"TUG-OF-WAR"

Chapter Three: Beast of War

by Tonzura123

Disclaimer: If I can't have Narnia, can I own England?

"It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learnt o fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad,"

-C.S LEWIS

Edmund doesn't know a Kelpie stole his form and attempted to infiltrate the Friends of Narnia, but he's starting to suspect.

When he comes-to, he can't see. What he can do is smell, and the air, which is thick and heavy, smells like wet animal; the initial panic is understandable, but then he pulls himself together. He has woken up in dark, frightful situations before. He's not tied down and he isn't broken or injured anywhere. This is a good start to a kidnapping. This is nothing new.

Except, he thinks when he bumps into a soft leg and hears a girlish eep, this is a little new after all.

"Hello?" he asks.

"Hello," comes a guarded (and definitely female) reply from his immediate left.

"I'm not going to hurt you." Much carefully than before, he gingerly pats out until he finds a shoulder, squeezes a little as she tenses up, and then lets her go. "I'm Edmund Pevensie," he tries again. "Do you know where we are?"

There is a very sharp pause.

"I'm sorry," says the female voice. "Did you say Edmund Pevensie?"

"At your service," Edmund says. "Miss...?"

"Um," says the voice. "You know me. I'm Charlotte. Charlotte Dawson."

"I can't believe my luck," Edmund says.

And by "luck," of course, he means "incredibly calculated misfortune."

OoOoOoOoO

Lucy pulls Creature over in the highlands, in a little slope beside the hidden Loch.

It is night by now, but a warm glow comes from the small stone house at the waterside. A lantern hangs outside the door, illuminating a gravel path to the porch, and Creature rolls hesitantly beside her as they slowly tread up the lane.

"Don't be nervous," Lucy says to Creature. She lays a gloved hand on its compass. It gives an uncertain creak, nudging her leg with a handlebar.

Before they ever reach the porch, however, the door flies open and a large, womanly figure blocks the light in the doorway.

"Lucy Pevensie!" calls the woman in very robust tones. She laughs and descends the steps, arms enveloping the younger woman in a tight welcome. "Oh! Let me look at you. You've grown again!" Then, in a slightly more reproving voice, "And, my dear, you are quite late!"

Creature can't quite whimper, but it manages to give an equally pathetic sound, as some of the air wheezes from its tires.

"That contraption again. Darling, I must tell you. With every respect to your brother and to your own common sense, that mess of metals will be the death of you."

Here, Creature revs, incensed.

"I doubt it," Lucy says. "But Aunt Polly, we really must skip all of this tonight. I've come on Narnia business."

"Narnia business? Well! Tell me what an old sorceress can do for you."

As it turns out, when a Kelpie kidnaps a king of Narnia and a very rich heiress, there is nothing an old sorceress cannot do.

OoOoOoOoO

Here is what Peter doesn't remember:

Exactly one week, one day ago, Edmund was sitting in a cafe called Inklings, pretending to read the paper while Jack the Waiter slipped him a receipt with a location, a time, and a brief description of events.

It read- Gici's Paper House 11:00 PM Kidnapped/wealth exchange 3 men max.

Edmund accidentally-on-purpose caught it on fire via the table's candle, and dropped the ashes in his cold coffee dregs. From there, he took his cane and limped discretely out the door.

Edmund met Peter at the train station, eager to have his brother join in this latest rescue. Peter was covered in university chalk and the grime of the train, but he found the energy to listen to the latest developments that Jack the Informant was passing along. Lucy demanded to be the getaway. She and Creature had been visiting Eustace almost daily, fine-tuning whatever magical additions couldn't be tuned by wrenches and welding torches. Peter laughed and agreed. Edmund had never been more thrilled. During the planning, it felt as if they were almost as they had been in Narnia.

Susan was the exception.

"I don't want to hear about it," she said, cutting Edmund off when he had greeted her with an inward breath.

That had knocked the wind back out, all right.

"Susan," Edmund had pleaded. "Just take a night off. Skip swim club or something. Peter just got home and he's missed you."

Susan turned to him as if she found him extremely lacking. With her vanity behind her, a thousand shades of reds and plums lined up like soldiers, he felt a sinking moan in his gut that made him instantly obstinate. "Eddie, I am the president of the ladies' swim club."

"Don't call me Eddie," said Edmund. "And it's not as if you're their queen; they have a four-woman democracy working for them in your absence."

"Peter will be home for the rest of the week."

"Peter will be home tonight, too."

"I cannot skip swimming."

She most definitely could, but before Edmund said so, Susan continued;

"And, anyway, Peter never says... We. Never mind."

"What?"

Susan turned back to her lipsticks and fiddled with a tube, pushing a coral-pink just beyond its gold container. "We don't' really get along anymore. Not like we used to. He's changed since he started at university."

Edmund's eyes didn't bulge, per se. "And you haven't?"

"What? What are you talking about?" She was honestly confused. Edmund knew for a fact that the Old Susan would have hated the people New Susan spent her time with. Each one of them looked like a advert model, were involved in the community, and went to chapel. But they were cruel idiots. Edmund had personally witnessed her late "beau" harass women on the street and, when confronted, blame it on "their skirts being too red." The women used their Holy Consolation Group for gossiping about breakups and breakdowns.

The last time Peter had been home, he'd blown up at her. Edmund and Lucy still didn't know what had set him off. He had told them that the argument was stupid and private and they were to leave it alone, High King's orders.

Edmund hated it when he did that.

"Never mind," he had said. "Have fun at swim club. We'll see you later."

Unfortunately, that later involved Peter twisting his ankle, Lucy riding off to Scotland, and Edmund not being his usual self.

It happened like this. Peter got off of the train with chalk on his jacket and engine grime in his hair. Edmund had hugged him hard and helped him with Peter's luggage. Then, as usual, they began getting up to no good.

Edmund said, "Want to foil a kidnapping?"

Peter said, "Sounds like fun."

Edmund said, "It will involve three other men, probably armed."

Peter said, "Delightful."

Edmund said, "The exchange is in three hours."

Peter said, "Perfect."

Edmund said, "Also, we have to weed the garden when we get home. Mum said so."

Peter said, "I do so love weeding the garden in my precious spare time."

Or something like that. Edmund remembers the gist of what Peter has forgotten, in any event. (No, wait. He completely forgot about the garden.) But he does remember how they snuck behind the Gici's Paperhouse and jimmied the lock. How they dodged like Cats behind the crates and ducked around the swinging shadows from the low hanging bare-bulbs. Edmund had his cane, Peter an umbrella, and both of them were feeling very sure of themselves before the chaos broke out.

There were five men, not three.

The girl was tied up to a comfortable looking wooden chair. She wasn't moving, but Edmund glared into the dark and could make out the shift of breathing, and signaled so to Peter before they split up. Edmund circled around behind, Peter to the front. If he took a single step, he would be in the light and the men would see him.

Edmund knew he wouldn't do that unless they somehow harmed the girl, so he hurried to his position so that he could count weapons. He came up with knives, mostly. Small ones. The men themselves were varying levels of wiriness and plump, confident muscle. A mixed bag. Edmund hated mixed bags.

He was about to return to Peter and tell him so, when a smell hit the air.

Cloves. Sunlight.

Rot.

The hairs on his forearms prickled. His hand clamped down on his cane. But before he could move, the doors to the front of the warehouse blew open in a rain-drenched gust, and the wind threw the hanging lights towards the back- towards Edmund.

Everything happened at once. One of the men spotted him and yelled. Edmund heard Peter yell in return and saw him start from his hiding place to attack. But behind everyone and everything, standing in the blown-open doors, Edmund's stunned brain just caught sight of a tall, shaking shadow with glowing green eyes.

Then a fist slammed into the side of his head and he wasn't stunned as much as he was annoyed.

He swung his cane hard, cracked it across the side of someone's neck. A high pitched scream signaled the rile of the girl, who was rocking violently in her chair in an effort to escape, and the bellow of Peter as he abandoned his now-bent umbrella to favor his bare knuckles. Edmund threw the tips of his bunched fingers into the bottom of a wiry man's neck, making him, "GooUUARGK" and instinctively flinch away to gag.

One man was out cold- Peter's doing- and another was picking himself up and making angrily for Edmund. The last two were violently wrestling Peter's arms against his sides. All three of them were in a writhing knot on the floor as Peter bucked and kicked and jammed his elbows into their stomachs. One of them took Peter's head in his hands and threw it against the ground. Edmund heard the impacting thwuck of his brother's bones on the cement. Peter stopped kicking.

The girl was screaming around her gag, the last man was advancing quickly, Edmund tore his eyes away from Peter's still body and watched the last man come. When he was in range, Edmund planted his feet and grabbed at the oncoming punch, pulling it hard in the same direction as it was pushing. The man overbalanced, Edmund kicked him hard in the rear and ran for the girl, yanking on the ropes around her arms until she was free.

"Run! Get out of here!" He could feel the footsteps through the cement, the rough hand on the collar of his shirt. He saw the girl run through the blown-open doors, and then the stars that explode into being from a well-placed strike to his head.

OoOoOoOoO

He woke up to ropes around him, cutting off circulation. The room was dark and the lights were swinging nauseatingly. He didn't know where Peter was.

"Peter?"

Where were the men? Oh, there they were. Laughing, somehow. The girl was gone. They wouldn't be paid. Why were they laughing? Drinking and laughing. Maybe laughing because they were drinking.

Edmund's head hurt.

"Peter?"

He looked down at his lap, noted the rusty stain on his new trousers. Licked his lip and found rust there. Nosebleed? Split lip.

His head hurt.

A groan at his back. Peter?

"Ed?"

Oh, thank Aslan.

"Are you all right?" Peter asked. Or something. Sounded more like "you ullrit?"

The ropes were thick, briny. Where was the knot? Edmund stretched his hands, popped his shoulder out of place and kept an eye on the drinkers and laughers.

"Ed?"

Edmund reached back, found a little of Peter's shirt, and tugged on it twice. Peter was quiet again. As Edmund ran a free hand over the knots, sticking his fingers around the bends and twists. Felt like rolling his eyes, but didn't for fear of them rolling right out of his head and onto the bloody floor.

The men, staggering, laughing, threw a bottle towards Edmund and Peter and went out the door with a deafening slam.

"Well," said Edmund. "I've some good news; these are some really terrible knots."

OoOoOoOoO

Lucy can't figure out why the would-be kidnappers were so jolly after losing their only means for a trade. Strictly speaking, Lucy's kidnappers had always been very, very put out when Ed or Susan or Peter foiled their plans to trade her for the kingdom, unimaginable riches, or supreme magical power. There had been plenty of foul language. And several death threats. But from what Edmund had described, the men at Gici's had been positively smug when he had woken up.

Which, of course, couldn't mean anything good.

"Like a trap," Lucy says aloud.

Creature's engine ticks inquiringly.

"How's that, dear?" Polly asks.

"If the would-be kidnappers were so blissfully drunk when Edmund last saw them, then they either got what they wanted, or found something better. And there's nothing very special about two boys from Finchley to average kidnappers."

"As opposed to not-average kidnappers."

"The thing is," Lucy says, spitting her hair out of her mouth as they drive around a particularly sharp turn, "Edmund said he smelled magick before everything went wonky. And he saw that shape in the doorway. The only thing better than a wealthy girl held ransom, is two young kings held ransom."

"You think they found out who Peter and Edmund really are?"

Lucy hopes that she doesn't think that. Who could have told? What kind of people believed it? Just how quickly could that spread around?

"The Kelpie might have done," she says eventually.

"How would the Kelpie have done if it just got here from Narnia?"

"I don't know!" Lucy exclaims. "But I'm sure you'll find out when we get back to England."

A/N: MERRY CHRISTMAS MY BEAUTIES.

The finger-jam to the base of the throat that Edmund uses is an actual self-defense move I learned in college from my psych professor (who also worked as a bouncer at a local bar). By clamping your fingers together (like you're about to karate chop something) you drive it, palm facing down, into the juncture of the base of the throat and between the clavicles. It's a little hollow, and if you apply a little pressure to it, it feels uncomfortable. This move doesn't need a lot of strength, and is mostly a distraction.

(If you are ever in a situation where you need to get away because your well being is threatened, this move is only effective if you do it and immediately run for your life. Please don't take on people like Edmund and Peter try to. )

Love you guys! Happy writing.

As Always,

-Tonzura123