The Unicorn and her Boy

by ChudoJogurt

Chapter VI - How All Were Very Busy

No words were uttered, as we bound the prisoners - the hag, the dwarf, and the wer-wolf still clawing at the blade that pinned him to the floor, and nothing was said, as we struggled to think of what to do.

"Aslan will come now." Lucy seemed almost too calm for the near-hysterics she was before. She was sitting on a Stone, making no move to help us in our work. "Red Sun will rise. Blood will be spilled, and the lion will come to its smell. And when Aslan shakes his mane, Narnia'll see spring again."

She jumped off her seat in a single languid motion, as if stretching after just waking up. Her eyes shone with hungry anticipation.

"I have to go greet Him."

“So be it then.” Peter pulled himself together, his eyes settling on his sister, and he nodded to her, accepting the utter truth of her words. “We'll have to buy you time.”

His tone grew curt and short as he took charge again, giving everyone their commands. ”Susan, take Lucy. Go find Aslan.”

Susan saluted her brother and they disappeared towards our small stables.

“Edmund, marshal our forces. We’ll need everyone capable of holding a sword, and we will need them as soon as possible.” Peter hesitated, drumming over the lion’s head on the pommel of his sword with his fingers. “If I don’t come back you’re…”

“Got it”. Edmund interrupted his brother’s train of thought. “They’ll be ready for their High King”.

A small, grateful smile was all Peter had to spare.

“Sunset, you’re with me. We need to win Lucy the time to find Aslan. And we have to stop the White Witch.”

There was little time to dawdle if we were to catch up with Caspian before he did something horrid with his new power. Frantically I grabbed what I could from my lab and my quarters - coffee to wake me from another sleepless night, some rainbow-essence and fern-flower potions to replenish my magic exhausted in the skirmishes of the day, their horrid acidic taste bracing more than even the caffeine, and then I was as ready for the heavy task ahead as much as I could be.

I found Peter prepared as well, in full plate armor, that on him seemed as light as a shirt, hardly weighing the King down.

"With all due respect, Sire, I must again beg your indulgence to come with you. It would be only proper." Reepicheep tried to argue, and clearly not for the first time.

“No, Reepicheep, I need you to protect my brother,” Peter said, his tone not accepting of any argument. “Should we not return, Narnia must have a King”. His voice softened a little as he crouched to the mouse’s height “ You and your boys are the only ones I can truly trust with this, Sir Knight.“

“As you wish, Sire”, Reepicheep sighed and bowed. If the little warrior ever had a weakness it’d be his inflated ego. The flattery would get him every time. “We shall guard him with our very lives”

“Good.” Peter stood up, adjusting the sword on his belt “Sunset, you’re ready?”

Instead of answering, I simply opened the doors of the How. A sharp, cold wind hit me in the face, throwing icy dust into my face, and in front of my eyes, there was winter.

When we returned from our failed raid this very night it was barely mid-summer. Yet now still-green leaves and grass of the forest were quickly getting covered by a gentle winter flurry.

Caspian’s trail was still fresh - clean footprints on the snow, the earth, and grass frozen solid marking every step.

Peter followed me outside catching a snowflake on his armored glove and studied it for a moment.

"Winter is coming." he said, crushing it in his fist, "Ice and hunger to grip the land for hundreds of years."

Something howled far away, a blood-chilling, inequine cry split the morning air and another one answered it - a chorus that echoed the cries of gathering the winter storms, and I tried not to think of the creatures that reveled so in White Witch's return.

We gave the How one last glance and hurried along the trail of footprints in the snow.

I prepared my spells and readied myself for the combat as we went - a somber and heavy task that invited no chatter, while Peter did much the same. The trail was clear and easy to follow in the unsteady light of rising morning twilight, and we had no need for words as we walked.

And then darkness fell upon me from the middle of the path - something appeared suddenly in my way, a heavy shadow in the light of the dawn. A soldier, raising the sword right above me, creeping up unnoticed while I was concentrating on what was to be and paid no attention to what was.

My battle instincts crying in alarm I jumped away, and my spells unfolded in every direction in the wave of power almost by themselves, ready to attack and protect at an instant’s notice.

A second stretched, and nothing happened. And then another, and it was only then that I recognized that the soldier was not moving, motionless like a statue, and like a statue, he was made not of flesh and blood, but of stone.

I put away my spells, folding my power back again for later and examined the Telmarine. Nothing I knew of could produce such an effect, save perhaps basilisk’s gaze, but there were no basilisks in Beruna wood - of that I was pretty sure.

“What happened to him?” I asked, not expecting Peter to know the answer - the High King knew little of magic.

“That is the power of the White Witch over those who would belong to her.” he surprised me with an answer.

That made scant sense to me. Magic I knew had laws and formulae and it would not depend on something as fickle and subjective.

“The White Witch was the first traitor of Narnia, rebelling against Aslan", Peter continued "so she holds the right to the lives of all the traitors of this world. And Caspian is the rightful ruler of Telmar."

"So the Telmarines..."

"Yes. Either they are bound to him through their fealty to the crown of Telmar, or they fall to him by the right of First Traitor. Willing or not, they will fight us, and they will try to stop Lucy from reaching Aslan. We must hurry."

We trotted faster, and then the forest became thinner and thinner and soon the petrified figures of Telmarines appeared more often than the trees. And then we reached the edge of it, where down the hill we could see who Caspian was going towards.

In the bend of Beruna-river, on a featureless white bank, where the morning sun colored snow blood-red and the air was so crisp with winter chill that it almost burned my lungs, they knelt.

Between the remains of the war machines, patches of ice and scores of petrified warriors marking where the last futile attempts at resistance were crushed by White Witch’s power, the Telmarine army - soldiers and officers alike stood on their knees. None dared to avert their eyes from what was going on - or maybe they could not. The entitlements White Witch and the Prince of Telmar had a hold over them that could not - would not - be overcome, no matter how brave or willful one was.

The sole exception was Miraz. He too knelt, but not of fear or of compulsion - he was pushed into the earth by the icy bonds, and though his head was bowed, I could see him twisting in his bindings, and there was no imagination needed to almost hear the curses he spat at his nephew.

Caspian stood by him, and the staff in his hand melted and stretched, turning from a magician's rod into a sword. A giant, two-handed thing, with a wide white blade, almost as long as Caspian was tall. Even seeing it for the first time, I knew it was not a weapon of war: it was the tool of an executioner.

Miraz struggled against his ice bond one last time, in a desperate and futile effort to escape.

The sword rose in a balance above Caspian head, and I broke into a gallop to do something -- anything -- but I was too slow and too far away.

It fell - swift and deadly. No hesitation, no second thoughts, just cold-blooded murder. And now I was powerless to stop it.

A wave of nausea hit me like a tsunami, and I threw up. Again, and again, until there was nothing in me but dry bile, heaving and gasping for air, unable to erase from my mind the horrible blood-gushing stump where Miraz's head was.

"I am your king now." Caspian declared, his voice filling the air with ringing, crystalline power. "By birthright, by duel, and by conquest, I am now King of Telmar and Narnia. Through Blood and through Law all that beneath me shall serve."

Peter was made of sterner stuff than I, and so he kept walking towards Caspian unperturbed and unthreatened by Caspian's power or by his army.

“You’re not the ruler of Narnia yet,” Peter said simply, coming to a stop, and unsheathed Rhindon. “Not while I draw breath.”

Caspian turned to him and saluted back with his giant sword.

“That is easily remedied, oh King.”

They took their stances and circled each other slowly in the inch-deep snow, studying the moves of their opponent. I could see caution and resolve in Peter’s eyes, as he measured his new - and old, in another sense - opponent.

In Caspian’s eyes, I could see nothing.

The swords clashed once, twice, and then they retreated, shifting positions, looking for an angle of attack.To them, swordsmanship was not an application of brute force, but rather a science and an art, not unlike what magic was to me.

Again they clashed, this time in earnest, and now the difference between them was apparent.

Caspian had always been light on his feet and graceful, and the months of combat had made him lightning-quick with his swordplay, but the White Prince was something else entirely. He moved with inhuman speed and precision, twirling his giant sword as if it weighed nothing. No living thing can or should be able to move like this - all sharp angles and twisted limbs, perfected machine precision of a clockwork praying mantis.

And he had magic. His sword circled round his back, held in a single hand, and his free fist smashed into the Peter’s shield with a cry and a flash, and Peter had to step back under the strain of the magically enhanced attack.

Peter’s counter-attack got blocked and tangled in the giant cross-guard of the white sword. Rhindon pushed aside, Caspian hit the shield again as he shouted a spell even more powerful and vile, and Peter fell to his knee at the assault, struggling to keep his shield up.

He tried to stand back up, but the White Prince cried a third time, the words in a dark tongue best left forgotten, so horrid that the stones round us cracked and my ears bled, and smote the shield once again, cracking the dwarf-forged steel and making Peter’s hand drop limp.

The White Sword rose above his head and then dove towards King’s undefended neck.

I finally sprung my spell.

It was the best spell I could have mustered, a layer upon layer of dissolving, attacking and binding magics, charged as they battled and released without any warning. Even Celestia, were she caught unawares, would have felt its impact. He did not.

Even as the sword fell, Caspian released his hand from the grip, and intercepted the spell mid-air grabbing and breaking a single thread of its tapestry, and all the energy I gathered simply fell apart with no effect but a gentle breeze.

On reflection, that was incredibly unfair.

Author's Note:

Two chapters remaining, which I think I'll publish over the weekend.
And guys, any feedback would be greatly appreciated.