Chapter 3: Autumn (Turn to Winter) - Part 2
That morning, as they arrived in port at Remi, the storm had stopped, leaving the roofs and streets of the town dusted with snow as they stepped foot on Ilian soil once again. It was still a long way to Edessa, the seat of the knights of Ilia. They flew on for days on end as winter fell over the north, their numbers thinning some as a few took their leave from the company to return to homes in the countryside.
Upon finally reaching Edessa, Sigune was left with the thankless task of filing the requisite records of their contract with the mercenary guild. Already tired from travel, by the time she had finished the work she found herself famished and in dire need of a good drink. As she stepped outside the guild hall on to the snow-covered streets, the night sky pitch black with clouds and snow still falling from it, she heard an unexpected but familiar voice.
"Sigune? Is that you?". She turned, and sure, enough, saw Juno standing there. "Gods, it's been so long, Sigune. More than three years already, right?".
"Yeah", she answered. "It has."
At Sigune's invitation, Juno joined her at the pub not far from the guild hall. The room was packed that night with a boisterous crowd, many of them returning mercenaries as well, and they found a small table in a far corner to sit after buying their pasties and drinks, a pint of cider for Juno while she asked for a small bottle of whiskey.
"Stronger stuff than usual for you", Juno said as they settled in, taking a sip of her cider. Sigune filled her glass and took a swig. "I suppose. Well, I suppose my tastes have changed some... So, how has life been treating you?".
"Better than I would have expected", she said, swallowing a bite of pasty and smiling a little. "It was a hard choice to make, but I ended up retiring earlier this year."
"What? Really?". She nodded. "But by now you would've been well on your way to becoming commander of the knights in a few years."
She nodded again. "Oh, I know. I was so conflicted about it, but... If I could help it, Thea and Shanna shouldn't have to worry about their big sister going off to war and never coming home. Especially not when they're almost of the age to leave home and become knights themselves. And besides--", she smiled again. "I met a man I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. Certainly, of all people I don't want to be dependent on a man or anyone else, but, also... We want to have a child together, and I could never bear to leave a son or daughter behind without their mother or their father like I was. Not if I could ever help it."
Sigune wasn't sure how to feel. Juno was still her best friend, and she desperately wished she could be happy for her. But there was a bit of jealousy there too. Jealousy that she found a way, any way, out of the hell that they had both lived in for their entire adult lives. Jealousy that she found someone who she truly wanted to spend a lifetime with and who felt the same way about her. And perhaps, as a faint flash appeared in her mind of a night spent together on the plains long ago, a bit of jealousy for the man who stole her heart like that. There was a part of her that seethed.
"Well well... Who's the lucky man, then?". Juno suddenly looked a little embarrassed. "Oh, this is going to sound crazy but... The Lord of Edessa, Zelots."
She did a double take, almost spitting out her mouthful of whiskey. Somehow, something about
this made her seethe even more. "Well, tell me more", she answered, still incredulous.
"Ah, well, we actually first met in Etruria... We were both leading mercenary squadrons there on opposing sides, but he came to me before the battle to try and negotiate a ceasefire. I'm not sure I'd never met someone like that before, an enemy commander who, not even knowing at first what their employer would think of it, came and tried to settle things peacefully just because he wanted to avoid bloodshed on either side. And somehow... He really did it. He talked the two nobles who had a dispute into reaching a settlement without fighting". She paused, taking another sip of cider. "And, well, I guess eventually he talked his way into my heart too. And we got married this summer."
Perhaps it was the alcohol softening her up - even now, as hardened as she had become, she was more emotional after a drink or two - but it was harder for her to be angry after that. How she talked about him, he seemed like a wonderful man, absolutely someone who Juno deserved far more than she did. And someone who deserved Juno far, far more than she ever could have in a whole lifetime.
"...Congratulations, Juno", she said. "I wish I could've been there... It must have been a wonderful wedding."
"Oh, please don't worry yourself so much Sigune. It was really nothing extravagent."
They finished their food, and Juno finished her cider, buying another pint from the counter and sitting back down to continue their conversation. Eventually, Juno paused for a moment. "Sigune", she started again. "After I left the Rhian's Goshawks, where did you end up? I know you were thinking of finding a new company as well, or starting one of your own someday, so...--", she paused again. "--Did you hear of what happened to Captain Rhi--".
"I...", she interrupted her. "I was there at Caelin. I saw her fall."
"Oh...", Juno said. "I'm sorry if I--".
"No, of course not. It's the way of things in this life". It was a little over two years ago now, the last time she had flown with their old company. A dispute over the succession to the throne of Caelin, which had been left to House Ostia after the death of its marquess and the return of the heir-apparent to the Sacaean plains of her birth. But House Kathelet had claimed a right to the title by blood, and the flames of war soon loomed on the horizon. There were many in Lycia's smaller marches who resented Ostia, after all.
The Rhian's Goshawks had taken the contract offered by the Marquess of Kathelet, and flew under their banner. But, though the Caelinese army was weak, it became clear that Ostia would fight for its claim, and that their erstwhile ally Pherae would back them. The heir-apparent had been a good friend of the Marquesses Hector and Eliwood, after all.
The Ostian and Pheraean armies had marched to Caelin faster than they had anticipated, and the battle of the Enza River that ensued had been a bloodbath. One that she made it through only by the skin of her teeth, and one that had left most of her company dead, including Rhian herself, cut down by a Pheraean sniper's arrow. She had been left the most senior officer of the company alive, and it fell to her to pick up the few shattered pieces that remained.
"Say, Sigune...", she started. "Forgive me for asking this if it's too probing, but... Do you still have those nightmares?".
"No", she replied bluntly.
"...I see."
Their conversation continued, though in a more somber tone after that, for hours as the crowd in the pub slowly thinned out, the whiskey in Sigune's bottle grew lower, and Juno made her way through a third pint, this time a lager, until eventually they were among the last half dozen patrons still sitting around the nearly empty room and the whiskey bottle was almost empty.
"Heyy, say, Sigune", Juno said, her speech just a little slurred. "Tomorrow I was goin' home to the village to see Thea and Shanna... And I wanted to make the pilgrimage to the summit of Mount Ninis. If you were staying in Ilia for a few weeks I would love if you'd come with me... I'm sure Thea and Shanna would appreciate it as well."
Sigune nodded, drunkenly mumbling an answer to her. The next morning, in spite of her splitting hangover headache, she set out with Juno southwest on the road to the village where they had grown up together.
It was a few days later that they arrived. It was an icey cold day, the air crystal clear and the countryside blanketed in the snow that had fallen the night before. In all the years since she had been born there, the village had changed little. For all the violence that was inseparable from the Ilian way of life, it was a peaceful, quiet place, and it felt almost as if it was forgotten by time. A half-formed memory from long ago came to her thinking about it, but she could no longer place it.
It wasn't much longer before they were at the front door of Juno's childhood home, and she rapped on the door. It swung open, and Shanna stood in the doorway. Her face lit up in a wide smile, and she put her arms around her older sister. She was still a bit shorter than Juno, but she had grown so much since the last time Sigune had seen her.
"Juno! Oh Juno, I'm so glad to see you! It's been forever!".
"My my, Shanna, it's only been a few months", Juno replied. "Although I suppose you and Thea have been alone. By the way, where is she?".
"Oh, she was out flying today. She should be home i--". Shanna looked past Juno's shoulder at Sigune. "Oh. My. Gods! Is that really you Aunti-- Uh, I mean, Sigune...?!". Juno stepped aside to let Shanna by, and she dashed up to Sigune.
"That it is", she answered, smiling although she may have had to force it a little. It was good to see Shanna again after all those years, though. And she had even stopped using the nickname that had driven her crazy when she was younger, sort of. Although by now 'Auntie Sigune' would be almost apt. "My, you've grown so much... How old are you now?".
"I'm thirteen years old!", she said, beaming proudly. Honestly, she realized, she would have had to force herself
not to smile. Shanna had an energy that was infectous, even for an old soul like her, weary beyond her nearly twenty-six years. Faintly, she heard the beating of a pegasus' wings. The three of them all glanced up at the sky as Thea landed, her steed blowing snow around as it touched its hooves down on the road. She lept from the saddle, whispering a few words in its ear, and walked briskly towards them, a small smile on her usually serious and severe face.
"Welcome home, Juno!", she said, a bit more energy to her greeting than was typical for her. "...And Sigune! It's been a long time, hasn't it?".
"Yep", she answered. "It looks like you're well on your way to becoming a knight yourself. You've been training hard, haven't you?".
"Of course I have. And thank you. In fact, I'll be leaving home for the first time in the spring, as long as I can pass my examination."
"About that, Thea...", Juno said. She produced a scroll from her pack and handed it to her. "From the commander of the knights and the mercenary guild."
Her eyes went a little wide as she carefully took the scroll, and even wider as she unrolled and read it. She had a bigger smile on her face than Sigune had ever seen, even when she was just a small child. Thea threw her arms around Juno, a few tears running down her cheeks. She wasn't sure she had ever seen Thea cry since the day she learned her parents had passed away. Juno wrapped her arms around her shoulders and patted her head. "Congratulations, Thea."
"...Usually you get self-conscious when I pat your head like this", she added, a bit of a teasing tone in her voice.
"...I don't care. Even if you're going to tease me like that I don't care". She broke off the hug. "You taught me so much, Juno... Thank you."
"Hey, so are you gonna stay a while or what Juno?", Shanna asked. Juno shook her head. "Not today I'm afraid. We'll only be staying today and tonight; we leave for Mount Ninis in the morning. But when I'm back from the pilgrimage I'll stay a week or two before I go back to Edessa, I promise."
The evening the four of them spent together was one that wouldn't have seemed out of place at all five years ago either, perhaps save only that now Juno allowed, with her supervision, Thea to share a glass of cider with her and Sigune after Shanna had finally been corralled into bed. But for Sigune now, it felt like a dizzying pastiche of that time, a time that seemed much further away in time than it truly was and that felt like something that could never be again, all of the emotions of those days lost or warped into something unrecognizable. She was almost relieved when it ended and the three of them - or four, rather, as Shanna had predictably returned from her bed no matter what Juno and Thea said to her - finally turned in for the night.
Early the next morning, well before dawn, her and Juno set out for Ninis, the ice dragon's mountain, still more than two days' travel away. The mountains loomned, mist-covered and forbidding, in the distance as the sun rose, revealing the brilliant white of the countryside around them.
On the third day, leaving the old inn on Aenir's Way, the age-old pilgrimage route to the foot of the mountain, after their ample breakfast, Mount Ninis rose impossibly high ahead of them. They left their pegasi in the care of the stables at the base and began the long ascent up the northern face. The trail wound its way through the boreal forest, quickly thinning out into steep fields of boulders and krummholz as they climbed, and then into barren snow and ice that soon forced them to use their ice-axes to assist their ascent.
There were scarcely any other pilgrims on the trail. Winter was the holy season, when, legend told, some two thousand years ago the first human settlers of Ilia began to starve and descend into madness before the ice dragon Aenir taught them how to hunt reindeer in their mottled, white and brown winter coats, to crack holes in the ice to catch fish, and to dig edible mosses and lichens from the snow, but few braved the unpredictable weather and bone-chilling cold to visit her altar past early autumn or before the spring came. Even on her winter feast days, the streams of pilgrims contented themselves with laying offerings at the temples around the mountain's base.
They were lucky at least that today's weather was as good for climbing as they could have possibly hoped for.
The sun began to set once more and the sky grew dim as Sigune and Juno ate their lunch at a bivouac high on the slope, shades of warm purple, pink, and orange cast across the cold taiga far below them. They pressed on still as night fell, one of the few fellow pilgrims helping guide them with the light of his spelltome.
It was night by the time they reached the summit, where Aenir's temple sat, the polar lights flickering emerald green in the sky above them, and they laid out a traditional pilgrim's meal of moss-bread, smoked smelts, and aged pegasus milk cheese, leaving a portion of each on her stone altar before Juno said a quick prayer and they began to eat
"Somehow...", Juno said. "I really feel at peace up here. Even with the wind and the cold and everything. It's as if you you can feel Her presence here, even though...". She trailed off. Not for a thousand years had anyone glimsped the ice dragon herself, since she went far away to lands unknown amid the Scouring. An absent goddess for her harsh country and wayward people.
Sigune almost thought she could fell it too, though she had never before known peace in her life to compare it too.
"...Yeah. Yeah", she replied. She quietly ate her last piece of bread, glancing out over the land below, shrouded in darkness besides the faint illumination of the moon and the northern lights.
"Maybe, just maybe, some day, whether it's in ten years or ten thousand, there will be a time when... No, that's... I don't know."
"What is it?", Sigune asked.
"Well", Juno started. "I just... Wondered if someday She will return to us again, some day when humans and dragons can live together in peace. If such a day would ever come."
"...Humans can't even live together with each other". Juno nodded sadly. "I suppose so."
"Well, though... Perhaps it's good that some people still have dreams". Left unsaid was that she was among those many who had lost them.
They sat there for a long while, simply taking in the views from the summit and feeling the strange energy the place had. After some time, without words, they stood up and began walking, the aurora borealis lighting their way as they descended back to the surface, where time still moved.
Chapter 3: Autumn (Turn to Winter) - Part 3
My remaining days --- how much more is there to live?
The sky was gray with clouds, and it looked as if it could start raining at any moment. Sigune sat atop her pegasus at the edge of a bluff, and below her the borderlands of Caelin stretched out, farm fields and scattered groves of trees where two rivers met. To their right, descending the shallower hillside to the west, went the knights of Kathelet. And across the plain, Caelin's army marched towards them.
Captain Rhian drew her saber from its sheath, holding it aloft, and sounded her bugle. And with that they flew, charging down the bluff to meet their enemy at the river crossing. They crossed the plain in a blur, reaching the river and overflying it, the company splitting in two and crashing into the Caelinese flanks as they were forced by the bridges to form a narrow column. Steel lances clashed against each other as they smashed gaps in their formation, the infantrymen all but descending into panic as they were beset by the Ilians. The Kathelet cavalry had now almost reached the enemy lines as well.
Far off in the distance, the bugle call was returned. On the southern horizon, an impossibly large force loomed, seeming to stretch as far as the eye could see. The cavaliers and mages of Ostia proper and the bowmen of Pherae. In an instant the wave seemed to be upon them. A hail of arrows came, so thick they almost blotted out the sky, and the woods burned and lighting flashed from the sky.
At first she no longer recognized this feeling of abject terror, a feeling as if in that in that moment you hung to life by a thin, unravelling string whose decay could no longer be stopped or slowed. All around her, she saw her comrades fall, their bodies and those of their pegasi littered with arrows or being set ablaze by the fireballs that sailed into the air. She felt the heat, singeing her clothes, as she flew on, desperately swinging her lance though no matter how many soldiers she fell it seemed as if there was no end to them.
In what felt like seconds, she was surrounded and almost alone. Only Captain Rhian remained by her side now. The archers raised their bows and drew their strings taut, and before she could react, they loosed their arrows.
She couldn't even count how many arrows had embedded themselves in Rhian's body as her pegasus neighed in pain, several more arrows having struck its flank, and she fell from it. As suddenly as they came, the armies had vanished now, and she was left all alone in the mud churned up by boots and hooves by the banks of the river. As she looked away from the lifeless body of her commander and up at the gray sky, the clouds parted, and the afternoon sunlight bathed her face.
Sigune's eyes flew open. She had become entangled in her dishevelled linen sheets from having tossed and turned in her sleep, her heart racing and her breath short. The morning light streamed in through the windows of her bedchamber. She felt strangely unsettled as the memory of her dream faded away.
Untangling her sheets, she rose from her bed, slipping off her nightgown and tossing it aside, pulling on a blue tunic, blue cloak, and high boots, wrapping a cloak around her shoulders. She made her way to the officer's mess, finding it quiet, Lieutenant Eira being one of the few others here for breakfast this late in the morning.
"Captain Sigune, good morning", she said, flashing a salute and going back to eating her oat pancakes and bacon. One of the castle servants brought around a similar plate for her, and she took a few bites of one of the pancakes, although her mind and appetite were both elsewhere.
"We received word via a courier last night that Castle Tymphi fell... It won't be much longer before the Etrurian Army is here in Carrhae too", Eira continued. She paused. "...Are you alright, Captain?".
"Did you say something? I didn't catch it, I'm sorry."
"Oh, no, it's fine Captain really. I just wondered if you were feeling well since you seem... Distant this morning."
Sigune took a bite of bacon. "It's nothing. Just thinking about an old dream."
______________________________
Having said her piece to Thea, her breath left her.
Sigune closed her eyes, and felt herself slipping, both mentally into a dream-like state, and physically from her saddle. She saw flashes of things she regretted, and of things she never knew she regretted until now, when there was no time left to change even those that could have been changed. She let go of her reins, slumping over, her feet falling from the strirrups, and finally toppled from the saddle into the air. She heard her pegasus whinny and sensed him turn his body in the air, trying to keep her on his back as she slipped away.
It was hard to tell, given her state of mind, how long she fell for, but all too soon she felt the sudden shock as she hit the earth, cold snow soothing her pain and her wounds as she fell asleep.
