I don't own Narnia or the Pevensies. I just use them to avoid productiveness.
"Haven't we been here before?" she asked several hours later. Edmund stopped walking abruptly, turning to face her with a very sour look on his face.
"Stop asking me that!" he snapped. She shrank back and muttered an apology. Sighing tiredly, Edmund pushed a hand through his dark hair, then looked back up at his sister with a frown. He shook his head unhappily. "Sorry. I'm not sure."
"There isn't anyone to ask," said Lucy. This was unsettlingly true. The forest was as devoid of life as it had been before; there weren't any creatures of any kind. Occasionally they would catch a glimpse of something moving in the trees but whenever they moved towards it, it would disappear.
"We need to keep moving. We can't know if there's anyone looking for us," Edmund pointed out. Lucy wasn't quite sure if he meant looking to hinder or help. Nodding glumly, she began walking again, her footsteps unnervingly loud in the silent forest. Dead leaves crunched beneath her feet. The air was much crisper than it had been before, bitingly cold but with the miserable dampness of the wood permeating it all.
Lucy shivered visibly as she walked on. She wondered where their brother and sister were, but found that she didn't really want to think about it. It brought unsettling images to her mind. Edmund seemed to sense her discontent, looking back at her questioningly as they made their way through the trees.
"Something wrong?" he asked. He answered his own question with a hollow, humorless laugh and rubbed his shoulder uncomfortably. "Besides the obvious."
"No," said Lucy. But then it occurred to her that she never had properly apologized for her comment before. It seemed far too late and out of context now, but she knew it had to be said at some point and there was little else to talk about. She kept walking, but spoke again. "Yes, actually."
"Hmm?" Ed glanced at her before kicking aside a dead branch in front of them and slowing his pace slightly.
"I…Ed, I'm…I'm sorry," she began, unsure of how to say it.
"For what?"
"For what I said before." She swallowed hard. Somehow she didn't think Edmund would attribute it to being that age. He didn't reply for a moment, which unnerved her slightly. When he did spoke, his tone was thoughtful.
"I'd forgotten about that, actually," he mused.
Lucy blinked, astonished. She'd thought he would be angry or at least a little upset. But this, this was entirely unexpected. She tried to keep her voice casual for she had the feeling she was making a much bigger deal of it than he was going to.
"But…" she started. "How could you forget? It was a perfectly awful thing to say."
"Yes, it was," he conceded, and she flinched. "But we all say things like that sometimes. I seem to recall doing it all the time before Narnia."
"That was different, though. You were upset about the war back home, it was understandable," Lucy argued. She had been expecting him to at least comprehend why she was troubled about the whole mess; really, she had been expecting anything but the indifferent brush-off she was currently receiving.
"So?" he said. "You were upset about your cordial, and about those clods back in the village. I was about ready to storm out myself."
"Edmund!" Lucy exclaimed exasperatedly. He looked up, slightly startled, but kept walking. She ran a step to catch up from where she'd stopped. Taking a deep breath, she let it out and tried again in a more reasonable tone. "You can't say you weren't hurt, Ed. Why else would you have left?"
"Well…" he trailed off, stumbling slightly on the irregular ground. "You're right. I was upset at first because I had somehow hoped it had been forgotten, not just forgiven. But that's too much to expect. What I did was hardly forgivable, and the fact that you still consider me a brother is enough. You forgave me, I'm forgiving you. Fair deal?"
"I guess," she mumbled.
"In any case, I'm all right now," he said. "Peter talked to me…" But he trailed off, his tone slightly choked. He shook his head vigorously as if trying to clear some unwanted thought. A short silence passed. Lucy watched the weak sunlight play off the shield on her brother's back.
"He's good with that sort of thing," Lucy said in a very small voice. Edmund nodded tightly, now refusing to meet her eyes and walking resolutely onward. His sister hurried to keep up with him.
"We'll find them," he said with a sort of shaky confidence, after a moment.
"Yes," she agreed firmly. He offered her a small, grateful smile, hesitated for a moment, and threw an arm around her shoulders affectionately.
"When the Witch asked to meet you all, I told her you were nothing special," he said quietly. Edmund's lips curled up slightly in a reflective smile. "I really was a liar then, wasn't I?"
Lucy laughed and grinned up at her brother. The terrible dread in her stomach had lessened by a fraction; the idea that at least they would face whatever lay ahead together was comforting. After a minute they let go and continued on side by side, their strides a little more assured this time.
They stopped for lunch a few hours later. There had been a grove of fairly healthy fruit trees, and so they'd helped themselves to apples and pears and a generous portion of raspberries from a nearby bush. Sprawled next to one another on the still-drying forest floor, they ate their fill in quiet. Still, they had no idea where they had come from or where they were going. They could only hope that soon, someone would come who would be able to direct them to help.
They were almost finished eating when they noticed someone a ways off in the trees, a short figure ambling in their general direction. Edmund's hand crept to his sword. Lucy slid her dagger off the ground and concealed it surreptitiously in the folds of her dress. Both remained seated. As the figure drew nearer, they could begin to see the details of its form and Lucy realized that it was a dwarf with a round little belly and a long white beard. Most curiously, she noticed as he approached them, he carried a broadsword that was far too long for him; it dragged on the ground unless he pushed down on the hilt to raise the blade. When he was only a few meters away he seemed to catch sight of them for the first time.
"Good afternoon," he called jovially. Lucy and Edmund shared a glance. He seemed pleasant enough.
"Good day, sir," Edmund replied cautiously. The man plucked an apple from a nearby tree and walked over to them, his stride a jaunty swagger.
"Well, what have we here?" he asked. "What are you children doing out in the woods with all the mercenaries running about?"
"Mercenaries?" Lucy repeated.
"Yes, those humans what came over from the other world," the dwarf said, hooking a hand into his belt and taking a bite of the apple. Through a mouthful, he continued, "Awful lot. Really mmph terrible the things they do for the promise of land."
"Oh," she said stiffly. The dwarf was eyeing them with a sort of disinterested arrogance that irritated her to a great extent.
She looked over at Edmund for some sort of lead, but his eyes were fixated upon the dwarf's sword and he had the most odd expression she'd ever seen upon his face. She followed his gaze and took stock of the it. It was beautifully crafted, a long, flat blade with gold inlaid in intricate patterns. She admired it for a moment before looking to the rest of the weapon. The cross-hilt was simple and the hilt itself was bound with red leather, the end topped off with a small, golden lion head.
And then it hit her, and she knew in an instant why Edmund's face was contorted in badly-concealed rage.
It was Rhindon. Peter's sword.
