Symmetry

Chapter Two: Holding Pattern

Despite the sergeant's proclamations, it wasn't the most beautiful day in the infantry that Amelia had seen. She was starting to feel that she had seen entirely too many of them so far, especially out in the wilderness, and it had only been a little over a month since they set out from the main camp. Since then, she had built shelters in rain, sharpened swords in the dark, drawn maps in fog, built fires in gale-force winds, and sparred in all of those conditions, as well as a mudslide. Before, during, and after a mudslide, in fact.

Somehow, everyone else still seemed to be operating under the impression that she had lost fairly.

Today, because the swamps of the past two days were known to contain any number of parasitic bugs and the like – Amelia didn't know if leeches were bugs or fish, and was okay with never finding out – they had been given a free hour to bathe in the river. Naturally, the universe had noticed this rare mercy, and responded by banishing the previous night's sauna-like heat with overcast skies and cold winds that drew immensely complex ripples across the water's surface.

Something that almost no one realises when they need to about rivers is the way they shape a forest, especially a thick one. The river's surface is definite but flexible, and the trees to either side crowd in to tap the water, which means that any river is essentially a long corridor for echoes to bounce down. Even around a bend in the stream, Amelia could hear the others in her group talking, when mad splashing didn't override everything else.

"I can't believe she's still here."

"It's not like she's good at anything that matters, anyway. If she really was part of King Ephraim's company, she was probably the cook."

"Maid!"

"Seamstress!"

Amelia eyed her lance on the shore, and briefly wondered what she might be able to sew together by tying a rope to the end of it. That might be one way to get them to shut up.

"Has she won a single match?"

"She beat Daber."

"Pff. Like that's saying anything."

"Hey, it's not my fault the rock I was standing on came loose!"

"I got her off her feet in less than a minute, in the first week. Some fighter she was."

She recalled that battle. It had been on an icy slope halfway up one of the Renvall mountains, and during a windstorm that kicked the frost up into a thin blizzard. No one had really won a single match that time, considering that everyone had slipped up before they were even supposed to rotate partners for the first time, and the sergeant had relented. After all, it had been almost three hours past midnight.

Since then, Amelia had to admit, she didn't have a stellar record. This was the final training course for junior soldiers, and some of them really did have skills, so she lost to the better ones and barely overcame the less-talented. What was coincidental to the point of suspicious is that it seemed to Amelia she always had the low ground, the unstable footing, and the worst visibility.

"Anyway, she hits like a girl."

"Duh, idiot."

"No, I mean, hasn't anyone noticed that that's one of those things you say? I mean, it's built into the language already, so why hasn't the sergeant caught on? What kind of a soldier could she ever be?"

Amelia sorted and repacked her rucksack while her towel dried in the wind, which was a good metaphor for the sorting and repacking going on in her head at the same time. Memories of the weeks travelling with Eirika and Ephraim seemed painfully distant, both in hours and miles, to the point where she wondered if she was imagining parts of it herself. True, she hadn't exactly torn Valter from his mount and nailed him to the door of Jehanna Palace, or slain a Dracozombie with nothing but a sharp branch and a ball of yarn, but…

Certainly she hadn't imagined her friends. Neimi – not so much Colm – Ross, Ewan and Tethys, and General Duessel… and Franz, the one who had rode out of a cloud of dust in the middle of a chaotic, confusing battle and somehow talked her into switching sides without a moment's hesitation on either part. Amelia always thought it was luck that he hadn't come at her with his sword swinging, but maybe she just hadn't looked like she was worth the effort. Practically a civilian, armed and armored or not…

Maybe she had gone through that whole Demon King ordeal without making any progress. She certainly wasn't getting anywhere out here; it was just day after day of the same thing, running without direction and fighting without learning anything. Nothing had actually happened to her in all those months, and nothing worthwhile was going to happen for a long time yet, Amelia had no doubt.

She heaved the rucksack onto her back and turned to march back into the woods – but her way was blocked by a little crowd of the other recruits, all looking appropriately smug about their superiority. The one at the front had the particular look of a leader about him, and was passing his lance from hand to hand with idle ease.

"Isn't it about time you got kicked out, one way or another?"

Was he ever going to get anywhere?

Seth thought that he had settled his mind on the matter the night before, and wouldn't have to have the same internal argument again for weeks, but something new was bothering him, and it wouldn't go away so easily. There was a hush over the castle that morning, brought on by the thickness of the moisture-laden air and the clouds overhead. All the world seemed to be encouraging a subdued day, and since the king and queen hadn't emerged to give any directives, Seth was content to let the weather have its way. He patrolled the corridors himself, doing a thorough inspection of the restored Castle Renais.

At least he was trying to convince himself of that much. In truth, Princess Eirika was in his every thought again, and there seemed to be no escape. The facts remained clear – to a knight, duty was everything, more important than wishes, feelings, or his very life. To abandon being a knight would be to abandon who he had been for almost twenty years.

And to cling to being a knight, in this castle, in this place, with his duties, would kill him from within. Slowly, yes. But completely. And inescapably.

As hard as it would be, he had to go to Eirika and tell her – no. Not everything. Enough. Tell her that he felt he needed to be somewhere else, request to be placed on monster patrol in the northwest or assigned to the reconstruction of Grado. It was in the nature of love that Seth never wanted to stop caring for his lady, but perhaps over time he could let it drift to the back of his mind, let her smile be a treasured memory and nothing more, nothing that would split him in two to demand that he cast all else aside and go to her or forbid even a word of it to be spoken…

Fortunately for Seth, no one in Renais held that rarest of magical gifts, the ability to hear and interpret the thoughts of others, or else he would likely already have been locked in a secure room with no sharp objects. He wasn't insane, of course, but nothing in his life had ever affected him like this before.

The unnerving rants that ran through his head were interrupted by a clatter and crescendo of falling metal that echoed up the stairwell from the armory. Duty asserted itself and he descended so quickly you'd have thought he fell down the stairs – if anyone else was up on this calm morning, they certainly hadn't been assigned to muck about with the plate mail reserves.

The clatter of metal continued until Seth reached the bottom and demanded to know who was in there. Helmets, armor, and lances had spilled across the floor, but the room was otherwise empty. …More accurately, the room was trying to look like it was empty.

"Come on, out where I can see you! Who's there?" Nothing happened except for one last helmet losing its stability and tumbling down to spin on the stone floor. Seth stopped it with his foot. "…Recruit O'Shaughnessy?" he asked, letting suspicion into his voice.

"I'm here, sir!" someone unseen replied in a high voice. "But I'm a bit stuck…"

Seth sighed. "All right, thank you – look, I know for a fact there is no Recruit O'Shaughnessy; I just made the name up. So whoever you are, you might as well show yourself."

Five mercenaries who could have been finalists in a disreputability pageant leapt out from behind weapons racks and armor chests, all of them carrying broadswords. If they were dismayed that no surprise registered on the paladin's face, they didn't show it.

"All right, mister shiny knight," said the one that Seth had tagged as the most likely leader. He had the sort of collection of scars that made people not want to even think about challenging him, because each one was a reminder that, for example, he had won fights after his left arm was slashed open from shoulder to elbow. "We've got you outflanked and you're unarmed, so it's in your best interest to close your eyes and take your fatal beating like a man. No reason to make this go on any longer than it needs to."

Seth nearly smiled. He disagreed on every point, but there was one that even a brigand should have caught onto faster than this. "Unarmed? This is an armory." The Silver Knight spun quickly to deliver a devastating punch to the sixth mercenary, who had been sneaking up behind him. When that one crumpled senseless to the floor, he grabbed a steel blade from the rack – a new one, its edge was straight and gleaming – and faced the others again.

The leader snorted his dismissal of the one-hit knockout, but shifted his stance uneasily. "You think you scare us?"

"Not yet," Seth replied, and lunged.

Naturally, his first swing was deflected easily – the man had seconds to see it coming – but Seth twisted his torso to conserve its momentum, glided off the blocking sword's edge, and struck home on the first foe to his right. They had him surrounded quickly, but as a long-time melee warrior, Seth knew that it was awkward to fight in a group against one target. Manoeuvre was out of the question, so it was really just a question of trying to swing on an angle that the foe wouldn't expect and not chopping any bits off your comrades.

Seth, in contrast, had no comrades, and so could feel free to be a dervish of unrestrained mayhem. When one of his strikes was blocked, he simply reversed and let his sights fall on a different target. Seth had to put more effort into blocking; to save any time he had to strike with enough force to knock the weapon away instead of just halting its momentum, and with five attackers, a fair number of blows were landing on his armor anyway.

In a somewhat un-paladinish move, Seth kicked out hard and sent one of them tumbling into the shelves, which then rained gauntlets on him. Another went down, this time dead, after he let his guard down in surprise. With a swing-block-feint-grab-yank, Seth managed to get two of the remaining mercenaries' swords locked together at the hilt, and took the free moment to slam the pommel of his own weapon onto the third one's head.

The second-to-last fell after a series of smacks with the flat of Seth's blade reduced his arms to numb jelly, leading to another knockout punch, leaving only the leader standing.

"This doesn't have to keep going," Seth offered.

The brigand grinned maliciously. "Agreed." He body-slammed Seth, who would have easily taken the impact, except that when he braced himself, he stepped on a fallen gauntlet and lost his balance. Seth crashed onto his back, and the mercenary leader charged with his sword held high, ready for a berserk overhand cut.

Seth, who knew a bad attack when he saw one, raised his blade and let the man run himself through. As the brigand toppled to one side, thoroughly dead, Seth searched his emotions. He hadn't felt any satisfaction in that, had he? Obviously he was glad to have protected the castle from whatever this band had been plotting, but he hadn't enjoyed killing either of those two, had he?

He hadn't let his frustration drive him to take life that he didn't have to, had he?

Seth noticed the blood staining the clothes of the first he had killed, and felt a distant regret. They had intended to kill him, certainly, and so had waived any rights to protection from his sword, but Magvel had seen enough killing in the last year to last it a century. The paladin let out a sigh of relief. Yes, he would have preferred a peaceful solution. Yes, he was in control of himself.

Seth cleared out a small closet, once used to stockpile pennants and standards for jousting tournaments, and locked in the surviving thieves – or whatever they were. The void left by the dissipation of his battle-fury was looking to drag him down into a melancholic quagmire, and he fought back by not thinking about it. For the protection of Eirika, King Ephraim, and all those of Castle Renais, he had responsibilities to meet.

And now, curiously, those responsibilities required him to calmly meet with the woman he could never be close to, and act as if he were no one but a knight. The Silver Knight.

So be it.

Franz staggered down a dim corridor for the second time in twelve hours. This time, rather than pure blackness, the inside of the castle was illuminated in a faintly ethereal way by the scattered light from hazy skies, and he was on his way to report to General Seth. No one else in his garrison seemed interested in getting up, by which he meant they had half-heartedly hurled a variety of objects more-or-less in the direction of the door when he suggested it.

"Oh, come on," said Franz, seeing the crumpled knight crouched against the wall at the nearest intersection. "Hot nights making it hard to sleep are one thing, but falling asleep on patrol is ridiculous." He stomped loudly up to the guard, expecting a panicked hurry to get back to his feet (which would last until he saw that it was 'Forde's little brother' approaching, rather than someone important). What he got was absolutely nothing.

He kicked the guard's foot lightly. "Up, already." …Something seemed strange about what had just happened. Franz kicked the same foot again, and noticed that it didn't budge. Few people are tense enough to keep their entire body rigid while asleep. Then he noticed the trickle of blood coming from a gouge in the knight's cuirass. Franz dropped to his knees, looking to the man's face to see if he was still alive – and anyone who hadn't been to the heart of Darkling Woods might have screamed.

Slowly, as someone who expects to feel needle-like fangs stabbing into some part of their body at any moment, Franz stood up. "Either the stonemasons are getting very, very strange ideas about modern art, or something very, very evil is inside the castle." The knight was stone. In fact, now that Franz looked closer, all his armor had been petrified as well. In the low light, it hadn't looked too different from the usual steely grey. "And what I do now," Franz said slowly, "is find General Seth."

Hhhsssrrrshshshshrrrrshsh… It was a complicated sound, the sort of sound shadows ought to make as they slide across the ground in a time-elapse movie, and as Franz spun wildly he discovered that he had no idea where it was coming from. There were halls in all four directions, and they branched off into other halls that connected again to the point where he felt that he was at the centre of a large hollow net. The liquid hiss echoed again all around him.

Franz knew the feeling that someone, somewhere, was watching him. This wasn't it. This was the feeling that everything was watching him, and slipping back into hiding just as he turned its way. Even the bloody doorknobs were watching him. Franz had his sword with him, luckily – the petrified guard's sword was granite and probably fused with its scabbard – but he didn't feel like fighting anything that could use Stone magic, or whatever had happened.

For that matter, armor probably wasn't any good against that sort of magic, either. Trying to keep a constant watch in four totally different directions, Franz slipped off his armor, including his favoured pauldrons and the plated boots, leaving them all stacked neatly by the stone guard. Another thought occurred to the cavalier, and he grabbed a pauldron. The guard's helmet would have been better, but it was stone and stuck to him.

Sure that no one was watching at that exact moment, Franz threw the curved piece of armor underhand down one hall, and dashed quietly in the other direction. The padding of his socks on the stone was completely drowned out by the clattering roll of the armor – and underneath it, the sound of a horrible slithering getting much more excited. Resolving not to look back, Franz ran until he reached a door to the battlements and got safely outside.

It wasn't a bad day, compared to the killer heat before. The sky was bright white-grey, the wind had a hint of mist on it, and the mock-orange in the courtyard was blooming, filling the warm air with its aroma. The malicious intruders in the castle were really the only downside. Franz wondered where he would find Seth, and realised that he could hear familiar voices on the air. Seth and Eirika, no doubt in the princess's upper-level garden. Well, he could get there without going back inside. He would just have to make sure not to pay attention to any of the words they exchanged, no doubt laden with subtle romance and radiating passionate –

"Good morning, Seth," said Eirika, staring out into the hazy plains.

"Your highness," said Seth. That was as formally as he could address her. She didn't correct him.

"What's the state of the castle?"

"Reconstruction is nearly complete, the people are well, the knights are ready, and your br– the King and Queen are not yet risen," he reported.

"That's understandable," the princess stated. "Isn't it a beautiful day?"

Seth nodded, the universal knight gesture for 'Whatever you say also happens to be my opinion'. "M'lady."

"So."

"Yes, your highness?"

Silence. The mist glimmered as the sun took another run at breaking through, but eventually gave up.

"I assume you had something in mind, coming up here?" she asked stiffly.

"Yes, princess. A minor incursion into the castle armory this morning. Six men, two dead and the remaining four currently locked away. They were not well-trained, and I doubt it is a sign of further upcoming attacks."

"You dealt with them."

"Yes."

An odd expression crossed her face. "Are you… injured?"

Seth kept himself as neutral as possible. "Not to any noteworthy degree." The princess was eyeing his abdomen… ah, yes. Where Valter the Moonstone General had gouged him during the fall of Castle Renais. "I'm ready for any assignment, princess."

"Of course. Well. Place the intruders in the castle dungeon until the king is prepared to deal with them. Take a few of the knights with you; I wouldn't want anyone to get hurt unnecessarily."

Heralded by the frantic slapping of his feet on the stone stairs, Franz rose into view among the roses. "That may be difficult, Princess."

She grinned wryly. "They're that hard to rouse, are they?"

"Franz, why aren't you wearing your armor?" Seth asked.

"No, your highness – and sorry, sir, but I do have reasons – there's been some kind of attack. Something in the castle is petrifying the guards. As in 'turned to stone'. I think I barely escaped."

Eirika looked to Seth. "It seems there was more to your thieves than you expected."

"It could still be unrelated, but I doubt that," Seth agreed. "We should secure the castle and ascertain precisely what number of intruders have entered, and how they… how… oh, by Latona…" The sun had made a final almighty push and swept away the enduring fog around Castle Renais, essentially lifting a veil that had been covering the courtyard below them.

It was full of soldiers, none of them Renais.

"It's the princess!"

"Fire, already!"

A wave of arrows sprang up from below, but too slow to catch Seth off guard – he pulled Eirika away from the edge of the garden at the same time that she tried to roll, resulting in both of them crashing safely into a peony as arrows rained randomly around them. The peony was less thrilled, but it did survive. Franz had flattened himself underneath a wooden garden bench, which did take a couple of hits, but withstood the test of battle. After a few moments the attack ceased; possibly someone in charge had realised they didn't want to alert the knights who hadn't been petrified yet.

"…Your highness?"

"I'm fine," she insisted, trying not to hyperventilate. Eirika had seen undead warriors, giant spiders, and three-headed demon wolves come at her out of the fog, but 'thirty glinting arrow points' was a new one. "What do we do?"

"My first responsibility is to your well-being," said Seth, matter-of-factly. "And to King Ephraim. We must locate his majesty, then…" It occurred to the paladin that this situation had disturbing similarities to the invasion by Grado, except that there was no heroic prince left to assume the throne. In that moment he vowed not to leave the castle under any circumstances.

"Why do you sound like you're on the defensive? This is Castle Renais!" Eirika protested.

"Yes, princess, but a huge portion of our army is out on training exercises. The remaining troops are only enough to maintain a light guard patrol and a military escort if the king needs to travel," said Seth. "And we must assume that the intruders have already begun neutralising what knights we had."

"I'll go, sir," said Franz, crawling halfway into the open. "I've ridden through blockades bigger than whatever this lot might have put together. I'll contact the knights in the surrounding countryside – we can lay siege to our own castle and crush them from all sides."

"If I'm protecting the princess, I can't assist you on your way to the stables, and if you don't make it through safely, we will be left waiting for reinforcements that will never arrive in time," Seth pointed out.

"I can take care of myself," Eirika stated icily.

"I will not abandon my duty," Seth replied.

"…I've noticed."

Franz, still wondering if a second wave of arrows was going to rain down on their heads at any moment, looked from Seth the Baffled Knight to Eirika the Ice Queen. "So what do we do?" he asked, trying not to sound exasperated in front of the princess.

Eirika turned to her usual, softer commanding persona. "Go quickly, Franz, and be careful. We'll be waiting for your return with the Knights of Renais, and show them the error of turning against the king."

Seth nodded his agreement, and Franz scrambled to his feet and to the nearest entrance to the inside of the castle. He was running through the things he would need – he'd have to get equipment from the stable armory, take the southern tunnel to avoid being spotted, then find the nearest training group to inform them of the situation and request their help in contacting the other knights…

…Actually, wasn't the nearest group the green recruits under Sergeant Faval?

"What's that supposed to mean?" Amelia demanded. "How are you going to get me kicked out?"

"We don't want you here," Narshen declared. "So whether you have to get battered around like a tetherball, or if you'll go quietly, or if we've got to tell Faval about how you, let's say, sprang an ambush on Alec in the woods, you're going home, all right? We worked to get here. You're just some kid who hung around the king while he saved the world."

They would never change, Amelia realised. No matter how long she worked, facing the same trials and hardships they did – not even counting her time in Ephraim's army – she would never be welcomed by this lot, and they would never want her around. She had been working at it for weeks nothing had changed in the slightest.

"Pick up your lance, brat," the recruit snapped at her. "As fun as this is going to be, I'd rather get it over with."

"Sergeant!" Amelia shouted.

"You heard the man, recruits, grab your lances," said Sergeant Faval, emerging from behind a giant tree. "And pair off; we're doing a little sparring before we get back on the march." The darker side of Amelia rather liked the unwell green that her antagonist turned while he wondered how long the sergeant had been lurking there.

"Sergeant," said one recruit.

"Yes, Alec?"

"There's an odd number of recruits, remember? Someone has to rotate out."

In Amelia's opinion, Faval had a very limited sense of humour, but he apparently found something in this amusing. "I don't see why, recruit." He gestured at a cluster of them "You four, you'll work with her."

"Me?" Amelia blurted. Always the same, stacking things against her.

"I don't understand," said Narshen.

"Imagine my shock, recruit." Some of the others – the ones who considered themselves to be at a safe distance – laughed. "Terrain, weather, and force size are not fair-minded. Do you know what it means when you're short of everything but the enemy? It's means you're in combat, recruit. If she wants to win, then she'd better get some better muscles. Everyone ready? Good. Go!"

The four of them rushed Amelia before she had even taken a good defensive stance, and it was only by incredible luck and effort that she managed to deflect all four thrusts. Admittedly, they were all coming in from the same angle. Apparently no one had taught them about group tactics. That should have been to her advantage, but Amelia quickly lost ground, facing an onslaught of brute force and awkwardness.

She remembered…

"Every time I see Ross crush a bonewalker with one swing, I remember all my technique training with Seth and cringe," said Franz.

"What do you mean?" Amelia had asked.

"Well, I don't like to generalise, but… there seems to be this thing in deep combat where men forget all about tactics and just focus on hitting things as hard as possible. Obviously not Artur, it doesn't work with magic, but Ross, my brother Forde, Cormag… I'm pretty sure I've even seen Ephraim do it."

"And Tana doesn't?"

"She puts force into her strikes, yes, but look at that precision."

The hellbone had made a popping sound as Tana's lance cut through its iron-hard spine and shoved upward. The creature's skull sailed past them and into the river, where it turned to dust. "Tana makes up for not being the size of her Pegasus by paying attention to where she aims. Marisa, too. And they're both terrifying if you interrupt them in the middle of a melee."

Amelia had pointed to the creature emerging from the forest across the river. "Looks like an Arch Mogall is trying to take the princess by surprise."

Franz had wheeled his horse around. "Oh, we'll see about that. After you."

…And stopped remembering just in time to see Narshen's lance coming down on her like a seven-foot truncheon. Amelia raised her own lance in time, but the force of the blow still knocked her back, and she landed on the riverbank. Well, at least the ground was soft – ouch – and rocky.

"Want to give up?" Narshen offered, smirking insufferably.

"…Sergeant?" Amelia called again. Narshen rolled his eyes.

"Yes, recruit?" Faval was leaning against a birch, watching her with an expression that said I see you, now what are you going to do wrong?

She climbed to her feet, brushed away some of the wet sand, and gave her lance a twirl. "Request permission to hit like a girl."

The sergeant grinned. "Permission granted."

If her opponent had been paying attention to her instead of the sergeant, he would have seen the first hit coming. The next two convinced him that he should back away, and soon Amelia was facing a wall of four slightly confused trainees. "What do you think you're doing? There's only one way this can end."

"I know. But, like the sergeant said, force sizes aren't fair-minded," said Amelia. "I've got you outnumbered one to four. You deal with it." She lunged.