Many thanks once again to PaintingMusic14 for making this chapter presentable, and to all of you who have read and reviewed! I have a new poll on profile where you can vote on what you would like to see me write next after completing this story. The appearance of a poll does not indicate that this story is drawing to a close, there are still several chapters needed to resolve the mess I've created this time. Many thanks to everyone for continuing to read...hopefully this story isn't becoming too long to hold your interest :-)
Some Weeks Later:
Susan stared at the enormous city with a feeling of horror; this was what they had come to lay siege to if the giants refused to negotiate? It's impossible! The city walls loomed two hundred feet high; solid blocks of granite the size of entire rooms at Cair Paravel were stacked and fitted together to create the barrier. She did not doubt that the castle wall itself would be even more difficult to breach, assuming of course that they made it that far.
Orieus halted beside her and his expression was far from encouraging. It had been difficult enough to gather the army, get them outfitted and provisioned, and march across Ettinsmoor in the first blizzard of the approaching winter, but seeing the expression on the General's face Susan knew that had been the easy part. "Your majesty?"
"What is it Orieus?" Please, let it be good news. "Have the scouts returned?"
He nodded, expression inscrutable. "They have. The gryphons report seeing signs of a small group of Narnians camped in the crags beyond the city; they could not risk betraying their location by landing. We await your orders, my queen."
Susan shivered, not entirely from the cold wind that cut through her heavy cloak and turned her mail icy. "You've led us this far; I defer to your experience and judgement."
Orieus shifted his weight, staring up at the city walls. "Then I suggest we organise a small party to negotiate with this giantish King and under cover of that distraction send a small party to retrieve our people. We cannot risk attacking the city itself until we know what has become of your royal siblings."
"Will you lead these negotiations, Orieus?"
"If that is your wish but would it not be better if you did so yourself?" She knew him well enough to understand that he feared losing his temper if placed in charge of negotiating with those who had slaughtered his people and imprisoned his rulers.
Susan smiled; perhaps a loss of temper would not serve them poorly. If the giants had cause to fear them they might be more likely to agree to their demands. "I trust you to act appropriately in my stead; I must go to seek news of my family." Let them be there; let them be safe. But she knew that if all three were safe outside the walls, one of them would have sent word and the group of Narnians would not still be camped so near the city.
"Take Phillip and that fool Linus with you, if you would be so kind your majesty; I can no longer endure either of them." Susan nearly smiled; she knew exactly what he meant. Edmund's messengers had been nearly unbearable from the start, though for very different reasons.
Linus, having quickly recovered from his exhaustion, had been an unmitigated nuisance. He had barked at every moving shadow upon the moors, and chased them as often as not, had quarreled endlessly with the troupe of Leopards and Tigers, and had taken it upon himself to follow Susan everywhere she went. Orieus had reminded her, looking rather amused, that Dogs did not frequently accompany the army to war because of actions such as those. Susan had been amused at first, but as the days wore on she often found herself gritting her teeth and trying to remain gracious when she woke to find the faithful, if overly energetic, Dog bounding into her tent to report on the scarcity of squirrels.
Phillip had been difficult in a very different way; he had sulked the entire time. He was terribly bad tempered, a circumstance that was not improved when he caught a slight cold, and would scarcely speak. Susan had done her best to convince him that he should remain in Cair Paravel to recover, but Phillip would have none of it. He seemed perfectly willing to defy anyone's orders as long as doing so allowed him to return to Edmund's side. Susan would not have thought less of him for this had he not recently taken recently to kicking anyone who dared approach him. No small number of minor injuries had resulted from this among the smaller Animals and even a few of the Dwarves and Orieus was at his wit's end.
"Queen Susan?" She blinked, returning from her thoughts and nodded.
"I doubt either of them would allow to leave them behind anyway." She looked up at the circle of light behind the leaden clouds that marked the sun's position; it was just past midday. "How long before you and the rest of your party can reach the gates?"
Orieus followed her gaze and frowned. "Not before dusk; I will gather a score of guards to accompany you. If you cannot safely return tonight then you must do so tomorrow before the sun has risen, else you risk detection."
Susan nodded and stubbornly blamed her shaking hands on the cold.
Night was fast approaching by the time Susan and her company reached the craggy foothills where the gryphons had reported signs of the other Narnians. By this time snow was falling in huge silent flakes, blanketing the ground and muffling the sound of the steps; even the clanking of their armour and weapons seemed quieter than it had before. Susan was grateful for the snow; it would hide their tracks and diminish the possibility that giants looking out from the battlements would see them, but it still made everything terribly cold and damp.
Linus trotted up to her side and, irrepressible though the wolfhound was, even he seemed more silent than usual. Phillip followed a few paces behind, silent and tense; ears laid back against his skull and eyes dangerously angry. Susan found herself rather afraid of what he might do if Edmund was not there when they reached the others or, and this was almost worse, what he would do if Edmund was there.
Linus stopped suddenly, the hair on his shoulders and back lifting slightly as he sniffed the air. Susan gritted her teeth, fully expecting him to begin barking at any moment in spite of Orieus' warnings and threats against doing so. A moment later he wagged his tail and grinned up at her, eyes shining.
"It's them, Queen Susan!" To his credit his voice was quieter than she had ever heard it, although that wasn't saying much. "I can smell them; it's the other Narnians!"
Narnians; he didn't say humans. That doesn't necessarily mean the worst, she reminded herself firmly. After all, weren't they all considered Narnians now? She didn't really have time to dwell on the question however, for almost immediately a mass of furry, quickly moving bodies rushed at them; it was the pack of Dogs that had gone with her family.
Susan found herself staring at them in a mixture of amazement and horror. They were nearly silent, far quieter than she had ever known Dogs of any kind to be when welcoming newcomers; that was enough to amaze anyone. What horrified her was the state they were in; all were terribly thin and bedraggled, but worse than that was the look in their eyes. They did not look like proud, free Narnians, in fact they barely looked like Talking Animals at all. Instead they looked frightened, hunted, and terribly close to becoming like the few ordinary dogs Susan had encountered since coming to Narnia.
Linus' tail drooped at the sight of them. "Greetings cousins," Susan called out, keeping her voice barely loud enough to be heard and trying her best to be cheerful.
For a moment, none of them responded. A sheepdog tilted her head to one side as if trying to understand and Susan felt a terrible sense of grief steal over her. Then the Dog bowed, ever so slightly, and slowly, as if the words were difficult, answered. "Greetings…fair queen. We have…hoped for your arrival…every moment."
"Where is Edmund?" demanded Phillip, quite forgetting himself in his impatience. The Dog growled faintly but otherwise ignored him, haunted eyes fixed on Susan's face as if in disbelief that she was real.
"Where are the others?" Susan asked quietly, holding back her own impatience to ask after her siblings more specifically; she must be a queen first and a sister second, at least in this moment.
The Dog dipped her head again and turned, followed by her silent pack, to lead them higher into the crags. Linus whined softly at Susan's side and she put a comforting hand on his head. "We will make it right; whatever has happened to them, we will make it right," she promised him softly. He nuzzled his nose against her hand gratefully and wagged his tail slightly. Susan wished she knew how she was going to keep that promise; whatever had happened in the weeks it took the army to cross Ettinsmoor had certainly taken its toll on the Dogs. She found herself feeling terribly afraid of what it might have done to the others.
After ten minutes of scrambling up steep slopes, made slippery by the snow, they came to a crack or crevasse in the rocks and were met by a sullenly burning fire and a circle of pale, worn faces.
"Susan!" Lucy threw herself at her sister before Susan had time to fully register that the ragged, wild looking girl by the fire was indeed Lucy. Her hair was braided very messily and looked terribly tangled, her face was pale and far thinner than when she had left Cair Paravel-had it really been less than two months ago?-but her eyes were shining with joy.
"Lucy!" Susan returned her embrace fiercely before holding her at arm's length to examine the bruises on her face. "What happened?"
Lucy laughed and brushed her hair forward, hiding the worst of it. "I slipped and fell into a hole; I'm really alright though." Satisfied enough by her explanation to believe she wasn't going to collapse, Susan turned towards Edmund.
If she had thought Lucy's appearance was shocking, his was much, much worse. While Lucy merely appeared bedraggled and in need of a good meal, Edmund looked half dead; his eyes were haunted and looked too large for his thin, frighteningly pale face. He might have been a stranger, he had changed so much. When he hugged her, she could feel his ribs and suspected, quite correctly, that he had barely been eating.
"Hullo Su, I don't suppose you happened to bring any food with you?" Susan smiled, incredibly relieved to hear a trace of her brother's manner in this stranger's voice.
"Of course I did." She looked back towards the fire, though she knew by now Peter wasn't there. The satyr rose, bowing, and Susan recognised Trebonius, it took her a moment longer to realise that the old faun laying upon the ground and appearing to lack the strength to rise was Metelus. "Peter?" she asked shakily, terribly afraid of the response.
Edmund smiled, though the expression looked stiff and did not reach his eyes. "Safe; or he was yesterday when he signaled me. He chose to remain in the city." It was obvious there was far more to the tale than he was willing to reveal currently and Susan wisely did not question him.
Edmund shifted his gaze from Susan to something directly behind her and she turned to see Phillip, silent and bristling with rage. "Come on Lucy," she put an arm around her sister's shoulders and ushered her back towards the fire. "Let's get you a blanket and something to eat." She would really rather not be standing between Edmund and Phillip if the Horse lost his temper.
"Well?" Edmund asked, eyeing his friend cautiously. "I see you followed my orders."
Phillip said nothing, merely stared at him stoically as if he was trying, and not quite succeeding, to ignore his presence entirely.
"Phillip, I'm sorry. I couldn't leave Peter and you couldn't come with me; I had to make you leave." Still the Horse said nothing and Edmund found himself feeling thoroughly miserable. "Please say something?"
Phillip snorted and nudged Edmund's shoulder with his nose. "You're too thin." Then he was silent again.
Edmund sighed and shook his head; it was better than nothing. The Horse shoved him again; this time hard enough to make him stumble, and there was a dangerous gleam of anger in his eyes. "If you ever do anything that damnably foolish again I will knock you down and drag you away from danger, orders or no orders!" As if to prove his point he shoved Edmund hard enough to send him sprawling to the ground in a rather undignified way.
Edmund glared up at him as the Horse flicked his tail, seeming suddenly rather pleased with himself. "Are you satisfied now?" he asked, picking himself up off the ground and brushing the snow from his cloak.
"Nearly," said Phillip with a snort. "But I meant what I said; do not attempt ordering me from your side again. I am the one who taught you to ride and you would do well to remember that I am perfectly capable of throwing you into the next river we come to." But most of the anger had left his voice and Edmund smiled, the expression feeling unfamiliar.
He joined the others near the fire, Phillip following him closely as if to warn him against further foolishness, and was happy to see that Metelus was sitting up and looking much better than he had in days. The old faun had fallen ill a week before when the weather had at last become truly terrible. Lucy had begged him to allow her to give him a drop of her cordial but Metelus had merely shaken his head and insisted she save it for those who would need it more.
Edmund gratefully accept the bowl of stew Susan handed him and wrapped his cold hands around it. Trust Susan to think of bringing enough food to feed a small army, though Aslan knows we need it. Hunting had been easy the first week, but by the end of the second most animals with any sense had gone to ground in their burrows or dens, or descended to lower elevations to avoid increasingly frequent snowstorms.
Hunger had not been their worst enemy, however. The giants, enraged at his and Lucy's escape had hunted them mercilessly and several of the Dogs, who at first had been far more careless than they should have been, had fallen to them. Those that remained had learned swiftly to be silent when hunting and had eventually nearly ceased speaking or making noise altogether. Edmund would have been worried if he had the energy to spare, as it was he did not.
"Ed?" He looked up to see Susan watching him with her most motherly expression. He looked down again quickly feigning interest in the bowl of stew he held; he couldn't face her concern, not when he had left Peter behind. "What did you mean 'Peter chose to remain in the city'? Phillip told us he was enchanted, is he still?"
"No." He shifted his gaze from the stew to the small fire, focusing on the dancing flames and trying to block out everything else. "The enchantment was broken before I left him; when I say he chose to remain behind I mean he did so of his own free will. I should have made him come with me." The last was more to himself than anyone else, but Phillip nudged his shoulder roughly as if to say; "There! now you know how I felt."
"Did you bring the army with you?" Susan nodded, frowning. "Good, because we will need them."
"Edmund, don't you think we ought to tell her the whole story?" Lucy as miserable at the prospect as he felt, but there really was nothing for it. Edmund set aside his still full bowl of soup, suddenly not feeling particularly hungry, and began his tale.
Sorry for the time jump; the next chapter will go back and explain why Peter refused to leave Harfang and how he managed to get Edmund to leave without him. Some of you will probably guess...I would love to hear what you think happened. Don't forget to vote on my poll and leave a review to let me know what you thought of this chapter. :-)
Cheers,
A