Chapter 17: In This Hopeless Place

When Wiegraf and Miluda had forged their band of commoners with dreams of glory, Miluda had commanded some forty Valkyries, pooling all their knowledge between them, training twice as long as any of the other sections of the Corps, refining their skills and strengths until they were one of the deadliest units on either side of the 50 Years' War. As the sun rose the day after Gregory had ridden north, Miluda commanded only six, and one of them was dying.

She stood at the edge of the plateau, staring down the way they'd come. The plateau was one of the easiest paths into Fovoham—and, therein, to sneak behind the Lenalian Mountains and take the Corps forts from behind—but then, easy was a relative term. It was a long, unfriendly climb northeast of Dorter, thick with shale and pebbles sloping down into the lower regions of Gallione.

But it was not the climb that had cost her. It was the nobles and their puppets. Just as it had been all along.

She'd known they were doomed the moment her sword and Wiegraf's had slipped through Gustav's chest. No, even that wasn't true: she'd known they were doomed the moment Gustav had betrayed their cause.

Oh, Gustav. So bitter and forlorn when he'd come to them. He couldn't have known how frail he looked. His soul was brittle. He'd been pushed to extremes, and he was looking for salvation. Their righteous struggle had reforged him, so he stood straight and his eyes looked almost as fervent as Wiegraf's. In Gustav's transformation she'd seen the hope in their cause. And in his fall...

He'd had to die. She knew that. They hadn't made that decision easily. They'd all done things they regretted during the course of the War, and necessity had forced Gustav's hand more than most. There had been rumors coming out of Dorter for months, but Gustav had worked behind enemy lines before, and Wiegraf and Miluda trusted him. When they heard reports of him driving out rival criminal syndicates and seizing the property of merchants, they had to believe he was acting in their best interest. They had to believe...

But then came the message, smuggled out with the latest shipment of supplies. Of what Gustav had done, to the people who worked for him and to the people he was supposed to be protecting. Of what he might still do. And while they fretted and worried and argued, the Marquis had been taken.

To bring an army against Gustav might have destroyed the Corps, and would have advertised their weakness to all of Gallione besides. So Wiegraf had left Gregory in command to the north and Miluda had trusted in her Valkyries to hold the south, and they had gone together to put an end to the old friend who sullied the name of their cause.

They hadn't been the only ones chasing after Gustav and the Marquis, either. There had been a Beoulve on the case. A Beoulve Miluda had made the mistake of trusting.

"Captain," Radia called. Miluda did not turn to look at her: she could just make out the red-headed figure from the corner of her eye. Radia was young and new to the cause, but damn useful. Her father was a former military commander of uncommon talents, and he had taught many of his techniques to his daughter. There was a time Miluda had envisioned a whole unit of such women, untouchable and invincible.

There was a time Miluda had envisioned a future that had hope.

She'd still had hope just a few weeks ago. Wiegraf and Miluda, blades wet with the blood of the men and women who'd walked along Gustav's monstrous path, had fled north from the Cellar, trusting in the baking heat and inhospitable desert to guard them from pursuit. They'd already set up a tent in the lea of a dune to the north the previous night, certain that Gustav's men would never see them coming.

One living creature was waiting for them—a lean, muscular bird with sun-gold feathers and intelligent orange eyes. Wiegraf ran his hand over Boco's beak, and the bird crooned softly into his hand. They had found Boco's egg in occupied Limberry, in the clutch of an Ordallian Duke's prized racing chocobo.

"We should keep watch," Miluda said.

"Boco will let us know if anyone's coming, won't you?" Wiegraf said. The bird chirruped, and almost seemed to nod. So they crawled into their tent, and rested their tired bodies in the baking shade.

"Are you alright?" she asked Wiegraf. Without a Ydoran sword and proper microrunes, the Bursting Blade was a dangerous technique. The first time Wiegraf had tried to use it, he had been laid up in bed for two days, practically immobile. Now he'd used it three times in the space of an hour.

"I will be," Wiegraf said, though he no longer tried to mask the trembling in his hands and voice. "We will be."

Miluda nodded. The look of disbelief in Gustav's eyes flashed through her mind, and she almost smiled. What did he think was between them, that would stay her blade when he'd become something so monstrous?

"What now?" she asked.

"Hard to say," Wiegraf admitted. "Limberry's certain to add their forces to the Hokuten now. Honor requires it."

"And everyone will forget we let him go," she said.

"We had to," Wiegraf said.

"Why?" Miluda asked. "We could have weakened Limberry."

"We would have weakened Limberry in the long-term," Wiegraf said. "In the short-term, we'd have brought every man and woman who can carry a blade howling for our blood. Better to face an honor-bound army than the hate of all Ivalice. If the people are not with us, we have nothing."

"But are the people with us, Graffy?"

"They will be," Wiegraf said. "So long as we are better than the highborn and their ilk."

"Is that all it takes?" Miluda asked.

"We give them an alternative," Wiegraf said. "Just like we did during the War. We keep their interests close to our hearts. We serve justice, not ourselves."

"Not like Gustav," Miluda said.

"Exactly."

It was not hard to be better than the highborn, was it? It wasn't hard to be better than the men and women who let the young, the weak, and the feeble starve and suffer so they could live in their accustomed comfort. They had made them bear the brunt of the fighting, and now they made them bear the cost of the peace. They took and they took and they never gave anything back. And if you dared to fight?

They had shown Emilie what kind of creatures they were.

"How is she?" Miluda asked, staring down the long climb up to the plateau.

Radia stepped closer. Miluda turned, and saw the tears in Radia's eyes. Her heart stopped as glaciers oozed through her veins.

No. Not Emilie, who had been with her from the beginning. Emilie, dour and steadfast and resilient, not the strongest or the fastest but the most enduring, able to march farther under heavier loads, leap into battle after a fifteen mile march. Emilie, who with a wounded leg had held back twenty men so that Miluda could lead the survivors to safety.

Oh God, that battle. It was as bad as anything Miluda had seen during the war. One moment, they were following the river north, wary for any sign of the enemy. They had climbed the foothills and found a camp of Limberry soldiers, one among many, and they had come with their lances and their axes and their arrows, they had come upon the backs of chocobos, they had slashed and stabbed and let their arrows fly, and Miluda and her Valkries and every man and woman that could hold a weapon fought for all they were worth but they were a scattered broken company, a straggling line, and this was a fresh and fearsome army.

So many dead. So many wounded. All because of that wretched Beoulve. Ramza, who had spoken of justice and sent her men into the slaughter.

And she had believed him! She had believed him, because what hope was there?

The night after that first meeting—the night after young Ramza had pleaded with them to return to Igros, to try and broker some pretense of peace that would likely have been a public execution—Miluda and Wiegraf headed north towards the Plateau, with Boco loaded with their gear.

"We can't beat both armies, Graffy," Miluda said, as the stars began to shine overhead.

"I know," Wiegraf said.

Miluda swallowed. What had it all been for? Why this mad mission to kill Gutav and his criminal followers, if the Corps was to die today?

"But we don't have to beat them," Wiegraf said.

She looked over. Wiegraf's eyes were blazing with the righteous fire that had made him such a fearsome leader, on and off the battlefield.

"Ondoria gets sicker by the day," Wiegraf said. "And the Marquis' like to side with Goltanna. They fought the Ordallians together. The best Larg can hope for is that they stay neutral."

"How does that help us?" Miluda asked.

"We can't beat the Hokuten," Wiegraf said. "But we can wound'em bad enough that the Nanten could finish'em off."

"Is that the best we can hope for?" Miluda asked. "Making sure someone else kills our enemies after we're dead?"

"If the world is better for my death, I'll pay that price," Wiegraf said. Miluda shook her head: she did not want to lose her brother, who had fenced with her using sticks behind their parent's inn, who had believed in her and her Valkyries and given them all the support they needed.

"But I don't intend to die anytime soon, Milly," he continued. "Dycedarg's a scheming cunt, but at least he's clever. He won't risk the Hokuten with war on the horizon. No, the real problem is Limberry. They owe a debt of honor, and their forces are relatively fresh. Once they link up with the Hokuten..."

Miluda considered for a long time. She felt shaky, hollow, and tired. She'd been fighting for so long. She'd killed Gustav, who had once been an example of what their cause could achieve, who had shared her bed. And there were so many others who'd died over the years. She didn't want to lose anymore.

"We need to hit them now, while they're weak," Miluda said.
"We need to move out of southern Gallione," Wiegraf said.

"We can't do both, can we?" Miluda asked. "Not before Limberry..."

"We can," Wiegraf said. "If we draw their attention."

He swung up onto Boco in one fluid motion, and looked down at Miluda. "Grab your gear," he ordered, and Miluda did so at once, shouldering her pack and adjusting her scabbard.

"You know where all our southeast units are, yes?" Wiegraf asked.

"I do," she said.

"Good," Wiegraf said. "Gather the Valkyries, and send word to everyone. Hit any Hokuten units nearby and retreat south. You choose the destination, but get an army together. It's important."

"They'll be slaughtered," Miluda said. "None of the smaller units can face full Hokuten brigades."

"They won't have to," Wiegraf said. "I'm sending units into Igros."

"You're..." Miluda gaped at him.

Wiegraf nodded. "If I start riding now, I can draw their attention and their forces. You hit the rest of their garrisons and gather a god damn army, and you punch north before Limberry can link up with. Send any wounded farther north and hold the Plateau. If you-"

"Go!" Miluda shouted, smacking Boco on the rump, and the bird squawked and took off at a staggering gallop, and Wiegraf yelped, clinging on for dear life.

"You bitch!" he shouted.

"I know the plan!" she shouted back. "Stay alive, asshole!"

"You too!"

He was pounding up into the foothills and Miluda was heading south, because she could see the plan now. Wiegraf was on a racing bird, moving by himself. It would take awhile for messengers to reach Limberry, and for even preliminary maneuvers to begin. Wiegraf could reach Zeakden, and Gregory had been training units to cross the Lenalian mountains north of Igros, both mounted and on foot. The sudden threat to their capital would draw the Hokuten away from the south, and if Miluda acted quickly she could bring a whole damn army north. They would hold narrow chokepoints across north Gallione, safe from any attack. They could survive and endure, and wait for their chance to strike.

And now Emilie was dead.

"How'd it happen?" Miluda asked, staring into Radia's tear-filled eyes

Radia shook her head. "I don't know, Captain," she whispered. "There was a lot of damage."

Miluda knew that. Miluda had seen it. Unable to bear the thought of her friend, she and the last of the Valkyries had moved down the pass under cover of night. There was no plan to figure out which of the enemy camps held Emilie, but there was no need for one. Emilie's screams filled the night.

There were 34 men in that camp. Six in the tent where Emilie had been tied down. None of them lived to see the dawn, but that couldn't save Emilie, shredded and bloody and broken. There were no healers in the ranks of the Corps.

"Was she asleep?" Miluda asked.

Radia nodded. Miluda wasn't sure if that was better or worse. Free of pain, but the idea of that marvelous warrior woman dying with her eyes closed rankled. She should have died on her feet, fighting for her cause. The highborn and their puppets hadn't even deigned to give her that much dignity. Instead...

No hope. It was taken from them, over and over. Just as it had been at the war's end, when their dreams of rising by virtue of their talent and valor had been dashed. Just as it had been when everything had fallen apart weeks ago.

Wiegraf had launched his raids from the north, and Miluda and her Valkyries had hurried across the south. It was hard to say exactly how many soldiers the Corps had these days: Gustav's men had functioned like a criminal syndicate in Dorter, whereas the bulk of their veterans at Zeakden functioned more like a traditional army. Southern Gallione was riddled with small cells of varying sizes, usually commanded by one of the veterans of the war. These soldiers recruited at their leisure: some were essentially bandits now, whereas others commanded small, disciplined units. Gustav would have known what they had, but there hadn't exactly been time for a debriefing before they'd killed him.

The plan was to leave skeleton crews at key locations to occupy any Hokuten garrisons while consolidating their forces for the big push north, but that plan failed almost immediately. The Hokuten were nowhere near as weak as the were supposed to be, even after the retreat to fortify Igros. It took Miluda sometime to figure out why: some kind of Limberry/Hokuten unit was already in Igros, and had responded almost as soon as the raids had come down through the mountains. As a result, she had to leave more forces behind in order to keep the Hokuten occupied, and some units—particularly in eastern Gallione—she never reached at all.

She had known where she was going to consolidate her forces from the outset. Before Gustav had gone rogue, Miluda has occupied an old fortress in the southern swamps in order to protect the wounded members of the Corps. The idea had been to bring the full strength of the Corps there, but then the forces of Limberry had moved in. Everything was falling apart. There was no chance of punching north. She faced an impossible choice: either abandon the wounded and hope some hundred men could force their way through two enemy armies, or prepare for a last stand.

And then there was a Beoulve.

She remembered that confrontation. She remembered Emilie, standing tall at her side, and Radia, using her powers to disarm that arrogant bastard before he'd had time to loose his arrow. And she remembered the sincerity in Ramza's eyes. She hadn't wanted to listen, exactly, but what choice did she have? And besides...

It was hope, when she was starting to feel hopeless.

"Human, just like me," he'd said. And what kind of monsters did this to their fellow humans? Sent them headlong into danger with dozens of wounded soldiers, slaughtered and tortured for the crime of dreaming of equality?

He had told her he dreamed of justice. But look where his lofty words had led. What fresh evil had he planned for them in Igros? What tortures would have been inflicted upon them, in the name of noble justice? What...

Lost in thoughts of bloodshed and hopelessness, lost in thoughts of what had been done to Emilie, what might yet be done to her and what few Valkyries remained, she almost didn't see the chocobos climbing slowly up the pass. Four of them, with the same number of riders. A blonde head she recognized the moment she saw it. A purple chocobo she'd last seen far to the south.

Her throat went dry. Again she saw that brunette Beoulve with the wide terrified eyes, her shaking throat beneath her thumbs, struggling for breath. Sister to her betrayer.

"Beoulve," she croaked, and then louder, "BEOULVE!"

Radia tensed at her side.

Ramza stopped well down the winding rocky switchback, at a place where the path widened just a little. He stared up at her.

"Miluda, I-" he started.

"Shut your fucking mouth!" she cried. "I won't listen to anymore of your lies!"

"Please!" shouted the other one, with reddish-brown hair. "My sister-!"

Miluda stared at him. She stared at the Beoulve. She looked at Radia, whose eyes were wide.

"Your sister," she said, her voice low. "Your sister."

There were only four Beoulve children. Miluda had known the names of Dycedarg and Zalbaag, of course—how could she fail to learn the names of her enemies?—and she had added Ramza's name to that ghastly list. She had seen the fourth. Had tried to kill the fourth. But this young man could not be Zalbaag or Dycedarg, so who the hell was he? And if he wasn't a Beoulve, who the hell was the woman they'd had in their camp?

"Who are you?" Miluda asked.

"Delita Heiral," Delita said.

Miluda shook her head. "I've never heard of the Heirals," she said.

"You wouldn't," Delita replied. "My parents were farmers"

Radia gasped. Miluda didn't notice: her eyes were trained on the other man's young, serious face. He was supposed to be a minor noble. He should have been, with the company he kept. With the two bastards, the one who wore his hate on his sleeve and in his glaring eyes, the other who hid it behind high-minded words like justice. He was supposed to be one of them. The girl she'd tried to strangle was supposed to be one of them.

They weren't supposed to be...they shouldn't be...

"Are you mad?" she asked.

There was silence. The wind moaned and howled along mountain passes and shale, rustling the scrub grass. Everything felt cold and distant.

"Are you mad?" Miluda asked again. "Are you...you know what these monsters do!"

"Oh for Ajora's sake!" spat the other one—the tall, acne-ridden whelp. "Would you shut your whining mouth!"

"Beowulf!" said the tall woman Miluda had never seen before.

"No," Beowulf said. "I'm tired of it. You didn't get paid, so you started murdering children. You think-"

"Gustav," Miluda whispered, remembering what the man had been, remembering how he'd died with disbelief in his eyes. "Gustav killed children, and we stopped him. We stopped him, even though you killed far more."

"When did we-" Beowulf began.

"You ever tried to buy food without gil in your pouch?" Miluda asked. "My parents ran an inn. They should have been wealthy. But the Ordallians burned too many farms, and the farmers could barely feed themselves, and then the army rode in and took what they needed. 'For the good of Ivalice'." She said the works with mocking sophistication, remembering the royal proclamations that had tried to justify the men, women, and children starving in the streets.

"Oh, but they tried," Miluda said. "They tried. They still had their contacts. Their inn became the hub of a small black market getting food where it needed to go. Yeah, they profited, but that's not why the Hokuten took them."

She remembered that night: the Hokuten breaking down the door, hauling their shrieking parents away in the night. Wiegraf and Miluda had been old enough to look out for themselves, and the inn was theirs.

"They took them for the same reason that they can't stand us now," Miluda said. "They can't stand the idea that the commoners could stand just as tall as the nobles. They can't stand the idea that the only thing that separates the powerless from the powerful is the boot they keep upon our neck. They'll take our food, they'll take our money, they'll take our freedom, and they'll spit on us if we ever try to get up. They'll take and they'll take and they'll take."

The other Valkyries were all around her now. Five of them left, of what had once been a squad of forty. Five of them of what should have been an army of righteous revolutionaries fighting to make a better world, holding the north so that the Hokuten could not take any more from them.

"You..." she glared at Delita. "You know what they are. They'll never give anything to you. They'll take and they'll take."

"Please," Delita whispered.

Miluda looked down the line of women around her. There was Radia, so young and bright, using her art to try and make the world a better place, keeping Miluda on the right track. There was Arlette with an arrow nocked, a hunter who could hit a fleeing hare from a hundred yards. There was one-eyed Beatrix, who she'd once seen duel five Hokuten knights to a draw. There was Dametta, with her gargantuan axe and her broad shoulders, who always went for firewood no matter how hard she'd fought or how long she'd marched. And there was Justina with a satchel of javelins at her feet, smiling in that strange bemused way that always preceded her killing.

Five women. Five of the best women Miluda had ever known. Emilie should have there, but she wasn't. Because of the men below her, and all their monstrous ilk.

"Your sister's at Zeakden, Heiral," Miluda said. "She's pretending to be a Beoulve. I hope they find out she's not. I hope they treat her exactly the way traitors like you should be treated."

"It's not her fault!" Delita cried.

"It's not her fault?" Miluda demanded, jabbing her finger towards Ramza. "They take from us. They lie from us. They betray us, and still you fight with them! What would you have me do? Stand aside? Go with you? I have seen what happens to those who surrender to your care. I have seen what you do to those your promise mercy." Her voice was rising along with her rage. "If I am to die, I will die on my feet with my weapon in hand and a curse upon my lips!"

The Valkyries roared in agreement around her. Miluda had found her position, in this hopeless place. She still believed in Wiegraf's cause, and she believed in paying evil unto evil.

"No one dies today!" Ramza shouted, and in one fluid motion had drawn a strange-headed arrow and loosed it towards her. Miluda moved with all her speed and training and desperate fury, spinning on her heel, catching the arrow between two fingers, using its momentum and her own to finish her spin so that the arrow hurtled back down towards the Beoulve and his bastard friends.

She would hold this pass. She was Miluda Folles, Captain of the Valkyries, leader of a revolution. There were things in this world worth fighting for. There were things in this world worth dying for, even if there was no hope left to her.