist free and recapture the reins, "why don't we just go over and see?"

"Your pardon, my lady, but I cannot permit it. While it is true the Calormenes all appear to have laid down arms and acknowledged the victory of your brother and King Lune, it is still no safe place for a lady and a Queen to walk. Any of the men might, at any moment, produce some concealed weapon, and I would not for the world give him another weapon by placing you in their midst. Only when they have been bound can I permit you to advance."

"Well," Lucy scowled, at last ceasing her fierce efforts to break free of the Centaur's powerful grip, "that's rather unfair."

It took her a moment to realise that the rich, rough sound that followed was actually that of Greian's laughter; once she discovered this, she looked up at him in no small amazement. She had never heard him laugh before.

"It is," he smiled at her, his solemn, horsy face becoming almost kindly. "I agree, it is unfair for one who has fought so well to be denied the pleasure of witnessing our victory, but if you will excuse my presumption, will you not see it as your brother does? You are as dear to him as only a sister can be. If I had forced him to see you endangered, I could not counsel anything but that he run me through."

This was a new way of looking at the thing, and it quite distressed Lucy. "Oh, no!" she said, and used her free hand to pat Greian's. "I would never let Edmund blame you for such a thing! He would know it was my fault entirely, I assure you."

"He might think so," Greian allowed, "but I would know better, Madam. I would reproach only myself. Please," with another, smaller smile, "do not ask it of me."

Lucy, far more moved by this gentle plea than she had been even at the threat of armed Calormene warriors seizing her, at once nodded most emphatically.

"Of course not, Greian," she reassured him. "Of course I won't do that to you." So they remained side by side on the ridge, comrades at arms, looking on as Rabadash was at last taken down and carried inside. And though it burned in Lucy to know what it was that had them all cheering so fiercely so soon afterward, she held her chin as high as any of the rest of them, and did not break rank until Greian finally said it was safe to ride down and join the warriors below.

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A.N.: I hope this chapter was as much fun to read as it was to write! If you did have fun reading it you have Francienyc to thank, as she talked me into covering the battle at Anvard (actually she said something like "I'm sorry you're not going to" and I said "no, wait, I will!" Because I am suggestibility personified).

I am also anxious to address an issue raised by the last chapter; I hadn't realised readers saw so many of the peripheral characters as human! While I do write the nobles and most (not all) of the people from the fishing village as human, Cair Paravel is, to my mind, largely populated and staffed by non-human Narnians. There were no humans in Narnia for a hundred years, after all; I don't imagine they returned in droves! I am planning a fic that addresses the restoration of land to human stewardship, but I wanted to clear up that misunderstanding right away.

Up next: General Tidying-Up, wherein Queens demand explanations of Kings and Princes alike.