"Ha-ha, blackguard! Villain!" I roared, and spurred my horse to charge the man at the edge of the wood. "Come here, puling spawn!"
The poor fellow, no more than a common foot soldier, looked up and turned absolutely white. For a moment, I felt some sympathy; no doubt he was terrified at the sight of a massive brown stallion, ridden by an equally large rider, both splattered with blood, bearing down on him at full speed. He dropped his lance and fled precipitously into the woods, wailing as he went.
I reined in my mount, grinning merrily, and watched him go. It wouldn't do any good to chase him, not through this woody quagmire; the forest would almost certainly do my dirty work for me, anyway. I rarely let an enemy escape, but after all, it just didn't seem quite honorable to kill a man who fled with his back turned.
Besides, the battle was most likely over. The man had been the last soldier I could see, and had been bending over to use a vulnerary when I had arrived.
I heard a grunt of amusement behind me, and turned to see Ike - who could only be accurately described as "blood to the eyebrows." Not that I was much better.
"Merciful of you," he said, tone light, but still holding an underlying implication. Unusually merciful, he meant.
I shrugged, letting my mount pick his way back to the tussock where the commander stood. It was evident that the battle was definitively over. Beyond the trees I could see Rolf being coddled on one side by Mist, and simultaneously teased on the other by Boyd; he had taken the coup de grace on the captured Duke Tanas. There was no sign of Titania or Oscar yet, though. Both had, like me, followed stragglers into the woods to drive them away. And Rhys - joined, with surprising earnestness, by our diminuitive tactician - was just kneeling to pray by a fallen soldier. That, more than anything else, reassured me that we were finished.
Seeing Ike's glance toward my bloody axe, I said, "Once their master was dead, there didn't seem to be much point in the killing, eh, Commander?" As he quirked an eyebrow, I quickly added, "Besides, there's no honor in stabbing a man in the back who's just beshit himself at the mere sight of you."
Caught off guard, he laughed aloud - yes, he'd not only seen me letting the Begnion soldier go, but also charging gleefully at him. So long as I was concerned with honor, he needn't worry about me being overtly merciful. I grinned, glad to be reliable.
An enourmous whoosh of wings sounded behind me - why was everyone insisting upon speaking to the back of my head today? - and a deep voice spoke. It didn't entirely sound happy. "Blue-haired human, I would speak with you."
I knew it was the hawk king before I turned around, but I hadn't anticipated that he would have his two soldiers behind him. I'd seen him fighting on the field, and sidled my horse closer to Ike. The man - the hawk, I supposed, but barring the eight-foot wingspan, he looked as much like a beorc as I - was simply huge: not just tall, either, but rippled with muscles to be envied by any knight. And I noticed that he hadn't bothered to use "beorc," but rather "human."
The commander, however, was fairly calm: firm on his feet, at least, though it was clear he was nervous. "I too would speak with you," he answered, and I was suddenly struck by how young he was. Was he even yet eighteen? Maybe twenty? I had never asked, but looking at him in comparison to the laguz, he seemed tiny - and exhausted. A deep welling of sympathy came over me, and I wondered if I would ever find out how he had been tossed into command of this mercenary company.
His confident tone clearly brooked well with the hawk, who drifted to the ground, unerringly finding a solid spot, and opened his mouth to speak again.
Another large noise of wind sounded from above, interrupting him, and a flash of white practically blinded me as another laguz landed beside the hawk. Ike gaped. "It's you!"
It was indeed: the heron, as both Mist and Ike had described him. He stepped forward, eyes flashing, and his voice was steel. "On your back... who is it that you carry?"
Ike hesitated, but only a moment. Then he set down his sword, and lifted the tiny figure from under his cloak. "The girl... I think she may be someone you know." The slight heron girl had clung to him for the better part of four hours, but when her eyes lit upon the other heron, she flung herself at him, suddenly animated, and burst into an unintelligible stream of language.
He answered her, kissing her hair and stroking her wings, face softening in disbelief and love: clearly, they did know one another. As their faces bent together, I realized that they must be brother and sister. "How is this possible?" he asked finally. I felt mildly embarrassed to be present for this wrenching reunion, and more than a little uncomfortable at the way the hawk king was eyeing Ike. "How did you survive all this time?"
"Leanne?" said the hawk suddenly, turning his attention to her. "Do you know who I am?"
She smiled brilliantly and answered; I felt a rush of relief as his face changed. "That's right... you remember my name. Have you been by yourself for all these years?"
She nodded, saying something, and the male heron translated - ostensibly for Ike, seeing as how the hawk seemed to speak whatever language she was using. "The forest protected her. It kept her asleep for so long..." He turned directly to the commander now, and said very formally, "There's no way to express my gratitude." Adding something in his own language, he bowed.
The hawk king looked startled, and Ike was blushing madly. Seized by a sudden urge to laugh, I coughed. The laguz no more than glanced at me, then spoke to Ike. "I am Tibarn, king of Phoenicis. Since the loss of their homeland, the Serenes royal family has been under my guardianship." A note of warning entered his voice, but he remained polite. "Who are you, and why do you aid the herons?"
There was no hesitation this time. "My name is Ike. I am commander of the Greil Mercenaries. I am under the orders of the empress, the apostle Sanaki, to protect the herons." It was nothing more than the simple truth.
Disbelief spread over Tibarn's face, followed by cloudy anger. "The empress of this country wants to protect the herons? Ha! That is an interesting tale. The herons were blamed for the assassination of the last empress. They were massacred on hearsay. And now her ancestor wants to help them? Touching."
I looked away for a moment; the members of the Greil Mercenaries were beginning to straggle back, but none of them had yet seemed to notice the altercation taking place. Quite studiously so, I noticed. Mist and Rolf had joined Rhys and Soren in their prayer, while Ilyana, Jill, Mia, Astrid, and Marcia were (unbelievably) simultaneously flirting with a flushed but pleased Zihark, and Gatrie was eyeing the ladies, evidently wondering if he could join. Lethe and Mordecai were still nowhere to be seen, but they usually vanished after battles, ostensibly to clean each others' wounds and for her to complain about beorc inefficiency. Oscar was still invisible, though Titania had reappeared and was speaking to Boyd.
Unwillingly, I drew my attention back to the situation at hand, internally sighing. Of all the people to be forced into witnessing this situation... I might have been the worst.
"Pathetic apologies and half-baked platitudes are easily spoken!" the male heron was shouting at Ike; I had missed the part where he became angry along with Tibarn. The young female heron looked quite distressed as he continued, "Humans burned Serenes Forest! They killed my family! I cannot trust one who allies himself with them!"
Ike was looking more than mildly intimidated, but he spoke firmly. "Please, withhold your judgment until you speak with the apostle. She's waiting at the forest's edge."
Tibarn exchanged a glance with the heron. The latter asked, unbelievingly, "The apostle... is here?"
"Yes," Ike said, quite unnecessarily, since he had already stated that. "Please, come with me." He turned his back, quite abruptly, and began squishing his way toward what I hoped was the right direction. He passed Soren on the way, though, and the young mage sprang up to go with him. Ike called out, twice more, and both Titania and Mist abandoned what they had been doing to follow him.
That would do, I reflected, watching the confused laguz trail after the commander; if anyone could find their way out of this beastly place, it was Soren... little as I liked him personally (the feeling was mutual, I was sure), I had to admit that he was quite good with directions and strategy. He would undoubtedly be intelligent enough to leave some kind of trail for the rest of us to follow. And besides that, Titania would keep them safe. I wasn't sure if Ike was ready to fight the hawk king, should anything go wrong, but Titania might have a chance.
As they went, I heard the hawk king speak to the male heron, asking a question; startlingly, he turned his head in a quick gesture and spat viciously. "May the curses of the goddess be upon Kilvas!" he said, clearly, and I shivered. Wan and lean the heron might be, but his expression didn't leave room for questions.
Riding in this muck was more of a hassle than simply walking, so I dismounted and left my mount for the moment. Boyd was walking around the edge of the copse, looking angry, and I went over to him.
"Something wrong?" I asked. "The soldiers are gone."
He eyed me for a moment, then his irritation got the best of him. "My dumb brother," he said reluctantly, "has gone and disappeared." I assumed he meant his elder brother; the younger one was studiously lost in prayer.
Despite his expression, I heard more than a tinge of nervousness in his voice. I didn't feel precisely worried myself, but this was unusual. It was one thing for Lethe and Mordecai to run off (and we never worried about Volke or Sothe), but Oscar usually came right back to Titania's side once a battle was over, to say nothing of the way he usually fussed over injuries with Rhys and Mist.
"Probably lost!" I declared, and Boyd's face lightened. "He can't be far off: the horses didn't want to separate from one another in the first place. Let's go, I must find my eternal rival!"
We left the others to their activities, and began combing the perimeter of the tiny clearing. Brom and Nephenee, leaning against a pair of trees like gargoyles, informed us that they hadn't seen Oscar to the southeast, where they had been fighting. "I dunno," said Nephenee, shrugging. "I s'pose he might still be off routin' them Begnions."
Doubtful, but I didn't say it. Tormod and Muarim hadn't seen him, either, and I assumed that Stefan was still out chasing after Lethe. We didn't bother asking Makalov.
"The green knight?" Devdan said, slowly, as was his wont. "Yes, Devdan has seen him. He was fighting over there." The halberdier extended a hand, pointing off in the exact opposite direction Ike and his companions had taken. He went back to studying a patch of grass as we stepped carefully away; Boyd and I exchanged a significant glance, grinning. We both liked and trusted the man, as did Ike, but there was just something about him that made us laugh. Never to his face, of course.
"Wasn't he with Titania?" Boyd asked, a few minutes later, looking worried again. It was difficult to see in this forest, and we kept lifting our feet over flat spaces that looked high, and tripping over logs that seemed submerged.
"I thought so," I answered, frowning and scraping something nasty from my bootheel onto a fallen tree. "Ugh. Where in the name of Ashera did this-"
He abruptly grabbed my arm, frozen, then leapt away splashing through a section of marsh. "Lille! Lille! Kieran, that's his horse!"
I saw it then: Oscar's horse, lying on her side in the mud. She was dead, brown coat only slightly less dull than the mud around her. As I splashed over, I saw Boyd kneel down, and his moan split the air.
Lille's rider fared somewhat better, but not much. My stomach tightened; he'd fallen from his mount when she'd died, but had clearly been attacked afterward. Thank the goddess he'd managed to drag himself to a tussock of grass, or he might well have drowned when he passed out. "Oscar? Oscar!" Boyd was saying, clearly hysterical, hands clenched white on the his brother's shoulders.
"Stop shaking him, Boyd! Let me look!" As he realized what he was doing, he let go and backed away a little (the goddess, he was hardly older than Ike), hand pressed to his mouth. I knelt down beside him; Oscar was unconscious - praise be for small favors - but still alive. Barely. Whoever had attacked him had jammed a lance quite literally straight through him: in the chest, out the back. There wasn't a lot of blood, but his face, which was grey and slick with perspiration, was quite alarming.
"Boyd! Listen to me!" I grabbed him by the arm, startling him. His eyes were huge. "Boyd. Go back, find Rhys, tell him to bring his healstaff- and don't let Rolf see you. I'll take care of your brother."
His face was ashen, almost as much so as his brother's, and he looked quite like he might vomit any second. "But..." he said, clearly meaning to argue.
"Go. Now! I'm serious!" I roared, and he fled back the way we'd come. A bit of guilt settled over me, but I knew Boyd: he would do much better running around and doing something, rather than just sitting. But Oscar was his brother... Ashera forbid he should die in front of me, before they got back.
I settled down into the mud, squishing into it unpleasantly to get Oscar's head onto my knee. His breathing was irregular, but I stuck a finger on his pulse and found it reassuringly steady. Steadier, in fact, than I'd expected. "Well, I'll be damned! Hang on, give it five minutes and then I'll sling you over my shoulder to take you back." I tried to sound as irritatingly cheerful as possible, in case he could hear me. "Moron. See what I tell you? I would never get myself into a situation like this. What a pathetic rival you are."
Abruptly he started shaking in my hands, and a thrill of fear shot through me. Then, in disbelief, I realized that his eyes were open, just a little, and that he was looking at me - and he was laughing. "Good grief, what are you...? Hold still, you dastard, or you'll hurt yourself more!"
He'd stopped shaking, and had closed his eyes again, making wheezing noises. Finally, "Like... like this has... this has never happened... to y-you." It was barely more than a whisper, but as he pressed his head into my thigh, his grimace of pain clearly softened into a grin, teeth blood-stained.
"Oh, do shut up," I said, endeavoring to sound cross, relief flooding me at how alive he sounded. "Not this far away from the battle, I haven't." Clearly he was referring to the siege in Gallia where they had found me half-dead with a chunk the size of a sword missing from my left leg, blood all over the sand. "Can you imagine what Rhys's robes are going to look like after tromping all the way out here? Mud, all the way to his waist, I'll bet. Come to think of it, you've probably ruined that pair of pants you're wearing there, draggling them through the water here." I went on in that vein for a few minutes to keep him from talking.
Finally I ran out of words: the forest was just too oppressive. We were silent for a good time. Where was Boyd?
When he spoke, it broke the damp silence so thoroughly that adrenaline shot through my veins. "Kieran," was all he whispered. I bent down, and he coughed pathetically, a fine spray of blood going across my leg. My stomach lurched. "If... would you tell my brothers... if I..."
"You are not going to die," I interrupted. "Don't even say it." I had my doubts, if his damnable brother didn't hurry, but didn't say so.
"If I die..." he continued, stubbornly, each word a struggle, "tell my brothers... I l-love them."
I put a hand on his face, resigned. "You're not going to. But I would tell them." On impulse, I bent as far as I could go and kissed his cold cheek, making him smile. Then I looked up, heart lifting. "Buck up, old fellow, here they come."
A faint splashing was growing stronger, and judging by the panicked voice, it was just Rhys and Boyd. Good, he'd managed to keep Rolf from coming. I wondered briefly how as they finally burst into sight, shoving through a large shrubbery.
Rhys's robes were indeed soaked in mud, splashed from hem to waist. As he bent down, healstaff in hand, I noticed that his hands were trembling, just a bit. It had been a rough campaign on all of us, and Rhys's own health was never thriving under the best of circumstances.
Eyes closed, he held aloft the staff and spoke almost inaudibly; it was one of the healer's spells. Just its familiar rhythm was soothing, and I saw Oscar's face relax as the staff glowed faintly. When he stopped suddenly, I looked up; he was looking at the lance, gnawing his lip and looking a little green. Our eyes met, and I sighed internally.
Well, I'd done it before. Except last time it had been without the benefit of a healer, and it had been on myself... so this was bound to be easier. I put a hand on the lance and raised an eyebrow at Rhys. He looked immensely relieved, and closed his eyes to chant again. The staticky feeling of a stop-spell flowed around us, and when the air could get no more saturated, I flexed my arm and yanked out the lance.
I vaguely heard Boyd, who had turned away to start gagging, but over that was the sound of Oscar's breathless scream as he went rigid against me, and Rhys clapped a hand on either side of his chest. "Al-dhra atani mella ennhi!" he cried, and the spell was complete. The healstaff, tossed unceremoniously to the ground, was losing its glow, and Oscar's shoulders relaxed in my arms. Rhys let his hands fall away with a sigh.
"Think you can stand?" he asked Oscar, who took a deep breath and nodded. I was used to how quickly one healed, when aided by a proper priest (hadn't it happened to me enough times?) but it still gladdened my heart to hear him breathe in deeply and sigh with content.
"Thank you, friends." Boyd had returned, and oblivious to his former conduct, was glaring at his brother. "Sorry you had to chase me out this far."
"You'd better be sorry, you jerk!" said Boyd angrily, jabbing a finger. "I thought you were dead! You should be more careful!"
"You're one to talk," answered Oscar cheerfully, and with his arm draped over my shoulder for support, stuck that hand under my armor and squeezed my collarbone. I bit my lip to keep from making a very undignified noise. "This is my first time almost dying in front of a family member. You've done it, what, eight times? And twice in front of Rolf?" But he was smiling, his teeth still grotesquely red, and Boyd, though red in the face, reluctantly grinned back.
"Fine. I guess..." He suddenly looked guilty, and looked over at the body of Lille. "Oscar, your horse... she's gone."
"I figured," his brother answered, ruefully. "She would have gotten up and come after me, if she'd been alive. Poor thing, she didn't want to come into this forest in the first place. And Rolf will be devastated."
We had started moving back toward the glade, Oscar leaning on me; I couldn't tell if he really needed the support, or if he was just being mischievous. Either way, I was enjoying his body pressed against my own, especially because of the confused, suspicious looks Boyd was throwing us.
"I'm sorry we didn't get here sooner," said Rhys quietly. "We might have been able to save Lille." I could hear the grief of the day pressing on him; it never mattered whether the dead were in our mercenary company, or in the enemy's army, he always suffered.
"It's not your fault," Oscar assured him. "This was almost an hour ago, you would have had to leave Ike."
"You were laying on the ground with a lance through your chest for an hour?" Boyd demanded. "You're so full of it, Oscar!"
"No, I was lying on the ground with a lance through my chest for the better part of an hour," his brother corrected. "How is the little heron doing that Ike rescued, Rhys?" His tone was clearly warning his brother: time to change the subject.
Rhys brightened. "She's fine, and her brother came to find her. Kieran, you were there, right? It was King Phoenicis--"
He stopped and his eyes went wide, as did Boyd's, as a high voice sounded over the trees, singing. It wasn't so much the voice itself that had made him stop--it was soon joined by another voice, and I realized it must be the heron siblings singing--but rather its immediate effect on us, and the forest around us.
Every leaf, those that still stubbornly clung to the trees, was trembling, fluttering, and glowing, the very air around them vibrating with the music. Our faces turned up to the sky as the sun shattered through the branches. I felt Oscar's arm tighten around me as we both breathed in the joy that suddenly suffused the forest.
All around us, the trees began to burst into life, flowers blooming as the mud vanished, replaced with soft grass. A feeling of peace washed over us, and the light of rebirth illuminated every iota of the forest, its dankness blown away by the sweet voices of the laguz.
We stood for a long moment, as the music rose and changed, everywhere the light shining, green plants verdant and suddenly alive. I could have cried out for joy, but I somehow didn't want to spoil the song.
Finally the last notes sounded, and we all breathed out in a sigh. Finally, Rhys spoke, his voice awed. "That was.. that was the most beautiful thing I've ever heard. It must have been a heron galdrar of rebirth."
"Just look at it," said Oscar as we all stared around. "They've brought the forest back to life!"
As health and general happiness went, the day couldn't have ended better.