Crossing Threads
Darkness had swallowed Aurelis. A few brave oil lamps bobbed on the jetties and ship railings, but their sparks struggled against the night in vain. One soldier marched down the dockside, little more than a bouncing lantern in the dark. His boots clattered, and every few steps he stopped to search the opposite river shore with his eyes. A meaningless endeavor, his light only touched the waves a few feet away.
Ike's left arm throbbed, and he forced a shaky breath. Damn injury.
He held his other hand up, counted to twelve, and then the soldier continued his patrol out of sight and out of earshot. Now or never.
Ike snapped his raised hand into a fist, and the man next to him released the arrow from his bow. The projectile sliced through the air and concluded its whistling flight above the river until it lodged into the stern of the imperial three-master anchored before Aurelis.
The port guards kept their silence. None of them noticed the rope across the width of the river, this flimsy line on which so much of Ike's plan hung. The cord lost itself in the shadows a few feet away from Ike, but he had no reason to doubt the arrow would hold. He had picked the archer next to him for this exact reason.
After a few silent heartbeats, Ike gestured him to secure the rope on their side of the river. Ike yanked at the makeshift bridge, but the rope stayed firm.
So far, so good.
The feet of his comrades waded through the muddy riverbank and pushed the boat inch by inch into the water. Every little splash thundered through the silence, and Ike convinced himself twice the alarm bells would ring the next moment. But Aurelis only turned over and continued its slumber.
When the cockleshell rocked in open waters, Ike motioned his comrades to climb in one after the other. Those inside held onto the rope to keep the vessel in place. Ike jumped in last and bit his tongue when a groan escaped the planks beneath his feet. Nine pairs of eyes darted towards the outlines of Aurelis, but nothing moved on the battlements and ship decks.
Ike took his place at the front of the boat, his arms locked around the coarse twine spanning the river. His fingers counted down from three, and in unison, his party pulled the boat forward, hand over hand along the rope. The boat glid over the waves, a quiet alligator on the hunt. Oars would have creaked, the sail would have clattered, but through sheer muscle power and a flimsy line, the boat crept toward the port. Apart from a labored breath, no sound heralded Aurelis' undoing.
Ike and his comrades ducked their heads when they passed the light cone of a ship's lantern, but two synchronized pulls later, the three-master's stern promised them the relief of shadow.
The Elibe. Roy's personal flagship. With this canon-larded monstrosity, he had laid siege to Talys and had taken the island after his fleet wrecked the coastline. A swift victory. Like most of the king's endeavors. But soon, he would taste the bitterness of defeat, and Ike couldn't wait to deliver this dish to him.
The Elibe groaned under the pressure of its venerable wood and coated the noise of Ike's party as they prepared to climb the stern. Sothe came up first. Ike cupped his hands for a leg-up, and after the first push Sothe scaled the wooden planks and small window frames with the expertise of an acrobat. He dug his fingers into every little crack in the façade, even the overhangs where the ship jutted outwards proved no challenge for him. On the rail up high, he disappeared out of view, and a moment later, a second rope dropped down.
The grapple hook Ike had tested at the sluice displayed its worth once again. A good investment. And to Ike's surprise, the bells of Aurelis still hadn't struck doom.
One after the other, his comrades climbed, only protected by shadows. One volley of arrows could fetch them all, and if the Empire had set up Aurelis to lure them, now would be the best time to spring the trap. The ballistae of the local garrison could rip them and their little cockleshell to shreds, and their deaths would land a blow against the rebellion it wouldn't recover from.
Ike tightened his grip on Ragnell's hilt. Only Titania remained with him on the boat, the rest of their group had managed the climb. She studied his face, but even her eyes wouldn't find much in the dark. Still her shoulders underneath the pauldrons betrayed her tension.
Since she insisted to play rearguard, Ike grabbed for the rope first. Or rather, he wanted to grab the rope. When he raised his left arm, his wounds reminded him of their unwanted presence by knocking over the door to his pain receptors and unloading their goods into his system. Damn this weak body.
Ike winced and tumbled as the blackness of agony replaced the blackness of night. He bit into his hand to silence a scream, but the flood refused to ebb, his body protested, louder and louder, and Ike only returned to his senses when Titania pressed his head between her hands.
"You can't go on in this state," she whispered.
He tried to raise his left hand, but regretted the action immediately. Gritted teeth or not, silent curses or not, Ike couldn't lift the stupid arm above shoulder level. The thirty feet up Elibe's stern might as well measure a thousand – with only one arm, Ike wouldn't get up there any time soon.
And here he had thought to witness a plan perform smoothly for once.
"Get to the others," Ike pressed out. "Tell them to continue as planned. I'll meet up with you."
"You are going to pass out. I won't leave you like this."
"You better. I said I'll meet up with you, okay? And if I don't, you'll go on with the plan."
"You are part of this plan. And you will see the end of it too."
Ike pried open her grip on him. "Is that your condition? You know I can't make promises."
"Then I'm not going."
"I'm not seven anymore, I can take care of myself."
"That's what a ten-year-old would say."
"For the gods' sake, you can't weigh my life against the rest our party and all of Archanea." A good thing Ike was short on breath, otherwise he would have busted the entire operation with his shouting. "You didn't swear a blood oath to me, so stop pretending. The mission comes first."
"Not for me."
"Seven people up there are waiting for orders. And if it kills me now, you're gonna go up there and tell them to continue as planned."
"Not if it means to let you die."
Ike blinked away white spots in his vision. He lacked the breath and the time to argue. Every minute wasted equaled another minute closer to sunrise, closer to exposure and death. In a last effort, he gave Titania both a physical and a verbal push. "No sacrifice cripples the determined man."
She punished him with an icy glare. But the dark hid the bulk of her fury. "Bold of you to use these words against me."
With that, Titania whirled around and scaled the ship stern. No doubt she would find a way to make Ike regret his words, but before both of them hadn't survived the night, he would spend the little energy he had on more urgent matters.
A steadier heartbeat for starters would work wonders.
Ike fished for the bandage under his tunic but found no blood, so the stitches Soren had applied had outlasted the exertion. So far.
A short fifteen feet separated Ike from the dock, but the noise of his subpar swim skills would alarm every soldier in Aurelis, not to mention that he would drown halfway through considering the state of his arm. So, he would have to rely on the boat for a little longer.
The tide worked in his favors, and when Ike shoved the boat off from Elibe's backside, the vessel rocked towards the line of yellow orbs that marked the dock. Too much light, too little cover. But he might just make it before the guard swung back around. The boat didn't seem fond of the direction, however, because the cursed cockleshell changed course and hurried downstream while several feet away from the shore.
Ike jumped.
The impact on the dock earned him a new collection of bruises to cover up the old ones, but he could still stand and behead any lousy soldier that came running his way. He might even make it back to the others in one piece.
That was when the bells rang.
A cacophony of brass bells tolled through the streets to call the sleeping devil out of bed. Other buildings had joined into the alarm sound of Aurelis' watchtower, and with them came the pounding of armored boots on cobblestone.
Ike pressed into the shadow of a doorway, desperate for air. The constant ringing reverberated in his head, and at this point he had forgotten how silence sounded like. What a spectacular failure. If at least his heartbeat would stop its spiraling attempts to kill him.
The merlon-crowned watchtower peeped out behind the rooftops, and when the steps of the nearest Pheraen squad had faded in the ravines between the houses, Ike dragged himself towards the tower. Torchlight bounced from the alarm bell as it swung back and forth with the untiring energy of a pendulum.
Street after street of high, decoration-less façades welcomed Ike on his way, and had the watchtower not screamed out its position at the top of its brass lungs, he might have lost himself in the labyrinth of buildings, each as uninspired as the last. In a forest, Ike navigated an area twice as large by the types of trees, the moss growth, and the softness of the ground under his feet. But the Empire seemed to have built Aurelis with the sole purpose to confuse him. The one time he had scouted the port in preparation for this mission did him little good now.
But lo and behold, Ike reached the watchtower and even avoided a run-in with enemy battalions. Every encounter would cost him time he didn't have and chip away at his arm. For the moment, the strained limb behaved and spared Ike from another almost-blackout. To not push his luck, he raised Ragnell with his right hand only and marched through the tower's abandoned ground floor. Playing cards crunched under his boots, and the sweetly scent of hard liquor wafted in the air. Knocked-over chairs proved that the place had housed guards earlier tonight, but the alarm had drawn them elsewhere.
To the others.
Ike gritted his teeth and zeroed in on the stairway at the back of the room. He had no time to worry about them. If the soldiers had found and killed them, they would have silenced the bells. Or so he told himself.
The stone steps into the upper floors had all the makings of a death trap. They wounded counter-clockwise to give any righthanded fighter stupid enough to scale the tower an instant disadvantage, and countless pairs of feet had smoothened the surface. On better days, Ike would have tossed Ragnell into his other hand and pressed onward without delay, but any attempts to lift his left arm by more than forty-five degrees failed. A death sentence against any opponent with height advantage.
But no one jumped at Ike from above. Only the rhythmless tapping of his own feet echoed from the walls, whenever the bell above dropped its assault on Ike's eardrums for a second. He took the lack of company as a good sign. If the Empire had feigned to withdraw its troop from Aurelis, he would have run into trouble by now. With an understaffed military on the other hand, one could excuse the fact that no one had stayed behind to guard the watchtower.
How considerate; this way Ike could carry out his part of the mission despite his arm.
After an arduous and breathless climb, Ike reached the top of the tower. The walls opened up to allow for a look at the plainness of Aurelis in all its night-painted glory, and icy squalls gnawed at Ike's skin, howling in their attempts to tear the tower down.
Here, the noise was deafening. Ike wished for a second pair of hands to cover his ears and looked up. Two bells dangled from metal beams above, and the lower, smaller one swung wildly.
Given the constant metallic boom, the lonely soldier shivering near the edge shall be forgiven for overhearing Ike. Ragnell tore him open, and the man died before he noticed the golden steel as it protruded from his chest. A last blood-filled gargle, and the body crumbled like a puppet that had its strings cut.
Ike took a moment to catch his breath and stared into the darkness beyond the torchlit tower. A handful of flares scurried along the docks, but whether the soldiers had engaged Ike's comrades or had lost them in the labyrinth of boats, he couldn't tell. He could only hope that someone was left to follow along with the plan.
In tradition with the Pheraen motto of engineering efficiency, the watchtower bells tolled without the need of a human hand. Once a concerned soldier set the hidden mechanism in motion, the magnets gained their momentum, and the cogwheels turned, the alarm would warn the city of an attack for the rest of time. The shrill metal rattle of the smaller bell ratted out everyone who tried an assault from the port side, and as the current situation proved, the soldiers would rally at the docks and shatter any opposition.
When the upper bell boomed, however, that's where things got interesting.
Ike had studied every map of Aurelis he could snag from an unsuspecting cartographer and had held as many conversations with locals behind closed doors as risk would allow to devise his strategy. For all intents and purposes, when the bells started to ring, the lights were out. The Empire had designed the city to offer optimal protection against any force from both the southern river and the northern plain, and soldiers were conditioned to respond to the bells in a matter of minutes. Ike had even kindled a fire outside the city on his last visit, and sure enough, the military had rushed to the battlements to investigate in record time.
Now it was Ike's job to turn their strength into their fatal flaw.
Two wheels with four handles each set embedded into the beam underneath the bells, surrounded by axles and additional cogwheels, an assembly of metal parts that far outclassed Ike's understanding of mechanics. Luckily, he didn't need the details to get the gears turning.
When he pushed the lower wheel, a series of clicking sounds came from the machine, and for the first time in an eternity, heavenly silence coated the watchtower. The bell had stopped. A few places between the house ravines still echoed its call, but since most of the other chimes needed operation by hand, they had relied on the watchtower to galvanize the troops into action. With its loud voice gone, the small bells across the city soon fell into awkward silence.
They waited for the maestro to stipulate a new tone. And Ike, head and shoulders above the rest of the orchestra was more than happy to give them exactly that.
A push against the second wheel set the axles in motion, the mechanisms squealed, the gears spun, and the upper bell struck the first note, lower and mightier than its brother, a weight that announced an enemy force to the north. No more hectic pace, a potential invasion in the deep heart of the Pheraen plains called for seriousness.
And in response to this call, the other players fell in line. The frantic flares altered course, and like a shoal of marcels, the Pheraen soldiers darted towards the northern city gates. If any of Ike's comrades still held onto life out there between the jetties or the buildings, they would now have the opening they needed. This could still work. Even though they had been spotted early, the plan could still work.
It had to.
Ike stumbled towards the guard rail to his right and searched the shadow-soaked city with his eyes for the sign. The outlines of turrets and chimneys protruded from the darkness, and the fortified walls of the local garrison stood tall and insurmountable a few hundred yards away. The deadly bolts of its ballistae pierced the night. A silver hue illuminated the crenellations as a shred of blue dyed the eastern horizon. Ike tightened his grip around the rail.
Come on, come on, come on…
For several long minutes, nothing happened while the bell worked to impair Ike's hearing. Back and forth the clipper oscillated, tic-toc the clock hands counted, and Ike's finger numbed as he waited. His mind chucked speculation after speculation at him, one grislier than the last. His comrades had failed, the soldiers had already caught them, they bled out on the docks, Soren's severed head in the dust, Titania amidst the polished equipment of the local torture master; Tellius forever out of reach.
And as Ike felt the weight of time crush him, and he almost whispered a prayer, a fire lit up in the yard within the garrison walls and rekindled this elusive emotion called hope.
Titania had kept her end of the bargain. She still followed the plan.
Soon after the beacon flared up and cast an orange glow on the stone walls all around, a wyvern shrieked. The weight of its wings resounded in the sky above Aurelis as each flap created a current that spelled calamity for the Pheraen soldiers. But they had veered too far north to prevent the inevitable. No one manned the ballistae. Ike allowed himself a grin when Minerva swooped into the fray with a battle roar.
He didn't stay long enough on the tower to watch the wyvern tear apart the turrets and ballistae of the garrison that remained unguarded now that the soldiers had marched to the north gate to engage a fake enemy. With no missile weapons left to oppose them, Minerva and Cherche sowed destruction in the town to their hearts' content. The grumbles of tumbling buildings rocked the slippery stairway on his sprint down to street level.
Ike likewise didn't stay long enough to see Soren raise the blue Altean flag above the estate of the local lord or the first flames as they came to life on the Elibe's main deck. But when he exited the watchtower, the three masts blazed and outshone the sun rising in the east.
Wherever they were, he hoped Cordelia and Gregor were watching. And Roy from the window of his chambers in Lycia hopefully fumed with anger.
Ike took in a deep breath that smelled of burned wood and victory. Then he fastened his cloak and turned north.
Time to go hunting.
"Oh my, it seems we have chosen an ill-fitting day for our visit."
Lucina nodded, although Virion's sugarcoated words did not quite capture the view presented to them and the rest of their party.
Heavy, smoke-laden clouds hung above Aurelis and carried with them volcanic scents that clogged their noses and burned in their throats. Lucina straightened her collar, but the itchiness remained. The roars from countless fires blended with the metallic clangs of combat and the shouts of civilians as they stumbled towards the riverside. But chaos awaited them there also. The ships anchored at the docks bent under the heat of an inferno, and masts the size of ancient oak trees broke asunder. The remains of Pheraen sails fluttered, half devoured by flames.
In the middle of the hellfire cauldron, the skeletal remains of the Elibe drowned in the river. Roy had taken Lucina to a political meeting on his flagship once, and she remembered the might with which the vessel had split the waves. The wind had instilled a feeling of liberation into anyone who stood on deck, a feeling to convince a man he had escaped the shackles gods had placed on mankind.
Nothing of this might remained.
After the arduous trek through the mountains, where Lucina and company had pushed their horses to their absolute limits, she had hoped for an easy win and an even easier time stealing the Elibe. With the three-master, they could have reached Lycia in a matter of hours, maybe even before Roy had organized his army.
Lucina added this scenario to the list of what-ifs that would haunt her thoughts later.
"This is horrible," Frederick said and glared at the crowd on the docks. "To drag all these civilians into the skirmish."
Cordelia on the other hand was having the time of her life. She held her sides and grinned from ear to ear. "I knew Ike was working on a big coup, but this is something else. That magnificent moron actually pulled it off."
"Are you sure your friend is behind this?" Lucina asked.
"Who else would be daring enough to launch an attack against the Empire's biggest inland port and get away with it? This is definitely Ike's handiwork. And how similar your and his plan were… I suppose it's true, brilliant minds do think alike."
Another reason Lucina yearned for the chance to meet the man. With how many rebels had he taken Aurelis? Two dozen? Even less? Based on what Cordelia had told her and her own observations, the resistance drew from minimal resources and saw barely any fighters in its ranks that matched a Pheraen knight. And yet, Ike had won the uphill battle with glowing, fiery results.
"I fail to see the brilliance in this chaos." Frederick crinkled his nose, and his expression darkened even further. "Not only do the fires put countless innocents at risk, in burning down all vessels, the plan also reveals its shortsightedness. One of these ships could have proven valuable to the fight against the Empire."
Cordelia rolled her eyes. "Well, I for one am happy for any win we can get. Besides, these innocents you worry about are residents of Pherae. They might not come at you with a sword, but they won't open their doors for you either. You as a wannabe knight among the eagles should know what I mean. Did they never step on your toes just because you happen to have a little more Altean blood than you ought to?"
"That gives me no excuse to—"
"Enough, you two." Lucina stepped between Frederick and Cordelia, and they both backed down, the former a little faster than the latter. "We can't change what happened here, but we can make the most of what is given to us. The rebels might have taken the port, but the battle is still ongoing. Loyalty or death is the Pheraen knights' first law; they won't give up without a fight. The sooner we combine our forces with Ike's, the better."
Cordelia grinned. "That's fine by me."
Lucina collected nods from her other party members before she gave her orders. "Good. Then let us move north in pairs of three. Try to eliminate as many enemy soldiers as you can, but if they surrender, leave them. I do not condone unnecessary slaughter. Good luck."
"May Naga watch over us all," Gregor said.
While Frederick all but jumped forward to volunteer as Lucina's company, she gestured him to lead another group instead. He took the silent command with a pained scowl but didn't object. Lucina would have felt better with him at her side as well, but she trusted his ability to manage the confusing alleyway mazes and any potential ambush – with minimal casualties on both sides.
So instead of abiding by her impulse, Lucina picked Cordelia and Virion as her partners. Cordelia needed the supervision and Virion needed every bit of attention that fed his ego and kept him entertained.
Together they entered the street canyons beyond the port.
Smoke screens wafted in the dry air above the cobblestone like a strange, discolored mist. A handful of civilians huddled in the relative security of their doorframes, too witless to flee towards the waterfront. Ash flakes stained the expensive velvet and silk shawls they wrapped around themselves.
Lucina thought back to the run-down quarters of Terra where Abel had lived. But the people here experienced the threat to their existence and the powerlessness in the face of a seemingly unstoppable enemy for the first time. Whereas the Alteans fought this battel day after day, and a few smoke stains on their window glasses were the least of their problems.
On the way towards the northern gates, Lucina and her company ran into splintered groups of Pheraen soldiers, but their uncoordinated efforts failed to delay Lucina for long. An arrow from Virion, a twirl of Cordelia's spear, and the encounter was over. Falchion cut through any armor plate and chainmail with an almost joyful ease.
A dangerous ease that made Lucina tipsy.
She loosened her grip on the hilt and let Cordelia take the lead with a look back to the two soldiers they had decimated. Unnecessary slaughter wouldn't win her any favors. Not with the citizens of Aurelis; and certainly not with Frederick.
The sounds of battle drew them forward, the screams and shouts and sword rattle of the last brave soldiers who stood against the rebel invasion. And when the buildings left and right thinned out into a plaza, Lucina found the source of the noise.
In the lee of Aurelis' outer wall, a cluster of thirty people waged war against one another. Blood and dust covered faces old and young; it was impossible to tell who was fighting who. And the fighters didn't seem to know either as they hacked at everything in reach of their swords. Blind arrows shot into the mess of limbs, but no one stopped long enough to spare the marksmen a look. Men fell. Soldiers stepped on the bodies of their fallen comrades to dirty their tunics with new blood.
Cordelia abandoned Lucina's side and dove into the chaos, thrusting her spear into the first torso she could find.
"Tsk, tsk, such savage practices," Virion said and adjusted his bowstring. "As I always say, the technique of Cordelia's merry adventurers lacks any finesse. Well, I suppose I could hone down the tangle a little and treat these poor peasants to a display of my technique."
Lucina glared at him. "Don't kill any more than necessary."
"For you, sweet Lucina, I will make sure to only aim at their ankles. I have hit targets smaller than that. While a storm lashed against my bow."
And to prove his superfluity of skill, Virion took position outside the bulk of combat and incapacitated a soldier who had dared to abandon the safety of the battlements opposite of the plaza for a blind shot into the crowd. True to Virion's words, his arrow pierced the soldier's ankle. With a muffled scream, he dropped to his knees behind a merlon. He wouldn't cause more trouble anytime soon.
Lucina crept towards the all-out melee and looked for a way to end the conflict. In the best-case scenario, she would even stop the bloodshed while there were still people standing. Under the arrow crossfire and the hailstorm of swords, the rows thinned. And the carpet of bodies grew.
One man above all others caught Lucina's attention. He towered at the eye of the hurricane, untouched by the slew of spearheads coming his way. With only one hand he directed a golden greatsword, like an incarnation of the hero figures embellishing the paintings in the Glass Fortress. For a heartbeat, Lucina thought Marth himself had manifested amidst the battlefield to aid her. Only ghosts could walk unscathed through this blood-painted hell.
But of course, the man was neither Marth nor a ghost. After he applied a wide swing that sliced through two soldiers at once, Lucina had a clear view of his face.
And what she saw shook her more than an iron mace to her ribs.
There was no mistaking it.
The ends of a headband flew around his shoulders, and with striking blue eyes, he returned Lucina's stare.
The man from Gran. The man Lucina had almost killed with Klein's arrow.
His jaw hardened. And with his blood-smeared sword raised, he stormed towards her.
Notes: Long awaited and now finally realized, the attack on Aurelis. An unheard-of accomplishment for the rebels, and finally a win for Ike after all the obstacles I tossed into his path. Truly, a moment for the history books. Oh yeah, and I guess Lucina and Ike have crossed paths too. You didn't think I would make it too easy for them, did you?
