Honesty Is (Not) The Best Policy
I do not own FireEmblem or any of its characters.
Rated T for mature themes and violence.
Chapter Three
Whenever Marth heard the name of Menedy spoken, she imagined not the fortress itself, or the surrounding lands, or the noble house that governed them, but the river into which her father's body had been tossed without prayer or ceremony after his murder. The land and its people were to her without substance, mere dots and squiggles upon her collection of maps; likewise, the fort on western horizon and its battery of ballistae had less power over her imagination than did the blood-clouded waters of Menedy River.
With all this occupying space in her head, Marth paid scant attention to the briefing that followed the third day of the Archanean League's siege of Fort Menedy. She didn't particularly want to hear how long it might take to starve the defenders into surrendering without conditions; the way to deal with the so-called "wooden cavalry" was to charge in and strike them where they sat, preferably with fire and thunder. This plan, such as it was, made some of the more conservative heads around the table nervous. In particular, the Archanean bishop with the thick gray mustache seemed on edge at the idea of a direct assault on the fortifications.
Reckless, Bishop Boah called it, and Marth- still stung by the way Nyna had used the words "a hunger for danger" to describe the same plans- sat back in her chair and decided to submerge herself again in her own thoughts. It seemed to her that most of her day had been spent taking heat from one corner or another, with the worst of it coming from Nyna's people.
"Should I learn you have been false to her, or are manipulating her, heads will roll."
Marth wasn't going to forget that encounter with the flower of Archanean knighthood any time soon, and not simply because Sir Astram had been, in his own words, discourteous. Lack of courtesy wasn't going to hinder their cause on the field, not if Astram followed orders as promised. No, it was the specific phrasing of his accusation and his threat.
If you have been false to Nyna.
Marth touched the surface of the Fire Emblem; she hadn't consciously meant to, and didn't know she was reaching for it until she felt the engraved metal beneath her fingers. She then forced herself to fold her hands gracefully upon her knee, to sit up straight in her chair and listen to the remainder of the briefing. After all, the Prince of Altea asked to be judged based on upon deeds and not merely... reputation.
As Nyna was not present for the briefing, Marth had the prerogative to dismiss the bishops and generals once the issue of a fortress siege had finally been talked to death. She asked Duke Hardin to stay for a few moments; Marth thought she'd noticed a certain impatience in Hardin's voice whenever besieging Fort Menedy was discussed.
"Coyote, please tell me if I'm leading us wrong. I just can't see any advantage in starving out an enemy that has the freedom to attack us at a distance."
"No, Marth," said Hardin, and Marth felt some of her tension ease upon hearing his deep and resonant voice. "A barrage of strikes from the two ballisticians in our ranks, followed by successive flank attacks from our most mobile units- it will carry the day, I'm certain."
The plan had some of the flair and daring that characterized Hardin's own guerilla strikes back in Aurelis, so it didn't surprise Marth that the scheme appealed to Hardin, but she couldn't always be sure...
"That's good. Thank you for your honesty, Coyote." She felt warm metal beneath her fingers again, and looked down to see that she was, once more, touching the Fire Emblem.
Hardin had noticed this tic also.
"Marth, is something..."
Even as Hardin's unfinished question trailed into silence, Marth looked up at him and gave him the best answer she could supply.
"It's warm. The Fire Emblem, I mean. No matter the weather, or the hour, it's never really cool to the touch. It's as though something heats it from within."
She was not lying. The Prince of Altea, accusations from common-born knights notwithstanding, did not speak falsely.
Hardin's eyes, brown and keen like a falcon's, seemed to soften a little.
"It seems a great deal about this quest is yet beyond our understanding," he said.
Marth nodded. Something about the way he was now regarding her- the warmth, perhaps- made her throat close up.
-x-
Marth felt out-of-sorts all through supper that evening in camp. The music that Hardin's men played on their pipes and drums hit her nerves in all the wrong ways. She bit down on a piece of bone in her rabbit stew and was afraid for a moment that she'd chipped a tooth. And the sight of Dame Midia and Sir Astram sitting shoulder-to-shoulder just bothered her. Just... bothered her.
The knights of the Holy Kingdom weren't as professional as they made themselves out to be, she thought as she poked through her bowl of stew. Yet she kept watching, long enough to see Astram pluck a piece of meat from his own bowl and place it at Midia's lips. Midia pecked at it with the manner of a hungry bird and Marth looked away in disgust.
She retired early that night, after giving permission for the others to enjoy themselves until curfew. There wasn't anything she particularly wanted to do at present, so Marth took out a knife and began to trim her nails. Three of them on the right hand had grown overlong, and the thumbnail on her left hand had broken during that morning's skirmish. She had just finished paring the torn edge when Merric asked if he might enter.
"Come in," she said, not looking up from the knife.
"Are you well, sire?" Merric asked once he'd hung up his hood for the evening. "You seemed a trifle... short... at supper."
"I assure you, Merric, I am and remain one and one-half inches above you."
Merric usually laughed at the prince's jokes, though the tame ones weren't especially funny and the funny ones often weren't especially nice. This time, though, he frowned, and as Marth glanced at him she noticed it was a thoughtful sort of frown that made Merric's eyes seem large and almost sad. Or perhaps it was just a trick of the candlelight.
"If something troubles your heart, sire, you know I am always willing to listen."
"Don't look that way, Merric." She turned her back on him to put away the knife. "I rely on you to keep my spirits up, so give us a smile and we'll call it a night."
She lay awake long after the candles were snuffed, long after the sound of Aurelian drums faded to nothing. Merric lay out of her reach; if Marth stretched her arm to its full extent, she could just catch the edge of his blanket with the tips of her fingers. She rolled over onto her side, shut her eyes, and hoped for some sleep before trumpets shattered the dawn.
Author's Notes: Oh, to be sixteen again, to feel the first stirrings of passion... oh, wait, being sixteen is terrible. Glad to be well past it.
Looking over the Shadow Dragon script again, Marth sort of acts as his own tactician a fair amount of the time, usually in the Nyna chapters. A pity FE12 decided to gut that sort of self-reliance...