Hailstorm
The clouds grew taller and darkened into a menacing black with every wyvern mile Ike advanced towards the capital. His mare dashed past the barren fields, and neither the angry squalls nor the snow spraying under her hooves deterred her. Ike hated to admit it, but Virion did have a knack for horses, and this particular specimen impressed with far more than her fine coat – not unlike her rose-watery owner. Ike dared to hope he would reach the capital before the storm broke loose.
What a foolish idea.
The relative comfort of Lycia's red sandstone walls still remained out of sight behind the horizon when the clouds conquered the last shimmer of daylight and unleashed their load. Entire chunks of snow hammered against Ike's face, and within the blink of an eye, the road vanished behind the white screens. His mare neighed and would not trot another step. With a growl, Ike tightened his worn cloak and dismounted. The assault from his left almost knocked him over. His raised arm offered his face about as much protection as a lace cloth, and every step he took to guide his mare forward by her reins had more in common with a drunk stumble.
And from the west, a new squall brought hail. Great. Ike's karma was working overtime today.
He needed to find shelter, and fast. Looking at the sky – scratch that, there was no sky to look at, only a tumbling mess of white chunks aimed for Ike's face. He was just going to assume the storm would whip the shapeless plain for a few hours, at least until dusk. Not that the landscape could get much darker. By then, Ike would be too frozen to care anyway. Either he stopped and let the storm bury him, or he wandered off into the nothing and right into the waiting arms of Pheraen zealots. Such wonderful odds.
Then again, the chances of hail in the middle of winter were almost nonexistent. Some higher power had rigged the game from the start. Ike let out a rather unseemly curse against the gods and their dirty fingers in the weather business and trudged forward.
Snow soaked his boots. His fingers around the reins grew stiff until he felt neither the warm breaths of his horse, nor the leather cutting into his palm. While a bit of life stole from his body with every breath, he gave up on clear thoughts. One step at a time brought him forward, whatever that forward was. One step at a time, he struggled against the frost in his muscles. One step at a time, and still the ice whipped his cheeks, gnawing off a piece of skin each time.
If he stumbled, if he stopped, he might not get back up.
His father's voice drifted through the hailstones. What was he saying? Ike didn't understand. He was repeating a lecture, the same he had given his son a hundred times. But Ike couldn't remember the words.
The cold of Ragnell's naked blade seeped into his spine.
He couldn't say for how long he stumbled through the storm before a dark shape peeled out of the onslaught of ice and hail. Ike had almost bumped his nose into the masonry, and he still needed to blink twice before he made sense of what he was seeing.
A watchtower rose out of the shapeless landscape, supported by nothing but stubbornness and two hunched ruins that only warranted the term stable in its most liberal definition. A relic from Roy's empire. On other days, Ike wouldn't get closer than a wyvern mile to one of these ugly watchtowers; they tended to house soldiers with a penchant for cutting rebel necks. But, although he could barely lift his sword arm, Ike would rather put up with a few axes than another avalanche from the weather gods.
He stumbled into the stable closest to him. Two horses already shivered between the hoar-frosted wooden posts, but Ike couldn't figure out what that meant. Something bad, probably. His thoughts limped in circles, half-frozen. He forced his icy grip around the reins open and, one step at a time, staggered towards the door leading inside the watchtower. He groped for the handle. There was none. Huh.
Well, damned be Naga and her abhorrent porcelain smile for that one.
Ike collapsed against the door, and the wood swung inward to spill him into the watchtower or maybe straight into the afterlife. But if this was the afterlife, the ground could be softer. And a little less dusty, please.
"By Lyn's bowstring!" a disembodied voice said.
Okay, not quite disembodied. The voice seemed to possess hands with which it rolled Ike over. The flicker of a handful of candles attacked Ike's vision as he stared into Rath's desert-tanned face, complete with the same old headscarf. With his utter lack of an imperial crest on his tunic, you wouldn't take him as a figure in the military, let alone one of the most important ones. And unless Rath and his bow had stumbled into the afterlife with Ike, his face proved Ike had made it out of the storm in mostly one piece.
Rath was saying something, but Ike needed several moments before his ears reconnected to his brain.
"The loud stranger is not his loud self today," Rath said and nudged Ike's arms to stimulate the blood flow.
"Just let me die if that saves me from your jokes," Ike croaked.
A laugh. "At least your tongue remembers itself."
With Rath's help, Ike dragged himself to a table at the center of the room. He slumped onto a crooked stool and kneaded his icy hands. But even after Rath assured him twice of this place's safety, he refused to strip Ragnell from his back.
The watchtower had seen better days. Lichen crawled across the walls, and the pile of stool legs near the fireplace proved the chairs around here expected a short, second life as fuel. Jeorge, Rath's fellow Lorca and something between his right-hand man and his best friend, tossed another log into the fire. His blond hair might make him an odd sight in the grasslands of his home, but he balanced that through his patterned Lorca tunic which fitted into a Pheraen watchtower about as well as a redbreast into a wyvern nest.
Apart from the two Lorca, a handful of civilians huddled at the far side of the room. Ike glared at them. At least some of them were devoted followers of Naga, judging by the five-story candles they used to warm their hands. These pilgrims multiplied like crazy these days. And the last thing Ike needed now was a pretty speech meant to convert him.
Lastly, a broad-shouldered figure in a dark coat hunched on a half-rotten barrel. A hood shaded most of their face, apart from a square, male chin. And they were armed. The coat failed to hide the bulge of a sword, and any number of flick-knives could hide in the hunter boots. Water dripped from those boots; the man couldn't have arrived long before Ike.
He brought his hand closer to Ragnell. But the shabby mug Rath placed in front of Ike distracted him, and his hand dropped. Rath seated himself, not on one of the remaining stools but the tabletop instead. The handcrafted Lorca bow lay next to him.
"How long did you ride through that storm of…?" Rath gestured as though he could snatch the missing word out of the air.
"Hail," Ike provided and nipped from his drink. Lorca wine, heated over the stool leg fire. He grimaced, and in the process disguised a glance at the hooded figure. The man didn't move.
"Hail, yes," Rath said. "You strangers call a strange land your own if the sky itself sends its arrows against you."
Ike raised his mug. He spilled a good chunk of his wine in the process – an acceptable loss. "You can say that again. I could go for some desert heat just about now."
"How long did you fight the hail?" Jeorge asked.
"Since it started."
Rath and Jeorge exchanged a look.
"Four hours," Rath said and ran his hand along the thread with the metal victory plates dangling from his belt. "Other men would have cowered on their knees and freeze."
"I'm hard to kill." Ike's spinning head begged to differ, but he drowned the pain with another sip of tasteless wine. "The queen went through so much trouble to order me back to the capital, I would hate to disappoint her."
Jeorge jutted his chin. "The loud stranger is a fool. I will not risk my life for any one person, be they fellow hunter or queen."
"Then I know who not to count on when the enemy surrounds me," Rath said with a laugh. "But you speak some truth. Only the rider who values his own life can value that of his brothers."
Ike spared himself the trouble of an answer by raising his mug. His lips were cold enough that he could almost forgive the wine's poor taste. "And what are you two doing out here?" he asked. "Weren't there plans for a campaign against Satar that could use your marksmanship?"
"Worse trouble stirs in the eagle nest," Jeorge said.
Rath nodded. "An assassin snuck past our defenses. An assassin in a Lorca tunic. It shames me that I once rode with him. But the split-tongued lizard does not change its way and neither does Navarre. We are on the hunt after those who plot with him."
Ike only noticed in the corner of his eyes, but he could have sworn that a jolt went through the hooded figure on the barrel.
"What happened?" Ike asked.
"Navarre raised his blood oath saber against the heir to Marth."
"The steps of the new shrine saw much blood that day," Jeorge added.
Ike choked on his question. "How bad…?"
"Bad. The Pheraens flock around the palace like vultures."
The dry taste in Ike's mouth had nothing to do with the Lorca wine. No way. This was a bad joke. Lucina wasn't… Ike kicked the stool from him and turned for the door. The ice still scratched away at the wooden shutters, and the squalls hissed through the door slits with all their might, but all that be damned.
"Where are you going?" Rath asked.
Ike ignored the pang of his bruised rib and the ache of his half-frozen feet and mustered another step towards the door. "The capital."
"Ike, this snow can swallow a rider with the same ease as a sandstorm. You will lose your way and freeze within the hour."
"Then I better hurry."
Rath took Ike's abandoned mug and hurled it against the door. The loud clatter and the wine dripping down the wood roused Ike long enough to throw a look over his shoulder.
"You have no right to waste your life like that," Rath said. An unusual firmness had captured his eyes. "You lead men. If you throw away your own life without a second thought, how many thoughts do you spend on theirs?"
Ike gritted his teeth but took a step away from the door. "I can make it."
"Will you change the war if you arrive in the eagle nest two hours earlier?"
Ike's hands dropped to his side, useless. The only task he excelled at was execution and, sure, he could try and cut through every Pheraen between him and the palace, whether they carried blood oath sabers or not. But a bloodbath wouldn't change anything. She wouldn't want that.
Ike backed down half a step but couldn't tear his eyes from the rattling door. Where Rath had spilled the wine, the wood showed its once blue color. Why did it have to be blue?
"You should listen to him, young man," one of the civilians said. The burn scar on the left side of his face made him look older than he was. "A storm like that is not to be taken lightly. It's a divine sign."
Ike turned from the door to glare at the man. "Sure."
"A little more respect would do you well. Naga is regaining control over the sky, can you not see? The oral testaments say it clearly: When hailstones rain and fire dawns, the five gems will unite, and the world will be reborn."
"Naga is calling her followers to unite against Grima," a woman added, most likely the man's wife. They even wore scarfs with a matching shield pattern. And the pattern wasn't pretty either, about as rusty as the story it stemmed from.
Ike gave up on the door.
"Yeah," he said, "I can't imagine a better calling sign than a hailstorm either. Everyone who follows that sign will be rewarded with a divine ice block to their face."
Rath burst into laughter, and Jeorge's puzzled gaze darted across the room. Sarcasm wasn't his strong suit. And the couple didn't appreciate Ike's joke either.
"You will see the error in your careless words soon enough," the woman said. "With every faithful heart raised towards her and every prayer in her name, Naga grows stronger. We are on our way to Lycia to honor her champion and visit the new shrine. By the time we arrive, Naga might already prepare the eternal paradise."
"Surely you have felt small and abandoned in the face of storms like this before." The man held up one of his five-story candles. "Is it not comforting to know a gentle goddess holds her hand above you?"
Ike tensed his jaw and looked for the door. "Absolutely. I've always found hail whipping at my face comforting."
"The loud stranger is a hopeless case. Maybe a campfire brawl will warm you back up." Rath punched the tabletop with a grin. Even in this situation, he had the ability to put a room of starved wyverns and even Ike at ease. "I look forward to stretch my muscles. The eagle nest offers few opportunities to enjoy the fun of the fight."
Ike shifted, but his toes still felt like part of someone else's body. "I'll pass."
A laugh rang through the watchtower. But the rough, barking voice didn't belong to Rath. Ike's hand shot towards Ragnell's hilt, his focus towards the barrel. The cloaked man leaned backwards, the hood slipped from his face, and he was howling with laughter.
Jeorge tensed his bowstring, but no one else twitched until the cloaked man's laughing fit ebbed into a broad grin. Scars and bandages twisted around the arm with which he pointed at Rath.
"I'll take you on," he said.
Jeorge poised his arrow for the man's throat. "Madness speaks from you."
Rath raised a hand to stop Jeorge, but his eyes didn't leave the cloaked man. "Who are you that you speak so?"
"It's as your friend said, I'm a mad dog. Linus, for you. I'm looking for my brother. You may have heard of him. But at the moment, what I am the most is bored. You want to stretch your muscles? Then bring it!"
Ike freed Ragnell from his back. "This is getting ridiculous."
"Is a fight all you hunt for?" Rath asked. His shoulders tensed, but he didn't reach for his bow.
The cloaked man, Linus, stood up. One kick hurled the rotting barrel into the nearest wall where it shattered. "Do I stutter? I told you, I'm looking for my brother. And I have reason enough to believe one of you knows where he is. Navarre was the last person my brother spoke to before he disappeared. And you mentioned his name."
"Maybe Navarre rammed his saber into the stupid back of your stupid brother," Ike said. "He does that sometimes."
"What was that about my brother, you maggot?"
Rath slid from the table. The move brought him between Linus and the civilians while also shifting the enemy's attention away from Ike.
"If a brawl is what you look for, here I am," Rath said. "But I see no path leading from this to your brother."
"Simple." Linus shrugged. "I thought you would be more willing to tell me what I want to hear after one of you is dead."
Chaos erupted in an instance. Jeorge's arrow struck the wall behind Linus, a loud clatter but half-drowned by the hissing of Ragnell as the blade severed the air between itself and Linus' neck. A dagger flashed in the folds of his coat, small but no less deadly. Rath evaded, dashed for his bow. The dagger slid towards the civilians, breathless silence.
Then, the screams.
Ike vaulted the table, sliced through the stool tossed at him, and pushed through the burst of splinters, a wooden caricature of the hailstorm outside. Ragnell flared with candlelight reflections.
But Linus drew his own sword in time. The weapons clashed, crude steel and its golden counterpart, heavy and destructive. Ike's feet were frozen and slow, too slow, and Linus' kick made him stumble. He groaned.
By the time he recovered, Linus had reached the pilgrims. He dragged the man with the burn scar to his feet like an ill-behaved child.
"Catch," Linus said with a grin and pushed.
The pilgrim staggered in Ike's direction, and he raised Ragnell to cut through the obstacle. It wouldn't cost him more effort than the stool before.
Rath's yell roused him from his mania, and a different face shifted in front of the man, only for one heartbeat, but that was enough. Ike twisted his wrist, and Ragnell rushed past the pilgrim. Close call.
Jeorge's arrows hit the wall inches away from pilgrim arms and heads, and Linus's dull battle expression twisted with the shadow of a grin. Rath's own arrows would only add to the chaos. Instead, he tackled Linus barehanded, his arms only one wrong twitch of a muscle away from the unforgiving edge of Linus' sword. The enemy towered over him by a head and twice the broad chest.
A stray arrow grazed Rath's leg.
Somehow, he managed to trap Linus' sword arm with his own. A jolt, Linus groaned, and his right arm went limp. With his left, he smashed his sword hilt against Rath's temple. Rath let go, gasping for air.
Ike reached them too late.
The woman with the shield-patterned scarf screamed as Linus wrapped his uninjured arm around her neck. Her body stretched like a helpless, blue-clad shield in front of him, he retreated towards the door.
Jeorge readied another arrow.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you," Linus said. "Her pretty scarf doesn't offer much protection against arrows."
Ike spun Ragnell, eyes set on Linus. "And?"
"Some knight you are!" Linus tensed his arm muscles, and the pilgrim choked, tears in her eyes. "Did you bribe your way into the military? I can't stand these upstanding squires who spout their moral code like gargoyles during a shower. But right now, you'd do me a favor if you just followed the textbook."
Ike advanced. "Hate to disappoint you."
"Ike, hold your sword." Rath had returned to his feet. Despite the blow to his head, his eyes were firm as he addressed Linus. "You search answers about Navarre. I will trade them for the women."
A wide grin spread on Linus' face. "That's more like it. And coming from a Lorca savage, no less. Spill it, then. Where is Navarre?"
"After the assassination, he traded the grassland for a prison cell."
"Where?"
"Johtran."
Linus cursed. "Of all the places in this forsaken land…"
"Why would you tell him that?" Ike growled at Rath.
Rath's eyes didn't turn from Linus for a second. "You have what you came for. Ride where the path to your brother leads you. But if you turn your sword on the woman or one of her companions, know that I will hunt after you. And no one has ever outridden a Lorca."
Linus looked more than tempted to test Rath on his words. The push knives on his belt jingled, and Jeorge countered by tensing his bowstring to its limit. But then Linus loosened his grip on the woman.
"Fair point," he said. "We'll call it a draw. Here's your prize." He shoved the woman towards Rath. "You won't mind if I borrow one of your horses in turn? Johtran isn't around the corner."
"A Pheraen hand like yours has no right—" Jeorge said, but Linus ignored him.
He threw a dumb grin at Ike and an even dumber grin at Rath and ambled out of the stable-ward door – not without jolting his dislocated shoulder back to place with a loud crack. The hammering against the shutters had quieted; only a gentle snowfall stopped Linus from making his get-away.
As soon as the door closed behind him, Ike marched forward. "I'm going after him."
"Save your strength," Rath said.
"Linus is going to bust Navarre out of prison. And before that bastard sees the sunlight again, I'll rather trudge through ten of these divine hailstorms."
"Bloodlust speaks from you."
"After what he did, he doesn't deserve any better!"
"Navarre is not in Johtran."
Ike blinked. When Rath still stood in the same spot, he lowered Ragnell. "Come again?"
"Navarre spends his imprisonment not in Johtran but the holes underneath the capital."
"You… lied?"
Rath grinned. "I have learned that diplomacy wins as many wars as a well-shot arrow. It is the use of truth in diplomacy that I still need to master. Linus will find no answers between the ice walls of the eagle prison. But if he searches other plains, he may discover a trace to Navarre's accomplices. Once the trace is dug up, we can find it too."
Ike didn't know what to say. All that made too much sense. The way Rath commanded the room, Ike struggled to harmonize him with the small but brawny Mister Headscarf he had first met in Sacae's grasslands. Rath, the Lorca who would smash wine cups and throw fists at unarmed prisoners before he wasted a moment to think. Certainly not… whatever Rath was playing at now.
The pilgrims spared Ike from a prolonged awkward silence.
"You saved my wife," the man with the burn scar said and shook Rath's hand. "Naga bless you."
"We owe you our lives," the woman with the scarf said. Her voice still betrayed a hoarseness, but she took Jeorge's hand with unfiltered thankfulness. "All of you. I can't bear to think what that faithless man would have done to us without your help."
"He could have burned our bodies so that we may never see the eternal paradise," her husband said.
"Please tell us who you are, so that we can carry your names to Naga's shrine and light a candle for you."
Jeorge straightened. "You will know my name. I am Jeorge, heir to Noah."
"Thank you, Jeorge," the woman said. "Naga is with those who save a life and those who spread harmony to their surroundings. Your father must be proud that you continue his legacy. And you are…?"
"No one," Ike and Rath said in unison.
As an answer to the woman's frown, Rath gave her a smile. "But you can call me Rath."
She beamed. "Rath, then. I thank you too. If it's not too intrusive to ask, would you mind sharing our provisions with us? We only have bread and cold meat, but it is the least we can do."
Ike only stayed long enough to ensure his toes had thawed and spent that time at the far edge of the table, where the pilgrim woman couldn't hand him the cloth with dry bread more than once. Jeorge entertained the table with more and more fantastical hunting stories – although not even his third mug of wine convinced him to steer from the truth. Rath grinned, and his loud voice and wide gestures made him everyone's favorite, to the point where the pilgrims even forgave him the fact that he had never addressed a single prayer at Naga.
Ike waited for the opportunity to quit the table and march to his horse. He was wasting precious time, and Navarre's blood oath saber cut flesh more than once before his inner eye, a blue-sleeved hand dropping lifelessly onto the steps of Naga's shrine. The ever-same lecture his father used to tell echoed along with the chatter across the table. Curse them all.
But one time, when the group's attention lay elsewhere, Ike did lean towards Rath.
"What's gotten into you?" he asked. "You're always begging for a fight, you could have punched the grin right out of Linus' face at any time, hostage or not. That, back there, wasn't like you. So?"
Rath smiled then. "The heir to Marth knows ways inside your head."
Ike grimaced to himself. Well, ain't that the truth.
Notes: Yes, I know, hailstorms almost never occur during winter. Even less likely in combination with snow. But this is a fantasy land, and damn it, I wanted that imagery. I tried to write the hail out of the chapter to just include snow, but I had to give up halfway through, it just didn't work for me. And who knows, maybe some of what the pilgrims said holds more truth than Ike would like to admit...
Since I still can't respond to guest reviews on this site, I would like to thank Dracofighter specifically for the continued support here. Comments do help my motivation, and I value all kinds of feedback. You know the drill.
In the next chapter, Lucina will face the representative of Talys, and two different voices battle for control.
