Chapter Thirty-Six : Of Bows and Burning Gold
There were few sights across the length and breadth of Narnia that equaled a full-blown Centaur-charge. In fact, it wasn't simply a sight – it was a sound, a sensation and a scent as well; the pounding, drumming crashes of iron-shod spatulate hooves the size of bucklers striking sparks from the flinty floor; the spicy reek of horse-sweat, leather and armor-oil; the reverberations that made internal organs tremble like knees.
During the Battle of Beruna, Peter and Oreius had lead a great chevron of stallions, bannerettes fluttering in the Spring breeze, long limbs churning, a ripple of sunlight passing down the line as lances were dropped and couched into position. Queen Susan's charge now was built on a wholly different scale – only six sets of hooves pounded the ground rather than the hundred or more her brother had, and still routinely, led – but was no less impressive.
Under the light of the three-quarter moon, Susan's armor shone like the sun, her streaming black cloak and whipping braid of jewel-tied hair flickering like shadow behind her. Niamh's coat – "within three shades of a newly-minted coin" as her husband never tired of telling her – blazed like molten gold. Her hooves churned fans of snow to the left and right, sparkling in the actinic, monochrome moonlight to rainbows of pale color To the left and right, the five stallions who had ridden out with their Queen - the remaining five staying in the village to guard the refugees already there and arriving – gleamed silver-white in the darkness, their armor and polished leather shining like mirrors.
A few minutes hard gallop north brought them clear of the woods, overlooking a small stream that twinkled in the moonlight at the bottom of the ridge they found themselves on. Niamh pulled up short even before Susan's hands tightened on the reins and her weight settled back in the saddle. Around them, the Centaurs came to a foaming halt in a clatter of armor
The moonlight provided enough illumination to see the scene unfolding before them; protected and guarded by a number of the soldiers of the Army of the East – Fauns, Dryads and woodland creatures in the main, for there were few Centaurs in the woods and no mountains for the Dwarfs – a snaking column of refugees was making its way towards the river. Their painfully slow progress – hampered by the night and weariness and the baggage they were carrying – could be determined by the birch-bark torches held aloft to provide some light. The resinous lamps provided pools of illumination – pools in which scattered scenes of desperation and fright could be seen. The column was running as well as it could, over uneven ground and in the confusing darkness of the dead of night. Cold and weariness were sapping their strength.
Pursuing them, in a ragged mass that bulged and broke into fragments and reformed as the whim took it, were the forces of the Witch. Susan gulped and swallowed her fear as best she could; the last time she had seen any of these had been when she was a little girl cowering in the bushes as they thundered past, tears streaking her face as Aslan lay dead. The darkness hid the worst of their hideousness from her, but she knew that soon they would be seen in the bright light of day – and there was no great army of her brother to defeat them this time.
There were not, she estimated, so very many of them. They were, however, too many for the soldiers defending the column to drive off. And, on the open terrain to the north of this river, there was no way to prevent some of them going around any defensive perimeter and running the refugees to ground.
The Narnians were half a mile from the river – and Susan saw that they were half a mile from death. The river could be forded easily by all but the smallest creatures, but the ridge beyond it was too high and too steep to climb quickly. The monsters would be on them before they had reached the top. They would be dragged down into the stream and the water would run red all the way to the mouth of the River at the Cair. The Queen turned to the Captain.
"How far until they can cross the river and reach the marshaling point?" He seemed to consider.
"A league to the west, maybe more." he answered grimly. His paired blades span inside sparkling arcs of their own reflected moonlight as he drew them.
"Do you trust me?" she asked quietly. His answer was immediate and not even a fraction surprised.
"As if you were Aslan himself." She nodded, and gestured with her sword.
"Send one of your stallions to lead the people westwards to where they can cross the river safely, the rest of you try to keep me alive." The Captain looked a touch uncertain, but he nodded at the youngest of his warriors to discharge the first part of her order. The young Centaur looked put-out that a share of glory might not be his.
"Your majesty, what are you suggesting?" asked the Captain. She smiled.
"I am the target of this assault, remember?" she grinned, "They will let my people go and try to slaughter me." The Captain was aghast.
"Your majesty, there are fifty or more there! They may very well succeed!" Susan's smile of calm surety was so beautiful, so heavy with authority that the Captain could say nothing more.
"Then it'll be time for Queen Susan to die," she said simply. Susan turned to face the field she had chosen for her first battle and considered if everyone had felt like this; sick to their stomach and so scared any death seemed preferable to the apprehension. "Ready, Niamh?" she whispered to the shaking horse – it was, Susan reflected, her first time in battle too. The mare's response was an affirmative whinny and then her front hooves left the ground and she reared backwards as Susan brandished her sword in the air, it sparkling like a spar of golden lightning.
"For Narnia and for Aslan!" she screamed, her voice cutting through the night air that was already ringing with the pounding of feet and panting of breath from the pursuit in front of them, "Queen Susan rides to war!" She twitched the reins and Niamh leaped from the ridge, splashing into the gravely bed of the river in a spray of water and stone. Five Centaurs unhesitatingly followed her, their powerful legs flexing as they landed in the icy cold water. Gravel crunched under them as their muscles flexed, sending them galloping forward with as much speed as they could muster, their Queen out in front by a length or more, leaning into her horse's neck, her sword upright and gleaming as both banner and challenge.
They met the refugees a third of a mile out. The column parted like curtains as Susan went through them like an arrow from a bow. With military precision no-one had any time to admire but without which the whole thing would have collapsed into chaos, the youngest of the Centaurs wheeled off and stationed himself at the head of the column, bellowing orders. The Captain raced to the eastern side of the refugees as his remaining three soldiers galloped frantically in Susan's wake. As he galloped past what would soon be the southernmost side of the column as it wheeled to the right, he yelled commands to the faster and tougher of the soldiers there; Your Queen needs you! Follow me! We take the battle to the enemy!
Clumsily, raggedly, the column of refugees shifted and snaked to the right, moving to the west and parallel with the river. Susan and her bodyguard – now swelled by some half-dozen soldiers who had been guarding the column – burst clear of the stragglers, hooves pounding through churned mud and snow, strewn here and there with the flotsam and jetsam of articles discarded to speed the refugees' flight. The young Centaur wheeled back, pushing them into a tighter line, screaming orders at the soldiers on the northern edge of the fragmenting column.
Ahead of her bodyguard by a good ten feet – close enough to be protected, but far enough away to feel it – Susan suddenly realized this was it. The curtain of thin clouds that had laid gauze over everything drew back from the moon and the night sprang into crisp focus. Ahead of her, a seeming wall of fangs and matted fur and talons and claws and horns reared up, snarling and drooling and immovable. There was no time to stop, no time to slow, no time even for prayer.
She dug her heels deeper into Niamh's flanks and the two of them hit their enemies at a gallop. A splintered second later, four Centaurs impacted alongside her with a terrible crash of metal on bone.
She remembered nothing of the initial exchange after the first swing of her sword; a swing which decapitated a drooling Cruel with skin and flesh like melting wax and nine-inch claws as sharp as razors dipped in blood. Everything was simply a swirl of metal and flesh, bone and blood, heat and hair. She vaguely felt blows and numbing, jarring impacts transmitted along her arm from her sword. Something wet and salty was on her lips and she had to blink her eyes to clear the sweat from them.
She came back to awareness, her limbs and mind burning with adrenaline and everything seeming to move in casual slow motion, half-way to the ground. Even as she flexed her shoulders, twisting in the air to land on them and not her back with a numbing crash, she took in the fact that Niamh had reared over-ambitiously, getting clear of a Minotaur's swung ax. The blade of Susan's sword was buried between its clavicle and trapezius, the quillons splitting the arterial spray into a fan like a statue in a fountain. More importantly for the falling Queen, the hilt was not in her hand.
The horse crashed over on her side with a protesting whinny, nearly crushing Susan who barely rolled to the side and back to her feet in time. Beside her, the monster thundered to the ground, forcing the snake-headed horror leaping for Susan to jump backwards to avoid being smashed to the ground by the mass of dead Minotaur.
The young Centaur had reached the end of the column he was leading and protecting, chivvying and driving the stragglers along. Black Dwarfs clogged his path, Efreets harrying him. He trampled a few, hacked down the remainder and screamed in pain as a knife stabbed into the muscle of his haunch, under the mail skirt. He whirled to see a hideously ugly woman with thin, dirty gray hair that seemed to blow in a different wind than was sweeping the land. Her skin was filthy with dirt and lice and the breath that washed from her was foul. Behind drooling lips and broken teeth a malformed tongue was chanting sorcerous syllables in some dark language even as it licked his blood from her knife. He could feel something in his chest constricting, his heart laboring
"Die, Hag!" he bellowed, rearing and cantering around to her, even as he felt his limbs stiffen and muscles weaken. She tried to leap backwards, out of range of his grasp, but she had misjudged the length of his strong arm. A single massive hand caught her by the throat and hoisted her scrawny body above his head, her enchantments giving way to choking gurgles.
"Ah, brave Centaur," she wheezed and wheedled even as his fingers tightened and his face twisted in revulsion at the parasites crawling out of her matted hair onto his hand, "you wouldn't hurt a poor old widow woman, would . . . ?" She got no further as he jerked his fist rapidly from side to side, snapping her neck like an autumn twig, and threw her body into the nearest tree with a crackle of bone. Before the corpse had bounced down into the snow his blade had swung again and one of the People of the Toadstools span away, its stalk and cap separated in a shower of spores.
In the center of the melee, where Susan and her bodyguard were surrounded by the bodies of their foes, there was a silent pause. Susan's bow was in her left hand with her right hovering close to the crimson flights of arrows that poked over her shoulder. The snake-headed creature – green and venomous, with a long lashing tail and the sculpted body of a beautiful woman, its four arms lashing a quartet of blades into a poison-dripping web of steel – snarled and hissed at Susan, licking long fangs with a forked tongue.
"No sword, Daughter of Eve?" it mocked, "I guess this is where the rules change."
"You guess right," said Susan shortly and put an arrow through its right eye before even its ophidian reflexes could twitch a sword towards her. Before the convulsing green scales had begun to tumble, Susan's hand had darted back to her shoulder again, her nimble fingers snatching two arrows and – as she moved to nock them to the string – her teeth stripped one of the feathers from one of them. The bow creaked sharply and the string twanged.
One of the arrows flew straight and true into the heart of a bristle-haired Dwarf, punching through his chainmail with terrible close-range force, while the other curved with an elegant grace and struck a black-skinned Bogart in the neck. Susan leaped backwards, inside the swing of her Captain's twinned blades, ducking below them as they razored the air inches above her head. Her bow sang again as the edge of one of the swords took the end off her ponytail, scattering priceless jeweled beads and trimmed ebony hair that would have filled the lockets of a dozen Princes.
Her back against the Centaur's armored chest now, his blades crossed in front of her like a bladed cage, she swept her eyes around the battlefield. Her nerves were keyed to a fever-pitch of excitement, she was feeling rather than thinking. Despite the horror that this was – the blood on her armor, the aches in her body, the stench of sweat and cries of pain – she could see that there might be those who liked this sort of thing.
The fact that one of them was her elder brother only made her feel the envy and pity more keenly.
She rolled forwards as an Ogre swung a club at her face; the Captain parried the blow as best he could, but the sheer force of it knocked him flying. She span between the monster's spread legs and shot it in the base of the skull. Around her, the Centaurs were leaping and slashing, their swords painting crimson lines in the air and their hooves cracking skulls.
She shook her head as she felt her braid begin to unravel, her waist-length hair opening out from the wrist-thick cord into a second cloak strung with tumbling and falling points of brilliant multicolored light. Her right hand grabbed for another arrow as her left dropped to her hip and pulled a knife free, holding it alongside her bow, in line with the stave.
As a Cruel leapt for her, iron-hard talons leering jealously for her face, she span her wrist in a figure of eight, taking it twice across the throat with the blade and smashing it away with the wood of her bow. She drove the arrow six inches deep into the throat of an Ogre, withdrew the shaft as it fell and shot the Dwarf behind it between the eyes before reaching for another.
She risked a glance at the column of refugees – it was running now, a new impetus and energy feeding the leaden limbs of the Narnian civilians. The young Centaur was rearing and fighting, his swords spinning in deadly fans of silver and crimson. Every second he and the column guards held out bought them more time, and every single moment she proved hard to kill brought more pressure to bear on her and took it off them.
It was, she reflected as Niamh rolled back to her hooves and kicked outward with bone-shattering force, breaking the trunk and branches of a corrupted Dryad and sending cankered and galled fruits scattering over the snow, simply a question of whether she could stand the pressure. Could her bodyguards keep her alive long enough for the civilians to get free? Could they keep her alive at all?
Behind her, the Captain struggled to his feet, sweeping the blow of a Minotaur aside with his paired blades. The monster reversed its grip on the haft and slammed the butt of the weapon into the Centaur's chest with a dreadful crack. For a second, the Captain's eyes glazed, his lungs and heart re-set by the impact. And then the butt of Minotaur's ax cracked him on the side of the head and he knew no more.
Susan's hand span over her shoulder for another arrow, found one, and sent it flying into the back of the Minotaur's skull. Almost incuriously, it turned to her; slowly, as it its thoughts were pinned in place by the shaft. She reached for another – an arrow through the eye would end this.
Her hand met empty air.
She did not hesitate for a second – she slung the bow and rolled out of the way of a sluggish ax swing. Her hand found the hilt of her golden blade and – with one foot on the shoulder of the monster and a great twisting wrench – she pulled it free. She knew she had no chance of meeting this beast toe-to-hoof – its power would break every bone in her arms if she tried. She dived to the side, rising and sweeping her blade upwards, the whole strength of her thighs, hips and shoulders in the blow.
The creature exploded at the midriff, her blade bursting through its waist in a welter of blood and intestines. She wasn't sure if the stench of rotting flesh was its own innards or its last meal.
But there were simply too few of them – they were surrounded now, all of them tired, not a single one of them uninjured. They had fought well and made their enemies pay a bloody price for their deaths – scarcely a score of the monsters remained, over two dozen had fallen to their blades. Yet it was only a matter of time. Susan snapped her blade to the salute. "Sell your lives as dearly as you can!" she cried, "Commend yourselves to the Lion!" I would have liked, she mused, to have won my first battle. But I did what I had to.
A great feline roar, lean and fast and somehow metallic. A leaping lithe shape – a narrow-waisted, somehow feminine, long-tailed shadow against the stars of the night - crashed into one of the faces of an Ettin. As if it were made of steel springs wrapped in razor-sharp velvet, it savaged the throat of the monster and leapt again, smashing a Hag off her feet before she could even think about sorcery.
All around the Narnians, cats – great, massive beasts; night-black panthers, brindled orange and sable tigers, spotted leopards and even a few tawny-maned lions – were pouncing into the melee. Everything was lashing tails and slashing claws around the Centaurs and Susan as Niamh neighed and reared, instinctively shying away from these terrible creatures. A few of the monsters turned to flee – they got mere feet before a couple of the swifter creatures – a midnight-black leopard and a copper-red puma – leapt on them and savaged them into bleeding ruin.
The first cat to leap into the melee – a true panther, Susan could see, by the length of the tail – diligently licked her paw and ran it over her head, smoothing her dark – although not perfectly black - fur back. "Your majesty," she purred.
"Elikolani!" Susan exclaimed, recognizing the Colonel of the Dancing Lawn elite, "I did not expect you to see you here!" The cat's purr deepened into warmer sarcasm.
"We arrived at the Cair just before midnight," she growled, moving forward and licking Susan's offered hand. This was not just a gesture of fealty – it served a practical purpose, cleaning the Queen's armor of the blood and gore that slicked it. To Elikolani and her troupe – nominally Queen Susan's bodyguards, but so infrequently was she abroad they generally fulfilled a different office – she was as much the head of their pride as Edmund was the alpha of the Lantern Waste elite. "General Oreius ordered us – as your bodyguards – to your side." Susan rolled her eyes and gave a grateful chuckle. "He might have got swifter results by telling us not to." The contrariness of the Dancing Lawn elite was legendary.
"You are most welcome!" The words came from Susan's heart. The two cats who had chased down the fleeing monsters – Carmit the Red with the distinctive scar on her muzzle and the leopard Sutta – padded closer to her and gently licked at her fingertips. Almost distractedly, Susan tangled her hands in their warm fur, a smile on her lips as she realized that – despite all her worries and everything she had said to the General, she was as safe out here as she might have been in Cair Paravel. She rarely spent much time with the Dancing Lawn elite – there was something decidedly uncomfortable about being treated as their equal. It was one thing for Edmund to spend more time with the wolves than anything else – and she did not like to think about just how many of the stories concerning his treaty negotiations were true; of being bloodied as a member of their packs, of winning the Alpha contests and unifying tribes that had been enemies for one hundred years – it was quite another for her to be a cat. She snapped out of her reverie as Kimba – the slender lioness whose fur was so pale it was practically blonde – gave a roar of warning.
"Your majesty! Re-enforcements approach!" Susan span around, ready to give orders to get the Captain conscious and on his hooves – but the brindled tiger Melody was diligently licking his face with her sandpaper tongue. He came around and spluttered, shoving the big cat away with an oath in a language none of them could speak. The cats gave throaty chuckles as Susan swung herself into Niamh's saddle and lead her warriors to the west at the double.
oOo
Susan, Niamh and the Centaurs who had ridden with them snatched a few hours of sleep while the cats and the remaining Centaurs patrolled the village and organized the arrival of the refugees, loading the carts with the supplies they brought and billeting them to take what rest they could. More than once, a couple of the cats and a Centaur galloped out to drive off the odd lone Boggart or prowling Ghoul that was harrying the Narnians and bring them safely home.
Susan awoke mid-morning and – after a breakfast taken around the dying embers of the fire the Centaurs had lit the night before to guide the refugees in, talking with her people and doing her best to allay their fears and gift them with a little of her strength – she had met with the Captain and Elikolani.
"Carmit and Kimba are still out, your majesty," purred the panther, "but Sutta and Melody report that north of here and as far east as the sea is empty save for our enemies." The Centaur nodded.
"By my calculations, there are some score and a half left – Colonel Elikolani's troupe should be able to bring them in without any trouble." He glanced at the sun, "They should be here by noon." Susan nodded.
"Let a meal be served at one, we will set out for the Cair at two. Speed is our priority, but these people will be tired – and they are not soldiers for the most part. If we can arrive at the Cair by nightfall, I will be satisfied." The Captain gave a curt nod.
By noon, Kimba and Carmit loped into the village, leading the final column of Narnians. By now, the village was crowded and packed to capacity and beyond. With the soldiers of the Army of the East now bolstering her own force of Centaurs and cats, she had some two and half hundreds. It was dreadfully tempting to forge Lucy's troops into an arrowhead and strike at the approaching enemies – but she knew that was folly. There were too few of them to make a dint. Perhaps if Peter had been here, he could have lead them. But not her – the very idea made her queasy and sick. It was only in combat itself that her hands had stilled – and she dare not risk such a bloody baptism again.
She felt no shame in the realization she was not a warrior. Yes, her skills against unliving targets and with baited blades had been sufficient to render her formidable, but she would never learn to like it, or even tolerate it. Her armor was a cage, her sword a shackle, even her beloved bow a binding. Sword reversed, kneeling with her head bowed, she prayed to the Lion she need never be tested like this again.
She knew, in her heart of hearts, it was fruitless.
At one, a cheerless meal was served – there was no wine and precious little water. The meat was cold and salted, the bread two days stale and the cheese curling to rind. This was the last of the supplies – the very dregs that were not loaded on the carts. Susan made point of eating the same meal as her people, breaking the bread before them and driving her dagger downwards as they followed. With an effort, she swallowed a few morsels – her palate was over-used to the fineries of the Cair. Edmund or Peter would be fine with this, she mused disconsolately, and Lucy would put a brave face on it anyway.
At two, the Captain of the Centaurs organized the Narnians into a marching column headed by the Queen and five of the Centaurs, with him and the remaining four bringing up the rear. On the flanks, the soldiers marched, and in the center – walking wearily alongside the carts or riding on them – were the civilians. Elikolani and her troupe prowled the edges and ranged ahead, a dozen feline shapes in the deepening afternoon as the sun sank.
After the excitement of the previous night – the fight, the flight, the terror for the war-virgins Susan and Niamh – the journey back to the Cair was an anti-climax. Kept at a constant state of apprehension by the fear of attack, exhausted by nervousness and the gnawing worry, the soldiers marched mechanically, the people tearfully and some of them wanting to simply lay down and sleep. The Dancing Lawn elite were skittish and jumpy, but it was impossible to determine how much of that was the stress of the war and how much was natural temperament.
Night fell – for a march of half a day could not be accomplished in that time by weary civilians. For the old, infirm and the children, it was simply too much. Each of the Centaurs – an almost-unheard of occurrence which Susan simply ordered – bore one or more of the smaller ones of their backs. Susan dismounted and stationed two elderly Fauns on Niamh while she herself carried a sleeping fox cub in her arms as she marched along.
The sun fell, and the moon rose and the stars began to appear one by one. And still they marched, the Spear Head directly behind them. The land rose and became rockier as they came closer to the Cair. And then, eventually, in the dead of night, the Cair itself was visible – a great spike of white stone and leaded glass gleaming black in the moonlight. A stab of pain took her through the heart when she saw none of the Royal Standards flying from the towers. I'm coming home, she smiled through her tears.
It was the final mile that promised some excitement – for Melody loped to the head of the column and bowed before her mistress, not even waiting for permission to speak.
"Your majesty," she panted, "our enemies close – if we do not move swiftly, they will be on us before we reach the walls of the Cair." Susan's face twisted, cracking the mask of weariness which had settled on it, and she shifted the fox more comfortably in her arms.
"Sprint to the Cair as swiftly as you may," she ordered the tigress. "Have them lower the drawbridge as we approach, and be ready to draw it up with all speed when we are inside. Have Oreius station archers on the walls." Idiot, Susan, she cursed silently, Micromanaging idiot – Oreius can defend a castle. Concentrate on getting your people home. Melody bowed and loped away, a framework of orange and white wrapping black fur that faded into the night.
The word was swiftly passed along the column and – with tears of effort and exhortations from the Centaurs and Susan – the Narnians began first to walk swiftly, and then jog and, finally, as the first monsters became visible in the twisted moonlight, run as if their lives depended on it.
Which, of course, Susan mused through gritted teeth as she sprinted in her heavy armor, her breath coming in ragged gasps, it does.
The ridge behind them had grown a hedge of spear points, an ugly canker of gnarled shapes – the shadows of monsters standing like a saw-toothed fence on the hill. With a roar of anger and hatred, they charged after the Narnians.
Elikolani and her troupe ran, swifter than Niamh and even the Centaurs, dashing hither and thither among the jostling column, leaping amid the pounding Narnians, jumping from cart to churned snow and back to cart again. Each grasped a child – a Faun, a Dryad sapling, a cub or pup – by the clothes or the scruff of the neck in velveted jaws and ran – limbs burning with the effort, spines flexing and stretching as only they could – for the Cair. There, they deposited the mewling children on the drawbridge where Susan's army of Dryads- and Naiads-in-waiting hastened to bear them into the castle.
And then those weary cats turned and did it again. And again. And again.
Susan turned and thrust the fox cub into Sutta's jaws, standing stock still as her people ran past her. She was five hundred yards from the drawbridge – and roughly the same distance from the bulk of the approaching horde. The moon was high now, pregnant with the madness that was descending on Narnia. She could see the danger that faced her people.
The bulk of the army would not reach the fleeing Narnians in time to catch them - they were not twice as fast as those they pursued. But, streaking ahead of the army, were the thick-limbed White Tigers of the North – creamy-white beasts with silver-gray markings, strong and powerful. The swiftest of the Witch's fighters, the ones against whom the Dancing Lawn elite had bloodied themselves in the Battle of Beruna. She counted half a dozen – she had refilled her quiver with twice that many arrows.
Her bow had a range of three hundred yards – those cats could cover that distance in less than half a minute. In the few seconds she had left before her bow was in range, she jerked the arrows from her quiver and stabbed their points in the ground. And then she went down on one knee, nocked the first arrow and drew it back.
It wasn't really possible – moving targets, white on white in the moonlight, six of them, less than five seconds to take up each arrow, nock, draw, aim and fire. The targets had to be chosen in the correct order. Each shot had to be a kill, a kill of a beast that weighed anything up to a quarter of a tonne. Weariness had her by the scruff of the neck, the terror of such monsters running towards her faster than a horse could gallop lay icy fingers on her heart.
It simply couldn't be done.
Susan the Gentle, by gift of Aslan Queen of Narnia and Empress of the Lone Islands, Duchess of the Southern March, Countess of the Dancing Lawn, an archer the equal of Artemis, did it without even thinking. Her hands moved of their own volition, golden fingers plucking at the string of her bow like a harpist, a single-note counterpoint to the prayer to Aslan on her perfect lips the whole time.
The final beast died three feet from her – a blind Faun couldn't miss at that range, but neither would anything stop the tiger's headlong plunge. The carcase slumped to the snowy ground, snapping the remaining arrows skewered into the earth with its weight and sending up great sprays of ice. The hot corpse slammed into Susan, knocking her off her feet and sending her crashing to the ground underneath it, unconscious.
So she didn't see Elikolani and Melody sprinting towards her, the panther dragging her dead foe off her and the gigantic tigress grabbing her around the waist and hoisting her up. She remembered only fitful, painful dreams of rides in cars with poor suspension over cobbled streets as the great brindled creature raced for the drawbridge. She didn't hear Elikolani howling "Raise the bridge!" as they approached, denying their enemies the opportunity to enter the castle. The only sign of the fact her head bashed against the underside of the bridge as Melody leapt a clear seven feet with her in her mouth and clung to the rising wood with her massive paws was a bruise on her neck.
It was merely the scrapes on her armor that told the story of how the tigress managed to haul her Queen over the edge of the nearly-vertical bridge, and it was only the limp in Elikolani's normally svelte stride that showed the Colonel had leaped over the bridge as Susan fell, twisting herself under Susan in a parody of the cat's natural tendency in order to cushion her fall into the gatehouse with her own body.
But, next morning, when Susan stood on the highest tower of the Cair at dawn, she was told the final chapter of the story.
As she raised the enchanted horn to her lips and blew – the clear note, rich and resonant, spiraling upwards and across lands and oceans, calling for whatever aid might come - Susan saw the vast besieging army that faced them. A sea of monsters surrounded the Cair, the onrushing horde she knew Melody had fallen into from the drawbridge as it closed.
For, on the largest banner of the army of the Witch, the great brindled body of Melody the tigress of the Dancing Lawn elite was crucified; the single one of her people Queen Susan had failed to bring home.