Lucky Horseshoes
I do not own Fire Emblem or any of its characters.
Chapter Two, in which Norne takes the measure of the Altean Army's rising star
The Liberation Army started their campaign in Raman by liberating a dozen chickens from the coop of a hostile farmer. The hen that Norne grabbed had a clutch of three eggs under her, and after silencing the hen Norne slipped the eggs into her kit pouch. Nothing like a good breakfast to kick off the day.
She shared her find with Gordin and Ryan, of course. One egg apiece was almost enough to go around; she would've liked to keep the hen, too, but she'd had to give that one over to her seniors so that the little prince and princess of Grust had a proper breakfast. Besides, Gordin was the best of them at cooking eggs; he had a neat hand in turning them.
"It'd be nice to have some buttered toast with this," Norne said to herself as she dunked her hard biscuit in coffee. It was the only way to soften the biscuits to the point where you could chew them. But fondly imagining some toast wasn't going to get her any, just as imagining the taste of roasted chicken wasn't going to get that hen back in her hands.
The three of them ate in near-silence. Something was different about camp these days, Norne thought. Not the same feel as she remembered back in the war against the Dolhr-Grust alliance. Norne wondered at first if it wasn't just the horror that came with knowing there were foreign troops running rampant over your homeland. For certain the early days after the fall of Altea in '02 had been dark ones, filled with stunned silence and outbreaks of rage, but when they finally left Talys and went on the offensive, spirits ran high from the word "go" and only went higher. Yes, some of that spirit was missing from the Liberation Army right then.
But she'd actually seen the Archanean army coming down on them before she and Sir Frey had escaped, and Norne didn't feel she was any different for it. The ones who'd been on the expedition down to Macedon were taking everything especially hard- maybe it was a feeling of guilt that the kingdom had toppled while all of them were busy elsewhere? She guessed that was reason enough for the unease in camp.
The real reason hit Norne as they were cleaning up camp: Prince Marth wasn't coming around to see them and have a chat with them. The only time Norne had really had a chance to talk with the prince was when she located the army in Grust and pledged her services for the duration, but it surprised her that nobody else was seeing much of their prince, either. Back during the last war, he'd always been one to check in on his people, to see that the wounded were faring decently and the ones on their feet were ready for the next dust-up. A quiet morning like this would've seen the prince coming over to their fire to see if his archers needed anything. Not today, though.
Norne wondered if this new distance had anything to do with the incident last year. Knowing that assassins managed to get deep into the Altean army would be reason enough for the prince to keep his distance from his ragamuffin band of knights, healers, and sellswords.
As it was, the first time Norne laid eyes on the prince that day was when they headed out northward into Raman. The prince looked splendid on his dappled mare, all azure and gold, and Norne watched as he leaned over in the saddle to address someone standing next to him. That someone looked sort of familiar.
"Who's that man in the cloak who's always attending Prince Marth? That's not our Lord Merric."
"That's Ras," Gordin said, like Norne ought to know the name.
"Ras?"
"It's short for Rasputin. He's from Sera..." Gordin's eyes looked a little misty for a moment. "Ras was the one who protected Prince Marth during that... during the incident last year."
Norne whistled.
"Well, now, I can see why the prince would want to keep someone like that close."
She kept her eye on Ras for a time after that, though. Or tried to. It seemed the man kept disappearing.
To Be Continued...
A/N: This is not the standard mercenary "Chris" as depicted on the box art for FE12, as we shall see...
