Chapter 19: Funeral Pyre
...I confess, I am daunted. Every scrap of research shows me just how much we do not know. Even now, centuries after the Golden Age of King Delita, we have not fully recovered what was lost in the Cataclysm! The Ydorans were experts in every field—genetics, engineering, metalworking, magic, magitek, and countless others. They synthesized their knowledge into incredible forms. The Dragoners were one such example: men and women who carried latent powers that would allow them to echo and invoke the strength of the long-dead dragons. But such is the way of life: what is lost can never be recovered, no matter how much we might wish otherwise. The best we can do is find echoes and inspirations, and weave them into our lives as best we can.
-Alazlam Durai, "Letter to the Professor of Ydoran Studies at Gariland University."
They were too tired, too wounded, and too weak to advance any further that day. They had survived against difficult odds, and not without cost. Beowulf had taken an arrow in the shoulder, and Delita had taken more than one wound in his fight with the one-eyed woman. Ramza was a long time healing from the strange magic Miluda had used on him. Reis alone was unwounded, and even she was exhausted from the difficult magic she'd used to save them from an impossible situation.
They huddled together around Violet, treating their wounds as best they could. Reis would finish the job during the evening, after she'd had time to rest and restore her powers. Once they were done, they took stock of their surroundings. They moved through the Plateau, gathering what material they could find, examining the other dead. Men and women missing arms and legs, with wounds in chests and stomachs. Men and women who had died in their own piss and shit. In one tent, they found the blonde woman who had faced them so audaciously in the south. When Reis had tenderly lifted the thin blanket from her body, Ramza staggered out of the tent and vomited, bile rasping down his throat.
"Did we..." Ramza whispered. "The Hokuten...?"
"Must have been Limberry," Delita said, and there was no energy in his voice. The restless, half-crazed man who had driven them on from Igros was gone. This Delita was a stumbling zombie, barely looking at any of them.
"We can't leave her like this," Reis said. "We can't leave any of them like this."
"We can't bury them," Beowulf said.
"We can burn them," Reis said. "Put the tents we don't need all together. I'll start the fire."
That was how they spent their day: grabbing tents, blankets, and weapons, setting aside what they needed, putting what was flammable in a pile. The bodies were the worst: either they stank, or they were still wet with blood. Ramza was weak, but he could not bring himself to stop. He kept moving, even though he felt dizzy and distant, as though he might collapse at any moment. He would have carried Miluda, but Delita shouldered him aside and cradled her body himself.
By the time the day was giving way to a clear, gorgeous dusk beneath a sky blazing amber and rose quartz, they'd gathered the dead and made a makeshift pyre amidst tents and blankets, scrub grass and saplings. The Valkyries they'd slain had place of honor atop the pyre.
"This won't tire you out too much?" Ramza asked.
"Not if we're staying here tonight," Reis said.
"We have to," Delita said, in that same dead voice. "The Lenalian Mountains get too cold at night. Two to a tent, for warmth."
"Shouldn't we set a watch?" Beowulf asked.
"What's the point?" Delita asked. "Allies behind us. Enemies ain't coming."
He wandered off into the dark. Ramza stared at Miluda's slack, white, bloody face. At the faces of all the woman who'd died as they chased after Teta.
"What's his problem?" Beowulf asked. "We won."
"How can you ask that?" Ramza said, staring at the tall, gangly boy.
"This is war," Beowulf said. "It's what we trained for."
"They were only hurt because of what I did, Beowulf," Ramza said. "Because I promised them safety, and-"
"And Argus betrayed you," Beowulf said.
"And I trusted the wrong person," Ramza said, shaking his head.
"And it's your fault?" Beowulf said. "It's your fault he was a monster? It's your fault these women got hurt? It's your fault they wanted vengeance?"
"I don't...that's not..." Ramza shook his head. "It's not that simple."
"It's exactly that simple," Beowulf said.
"He's not wrong," Reis said.
Ramza looked towards her. Reis had a hand on Beowulf's uninjured shoulder. "You step onto a battlefield with sword in hand, you accept the price," she said. "You did the right thing. It's not your fault it got fucked up."
"What's the point of trying to do the right thing if you can't succeed?" Ramza asked.
"Oh, that's bullshit!" Beowulf spat. "That's like asking, 'What's the point of fighting if you lose?' You fight because you have to, Ramza."
Ramza shook his head. "I don't believe that."
"Smarter people than us have argued about this," Reis said. "Not sure they ever found an answer. But there's one thing we can agree on." Reis turned back to the pyre. "These women deserve our respect."
She spread her arms, and the air around her flickered with the premonition of flames. She exhaled, and embers sighed out of her mouth, floated along the breeze like dandelion seeds. The shadow of the dragon around her was fainter this time, and gone almost as soon as Ramza noticed it. But the seeds of fire slowly blossomed into a full, roaring inferno, rising to consume the fallen.
"Thank you," Ramza said, as they watched the blaze. "We couldn't have...we'd be dead without you. Both of you."
"Well, hell," Beowulf said. "A desperate charge right into enemy territory? I should be thanking you."
"I should really find a man with less drama," Reis said.
"Please, woman," Beowulf said. "You'd be bored within the first day."
Ramza didn't understand how they could be so unaffected by what had happened. He envied them.
He turned away, his heart, head, and body all aching in unique ways. He wandered off after Delita, found him at the very edges of the firelight, staring down the long, winding climb they'd taken to get here. Ramza stood besides him, and they stared back the way they'd come as the sky darkened above them.
"Wasn't she right, Ramza?" Delita asked.
"She was," Ramza said. How could he deny it? The people she cared for her had been hurt because she'd misplaced her trust. She'd believed Ramza could offer her a safe path, and Argus had...
But Ramza should have known. He should have known better than to trust Argus.
"About everything," Delita said. "About..."
Silence. The flames crackled behind them. The wind howled. From this far away, Ramza couldn't smell the bacon-in-the-pan scent of the bodies burning.
"If it were Alma," Delita said. "We'd have an army out here, right? It wouldn't just be us. It wouldn't..."
Ramza stared out with Delita, out down the rocks, out to the distant flickering fires of the soldiers of Limberry. The moon had waxed far above, and everything was illuminated by its ghostly light, stark and white and beautiful. They'd ridden all this way, after Teta.
And if it had been Alma, every one of those Limberry soldiers would be on the Plateau right now. Delita was right.
"I thought if I was the best," Delita said. "I thought if I...if I excelled. I could just as great as Balbanes, or your brothers, or..." He shook his head, and dropped his gaze. "But I couldn't. They always hated me. Madoc and them, they..."
"They were assholes," Ramza said.
"If everyone else is an asshole," Delita said. "You've got to ask yourself...what if it's you?
"Del, this isn't your-" Ramza started.
"I know," Delita said. "Not my fault. How could it be? I wasn't there to protect her. I was with you. Dreaming above my station. Pretending I could ever be..." He looked up at Ramza, and there were tears in his eyes. "Ramza. Remember when I defended discharging the Corps? Remember how I..."
He looked down at the ground. "The way she looked at me, Ramza. I can't get it out of my head. She didn't hate me. She pitied me."
He was shaking now. His voice was weak.
"I'm nothing."
Ramza reached out to pat his friend's shoulder. Delita shied from his touch, and Ramza withdrew his hand as though it had been burned.
"I'll take first watch," Delita said. "We're leaving at first light. They're not taking Teta from me."
Ramza hesitated, his soul and body too exhausted to find the right words to comfort Delita. The sheer scale of the injustice around them...the sheer, awful weight of the things they had done and the blood on their hands.
The Valkyries were dead. Alma had been beaten, and Dycedarg stabbed. Teta lay in enemy hands. All because Ramza had dreamed of mercy. All because Ramza had imagined he could stand anywhere near as tall as his father and brothers.
Ramza headed back towards the fire, but stopped to stare up at the sky, tracing the familiar patterns of the Zodiac and half-remembering old stories about the Braves. "Delita," he said. "Thank you for saving me."
Delita said nothing. Ramza felt a pang in his chest, but he shrugged it off and kept walking.
"Ramza!" Delita called.
Ramza turned back towards Delita, who was looking away into the night. "If it was me," he said. "If she'd been about to kill me, would you have...could you have...?"
Ramza's throat felt very dry. He swallowed.
"I think so," Ramza said, and felt a stab of fierce cold guilt rising up from his stomach against his heart. Because 'think' hadn't been the word he'd wanted to say. The word he'd wanted to say was 'hope.'
He turned away from Delita.