Of Love and Sorrow

I do not own Fire Emblem or any of its characters.

An FE4 holiday exchange story for garmmy and inspired by garmmy's own wonderful fanart. Assumes events of FE5 took place, but when the two accounts appear to be in conflict, FE4 carries the day here.

Warnings: contains blood, death, angst, and pairings. Pairings include Leif/Nanna and Seliph/Patty. Enjoy.

"Wait! You're my-"

The word "sister" never left his throat. All Leif's words jammed up inside him when Altena's dragon flapped its great leathery wings and a blast of air washed over him. Altena shouted something down at Leif as she wheeled around him and soared well beyond the reach of the Light Brand. Then her dragon drew its wings in towards its body and went into a dive, and Leif realized he was going to be impaled on his own father's lance and the Light Brand wasn't going to save him.

Oh, Mother, protect your son!

A flash of light more intense than anything his own sword could cast left Leif dazzled and unready for the rumble of earth-shaking magic that followed. Knocked to the ground by the force of the air enveloping the Gae Bolg, Leif not only lost his grip on the Light Brand, he lost his very wits. He clawed at the grass in hopes of finding his sword, but his eyes were streaming and he couldn't see and could hardly hear and his entire body felt broken from the buffeting. He wasn't dead though, there was that.

"I'm sorry, but this is where you'll die," he heard his sister say through the tumult.

Leif shut his eyes and waited for martyrdom. He saw the flash of the Gae Bolg through his eyelids and the quaking of the ground beneath him forced him down even lower than he already was. The blow he anticipated didn't come, and neither did the awful battering the Gae Bolg inflicted when it missed.

And yet, he knew from a terribly familiar sound that Altena hadn't stayed her hand. Leif opened his eyes and realized that Finn had put himself between Leif and the Gae Bolg. It had gone clear through him; the head of the holy lance was so close that Leif might touch it if he could only lift his arms. It looked like it was dipped in red lacquer, Leif thought, but Finn's white mantle was stained with an ugly dark color that wasn't like lacquer at all.

To stare was all Leif could manage then. He couldn't move, couldn't speak, couldn't scream. Finn tried to say something, but in that moment Leif didn't even recognize it as human speech, and Leif looked up at Altena to see if she somehow understood. She looked puzzled, Leif thought. Puzzled, not triumphant. This was all so terribly wrong.

But Altena had to wrench the Gae Bolg free if she meant to strike again, and in the moment she was occupied with her weapon, Leif found the nerve to dive for his own. He found his voice, too, and so leapt to his feet with a shout as Altena turned her fierce gaze upon him.

"Altena, please stop! It's me, your brother!"

The words tumbled out of him then as Leif focused on his sister and his sister only. He couldn't spare a thought for the bloody Gae Bolg or the green dragon with its vicious claws and mouth of jagged teeth or even for Finn, who'd collapsed to the earth without a sound, because if Leif did spare thought for any of these things he'd freeze up again and Altena would just kill him. Altena didn't kill him, though she looked like she wanted to, and she flew off in a fury. Leif's body trembled as if the ground beneath him still quaked from the Gae Bolg's power, even as the green-scaled beast his sister rode faded to a dark shape on the sky.

"Finn?"

His voice shook as badly as his knees. Leif swallowed back some of the bile that was bubbling in his throat and forced himself to look down.

Finn's eyes were wide open, but that didn't give Leif any hope. There was too much blood, much too much of it staining the blue wool of Finn's coat. Finn had both his hands pressed to the wound in his chest, as though he might hold himself together somehow until help arrived, but force of will just hadn't been enough. Leif understood enough of healing magic to grasp what was and wasn't possible and he'd entirely too much experience in battle not to know death when he saw it.

Leif sat down in the grass alongside his guardian, brought his knees up to his chest and thought about how much his belly hurt right then. The dead dragon of one of Altena's knights had landed with one wing poked up into the air and it made an eerie whistle as the wind blew past them. Leif crouched there in the midst of Altena's dead and his own until the thin high sound of the wind turned into a voice.

"Prince Leif!"

Of course someone was coming for him now; his comrades at Mease would've witnessed the light of the Gae Bolg and then seen one lone dragon knight flying away. But Prince Ced and Lana didn't have mounts, and that meant the first healer to reach them was would certainly be...

"Prince Leif! Father!"

Nanna.

Leif knew he couldn't let her come across this. As the sound of hoofbeats announced her approach, he began to pull at Finn's mantle, doing his best to arrange it so as to hide the gore from Nanna's sight. But there was only so much he could do to soften the blow when Nanna found them.

"Prince Leif?"

He watched as she bit her lip to keep from screaming even as her blue eyes went impossibly wide. Leif didn't try to comfort her now, not with blood smeared across his palms.

"Nanna, go back to Mease and get help. Get anyone you can to help me carry him. It doesn't... it doesn't matter who."

She nodded. She understood. He could tell from the way she set her jaw, with those bright white teeth pressed into her lower lip.

"I'm sorry," he called after her, but she didn't look back. Leif knew that his regrets, too, didn't much matter right then.

-x-

"It doesn't look like Kapathogia is rushing out to meet us, sir."

The eerie quiet of the woods around them backed up Delmud's statement. Ares and his cousin had gotten close enough to the Thracian fortress to see the members of its garrison milling around by the outer walls, but not a single Thracian knight clanked toward Mease that day.

"They must know something we don't," Ares said. "Something tells me if we move in to attack, we'll end up with a swarm of dragon knights on our backs."

"That sounds likely, sir."

"Well, let's go," said Ares as he glanced at the long shadows cast by the trees. "I don't want to be caught in these woods in the dark if they're setting a trap."

Ares and his cousin-turned-adjutant worked out the details of their report to Lord Seliph during the uneventful ride back to Mease. Delmud had a knack for turning Ares's curt phrases into something that sounded suitable for the ears of the would-be Imperial Prince, plus he left out the opinions that often got Ares in trouble. Ares anticipated a quiet evening on his own time once they got back to their base, but he had an inkling that wasn't going to happen when they found Lord Oifaye waiting for them at the gates of Mease.

"Ah, Delmud. I'm glad you're back."

And he beckoned Delmud some distance closer, just close enough that Ares couldn't hear every word. Ares held position and watched; Delmud and Oifaye made an odd mirror of each other in their sable coats trimmed in crimson and spotless white trousers. Ares had assumed Delmud's favored colors were meant to honor the tastes of House Nordion, but now he wondered if the black-and-crimson actually paid tribute to the man who'd mentored Delmud in Tirnanog. This idea irritated Ares for reasons he couldn't place, and he nudged his mount a little closer to eavesdrop. Besides, at this point he wanted to know what was up, as the look on Del's open face had already made clear Oifaye's news wasn't anything good.

At least it wasn't bad news about Nanna. If she'd gotten killed on Prince Leif's mad mission to win over King Travant's daughter, Ares would've had to be restrained from killing Leif.

Once Oifaye retreated into the castle, Del turned towards Ares; his eyes had the stunned look of someone who'd been struck from behind.

"My father. He..."

"I heard."

"He's in the chapel. Nanna's there with him... I'd better go see him."

"Sure."

They turned the horses over the the stablehands and Ares followed Delmud's quick footsteps toward the grim stone chapel where Lord Finn was laid out on a makeshift bier surrounded by some mismatched candles. Ares wasn't surprised to see the Prince of Leonster there, down on his knees with his face buried in his hands. Delmud's sister Nanna hovered over Leif with a grip on his shoulders, almost like she was actually holding him up. She stood at the sound of her brother's voice, though, and Ares pretended to study some gargoyle carvings in the columns around him while his cousins had their halting, tear-stained reunion.

"Nanna, do you think I could be alone with him for a little while?" Del asked after the conversation trailed off.

"Of course," Nanna murmured, and she began to tug on Prince Leif to get him out of the way. Leif lurched to his feet like a sleepwalker, but after a few steps he came back to himself and turned to address Delmud, though there wasn't any trace of his usual princely poise.

"Delmud, I can't begin to tell you-"

"No need to apologize to me, Your Highness," Delmud said, and he did a good job of sounding more concerned about Leif than he was about himself.

Sometimes Ares had to wonder about his cousins. The legendary passion of the Black Knight's bloodline had skipped a generation when it came to Del and Nanna. Ares thought that maybe Nanna had it in her, at times, but Del definitely didn't.

Delmud had said "alone," but Ares didn't leave. Del hadn't asked his permission to be alone, had he? So Ares stayed.

"I don't know what I'm supposed to feel," Delmud said, after a long moment of staring silently down at Lord Finn. "I didn't know him. We never really talked. Sometimes I'd tell myself that after this is over, after we'd found Mother, that there'd be time to be a real family together."

After a moment of fidgeting Del took out his pocketknife and cut off a lock of Finn's azure hair, which he tucked into the frame of the miniature portrait of his mother Raquesis that Del wore on the inside of his coat. Ares thought then that he didn't have a single memento of his own parents besides his father Eldigan's sword and really, it was no wonder he didn't feel more sorry for Delmud right then. Lord Finn had even cleaned up well enough to be laid out like he was, which was a hell of a lot more decent than the things done to Lord Eldigan after his execution...

"And then again, he's my father," Delmud said. "Now that he's fallen, I have a duty to respond, but... it was Prince Leif's sister... there's not any way for me to avenge him."

"Yeah, don't even bother thinking about it," Ares agreed.

Vengeance against the Thracian princess looked like it fell squarely in the category of "tactical error," and besides that, if Leif did ever succeed in winning his supposed sister over to their side, it was all going to be incredibly awkward. Still, if Altena had the Gae Bolg and could use it, she really must have been Leif's sister, which meant that Lord Finn's unlikely theory had actually been right. Ares wondered, not for the first time in his life, if being right was any consolation for being dead.

As Ares pondered this particular issue, a serving-girl poked her head in the chapel and announced that His Highness Lord Seliph the Prince of Grannvale was about to enter. Delmud stood straight and tall like the well-trained knight he was, just in time for Seliph to enter with his tactician Lewyn in tow. Ares stayed exactly where he was, skulking between two columns, as he watched this round of court charades play out. Prince Leif and Nanna both slipped back in behind Seliph, and then what looked like half the army trotted in behind them.

Ares hung back, feeling like a visitor, though he did have to suffer through Seliph's dewy-eyed condolences over the loss of his uncle. Ares brushed this off with an "I'll be fine," and was happy to let Nanna, Del, and Leif soak up all Seliph's attention. It was all starting to feel like a wake with no ale, which in his opinion made for a lousy wake.

At the hour of their normal curfew, Lewyn shut them all up with a clap of his hands.

"Well, this has been a setback, but the war carries on. Off to bed, all of you."

"I'd intended to stay here through the night," Prince Leif protested, and Nanna nodded her head so vigorously the white feather at her ear nearly fell out.

"Not a chance of that. We'll deal with whatever formalities you want to observe later," Lewyn said, and when Leif began to shout this down he added, "What, did you expect we could spare time for a week of mourning and a state funeral? This is war, if you hadn't noticed. Council at daybreak for all the usual personnel, and the rest of you be ready to move out again tomorrow."

"Good thing we got the report settled before we got back here," said Ares as he and Delmud departed, and only after the words came out it he realize it sounded pretty callous. Delmud laughed in reply, but the short strange titter wasn't his usual laugh, and Ares decided they were all better off going to bed.

-x-

Seliph said nothing when Leif showed up to the next morning's council with a pale face and shadow-ringed eyes. Seliph enforced the curfew about as strictly as he enforced the ban on stealing from their fallen enemies; as long as he didn't see violations, he wasn't going to ask hard questions.

"Well, what are the lessons from yesterday's encounter with Princess Altena?" Lewyn said to start them off.

"Should've taken a larger party," said Ares.

"Wrong. Leif brought sufficient numbers to handle the Thracian battalion, which is why there are dead dragons scattered all over the field to the south. Remember, part of our intent was to minimize the casualties Altena could deal us with the Gae Bolg."

"He didn't have anyone with him able to counter the Gae Bolg," Ares replied.

"And the mission objective wasn't to kill Princess Altena," Lewyn said with a frown. "Leif, where did you go wrong?"

"I misjudged the ground I could cover and I let her get airborne and seize the advantage against me." Seliph felt a flood of compassion on hearing poor Leif's hoarse-voiced but sober account of his mistake. "Once I'd talked to her, she left the field. She believed me enough not to take me back as trophy to Travant. If I'd gotten to her just a few moments earlier, when her dragon was at rest..."

"Well, it's a pity you don't have a horse, then," said Ares, and since everyone knew that Lewyn only allocated out valuable destriers when he believed people ready for them, Seliph felt everyone in the room was surely squirming inside... aside from Lewyn himself.

After they'd talked the prior day's battle with dragon knights through, Delmud gave the report he and Ares had prepared regarding troop movements around Kapathogia. As Delmud talked, Seliph tried his best not to look too long or too often at the empty chair to Leif's right. Finn hadn't often been vocal during council meetings, but on the occasions he'd voiced his opinion it had always been worthwhile, and Seliph thought he'd learned a fair amount just from watching the older man's during debates. Finn's reactions to the things Lewyn said were especially interesting. Besides that, Seliph felt out of his depth in dealing with the Thracian peninsula and he'd considered Finn the resident expert on that count, so really this all couldn't have happened at a worse time.

"Seliph, do you agree that Kapathogia poses a trap?"

Seliph had been listening to Delmud's report with only half his attention, but he was disciplined enough now not to jump when Lewyn called him out on it.

"I don't know that we have enough information to say," he replied.

"Seliph, Thracia is no place for indecision. We have one unit available for aerial reconnaissance and you sent her west to look into the state of the villagers there. Your enemy has every advantage when it comes to a surprise attack and they intend to use that advantage. Do you authorize an full-scale attempt to take Kapathogia or do you intend to focus on holding Mease?"

"I disagree with staging an assault on Kapathogia."

All eyes turned toward Leif.

"Why do you think that, Leif?" Seliph hoped his cousin wasn't battle-shy after what had happened the previous day.

"It's General Hannibal. He's helped my people out in the past. He's reasonable. He can be reasoned with. That's not the kind of enemy we were facing in Northern Thracia."

"Are you advocating for diplomacy with the general, Leif?" asked Oifaye, who'd mostly kept silent until then.

"No. Hannibal would never openly negotiate with his opponent, not without license from his sovereign... which he's not going to get. Hannibal won't bargain, but in the past he's been known to turn a blind eye upon things that worked in our favor. I believe he's doing exactly that with our presence now."

"How do you turn a blind eye on an enemy army located within easy striking distance of your base?"

Ares's incredulous comment brought Lewyn's full attention down on him.

"Since we have an advantage in mobility compared to Hannibal's heavy infantry, I take it you're in favor of an easy strike against Kapathogia?"

"You already heard my position. Kapathogia is a trap and our best bet is to tease them out a little at a time and weaken them before laying siege to the place."

"You're both clever," Lewyn said after a pause, "But in this case you're clever enough to get half this army killed. Time is not on your side here. Neutralize the threat posed by Kapathogia before the next wave of dragon knights arrives- and it will. Mark my words, it will."

"Of course it will," put in Ares. "Why to we want to try to hold two castles at once? Shore up our defenses here and let them meet us where we're strongest."

"His actions yesterday threw down a gauntlet to King Travant," said Lewyn, his finger pointed squarely at Leif. "If the next battalion of dragon knights isn't commanded by Thracia's princess, it'll be led by Prince Arion or Travant himself. Under those conditions Hannibal won't have the leeway to ignore this army's presence."

"So we're backed into a suicide move because of what he wants?" Ares had strange brown eyes that looked red in some lights, and they gleamed red now as he directed his ire at Leif. "Why the hell are we even here in Thracia? Leif's going to get us all killed because he's got it stuck in his head that he owns this place."

At that point, Seliph had to break in to restore order, calm everyone down, and keep Leif from challenging Ares to a duel. Then he gave his blessing for the assault on Kapathogia, which made everyone even less happy. Ares was the first to bolt from the council chamber once Seliph dismissed them to ready for battle. Leif stayed behind once everyone else had gone, and he turned to Seliph with a heartrending plea on Hannibal's behalf.

"Do all you can to spare him, sir. If I can't repay General Hannibal for the mercy he showed my own people, then what good are we... what good am I doing here?"

"I hear you, Leif." Seliph reached out to place a friendly hand on his cousin's shoulder. "That's why I'm going to have you lead this battle."

"Lord Seliph, I can't..."

"Of course you can. You've led an army up and down Thracia. I can place the lives of your comrades and General Hannibal in your hands and I know you'll do right by them."

And Leif cast such a plaintive look with his shadowed eyes that Seliph heard the unspoken question perfectly.

"Better than I did yesterday?"

But he didn't say it, and so Seliph didn't have to give him reassurance on that count, and so they parted ways.

-x-

As they rode southwest toward Kapathogia for the assault no one but Lewyn wanted to stage, Ares allowed the anticipation of a battle to ease his foul mood.

"The Mystletainn will be happy today," he shouted over his shoulder to Delmud. "We can ride circles around these tin-plated knights."

"Yes, sir."

But Delmud didn't chat with Ares like he usually did, and Ares was a little relieved when Oifaye caught up to them. He'd get Del to talk.

"How are you holding up, Delmud?" the senior knight asked.

"As well as can be expected, sir."

It turned out Oifaye had more on his mind than Del's general well-being, though.

"I've heard rumors circulating in Mease about the nature of the Gae Bolg, and I thought it might be best to give you some perspective on it before you hear the tales."

"I understand that holy weapons have a character of their own, sir, and that the wielder can't always take full credit or blame for what the weapon does." Del said it with a sidelong glance at the Mystletainn.

Ares, who had always used the blood-thirsty reputation of his sword to convenient effect, caressed the Mystletainn's hilt with genuine affection.

"The Earth Lance of Leonster is as fabled as the Mystletainn, and for no happy reason," Oifaye said. "It's said the Gae Bolg is... not cursed, but fated may be the word for it. Those who've used it have only brought sorrow to those they most love, from Crusader Nova's time to the present. Leif's father Prince Quan scoffed at the legend, but even so he only possessed the lance for a short time before he also met a terrible fate. And now this."

"I don't hold it against Princess Altena personally, sir."

"Yes, that's fine, but I suspect this all may fall outside the realm of any blame, even blame placed upon the weapon."

"Are you suggesting, sir, that this was supposed to happen?" Del showed the same strange calm that he had the night before when assuring Prince Leif that he didn't need an apology.

"Yes... though only in the sense that the Belhalla Massacre was supposed to happen... or permitted to happen."

"That's a lot to take in right now, sir," said Delmud, and Ares thought he saw, for the first time ever, the crimson flash of House Nordion's hot blood in Delmud's eyes. Del took the first opportunity to ride ahead and join his sister and Prince Leif in the vanguard.

Oifaye shook his head as Delmud rode away.

"Perhaps I shouldn't have gone there, but I didn't want him falling into the nonsense about the Earth Lance having a mind of its own."

Ares preferred to believe some of the wilder tales about his own sword and so didn't respond. But Oifaye spoke to him like he was an adult in command of himself instead of talking down the way Lewyn did, and so Ares didn't mind Oifaye as long as he didn't feel they were competing for Delmud's attention.

"I guess this is pretty hard for you, too, given you've known Lord Finn since you were basically kids," Ares offered.

"I've been reeling from the irony of Finn ending up on the wrong end of Prince Quan's own lance," replied Oifaye. "If you'd ever seen the two of them fight alongside one another..."

"Well, this war's been all about irony, right? Trusting the wrong people, suspecting the wrong people, saving the wrong people, killing the wrong people..."

"I don't know that irony covers all that, exactly," Oifaye said, and the crease between his brows deepened, but just then they could hear Prince Leif ordering them all to halt and arrange themselves for battle.

-x-

Seliph knew he'd been right in trusting Leif. The battle for Kapathogia unfolded as something beautiful- not a series of individual duels or a shapeless pile-on but a choreographed dance of death.

Leif's cry cut through the din as the first wave of infantry fell, exposing General Hannibal's position.

"Allow the general to withdraw!"

And they managed it. With a volley of arrows and a torrent of magic they cut a path around the general in two directions, but kept Hannibal's line of retreat clear and left him enough of an escort to conduct him safely back toward his fortress.

"Move out the cavalry!" Leif shouted, and Seliph watched a squadron led by Oifaye race off, not in pursuit of Hannibal but in a longer arc designed to cut off the road to Kapathogia well to the south of their position.

"They'll make it for sure," Seliph said to his cousin. "Hannibal's infantry can't possibly get to the gates in time."

Leif still looked sour, though, and when Seliph asked him what was the matter, Leif replied, "I hope Hannibal doesn't decide we've trapped him to the point where he takes the honorable way out."

"Oh dear. I hadn't thought of that. I don't expect he'll simply surrender when he finds we've blocked the way, but..."

"No," Leif said, and his face brightened just a little, "I shouldn't think that way. The General didn't get to his age by being rash. He'll hide in the woods with the men he has left and wait for us to get distracted."

"Yes, I'm certain that's what he'll do... at least for now." Out of the corner of his eye Seliph saw Lewyn approaching, though, and he turned toward his tactician expecting Lewyn to pass judgment on the battle. To Seliph's surprise, Lewyn offered his first word to Leif.

"Congratulations on a fine battle, Leif. I think it's time we had your promotion ceremony."

Lewyn was so scant in his praise that normally these words would make any member of the army swell up in pride, but Leif looked more like he wanted to spit.

"We don't have time to bury someone who spent all his life fighting against the Empire, but we have time for a promotion ceremony?"

"One of these things brings us closer to the day of our victory and the other doesn't," said Lewyn.

"At least you get your damn horse now," Seliph heard Ares mutter from behind them.

Seliph wasn't sure if he should rebuke Ares or not, and what repercussions there'd if he did, but just then Patty came dashing up to him, all smiles and with her arms full of the "keepsakes" from the battle, and Seliph decided he was better off dealing with his light-fingered companion.

-x-

Since Lewyn had Lord Seliph's backing, the promotion went on the next morning, outdoors in the central courtyard of Mease instead of in the chapel where Lord Finn lay unburied. Lewyn proclaimed Leif's mastery of all classes of arms and all licit branches of magic, and Leif recited his vows, and the rest of them applauded as heartily as they could.

Ares did applaud sincerely; he knew his own Aunt Raquesis was Leif's inspiration for becoming a Master Knight, and he did have great respect for his aunt's accomplishments. Belittling Leif's position would be a slap at Raquesis, wherever she was, and Ares couldn't do that. Ares could even say that Leif made a fine sight in his white armor with sword and tome at his belt, both a staff and a lance clutched in one hand and crown of tinsel resting crookedly on his chestnut hair.

"Impressive," Ares offered, when it was his turn in the receiving line.

"What do you mean? I'm the most worthless person in this army." Leif's dark eyes looked almost hateful. "I'm the one who can't hold his ground against his own sister."

Ares thought about saying that as long as Johan of Dozel was with them no one else could possibly claim to be the most worthless member of their army, but he decided it wasn't the best thing to say.

"You'll make a good protector for Nanna," was what he said, and it pained him to say it.

"Protector? She won't need one. I thought she might have told you- she wants to be a paladin. Like my mother."

And Ares, who came from a line of paladins that stretched back to the Black Knight Hezul, decided he still didn't much like Leif, even if he did have to respect him.

And work with him. Every day, in Lewyn's interminable councils of war.

"Hannibal's staying put just outside of Kapathogia. He hasn't made any attempt to break through our lines," came Delmud's report the following day.

"It's like he's waiting for something," said Ares.

"Reinforcements must be on the way," Lewyn agreed. "This will be the assault led by one of the Thracian royals. We need to be prepared for the presence of the Earth Lance, the Heaven Lance, or both."

"Well, we have Yewfelle and the book of Forseti to counter them," Oifaye said. "If we're willing to take those measures."

Ares was already looking hard at Leif and within moments everyone else was, too.

"Leif?" Lewyn sounded suspiciously mild. "In the event we face Princess Altena again, will you accept the use of Forseti or the Yewfelle against her?"

Everyone knew what Lewyn was really asking, and Ares was pretty sure he knew what everyone else was thinking. How many casualties could they risk for the sake of Leif's crazy sister?

Leif was staring down at the table while they waited for his answer, and Seliph looked like he was on the verge of settling the question himself, but then Leif swatted his thick bangs away from his eyes and thrust out his chin.

"Have Prince Ced use the Sleep Staff on her and we'll capture her."

Lewyn raised his eyebrows in a way that made Ares think the tactician was actually impressed.

"That'll work," said Lewyn.

"Should've thought of that in the first place," Ares said to himself. "Or should've used it on Hannibal so we're not wasting time on him now."

He looked toward Delmud to see if he could catch his cousin's sympathetic eye, only to see Del was buying filling the papers in front of him with a game of noughts and crosses. Once Seliph dismissed the meeting, Ares pulled Delmud aside.

"You okay? You weren't even paying attention in there half the time."

Del hesitated before admitting, "I was thinking again of Father."

"Yeah, that's pretty natural," said Ares, who still thought of his own every day even though he barely remembered Eldigan and even though he'd had to back off his vow to murder Seliph over it all.

"Lewyn let me know that his last words were for Leif's parents. Not for Nanna or me, or Mother, or even for Prince Leif, but for two people who've been gone almost as long as I've been alive."

And Ares thought of how the last reported words of Eldigan the Lionheart had been a cry for Delmud's mother rather than Ares's own, and he decided that what came around went around, or something like that.

"Part of me thinks I should be angry," said Delmud, "But then... I know that kind of dedication is what I'll need to give to you and to Lord Seliph if we're ever going to liberate Grannvale and then Agustria. So there's really nothing I can do besides accept it and move forward."

Ares mulled that over for several moments, then withdrew the Mystletainn from its scabbard and held it up before his cousin.

"There are times when I wonder why fate entrusted me and not you with something this powerful. I don't think anyone would disagree that you're the better man, Del."

"Oh, let's not talk like that," Delmud said, and as he tried to brush off the compliment Ares thought he did notice a fleeting resemblance to Lord Finn.

-x-

The wave of dragon knights that Lewyn predicted came over the mountains the next morning. Lord Seliph placed Leif in charge of the vanguard again, and as the Liberation Army streamed southward to meet the enemy, Leif caught his first glimpse of a man dressed in savage finery riding a beast as dark as pitch.

"Travant."

The words surfaced in his throat as a guttural growl. His parents' murderer, his sister's kidnapper, the chief architect of all of his grief. Leif knew then that this day would be his day of vengeance, but first they'd have to cut their way through the rest of Travant's knights. Thunderbolts and arrows flew skyward and volleys of divine wind magic turned the sky greener than the patchy Thracian grass. To Leif's left, Nanna let out a shout as she charged toward the foothills, swinging her Runesword to cast its magic at the enemy. To Leif's right, Delmud swung his great silver blade downward to finish off a wounded dragon. Leif spurred his new white destrier forward, intent on taking down the black-scaled monster and its equally monstrous master.

Travant was down in their midst now; Leif heard Faval scream as the Thracian tyrant struck him. It was a terrible sound, but Leif didn't fear for Faval's life. That was not the Gungnir in Travant's hand, just an ordinary lance, and that meant Thracia's holy-blooded king was fighting at the level of ordinary mortals. Leif drew out the Elwind tome he'd received from Prince Ced and began the incantation.

The air itself became a blade that broke the wings of Travant's dragon and sent beast and rider crashing earthward. Stronger wind magic might have severed the wings, but Leif would settle for anything that knocked Travant from the skies. He'd always planned to kill Travant with his mother Ethlyn's sword, but Leif realized that going in to sever Travant's head with the blade of the Light Brand would expose him to the threat of the dragon's twitching claws and thrashing tail... and yet simply raising the sword and allowing its magic to finish off Travant didn't offer up the satisfaction Leif wanted from this man's death. Leif wanted to feel the blade slice through skin and tendon, to hear the crack of bone as Travant died. Finn's lance would be the right length, he thought. Just long enough to ram through Trabant's throat...

Leif readied the lance that his father Quan had given Finn when Finn had been younger than Leif was now. Letting out Travant's blood with this would be as sweet as slitting his throat with the Light Brand would've felt.

"Travant, we meet at last. I've waited so long for this day to arrive."

The wounded king struggled for breath as Leif aimed at the soft vulnerable skin of his throat. Travant spat out one last curse against Leif and his bloodline, but Leif put all his passion into the final blow and so silenced his enemy. He looked down for a long moment at the twisted expression on Travant's face, at the matted waves of the dead man's hair, and then Leif pulled free his lance. The holy blood of Dain dripped from its elegantly barbed head.

"We did it, Finn," he said, and a sense of elation blossomed in his chest. "Mother and Father can rest now we've avenged their murders."

When the last of Travant's dragon knights were vanquished, and Faval and the other wounded were seen to be comfortable, Leif sought Lord Seliph's permission to return to Mease for the night.

"I wish to offer my thanks in the chapel, sir."

If Lord Seliph had any reservations about Leif's motives, he kept those reservations to himself.

Leif did everything correctly and methodically on his return to Mease. He saw to it that his horse and his gear and all his weapons were handled properly. Only when he'd done every necessary mundane thing did he walk with ever quickening steps to the chapel, where the candles around Finn still burned brightly in the gloom. Small offerings had been placed around the bier- a bunch of yellow flowers from the gardens at Mease, sweets wrapped in colored paper, a rolled-up note tied with a ribbon, a little mesh bag holding three pieces of silver. Leif didn't know which of his companions had brought these tokens, but it warmed him inside a little to see that people cared, or at least that they cared enough to behave properly. He had his own treasure to add to the pile- Travant's mantle, adorned with the grotesque head of a dragon.

Leif draped the mantle across Finn and stepped back to look at his handiwork. At first it looked a little too much like a blanket meant to warm Finn in spite of the freezing spell Lewyn had placed upon him, but after a few adjustments Leif had the mantle looking more like a proper martial trophy. The candlelight almost cancelled out the faint blue glow of Lewyn's spell; Leif didn't like to look at it and so he knelt at the bier to recount his victory over Travant.

"I wish with all my heart Altena could've been there with me, but there's been no word of her yet. I don't know if Travant locked her up, or... or even if he killed her. I don't know what I'll do if I find out that's what happened. Finn, if you see Altena before I do, tell her how sorry I am that things turned out this way."

Leif's eyes were stinging and his throat was getting tight, and the last hurried sentences sounded more childish than he ought to sound.

"Finn, I promise I'm not going to leave you here. I'll take you back to Leonster when I return there, and I'll... I'll..."

Leif could feel the hot splash of his own tears on the back of his hand, and in the end he couldn't put words to the grand ideas that filled his head about what he'd do in Leonster regarding Finn, or Travant's mantle, or any of it.

-x-

"Patty, I don't think this is a good idea."

"But Lord Seliph! A castle like Lutetia is bound to be filled with... provisions, and things this army needs. Nobody can round up the goods better than me!"

Seliph knew Patty was right in the sense of being accurate, even if she wasn't necessarily correct in her behavior. Even once he'd agreed that Patty could come along on the raid, he had reservations. As lightly defended as Lutetia was said to be, surely taking only Patty would be foolish. But, as it happened, he had a volunteer just waiting for the chance to ride westward.

"Your Highness, I will escort you to Lutetia."

Nanna said it the way Lana or Larcei might- we will go forth with you, Lord Seliph, and please don't argue. Seliph did know the limits of his power as a commander when it came to moments like this, but even so he looked over Nanna with a measure of doubt. She looked hard somehow, her blue eyes like ice or chips of stone. She'd responded to Lewyn's jab about indulging in a week's mourning by donning a dress of bright marigold yellow in place of her usual ethereal blue, and that too struck Seliph as a little off.

"Are you sure you want to make the journey?"

"Quite sure, Your Highness."

The road from Kapathogia to Lutetia was hardly longer than the distance from Kapathogia back to Mease, and the road was broad and smooth, well-trodden by many armies in its time. Patty acted at times as though this were a pleasant outing, an occasion for picnic lunches and amusement. Nanna, though, treated the easy march as though it were the gravest mission she'd ever been assigned, and Seliph realized now that she was trying her best to overcome a reputation as someone who ought to be sheltered and kept away from the front lines. Lewyn didn't have any criticism for her, though, and given how capably she'd fought in the last few battles, Seliph decided Nanna was ready for the mission. Ready enough, anyway.

Lutetia proved one of the least-defended castles Seliph had ever been expected to seize. Nanna and Patty overpowered its complacent guards, most of whom were youths barely of an age to fight. When the master of this particular castle arrived on the scene, Patty struck him hard in the gut and Nanna finished him off with her elegant Runesword, and so Seliph captured Lutetia without soiling his blade.

"Ooh, that's a nice ring," Patty said as she examined the corpse of the dead general-Disler, as Lewyn identified him.

"So it is. I'll be keeping it," said Nanna, and she slipped the ring off Disler's thick finger and placed it around her own thumb. "It has a Return spell on it, Your Highness. I can report to Mease with news of your victory if you wish it."

"Let's make sure there aren't any surprises here at Lutetia first," Seliph told her, and sure enough there was a real surprise in the dungeon- just not the gold plate or gems that Patty hoped for.

"That's General Hannibal's son? I thought he'd be taller," said Patty, once they'd freed the boy from his cell.

Nanna had her own surprising reaction to young Corple.

"Lord Seliph, there's something about this boy..."

"What's that, Nanna?"

"I can't quite place it." She frowned as she seemed to study the air around Corple, looking for some magical signature invisible to Seliph's own eyes. "He has major holy blood. Yes, I'm certain of it."

Almost as soon as Nanna said the words, Lewyn had confirmation on her hunch.

"Do you recognize this, Seliph?" Lewyn said of one of Corple's few possessions, a staff of elaborate (and impractical) design. "It's the Valkyrie Staff, the holy weapon of Edda."

"Edda?" But before Seliph could ask, much less work out, how a descendant of a Grannvalean duchy had ended up in a noble house of Thracia, Lewyn had bundled the ancient staff into Corple's small hands and was issuing orders.

"Nanna, send Master Corple to Mease and follow him there. From there we'll be able to send him quickly to Kapathogia and reunite him with Hannibal. That'll prevent any further attacks on us from that department."

"Yes, sir! My father won't have any reason to take arms against you once he sees me."

Lewyn was hardly listening; he scribbled out a note that he handed to Nanna.

"Give this to Prince Leif."

"Yes, sir," she said, and once she'd sent Corple away with the Return Staff, Nanna held aloft her magic ring and likewise disappeared.

"Why didn't you want me to return to Mease with them, Lewyn?"

"There's someone who's going to come along shortly," was all that Lewyn would tell him. "Seliph, it's as lovely a day as you'll see here in Thracia. You'll want to wait outside."

-x-

Ares had come to hate the shape of any shadow gliding down from the mountains, so he was already displeased before he realized this particular shadow belonged to one of their own.

"Fee reporting for duty, Your Highness." Lewyn's daft daughter sounded unbearably peppy.

"Where the hell have you been? Do you know how blind we've been without your reconnaissance?" In case this didn't get through to her, Ares decided to escalate the fair rebuke into a less fair accusation. "We've lost people while you were off larking about, and we're lucky we didn't lose more."

Fee brought her pegasus down to rest on the earth and looked up at Ares with big soft eyes.

"I heard about your uncle. I'm sorry."

"It's all right. We weren't even close. At all."

"No, but there had to be things you wanted to ask him about your aunt. Or about your father. I mean, he knew your father, at least a little, and there's not a lot of people left that did."

"Yeah, I guess you're right about that." Gods, she was a strange one. "It doesn't change the fact that you're late and we've needed you here to help us deal with these damned dragon knights."

She looked like a bird whenever she cocked her head the way she was doing now.

"Well, if dragon knights are all you're interested in, I guess you don't want to hear there's a host of cavalry in the northwest just waiting to stream down the mountain pass toward Lutetia."

"Lutetia?" Now Ares looked at her with a feeling of something more grave than irritation. "Fee, that's where Seliph is right now, and he's basically got nobody with him."

"Well, I'd forget about laying siege to Kapathogia and get at least a third of this army over to Lutetia to give that horde of cavalry a nice welcome."

The words were hardly out of Fee's mouth before Ares swung his destrier around.

"Delmud!"

Losing Lord Seliph would just place a perfect capstone on this whole stupid Thracian campaign, Ares thought as he waited for his adjutant to round up a rescue party. Damn all of them.

-x-

Leif had decided he was counting his reign as the leader of New Thracia from the day King Travant met his just and merited end, but for the moment Leif's "kingdom" was made up of Mease and a depleted army. With Seliph still off at Lutetia and Ares headed that way, Leif put Johan in charge of the "siege" of Kapathogia and had the warriors left to him regroup at their base in preparation for the next inevitable battalion of dragon knights.

"Ares took Delmud, Lester, Arthur, Prince Shanan, and the twins... oh, and Leen, for all the good she'll do him fighting. Lord Seliph has Nanna and Patty with him. Johan's holding down Kapathogia in case Hannibal decides to move. I have Prince Ced, Miss Julia, Faval, Tinny, Lord Oifaye, and now Fee's come back. Is that enough? I hope it's enough. If I can't hold Mease, I..."

I'll lose this war for us.

Leif was flailing in the grip of these unpleasant thoughts when a circle of light etched itself out on the castle floor and the figure of a young boy appeared in its center.

"Prince Leif?" the boy asked with a tentative smile.

"We've met..." Leif scrutinized the new arrival; the boy's dark-blond hair and wide brown eyes seemed familiar. He was remarkably self-assured for all that he was still in short trousers. "Corple."

"Yes, Your Highness. I'm General Hannibal's son."

As Corple spoke, second glowing circle materialized in front of Leif, and this time Leif recognized the arrival before he could fully see her.

"Nanna! How's Lord Seliph? How's Lutetia?"

"Lord Seliph is fine and Lutetia is in his hands. We found someone rather important there."

"Yes, I've been getting reacquainted with Master Corple."

"Well, there's something Master Corple has to share that we didn't know before."

She handed him a note in Lewyn's hand even as Corple unwrapped a staff of strange and plainly ancient workmanship.

"Use this staff as you see fit. Lewyn," Leif read aloud. "Maybe this is a test... or a trap."

He knew what this staff had to be from his studies of magic, and the idea of the holy staff of resurrection landing into his hands sent a thrill down Leif's spine- a thrill met by an equal eddy of doubt.

"If we use this, every other member in the army has reason to loathe me. Johan grieves for the brother he killed in Isaach. Arthur and Tinny want nothing more to see their mother again, and I think you can say the same for Prince Ced and Fee..."

"Lord Leif, I saw Lewyn's face when he noticed the staff. He had me send Corple home and ordered me to follow. He knows what you're going to do with it. I truly think he wants you to do it." Her clear blue eyes gazed up into his, and he didn't see a flicker of doubt in their depths. "I have to wonder if he weren't planning on this all along."

They stood quite still then, their faces almost touching, their bodies tense as though both Leif and Nanna sensed the tug of the cords of fate that bound them.

"Delmud did say once that Lewyn knows everything," she said, and there was a little touch of sour humor in her words that made Leif smile in spite of it all.

"Corple, you can use the Valkyrie Staff?"

"I feel that I can, sir."

"Let's give it a try," Leif said, and he and Nanna showed the boy the way to the chapel.

Corple, like any obedient priest, needed a little time to get ready; as the boy prayed, performed the required ablutions, and slipped into a borrowed cassock that was far too long, Leif recited to himself a sort of anti-prayer, a list of reasons that he shouldn't get his hopes up. They didn't know this boy was really the rightful heir of House Edda, he'd never been taught anything on the level of a resurrection spell, and they were all going with the mere feeling that this would work. Maybe it wouldn't. Maybe they'd ruin the staff for all time in trying.

By the time Corple was ready, it seemed that everyone under Leif's present command had filled the chapel to be their audience, and Leif had convinced himself they were all in for a great disappointment.

Leif's convictions lasted until the crimson orb of the staff began to glow, the tassels on the staff started swirling in a sudden unnatural wind, and Lewyn's freezing spell shattered in a burst of light, red as the first rays of dawn. Leif heard the faint tinkle of unnatural music as the glow of the Valkyrie staff pulsed around Finn; he took hold of Nanna's hand and she gripped him back until Leif felt both their hands would break from the pressure.

The music and light both died without warning as the staff shattered in Corple's hands, and for a moment all the chapel seemed perfectly, terribly still, everyone holding in a shocked breath. Finn, too, remained still... but even as Leif resigned himself to the failure he watched Finn take in a breath, and then another. A few more breaths and Leif could see the movement of Finn's closed eyes, followed by a little twitch in one of his hands.

"Almost there, come on," Leif whispered, and Nanna made a little sharp sound in her throat like a half-suppressed cry.

Finn's eyelashes fluttered, and for a moment he seemed to be losing the struggle for consciousness, but then he sat up as suddenly as someone wakened from sleep by a loud noise. His eyes were open now, no longer blank but clear and focused and alive.

"Lord Leif?"

Leif quite forgot himself then, and launched himself toward his guardian, pulling Nanna along with him into a three-way embrace. Leif didn't let go until he could feel with his own fingers that the terrible wound in Finn's back wasn't there anymore.

"I said to you once that you couldn't die on me until we got to Manster," he said into Finn's shoulder. "I shouldn't have said it like that. I meant never, not ever, do you hear me?"

"Lord Leif, please don't say such things."

Finn's response was so reflexive, so expected, so normal that it almost let Leif believe none of the mad and terrible events of the last few weeks had ever happened. But they most certainly had happened, and half of Mease was around them to testify to it, and now the solemnity of the chapel dissolved into a celebration best described by "giddy" or even "delirious."

But, as with so many other moments of this war, a call of alarm cut the celebrations short.

"Prince Leif! There's a dragon knight coming our way!"

"Just one?"

There was, indeed, one dragon knight winging its way toward Mease against the golden evening sky. Leif couldn't see the green of her dragon's scales yet as he stood upon the ramparts of Mease, but in his heart Leif already knew with certainty that this was his sister. There was no battalion of warriors behind her, not this time, and he was equally certain the Gae Bolg was stowed away, never again to be drawn against him.

"Altena. Well, this is a day of miracles." He glanced up at Finn, who was gazing at the last slanting rays of the sun with a little frown, as though he now doubted everything in front of his eyes. "Let's welcome her home, Finn."

With Finn at his side and Nanna's arm linked fast in his own, with Travant dead and Altena alive, Leif tasted happiness on a level he'd never before known in his sixteen years. The deepest wounds healed, the worst monsters put down... everything was suddenly, improbably perfect.

-x-

Ares and his party didn't get to Lutetia by sundown, but they did reach a church nestled at the base of steep Thracian cliffs that offered sanctuary for the night.

"Hey, you look happy," Ares said to Delmud as they retired to the simple quarters meant for wandering pilgrims.

"I can't explain it, sir. Not an hour ago, I felt a surge of well-being in my heart, and I can only guess that something's happened to Nanna that's caused her to be joyful. I don't know what that might be, but I'm glad for it."

"Huh." Sometimes Ares did have to wonder if he was the only sane man on this expedition. "We'll take what we can get, won't we?"

"That we will, sir!"

Ares wondered if Leif were, at that moment, showing Nanna a very good time. The possibility didn't appear to cross Delmud's charitable mind, but it festered in the mind of Ares for long hours into the night until he fell into a dreamless sleep.

-x-

"Mm, this bed is nice. I thought they were supposed to be poor down here, but this is a pretty good bed," Patty said of the four-poster with the feather pillows and velvet counterpane that had belonged to General Disler a short time before.

"Even in Thracia, with so little to go around, the wicked make sure they have more than enough," Seliph replied.

"Yeah, that Disler guy was pretty bad. I can't stand people who hold kids as hostages."

"I'd hope not," Seliph said as he ran his fingers along Patty's braid of golden hair. "We mustn't forget it was King Travant that ordered him to make hostage of Corple in the first place. I fully understand now why Lewyn and Lord Finn were both so set on pushing down into Thracia; Travant might be just as bad as his reputation."

"Yeah," Patty said, though the dreamy note to her voice said that tyrant dragon-kings weren't weighing heavily on her just then. "Isn't it funny how things worked out today with us findin' Corple and then Prince Leif's sister showin' up?"

"I can hardly believe it," said Seliph. "I hope Altena made it to Mease safely."

"I hope Corple made it there safely. Warp magic just makes me feel all icky and shivery inside." She gave a theatrical shudder that caused the bed to quiver a little. "I mean, disappearin' into nothing like that is awfully close to dyin' if you ask me."

"Let's not talk about dying right now, Patty." Seliph had unpicked the end of her braid and began to run his fingers through her soft hair.

"Sure. I guess with that Valkyrie Staff around, dyin' can be a thing of the past."

"I'm sure it's not that easy, Patty. The legends all say that Saint Bragi only used it once before it shattered and he had to go to the ends of the earth to find a craftsman skilled enough to repair it."

"But it got fixed, right? So as long as we can find and pay somebody to fix it, we're golden." Patty giggled to herself. "And as far as payin' people goes... that's what you have me for."

"Oh, Patty. What will it take to get you to behave yourself?"

He wasn't cross with her though, not really... though Seliph did have to wonder what sort of Empress she'd make if they did take Grannvale.

"Well, I used to be afraid I'd get born next time into a miserable life if I was bad in this one, but if I don't stay dead I don't ever have to worry." Her nimble little fingers were fast around his arm, and he could feel their grip tighten as she skipped into her next thought. "But Lord Seliph... if somebody was destined for a good life next time around, maybe, would bringin' 'em back to this one be a bad thing?"

"I don't know. I don't know that any one of us can answer such a question."

"I'll just ask Lewyn about that one tomorrow. He knows everything, right?"

"I wonder, Patty. I wonder."

And so Seliph slept a little less easily than he'd hoped in the peace that surrounded freed Lutetia.

The End