"Are you all right, Ed?"
"I—I think so," Edmund panted. "I've got that brute Nikabrik, but he's still alive."
"Weights and water-bottles!" came an angry voice. "It's me you're sitting on. Get off. You're like a young elephant."
"Sorry, D.L.F.," Edmund said. "Is that better?"
"Ow! No!" Trumpkin bellowed. "You're putting your boot in my mouth. Go away."
"Is King Caspian anywhere?" Peter asked.
"I'm here," a rather faint voice said. "Something bit me."
They all heard the noise of someone striking a match. It was Arvid. The little flame showed his face, looking pale and dirty. He blundered about for a little, found the candle, set it on the table and lit it. When the flame rose clear, several people scrambled to their feet. Seven faces blinked at one another in the candlelight.
"We don't seem to have any enemies left," said Peter. "There's the Hag, dead. And Nikabrik, dead too. And I suppose this thing is a Wer-Wolf. It's so long since I've seen one. Wolf's head and man's body. That means he was just turning from man into wolf at the moment he was killed. And you, I suppose, are King Caspian?"
"Yes," said the other boy. "But I've no idea who you are."
"It's the High King, King Peter," Trumpkin said.
"Your Majesty is very welcome," Caspian said.
"And so is your Majesty," Peter said. "I haven't come to take your place, you know, but to put you into it."
"Your Majesty," said another voice at Peter's elbow. He turned and found himself face to face with the Badger. Peter leaned forward, put his arms round the beast and kissed the furry head: it wasn't a girlish thing for him to do, because he was the High King.
"Best of badgers," he said. "You never doubted us all through."
"No credit to me, your Majesty," Trufflehunter said. "I'm a beast and we don't change. I'm a badger, what's more, and we hold on."
"I am sorry for Nikabrik," Caspian said, "though he hated me from the first moment he saw me. He had gone sour inside from long suffering and hating. If we had won quickly he might have become a good Dwarf in the days of peace. I don't know which of us killed him. I'm glad of that."
"You're bleeding," said Peter.
"Yes, I'm bitten," Caspian said. "It was that, that wolf thing." Cleaning and bandaging the wound took a little time, and when it was done Trumpkin said, "Now. Before everything else we want some breakfast."
"But not here," Peter said.
"No," Caspian said with a shudder. "And we must send someone to take away the bodies."
"Let the vermin be flung into a pit," Peter said. "But the Dwarf we will give to his people to be buried in their own fashion."
They breakfasted at last in another of the dark cellars of Aslan's How. It was not such a breakfast as they would have chosen, for Caspian and Cornelius were thinking of venison pasties, and Peter and Edmund of buttered eggs and hot coffee, but what everyone got was a little bit of cold bear-meat, a lump of hard cheese, an onion, and a mug of water. But, from the way they fell to, anyone would have supposed it was delicious.
"Now," Peter said, as they finished their meal, "Aslan and the girls, that's Queen Susan, Queen Lucy and Arvid's sister Aylin, Caspian, are somewhere close. We don't know when he will act. In his time, no doubt, not ours. In the meantime he would like us to do what we can on our own. You say, Caspian, we are not strong enough to meet Miraz in pitched battle."
"I'm afraid not, High King," said Caspian.
He was liking Peter very much but was rather tongue-tied. It was much stranger for him to meet the great Kings out of the old stories than it was for them to meet him.
"Very well, then," Peter said, "I'll send him a challenge to single combat."
No one had thought of this before.
"Please," Caspian said, "could it not be me? I want to avenge my father."
"You're wounded," Peter said. "And anyway, wouldn't he just laugh at a challenge from you? I mean, we have seen that you are a king and a warrior, but he thinks of you as a kid."
"But, Sire," the Badger said, who sat very close to Peter and never took its eyes off him. "Will he accept a challenge even from you? He knows he has the stronger army."
"Very likely he won't," Peter said, "but there's always the chance. And even if he doesn't, we shall spend the best part of the day sending heralds to and fro and all that. By then Aslan may have done something. And at least I can inspect the army and strengthen the position. I will send the challenge. In fact I will write it at once. Have you pen and ink, Master Doctor?"
"A scholar is never without them, your Majesty," Doctor Cornelius answered.
"Very well, I will dictate," said Peter.
And while the Doctor spread out a parchment and opened his ink-horn and sharpened his pen, Peter lent back with half-closed eyes and recalled to his mind the language in which he had written such things long ago in Narnia's golden age.
"Right," he said at last. "And now, if you are ready, Doctor?"
Doctor Cornelius dipped his pen and waited. Peter dictated as follows:
"Peter, by the gift of Aslan, by election, by prescription, and by conquest, High King over all Kings in Narnia, Emperor of the Lone Islands and Lord of Cair Paravel, Knight of the Most Noble Order of the Lion, to Miraz, Son of Caspian the Eighth, sometime Lord Protector of Narnia and now styling himself King of Narnia, Greeting. Have you got that?"
"Narnia, comma, greeting," the Doctor muttered. "Yes, Sire."
"Then begin a new paragraph," Peter said. "For to prevent the effusion of blood, and for the avoiding all other inconveniences likely to grow from the wars now levied in our realm of Narnia, it is our pleasure to adventure our royal person on behalf of our trusty and well-beloved Caspian in clean wager of battle to prove upon your Lordship's body that the said Caspian is lawful King under us in Narnia both by our gift and by the laws of the Telmarines, and your Lordship twice guilty of treachery both in withholding the dominion of Narnia from the said Caspian and in the most abhominable, don't forget to spell it with an H, Doctor, bloody, and unnatural murder of your kindly lord and brother King Caspian Ninth of that name. Wherefore we most heartily provoke, challenge and defy your Lordship to the said combat and monomachy, and have sent these letters by the hand of our well beloved and royal brother Edmund, sometime King under us in Narnia, Duke of Lantern Waste and Count of the Western March, Knight of the Noble Order of the Table, to whom we have given full power of determining with your Lordship all the conditions of the said battle. Given at our lodging in Aslan's How this XII day of the month Greenroof in the first year of Caspian Tenth of Narnia.
"That ought to do," Peter said, drawing a deep breath. "And now we must send two others with King Edmund. I think the Giant ought to be one."
"He's, he's not very clever, you know," Caspian said.
"Of course not," Peter said. "But any giant looks impressive if only he will keep quiet. And it will cheer him up. But who for the other?"
"Upon my word," Trumpkin said, "if you want someone who can kill with looks, Reepicheep would be the best."
"He would indeed, from all I hear," Peter said with a laugh. "If only he wasn't so small. They wouldn't even see him till he was close!"
"Send Glenstorm, Sire," Trufflehunter said. "No one ever laughed at a Centaur."
There was a great stirring at Aslan's How when the news came back and was communicated to the various creatures. Edmund, with one of Miraz's captains, had already marked out the place for the combat, and ropes and stakes had been put round it.
Two Telmarines were to stand at two of the corners, and one in the middle of one side, as marshals of the lists. Three marshals for the other two corners and the other side were to be furnished by the High King.
Peter was just explaining to Caspian that he could not be one, because his right to the throne was what they were fighting about, when suddenly a thick, sleepy voice said, "Your Majesty, please."
Peter turned and there stood the eldest of the Bulgy Bears.
"If you please, your Majesty," he said, "I'm a bear, I am."
"To be sure, so you are, and a good bear too, I don't doubt," Peter said.
"Yes," the Bear said. "But it was always a right of the bears to supply one marshal of the lists."
"Don't let him," Trumpkin whispered to Peter. "He's a good creature, but he'll shame us all. He'll go to sleep and he will suck his paws. In front of the enemy too."
"I can't help that," Peter said. "Because he's quite right. The Bears had that privilege. I can't imagine how it has been remembered all these years, when so many other things have been forgotten."
"Please, your Majesty," the Bear said.
"It is your right," Peter said. "And you shall be one of the marshals. But you must remember not to suck your paws."
"Of course not," the Bear said in a very shocked voice.
"Why, you're doing it this minute!" Trumpkin bellowed.
The Bear whipped his paw out of his mouth and pretended he hadn't heard.
"Sire!" came a shrill voice from near the ground.
"Ah, Reepicheep!" Peter said after looking up and down and round as people usually did when addressed by the Mouse.
"Sire," Reepicheep said. "My life is ever at your command, but my honour is my own. Sire, I have among my people the only trumpeter in your Majesty's army. I had thought, perhaps, we might have been sent with the challenge. Sire, my people are grieved. Perhaps if it were your pleasure that I should be a marshal of the lists, it would content them."
A noise not unlike thunder broke out from somewhere overhead at this point, as Giant Wimbleweather burst into one of those not very intelligent laughs to which the nicer sorts of Giant are so liable. He checked himself at once and looked as grave as a turnip by the time Reepicheep discovered where the noise came from.
"I am afraid it would not do," Peter said very gravely. "Some humans are afraid of mice—"
"I had observed it, Sire," Reepicheep said.
"And it would not be quite fair to Miraz," Peter continued, "to have in sight anything that might abate the edge of his courage."
"Your Majesty is the mirror of honour," the Mouse said with one of his admirable bows. "And on this matter we have but a single mind... I thought I heard someone laughing just now. If anyone present wishes to make me the subject of his wit, I am very much at his service, with my sword, whenever he has leisure."
An awful silence followed this remark, which was broken by Peter saying, "Giant Wimbleweather and the Bear and the Centaur Glenstorm shall be our marshals. The combat will be at two hours after noon. Dinner at noon precisely."
"I say," Edmund said as they walked away, "I suppose it is all right. I mean, I suppose you can beat him?"
"That's what I'm fighting him to find out," Peter said.
A little before two o'clock Trumpkin and the Badger sat with the rest of the creatures at the wood's edge looking across at the gleaming line of Miraz's army which was about two arrow-shots away.
In between, a square space of level grass had been staked for the combat. At the two far corners stood Glozelle and Sopespian with drawn swords. At the near corners were Giant Wimbleweather and the Bulgy Bear, who in spite of all their warnings was sucking his paws and looking, to tell the truth, uncommonly silly. To make up for this, Glenstorm on the right of the lists, stock-still except when he stamped a hind hoof occasionally on the turf, looked much more imposing than the Telmarine baron who faced him on the left.
Peter had just shaken hands with Edmund and the Doctor and was now walking down to the combat. It was like the moment before the pistol goes at an important race, but very much worse.