Disclaimer: Everything I know about ships I learned from Google, so please, bear with me. Well, pretty nervous about this chapter, but...oh well. I think I got it to where I wanted it to be. Was going to cut it off and leave you with a nasty cliffhanger, but I decided against it at the last moment. Much to your relief, I'm sure.
The Witch held out her porcelain hand, giving him an odd, cold smile that made his very bones feel brittle, even as her eyes twinkled with some unknown mirth. "Edmund," she whispered, shaking her hand a little to remind him that she wished him to take it. "You could be my king."
He swallowed hard, trying with all of his might to pull away, but Mahir was there, holding tightly to his shoulders and preventing any sort of escape. "No," he whispered hoarsely, even as the bounty hunter lifted his hand, a hand that held a silver blade. "No!"
The Witch's smile grew then, as little beads of blood spotted Edmund's palm, as Mahir forced his hand forward and held it out to the White Witch.
The Witch leaned forward, clasping his hand in her own, and a bolt of white light followed the movement, slapping through the air and lifting into the sky, before falling back down once more as if to cover the world with the Witch's magic.
Edmund felt faint, his body slumping back into the bounty hunter's arms as the Witch squeezed the blood from his palm onto her own hand, her shadowy body becoming all too clear.
When she dropped his hand, Edmund felt a wave of exhaustion pour over him, and it was all he could do not to fall to his knees then.
Her smile rivalled any that Edmund could remember seeing on Lucy's face, by this point, and his terror mounted. He thrashed against the bounty hunter's hold, even if every sane part of him knew this was useless.
He could never escape her.
She would only find a way to return and haunt him again. He knew that, now.
"Damn us all to Tash!" a voice broke through his nightmares, and, though admittedly not the comforting voices of his siblings, Edmund would take what he could get, as long as it woke him from such a nightmare.
As long as it woke Edmund from the vision of her face.
He let out a gasp, sitting up straight from where he had been slumped against the wooden pole Mahir had tied him to, and glancing around. He had to suppress the urge to pull his hands forward to wipe at his eyes, not wanting to chafe his already bruised wrists any further by pulling on them.
And then the ship lurched to the right, bringing Edmund with it, and he cried out as he felt the binds at his wrists dig into the already fragile skin. But the last vestiges of sleep left Edmund's body as he felt the unmistakable sensation of something crashing into the side of the ship. And whatever that something was, it was much too large to be a mere rock, unseen by the sailors in the middle of the night.
"Heave! Faster, you lazy bastards!" that same voice that had awoken Edmund before, came from just outside his little cell, and he almost jumped at the sound of another voice, so close.
The rowers, their loud rowing the steady beat that had helped him to sleep earlier.
He was wide awake.
Waves crashed against the Riveiosa with frightened intensity from that moment onward, jostling its occupants about wildly, causing Edmund to crash to and fro, and he wondered if he was wrong, and it truly was merely an awful storm set upon them.
And then that thing crashed into the Riveiosa once more, and Edmund let out a cry of pain as he was jostled forward, the ship careening forward at a terrible angle; the floor suddenly in front of him, rather than beneath. Screams from above deck filled the air, and then another loud crash against the side of the ship slammed his head against the pole restraining him.
His world went fuzzy, and, for a moment, he was afraid he might pass out, that the ship would sink and his captors would leave him here. Blood gushed from a gash on his forehead.
His manacles were perhaps the only thing preventing him from going through a port hole and into the watery depths. But also, he noted with growing fear, the only thing keeping him locked in place, unable to escape should he need to. Should the ship sink and he be forgotten in the sailors' quests to find their own ways to freedom.
He was frightened, and eager enough to admit it, when he accidentally bit so hard into his lower lip that he could taste his own blood, could feel it gushing down his chin and neck.
He knew that, to the men aboard this ship, he was an important prisoner, important enough that surely someone would come and free him should they need to abandon the ship. But he also knew of the cowardice of Calormenes, in the worst of times.
And yet, with every crash of the waves, with every scared shout from one of the men outside his room, his worry only increased as no one came for him, nor indeed, spared seemed to spare him a second thought in their loud traipsing throughout the hull.
Although he was the King of the West, where sea was scarce indeed, Edmund knew enough about ships to know that this one would not last long in the onslaught of the current storm.
It was not until the bounty hunter returned to his prison and unchained him from the wall, though his hands were still stuck together with a smaller length of chain, that Edmund realized that this was not the onslaught of a storm, or perhaps not totally, but something far worse, easily enough deciphered from the expression on Mahir's face.
"What's going on?" Edmund demanded, even as Mahir pulled him to his feet and pushing him roughly toward the door. Another jarring rock of the ship, and Edmund planted his feet firmly before he would have slammed into the nearest wall.
"Kindly be quiet, Your Majesty," Mahir snapped tersely, and Edmund found himself jerked forward, stumbling along in confusion for a moment, until the confusion found its source; his feet, bare as they were, were surrounded by water.
A water level that was slowly rising, even here, in the bowels of the ship.
They were sinking.
"Someone's attacking us," he breathed the obvious words, ignoring Mahir's snort as he continued to drag him through the room and into another, where the rowers were. They moved frantically, some still attempting to salvage the rowing, while the others ignored this altogether, jumping to their feet in a feeble attempt to abandon ship and ignoring the shout of the boatswain to sit down and row again.
It was no use for them, anyway, to try. Edmund knew well enough the Calormene tradition of using slaves as rowers, of chaining their feet to the aisles so that they would go down with a warship, should it sink, and all chained together, and would not attempt a revolt of superior numbers against their overlords.
And then Mahir was dragging him past the rowers, and Edmund stiffened.
"What about them?" he demanded, gesturing toward the slaves meant to row the ship back to Calormen soil.
The slaves glanced up at Edmund's words, breath catching in their throats even as they stopped rowing, sensing that their duties to the Riveiosa were soon to come to an end, one way or another.
The boatswain let out a shout of anger, and then the other ship hurled into the side of the Riveiosa once more, and he was sprinting toward the ladder, making his way up deck without a glance behind, the keys to the slaves' chains jingling loudly in Edmund's mind, even as he attempted to find his footing.
The bounty hunter glanced dispassionately at the slaves before righting Edmund and giving him another push toward the very same ladder. "Move, Your Majesty."
"But-"
"I do not have the key, Your Majesty, as I had yours," Mahir hissed, close to Edmund's neck. "Do not give these poor souls hope where there is none."
Edmund swallowed hard, glancing back at the men.
He felt indescribable pity, that he could not save them from this fate any more than he was now capable of saving himself, for, even Mahir would allow him the chance to search for the keys to these men's chains, which he strongly doubted, given that Mahir seemed to have no pity for any but this loved one of his, he would not have been able to free all of them in time.
Mahir seemed to feel no such pity, pushing Edmund up the ladder that would lead above deck, and Edmund scrambled up it, a bit of a chore with the chains still wrapped around his wrists, but he somehow managed.
Once he reached the deck, however, he suddenly wished he had stayed below, however implausible his survival might have been. Things on deck looked far more chaotic.
The sailors ran about frantically, several working to free the sole longboat while others yanked at the sails; the rest seemed to have given up on the ship altogether, and were making their way overboard on pieces of wood and rope.
The ship was rammed to the side again, and Edmund slipped and fell on the slippery deck, and then a crack of lightning burst through the air, alerting Edmund to yet another problem the Riveiosa faced. Rain pattered down onto the deck in heavy droves then, slamming into the waves beyond like the crack of a thousand whips.
The night sky lit for only a moment, and Edmund could see familiar landmarks on the distant shore. Another crack of lightning, illuminating the faces of the scared Calormene sailors, and the ship rocked from waves, rather than another ramming.
Edmund's stomach churned as he realized that he may well have faced the White Witch and, by the Grace of Aslan, lived to tell the tale, only to be lost at sea mere days later.
The boatswain, the very same man from below, was suddenly swept by another jarring of the ship past Edmund and Mahir, as she tipped precariously starboard, the man slamming into the mainmast before tumbling overboard, and into the waves with a wrenching scream.
Edmund watched in horror as he fell, where a moment ago he had hated the man for his lack of compassion, bile rising in Edmund's throat even as the Riveiosa attempted to right herself without the guide of her Captain, vanished as the man seemed to be in this moment.
And then he turned to face the other ship, this one so intent on seeing them all drowned.
The Riveiosa was, for all intents and purposes, a merchant vessel; Edmund could see that in every crevice and knock of wood about her.
This other ship, lovely and sleek in all the ways that the Riveiosa was not, was clearly built for one purpose; to be a ship of war. It glided over the stormy waves without hesitation, slamming into the Riveiosa as if she were half its size rather than nearly double, and Edmund had a fleeting image of the other ship's lady, seeming to fly off the prow, before he was knocked off his feet once again.
He was disappointed to realize he did not recognize her figurehead on sight.
Mahir grabbed hold of him this time, keeping Edmund from flying into the mainmast and knocking his head, though he grumbled and cursed even as he did so.
For one happy moment, the Riveiosa was still, and Edmund breathed a sigh of relief, letting out air he knew he would want for later, before turning back to this oncoming ship and squinting hard at it through the rain, in a feeble attempt to decipher whether or not it was Narnian. But then, who else would it be?
"Is it my brother?" Edmund demanded, though doubtfully. He could think of no one else who would wish to ram a Calormene ship, and yet he knew that Peter would not knowingly endanger his life like this.
Unless he thought that Edmund was dead already.
It was not a reassuring thought.
But surely, if Peter had figured out what the Calormenes had done, he was assuming Edmund was still alive.
Mahir didn't answer him, and Edmund felt desperation clogging at the back of his throat.
"Is it Narnian?" Edmund shouted at him impatiently.
It wasn't Mahir who answered.
Instead, a lone, flaming arrow careened through the air, flying out from the rough direction of this enemy ship.
And Edmund barely had a moment to register that it was coming, and that, by Aslan, he should move, but that he hardly could, before the bolt slammed into him, white-hot pain spreading instantly through his body. He heard himself scream from far off, heard Mahir curse rather colorfully in words that would have made Susan blush, and then the world went black.
This blackness only lasted a few moments, Edmund surmised, when a rough hand to his cheek woke him a moment later, to find the bounty hunter standing over him, yelling over the wind and rain for him to wake up even as he pushed him back, out of the range of a dozen more flaming arrows and beneath a small awning to keep them out from under the pelting rain.
The sudden pain in his thigh, dulled in the last moment from his waking, hit him then, and Edmund hissed in a breath of pain, glancing down.
He knew instantly upon the looking that he should not have done so, that he was likely to be sick at the sight of it, but Edmund had never been one for shying away from ugly things, and he looked.
The arrow, shaft and all, was still sticking up dangerously out of his leg, trousers soaked with blood that Edmund was vaguely aware of as his own and scorched away at the area where the weapon had entered by fire, before the bounty hunter (presumably) had put it out.
It was in deep, too deep, and with every twitch of Edmund's leg, every rocking of the ship, Edmund swallowed harshly and fought unconsciousness as the arrowhead brushed against bone which was once solid.
Mahir held a hand out, shouting something that Edmund couldn't hear over all the commotion, but clearly meaning for Edmund to get up, which sounded like an absolutely terrible idea, at this point.
He scrambled back from the man's reach, even as Mahir reached forward and effortlessly pulled him away from the flames now threatening to spread through the rest of the ship, doused in oil as they were.
"Dammit, boy," Mahir snapped then in exasperation, "You can't walk far on that leg, and I need to find the Tarkaan. He'll have found a way off this ship, the scoundrel, soon enough, and if we've brains we'll follow that way."
"Then leave me here," Edmund muttered, because it did not matter anyway. They had tallied too long. It would be much too difficult to make their way off of this ship alive. "Like the poor souls below."
A small crowd had gathered around them, despite the danger on the ship, stood in shock at the sight of the arrow in Edmund's leg.
The wound itself was not so strange a thing. The arrow protruding from it was.
Edmund was too busy staring at the arrow in his thigh to notice, wondering if he could pull it out now without too much damage, or if this would only encourage the blood loss.
Aslan, but he missed Lucy's healing cordial. It always seemed to be on the opposite sides of the world when Edmund needed it most, or so he had surmised from these past few weeks.
And Edmund recognized the insignia on this arrow all too well, even as he tried to deny what his eyes were telling him.
He had seen the make of those arrows too many times fired upon his people, upon Narnians, to not know them on sight, especially when one was protruding from his own leg.
"No," one of the sailors cried out, eyes wide with fear. "No, by Tash's bolt, it's a Calormene ship!"
Bedlam erupted on the deck then, men either jumping voluntarily into the waves or making good use of the lone landing boat, cramming into it and casting the small vessel into the water as well. Edmund would have liked to point out that this would be a good idea, but then Mahir was moving, and Edmund doubted he would be heard above the chaos around them, even shouting.
Mahir pulled Edmund by the wrists toward the Wheel, the lone sailor who seemed to think he could still steer the Riveiosa out of danger, huddled behind the wheel and jerking it spastically in the opposite direction of the warship.
Edmund glared at Mahir in bemusement, though some rational part of him knew that Mahir had no more answers than he. "Why are they shooting at us? And why are they so far North to begin with?"
Mahir ignored him. "Where is the Tarkaan?" he demanded instead, of the man at the Wheel, who seemed to cow at the very sight of him, despite his best intentions of steering the ship to safety.
They were at open sea, in the middle of one of the worst storms Edmund had yet seen in Narnia.
He might as well toss himself over now.
The man paled at the bounty hunter's question. "By Tash, and how should I know? If you want to live, bounty hunter, abandon ship while you still can. She's going down, and that Calormene beauty right there-" he jerked his thumb toward the oncoming ship, "isn't going to be letting up anytime soon. At least, not until we're all good and sunk."
"And why haven't you done just that?"
The man shrugged. "Figure if we can drag this scrap of wood to Archenland, anyone still aboard can at least get the insurers' compensation."
"You won't make it that far," Edmund protested weakly, but both men ignored him, as he'd expected.
Mahir shook his head stubbornly, his grip on Edmund painful and unyielding. "I must find him," he hissed. "Where is he? Where did you last see him?"
Another sailor answered, when this one would not, shouting loudly from across the deck even as he made his escape, "Still holed up in his cabin, most like. Been in there for hours now, with the Captain."
Mahir grabbed Edmund by the arm, yanking him toward the Captain's quarters, on the other side of the deck, and Edmund flailed along a step behind him, casting about nervously for some means of escape.
Whatever deal Mahir had with the Tarkaan, Edmund did not want to stick around and decide the finer pieces of it; he would much rather face the billowing waves around them on the stormy sea than the oncoming charger.
At least the skies did not promise so terrifying a storm, and he was half-certain that he could make his way to shore through it, if he had but a good bit of driftwood to keep afloat on.
But then Mahir was grabbing him by the chains around his wrists again, and Edmund had no choice but to limp after him or risk twisting his leg into further pain than it already was.
As it was, the pain in his leg forced him to focus merely on not screaming.
The Captain's cabin was, surprisingly, empty of the Captain, despite the sailor's words that he would be here.
But the Emissary was there, scrambling for rent pieces of parchment and the little bit of gold that remained, even as the ship sunk around them, even as the porthole at the other end of the cabin rapidly filled it with water. He glanced up in shock when Edmund and Mahir entered.
Edmund could not say that he was entirely surprised.
He didn't have the time to say so, however, when another flaring pain washed through him, and he cried out, going to his knees, which, in retrospect, was not the best idea he might have had, for it only tore at the muscles in his thigh all the worse.
The bounty hunter wasted not a moment then, gripping the arrow by the shaft and, ignoring Edmund's scream, partly from surprise that the man would pull the shaft without first digging out the head, despite their rather limited time, and mostly from the pain this action caused.
And, as Edmund collapsed on the floating floor of the cabin, blood seeping from the wound and breath leaving his body in painful gasps, the bounty hunter slunk over to where the Tarkaan stood, ripping his knife from its scabbard and pressing it to the man's neck before he had the chance to flinch away.
The Tarkaan swore, reaching for one of the chunks of gold he'd had in hand before, perhaps to bash it against the man's head. "I told you before that if you ever held a knife to me again, you'd live to regret it," he warned, but the bounty hunter only smirked, shoving the gold piece away with his other hand.
"I don't think either of us will be living much longer, Your Excellency," he said, voice colder than Edmund had yet heard it, and he was almost impressed.
The knife nicked the man's skin, and Mahir smiled at the bead of blood which followed. "But you're going to die first."
The Emissary's eyes widened fearfully then, and he backed up a step, but had nowhere to go save for under the roaring waterfall now cascading from the lone porthole in the cabin.
"I...didn't kill her," the Emissary rasped then, in a last ditch attempt to save himself, and Mahir glared darkly at him, pushing him underneath the wave of seawater mercilessly. "I didn't kill your Kareema."
Edmund was feeling very near to fainting from the blood loss, and struggled to hear the words, softly spoken as they were.
Mahir chuckled with unhidden disgust. "You are a coward, Sire. You'll die in a few moments at any rate; what does it matter that I kill you now?"
"There is no honor in dying at an assassin's blade. I would rather die at sea, a servant of the Tisroc, may he live forever," the Emissary bit out, sounding for the first time as though he were the honorable man Edmund had never imagined him to be, and, unbidden, he felt a bit of respect for the man. The man who would do anything to find his bastard son, and, failing that, a greater prize.
For, in this moment, Edmund understood what Mahir the Bounty Hunter could not, blinded by his feelings for his sister. That Amin Tarkaan had not just sent a bounty hunter across the world to find his bastard and bring him home before he could spread undue lies about his previous master and sire. He had sent the best to find and bring home his son, his only heir, before the Tarkaan was given the opportunity to die.
The bounty hunter growled then, the knife slicing into the thick skin of the Tarkaan's neck.
"Wait!" the Tarkaan cried out. "I am not lying. I...lied, before," he gasped out, even as blood began to trickle onto his wet robes, dampening them further. "Your sister is not dead, I swear by Tash and all that he stands for. However, she is no longer in my home."
"Give me one good reason why I should believe that for an instant," Mahir snapped. The ship rocked ominously with his words, and Edmund bit his lip, closing his eyes and preparing for the end.
"She...escaped. The night she told me her name, I was intrigued by her, and intended to take her into my bed. But she ran away that night, stupid wench, and my men could find hide nor hare of her. She went into the desert," the words tumbled out in a mess, and Edmund's eyes opened as he heard them.
The knife at the Emissary's throat fell from Mahir's hand. Mahir stared down at the other man shakily, face a dreadful shade of white, even in this terrible light.
"She's alive?" he whispered out.
The Emissary's head bobbed up and down in agreement. "Alive, and, likely, has made her way North by now. She's a stubborn little wench, I'll certainly give her that." And that was when Edmund saw the flash of metal, realized that he had never heard the knife hit the water, but it was too late to give warning. The blade slammed into the surprised Mahir's gut, and Amin Tarkaan twisted it savagely before pulling it free.
Blood gushed from the wound, staining the water below.
"I warned you never to hold a knife to me again, fool," the Tarkaan muttered, and then promptly fell into the water, boneless, the strip around his neck from Mahir's blade thicker than Edmund had originally thought.
Edmund blinked, staring first down at the man, and then at Mahir, and wondering which he felt less sorry for. He had grown to sympathize for the bounty hunter, after all, for his plight, but he was still the enemy. He had still stolen Edmund away from his family, when they might have been reunited days ago.
But Mahir wasn't dead.
The bounty hunter stumbled forward, clutching his stomach before reaching down with surprising ease to lift Edmund from the water. Edmund went silently, though he had to question why the bounty hunter looked for escape now that he had been stabbed, rather than before, when they actually stood a chance against the waves.
Revenge seemed to make its victims do foolish things to achieve what they wanted, he supposed. He had learned that from the Witch, after all.
And then that other ship, the Calormene war ship that was somehow impossibly this far North, slammed into the Riveiosa for a final time.
"What are you doing?" Edmund demanded, hollowly. A wave crashed against his injured leg, and he flinched, suddenly no longer caring to even hear the answer to his own question.
Mahir laughed hollowly. "I think we both know the answer to that, Your Majesty," he muttered, not meeting the young king's eyes as he bound his thigh. Edmund let out a small cry as the wet cloth tightened around his wound, but Mahir, if he had any compassion for Edmund's pain, had buried it deep.
"You should be using that for your own wounds," Edmund observed, and the bounty hunter snorted in response.
Mahir's wound from the Emissary had not stopped bleeding, and Edmund suspected that there was some sort of poison on the blade to make it so, though the stubborn bounty hunter had not admitted to such a thing. His face was pale from the blood loss; Edmund could see this with every flash of lightning, though not in the dark storm otherwise.
"We should try to make it to shore first," Edmund tried again, but, yet again, the man did not heed his words.
The rock they lay against, which they had found between the shoreline and the wreck of the Riveiosa, provided adequate enough breathing room for the two of them now, especially after the war ship abandoned them there, seeing its job as done when the Riveiosa sank, but Edmund knew that they would lack protection until they made it to shore.
The trouble was, Edmund did not think they were, either of them, capable of doing so, in their current states. It had taken almost all of Edmund's energy to crash against this boulder, and he had been holding onto Mahir for support.
Mahir was bleeding through a wound to the gut. Swimming would not come easily again.
The boulder they clutched to was just large enough for the both of them, just tall enough out of the water to break the waves coming at them from the other side, but certainly not from the lightning above, nor the rain.
They were submerged up to their necks, and Mahir wrapped his wound beneath the water.
Water stained with blood. Bits of wood floated past them, with every wave.
If someone did not come for them, and very soon, Edmund thought that they would either be pulled down into the waves or struck by the lightning.
He wondered which was a more painful way to die, or if he would die from blood loss, or, as he suspected, a poisoned arrow, first.
Mahir continued binding his thigh, undaunted by all of that which worried the Just King.
"Take this," Mahir said suddenly, pressing something metal and cold into Edmund's hand. A dagger, by the feel of it. Edmund could just see it glinting as another flash of lightning broke through the clouds.
Edmund tried to pull back, but Mahir's iron grip on him did not cease, and he found himself unable to. "You'll need it more than I."
Edmund paused at that, swallowing hard. "You should probably.."
A wave crashed against Edmund's legs, cold and far too close, and he let out a yelp of pain, surprised to note that there was feeling in his injured thigh again.
And by Aslan, it hurt.
"Promise me," the bounty hunter interrupted, and he was clutching Edmund's hand so hard now that it hurt, that he could see it growing white beneath the water, "promise me you'll find my sister. That you'll find her..." he coughed. "I've done nothing to warrant this task, or your forgiveness, but please..." he glanced up at Edmund hopelessly. "She's my sister."
"Why did you free me, help me?" Edmund demanded, ignoring the way his throat clogged at the bounty hunter's words. His sister. All of this, for his sister.
Edmund spared no delusions that Mahir the Bounty hunter was not a good man. He was, after all, a man who made his profit off the finding of runaways worth money, dragging them back to their masters or magistrates without a second thought, and would have gladly done the same with Edmund, had he been given the chance.
But he had done all of this for his sister, and Edmund was not such a hypocrite as to pretend not to imagine what he might have done for his sisters, if faced with the same dilemma.
"If you escaped sooner, you might have made it, and landing on the Narnian border with me as your hostage will not endear you to my siblings," Edmund spat out, still conflicted. "Why did you help me instead?"
Mahir glared at him. "Perhaps I wanted the pleasure of seeing you die myself, Your Majesty."
"I don't think so," Edmund argued, aware of the other man's growing annoyance. "Tell me."
The bounty hunter was silent for a moment, chest heaving with the last vestiges of his strength, but when he did speak, it was with surprising conviction, and Edmund could do nothing but listen with rapt attention.
He wasn't going anywhere, after all, with this man's iron grip on his hand and manacles.
"That...story," Mahir wheezed out. "The one you told me, about your stealing the Emissary's horse."
Edmund blinked in confusion. "You freed me because I told you a story? You're a terrible bounty hunter, you know."
It would have been amusing, if they weren't both likely about to die.
"No," Mahir shook his head, so hard that, in the man's current condition, Edmund was rather afraid that it would fall off. "No, it was...you spoke of your siblings, in that story, of how they helped you. Your brother and sisters. With such love and devotion, one could not doubt that you love each other, that the bond between the Four of you is as true as any." He swallowed. "Family is important, in Calormen. My...sister and I do not share the bond that you and your siblings have, however, at least not in the same way. What exists between us is duty, duty to our family and to each other, after our mutual hardships, because there was no one left in our family by the end of those struggles."
Edmund shook his head, still confused. "I..."
"I wish that we had something more. That we...truly loved each other, as siblings should. I...don't love her, but I do not know what I would do if the last of my family was killed because of me." He glanced searchingly at Edmund. "Several years ago, it did happen. Our mother was killed, because of my work, because of a mistake I made, and I was thrown into the mines of Calormen for my failure. I couldn't lose her, too."
Edmund bit his lip. "I think you love your sister more than you know," he said softly. "And I think she would understand."
The bounty hunter lifted a brow. "Do you?"
And Edmund, despite the injustices this man had done him, despite the fact that, if the bounty hunter did not let go of him soon, he would also die in these waves, found himself nodding, but not to that question.
It was likely a fool's errand, an impossible request, for even if she had made it out of Calormen and into the North, there was no telling where she might be now.
But he nodded.
After all, he was likely going to die tonight. Mahir was definitely going to.
He hated that he did so. This man had more cause for his hatred than anyone living at the moment, and yet he had seen the pain in the man's eyes when he went to avenge his sister. Knew that Mahir had done all this for her sake, as he'd said.
And couldn't help but think of Lucy and Susan.
It didn't make the bounty hunter's actions right, by any account, yet Edmund understood them better now, and almost pitied him.
In the blistering storm, the bounty hunter couldn't see the motion. "Your Majesty..."
Edmund tore his hand away, wincing as it scraped against the rock and started to bleed, the liquid mixing seamlessly with the crashing waves around them as he managed to sputter out an answer. "I will find your sister, and make sure that she knows what her brother did for her."
The bounty hunter relaxed at these words, leaning his head back against the rock and closing his eyes. A moment later, despite the turbulent seas and the thundering clouds above, Edmund thought he could hear the man's breath leave his body.
And then a wave washed over them both, something hard and painful scraping against Edmund's wound, and Edmund knew no more for some time.
Waking was more painful than it was the last time, despite the fact that Edmund did so to find himself enveloped in soft sand. He let out a groan as the ache in his leg turned into a steady throb, wondering absently if the leg would have to be cut off before he could make it to Lucy's cordial.
And then a hollow laugh ripped through him, at the thought that he would ever be seeing Lucy's cordial again, after tonight.
It was still night, though nearing the dawn, when Edmund pulled himself up and glanced at his surroundings in bemusement. They did not look familiar, but this could just as well have been because of the bleary sheen in front of his eyes than because he had never been here before.
He stared up at the sky and the slowly vanishing stars for a few moments in an attempt to focus them, multiple thoughts running through his mind as his eyes lit upon a small flurry of wings; not so very far away from him, but too high in the air to determine whether or not they were that of an eagle or a sparrow.
Or perhaps his eyes were simply too cloudy.
The first thought to enter his mind upon the sight was that he might not make it until morning, but this was quickly jumbled aside by half-remembered words, words that he knew he should be thinking of then, that he was reasonably sure had belonged to Aslan, and yet they still did not make sense to him, even as his eyes focused on that bird above him.
The bird soared above him, always above him, not moving from that place in the air even as Edmund did not move from his collapsed place on the ground, and then let out a noise that seemed to Edmund of frustration; that he had not yet arisen.
Then he recognized the bird, or rather, its kind, as it swooped down close to his head, but not close enough to reach out and grab, as if baiting him forward.
And he wondered, even as it flew back up into the far away sky, what in Aslan's name a dove was doing about at this time of night, or so near the commotion of a crashed ship. The little creature should have been startled away by the commotion, not drawn to it.
Aslan's name.
Aslan.
Half-remembered words from an age ago filled his mind then, words he had not been convinced until now were merely part of a dream he'd had. A dream while dead. A dream of Aslan, speaking to him, on the shores of Aslan's country.
A dove. Something about a dove.
Something important, and Edmund was ashamed to discover that he couldn't remember what that was.
His leg throbbed again, and Edmund nearly cried out from the pain of it, but managed to contain it at the last moment. It was then, as he lay panting in the sand of the beach, his leg aching so badly he wondered if he would die before he could pass out, that the words came to him abruptly.
Follow the dove.
And Edmund smiled.
He didn't know what strength he had to do so, but Edmund found himself crawling on hands and one knee, his wounded leg splaying out awkwardly behind him, after the dove, letting the Dumb Creature guide him, as she clearly meant to do, and secretly glad every time that she stopped, as if sentient enough to know that he needed the rest.
They moved slowly, and by the time Edmund had managed to pull himself off the shoreline and up painful, cutting rocks, the sun was already risen in the sky, pink in the sky. Or perhaps red, like blood.
Still, the dove persisted, swatting at his damp hair with her wings every time that he stopped, spurring him on, and Edmund moved with half-lidded eyes, wondering several times why it was so important that he follow this bird. Why he was following her to begin with.
He saw the White Witch at one point, grinning down at him, jeering at his slow progress, and it managed to give him the last push of inner strength that he didn't have after the dove before he collapsed and closed is eyes, reveling in the soft feel of the grass beneath him.
A sound like a meow jerked his head up once more.
The little Kitten stared up at him with wide, unblinking eyes, and Edmund had one spare moment to realize that he was indeed still in Narnia, as he'd always thought. Then he collapsed at the little creature's feet in a heap, ignoring its startled cry as he once again lost consciousness.