[Fire Emblem 10] A Song for Your Thoughts
Sep. 28th, 2009 02:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
runicloreA Song for Your Thoughts
Author: Amber Michelle
Gauntlet Theme: 34 - I should have kissed you by the water
Fandom: Fire Emblem 10
Characters/Pairing: Lehran/Altina
Words: 4348
Warnings: n/a, unless you count spoilers
...............................................
Altina chose an open space on high ground for their first camp, bordered on one side by a steep fall of dirt and rocks, and on two others by a wood crowded with maples, juniper, and trees she couldn't name. The river meandered through it at the bottom of the hill, a slow murmur of water on rocks, between grasses, the surface a patchwork of blue and gray and the green of fallen leaves. Yune's war was still a month of marching away, and their force was still small: one hundred laguz, dragons and cats - mostly the latter - and a little over a thousand beorc from the outreaches of Syene who answered the Ashera's call. We only need one dragon, Lehran told her when they left the tower. But they march in pairs when they do so at all, and they cannot abandon their king. I didn't have the heart to turn the others away.
He was by the river when she walked beneath the canopy to listen and search for signs it would not be safe. Birdsong skipped between the branches overhead, accented the splash of water while she watched patches of sunlight gleam on the dim surface, tinted orange and pink with sunset. Bushes crowded the shore in clusters, most green, a few dotted with wide, fat yellow flowers. Lehran bent down to twist one from its branch and twirled it in his fingers, flicked his wing to brush aside a drifting leaf. They curved around his shoulders like a shield.
"Kerria rose," he said when her footsteps crumpled the ends of a slim, fallen branch and crunched on dead leaves. "It's rare in the south. I never thought to find it so far from the mountains."
Altina stepped more carefully, smelled the dust of crushed leaves, the deeper dirt scent of the forest loam. He looked up, and the flower tilted inward. "It's common in poetry, but not many other places." She watched the shimmer on his hair. "Has the first watch already been through here?"
Lehran lifted his eyebrow and rolled his eyes upward. "Soan took care of that."
"Hm."
"We're days early for our first skirmish," he said. "It won't happen for some time yet."
"That doesn't rule out the possibility of assassination." His wings looked black in the deepening shadows, limned around the edges with golden brown where the light shined on his feathers. "It would be poor service to you and Lady Ashera if I allowed her favorite servant to sustain so much as a scratch for my carelessness."
"Her favorite?" Lehran laughed, looked down at the flower in his hand, and approached her. The branches bent beneath his step but did not break - didn't even make a sound. If his wings hadn't been at rest against his back, she would have thought he used them to float above the ground to walk so quietly. "Ashera does not single out favorites, my lady. To do so would encourage disharmony."
Altina shifted half a step back before she stopped herself and let him approach. He tilted his head slightly to the side. She jerked her gaze away, looked at the water. The pink and gold sparkles were lost to the shadows of the trees. "What do you call that display in front of the tower before we left?" He smelled faintly of incense, his breath warm on her cheek. His fingertips sifted into the hair above her ear and she stiffened, tried not to flinch back. "Not favor, surely."
"Jealous?" She slanted her gaze back to see Lehran smile, though his gaze was intent on her hair and she felt his fingers brush her ear. "Any mother would bid her son farewell with an embrace." He held her head still when she tried to look at him. "I'll tell you the story some time when we've nothing else to occupy us. There." She raised both eyebrows and he smiled again, the line of his mouth faint and shadowed while the light still glowed behind him. Altina half-expected his eyes to gleam even in shade, but they were dark beneath brushed-ink lashes. "It suits your color."
Heat crept into Altina's throat, warmed her ears when he twisted away and his hair brushed her arm, then his feathers as he passed behind her, walking back toward camp. She lifted her hand to brush her hair, her ear, the flower he'd secured there. The petals were soft and cool.
"I'll stay in camp like a good heron," he called over his shoulder, and she heard the leaves shift. "And I'll tell Soan his ears aren't good enough for you."
Altina spun around with her mouth open, only to snap her teeth shut when his shape was a blur among the dark trunks of the trees, her eyes blinded by the hint of sunset on the water. She reached to adjust the sword belted across her back, straightened her coat-- but she felt again for the kerria rose perched atop her ear and sighed loudly when she caught herself doing it. Herons. "Flirting won't get you out of our safety checks," she called.
His laughter echoed back from the shadows.
.
It became routine to find Lehran after their escort stopped for the day and shoo him back into camp as she would a child, though Altina knew stories to indicate he was many times her senior, perhaps as old as the goddess herself. He coasted on the wind above the army with his honor guard of hawks and a few ravens, so high in the sky at times they were only dark shapes against the blue and sometimes veiled by clouds. She might have joined them on her pegasus, but he'd warned her the first day she would be too cold, that beorc weren't hardy enough to travel at such altitude - that the air was too thin for her pegasus that high, and it would flag before long.
You need to lead your army, he said during a break. They look for your snowy wings to guide them.
If only they were her own wings, she'd thought immediately, to spread as she chose. He mislikes battle, she'd said, stroking the short, soft fur of Leo's nose.
But he likes you. Imagine his consternation if you joined a fight without him.
Altina rolled her eyes, and he heaved a sigh, said her skepticism wounded him, and pressed a hand to his heart. Then he produced an apple unlike the fruit she knew from home, its skin pale red and yellow like a sunset instead of plain green or dark red, and lured her pegasus away when she was ready to mount up and continue. Lehran wanted her to walk, she thought, and while she spoke to her second-in-command to arrange space for her escort in the formation - to give in, lest he give her that sideways look again and make her wonder what she said wrong - his whispers tickled her ears in the background before they disappeared beneath the clatter of hooves on rocks, the thump of five pegusi landing behind them, the chorus of voices acknowledging her orders and marking their formation.
She knew the old tongue as a language for the old and venerable, as it was only spoken by the eldest of her family and the laguz tribes, whose memories were longer than generations. Even they did not write it - they only knew the sounds, and the prayers and spells, and sometimes songs. What he said sounded familiar. Altina turned her head to ask what he was muttering to her traitor of a pegasus that he couldn't say in a common tongue.
"I asked him if he likes flowers," Lehran said. Leo's head dipped, and her heron companion pulled a blossom from his robe and twisted it into the mane, first combing it with his fingers, then braiding strands around the stem so it seemed a row of tassels slapped against the expanse of white neck. "He licked his teeth. I suppose that means he prefers eating them."
Altina laughed briefly, and counted four such flowers already decorating her pegasus - flat, round, yellow blossoms like the one he slipped into her hair the first night of their journey. The sunlight burned on her skin. They neared the Grann Desert, and the western spine of mountains that separated it from the grassland, now a shadow in the haze to the north and east. "Perhaps you should be feeding him, then. It would be a more appropriate use of those blossoms."
"After my trouble in preserving them? Hardly." Lehran's dark hair shined with a halo of sunlight; the scent of his blossoms tickled her nose with green, a hint of the damp southern lands she knew as home to remind Altina there were things other than dust to smell and taste coating her tongue. His wings angled when he leaned down to speak again in the forest tongue. The petals flicked in a breeze. "The color adds a certain cheer to his mien, don't you think?"
She stared at the back of his head. "He's a war horse!"
The ornaments on Lehran's belt tinkled when he straightened too quickly, the flat, oblong coins like chimes. A charcoal eyebrow lifted. "I thought you said he didn't like battle." Leo pressed his nose into Lehran's open palm. "Perhaps a warrior of his refined taste prefers roses to steel."
Altina breathed a sharp oh and lifted her chin. Someone behind her snickered, but her guard met her gaze with straight faces when she twisted around to look. "His dignity will be in tatters by the time you finish."
Lehran snorted, managed a breathy dignity! as he laughed, his other hand still tangled in the mane. He swatted at Leo with his wing when the pegasus turned its head to nicker in his ear and nuzzle his hair. "My lady--" He pushed Leo's face away again and fell back so he walked even with Altina and met her eyes across his back. Lehran's smile was tight and small, as if it wanted to spread wider and he only resisted by a hair. "I think he likes the attention."
She watched the swish of Leo's tail, and the angle of his head - it was higher, and his wings fluffed to spread open. She thought of the way he sought Lehran's hands, his stroking fingers, and knew she'd spent more time managing her subordinates and trying to march with every rank than with Leo. Altina stretched her arm to stroke his neck. If they traveled alone, or with her escort, they would have curled up together under a tree to sleep; they would have bathed together in the river, and wandered across the grassland to rest and eat, and perhaps not move for days.
Even if she tethered him outside her tent it wouldn't be the same. Canvas would separate them. She swatted her pockets, and knew there were no treats secreted away - no apples, no carrots.
"I apologize," Lehran said, a brown shadow in her peripheral vision. "It was not meant to be an accusation."
Altina shook her head. "No need." She rested her hand on Leo's back to feel the shift of his shoulder blades as he walked. The grass whispered and shifted around them, crushed beneath the hooves of her escort or the feet of a thousand soldiers, some of it yellow and dry, some of it pale green. Infantry marched on both sides, in front and at her back in imperfect lines to form shapes one could call squares only if one were generous with the description. "It was something I needed to hear."
They parted company some time later and Altina took to the sky again to scout for an appropriate place to stop for the night. Trees were a necessity because Lehran and his companions preferred them, though he'd been provided with a personal tent. Her second asked if it was not inappropriate for the Elder Servant to sleep in a tree - or worse, on the ground, as he did when the branches proved too weak even for his minimal weight - but Altina told him birds needed room to spread their wings, and their largest tent would not accommodate him. Lehran told her a heron would always be happier with grass tickling his skin and the breath of the trees in his ear. Dust and dirt held no fear for him, and a canvas wall would not stop the charge of a predator or an enemy.
There was truth in that. Canvas wouldn't; wood could be broken. Even stone would burn within the fires of magic. She bore scars to prove it.
The caravan had only plain green apples to offer, but Altina took three when they stopped for the night beside a copse of cottonwood trees, and shouldered a bag of oats for her pegasus. They were hobbled apart from the other mounts, near the encampment occupied by her own honor guard, and while she fed bits of fruit to Leo and felt the feathery brush of his lips on her palm, she wondered if moving her quarters to join them would raise too many eyebrows. She wouldn't give it a second thought if she were simply commanding the other pegasus knights, perhaps as Lehran's guard, the function in which she usually served the temple. Yet Ashera saw fit to place the entire force in her hands - nine hundred infantry, three hundred cavalry, three hundred wyverns - and would it not be an insult to her status to ignore her function as figurehead and motivation for her troops, and step down to camp with common soldiers?
But Altina served - she didn't lead. Never had she dreamed of it before now, nor did she want to continue. Once Yune was subdued Altina would return to her proper place among the holy guard, and someone else could marshal the troops next time. Soan, Dheginsea. Someone with more wisdom than she could claim.
Dusk lay over the grasslands when she returned to her tent at the center of the encampment. Woodsmoke haze lingered around the pyramid top, trapping the orange light of the setting sun and the flicker of campfires and mingling with the dust. Altina had long since stopped sneezing. Her throat felt caked with mud, and she tasted it in everything, felt bits of sand grit in her teeth when she ate her morning porridge and bit into the hand-molded rice cakes that were her dinner. A thousand voices made a low murmur in the background, like a storm wind, joined by the slithering scrape of a blade being sharpened. The commanders for each troop waited outside the flap and snapped to attention when she appeared, fists over their hearts. Lehran was with them. He spoke to the leader of her guard, one of the elder knights by the name of Jessica, who bowed to him with her hands on the hilts of her long knives and left after nodding to Altina. Soan waited with his arms crossed and the light of a fire behind him, limning his bright hair with metallic highlights.
"We're too slow," he said when she entered the circle swept into the dirt before her tent. "They'll know we're marching before we're even halfway there."
"Yune will know anyway," Lehran said, stepping into the circle when she did. "She shares Ashera's prescience, so there's no use in stealth." Soan muttered something, and Lehran frowned. "The pickings won't be any better near her army, either. Didn't you learn any patience in Goldoa?"
Soan's voice was the deepest she'd ever heard; it reminded Altina of resting her head on her father's chest and hearing his laughter rumble deep within. "I spent as little time with Dheginsea as possible."
"I should have known. You're still in possession of all your limbs--"
"Why don't we get back to business." Altina emulated the lion king's posture, crossed her arms, and flicked her gaze to the others. The infantry commander shook his head. "If we go any faster we'll leave the bulk of our troops behind. We won't win any wars that way." Nor would they win a war with fifteen hundred men, though Lehran promised reinforcements from Serenes, and Soan told her the dragons would pick up the slack - you don't have to believe it, just watch. She didn't know how large Yune's force was, either; a thousand, the reports said - nothing major, just remnants of the cities up north, deserters, brigands even. Renegade laguz-- maybe. "Have our scouts reported in?"
The meeting was quick; the birds and lions said the grassland was clear to the river, and the wyvern scouts they sent to the river fork had returned to confirm their numbers. Soan ran north with his laguz to secure their next encampment, and Lehran stayed with Altina, bidding the others a peaceful night, then looking up to the sky with his face turned south.
"You are not usually present for command meetings," she said when the silence stretched more than a minute. "What's the occasion?"
Lehran blinked, lowered his head. "An apology."
Altina let her arms fall to her sides. Yellow light peeked beneath the canvas walls, warmer than the faint firelight; there were no torches planted beside her tent, and the nearest flame was several yards away. The sky was moonless. "Come inside."
He ducked inside, wings curving tightly around his arms, and Altina followed him, let the canvas flap snap down behind her with a brush of air. The hemp flooring sank beneath her feet almost like a rug. Each step summoned the scent of dust to join the residue of lamp oil on the air. A yellow flame burned in a plain glass lamp at the edge of a square table as wide as her arm was long on all sides, and two steps away was the narrow cot she called a bed, hardly wider than her shoulders, the sheets and blanket folded back in a neat triangle.
Lehran pulled his stool from beneath the table and placed it adjacent to her side of the table. "Soan says I should take this more seriously. The war, and Yune."
Altina pulled her chair out and adjusted the angle of her sword to sit down. The wood creaked. "I didn't think you took it lightly, exactly."
"But I've been flippant." Lehran watched the lamp flame flicker and his eyes reflected the the curl of its light. His wings stretched out, perhaps the length of his arm span, before he pulled them in again and the feathers slotted together. The high arches bent slightly forward, over his shoulders. "Yune has always surrendered without a fight before. I can't imagine her intentionally hurting anyone, and I have faith she will see the error of her ways if we have the chance to speak with her."
"Is this why you objected to bringing him along?" His chin snapped up. Altina lifted her shoulder in a shrug. "He rushes in before thinking-- right? I don't know him well, but I've heard laguz fight that way, that they lack discipline. Our wyvern captain objected to marching with them on those grounds."
"He isn't that bad." Lehran looked away. His hands folded on his knees, and his eyes gleamed a bright green, the only point of color in her brown and gray space. "He's more sensible than he used to be. He might even sit still for the negotiations."
She looked at the unpolished grain of the table under her hands. "Not Soan, then."
His shadow shifted. "No." Lehran leaned forward, pushed the lamp to the center of the table, and folded his arms on the tabletop. "Nor does it matter who. We all obey our nature, even if we do not know it."
Altina pulled her braid over her shoulder and picked the knot of her ribbon loose. She had only known Lehran in the recent years of her life, since attaining knighthood and passing muster for the holy guard; until then she saw him only from afar, and only when her family made the trip to the capitol, which was not often. What she knew of Ashera might be attributed to a book of children's tales. Dheginsea was a myth. Yet-- he was eminently suited to the goddess Altina knew: cool, logical, unwilling to compromise.
Perhaps it was ignorance that led her to make such a judgment. She'd only spoken to him once.
And-- perhaps the dragons were present not to overpower an army they already outnumbered, but to exert their psychic influence.
"Then we won't talk about it," Altina said. The braid unraveled between her fingers. It tried to tangle at the end, where the hair was dry and frizzed. "I have another question I hope you'll answer."
"Oh?"
"Where are you getting those roses? We haven't seen a bush since our first camp."
Ah. Lehran chuckled and withdrew his hands. He was watching her when she looked up to see what he was doing, his eyes lingering on the kinks of her hair still half-braided over her shoulder. When his gaze flicked up and met hers, he reached into the first layer of his robe, perhaps into a hidden pocket, and pulled a green stalk out. "A long time ago, my goddess taught me the art of making plants grow - specifically the food-generating variety." He twirled the stem, and she saw its blunt end was shaped like a dewdrop-- a bud, not a scar or a nub. "She encouraged me to rely on the natural cycles, of course, but if absolutely necessary, I may use galdrar to obtain food from a seed or a branch of the right type."
Altina watched it turn in his fingers. "I didn't know galdrar were so powerful."
"Most are not. My clan is ignorant of that particular spell."
"Is that why you're here?" Altina stilled the twisting stem between her thumb and forefinger, felt the heat of his hand very close to hers. "Because you know things nobody else does?"
Lehran lowered his lashes. They hid his gaze with their shadow, cast by the yellow flame of her lamp, and darkness pooled in his hair, in the hollow of his throat, and the line of his lips until they parted and he sang instead of answering her, his silky baritone acquiring a depth in the notes that raised goosebumps along her arms and legs. The light paled, or perhaps he gave off his own illumination; his skin glowed white again as it did in the sun while his lips shaped words Altina couldn't understand, in tones she didn't recognize even from hearing the old tongue spoken so often in spells and prayers at the cathedral.
The green bud stretched, grew, and velvety yellow brightened where the green sepals at the bottom split and parted, becoming slim, young petals-- then ruffling and spreading out like wings to make his kerria rose. Altina felt her lips part and watched the filaments at the center curl inward.
He stood up and Altina started back, straightening, and realized his song had ended. "I-- I've never seen--"
Lehran leaned over, and she felt his fingers comb into her hair. "Another legend for the storybooks, I suppose."
Altina waited to feel him twist it into place, step back, and she pushed her chair back to stand and meet him on her feet. "I--" Her neck felt hot beneath her collar; her face began to heat as well, and she jerked her gaze sideways, away from the shine of his eyes. "I fed them to--"
He laughed. She felt the warmth of his breath on her throat, felt him take one of her hands and press it between both of his. They were warm, slender, soft. "It's all right, my lady." His hair slid around his arms and brushed her fingers when he bent his head. "They're only flowers."
She took a deep breath and gathered the courage to look at him. They weren't just flowers. It didn't matter that their genesis was a bush growing along a nameless river in the south; his voice brought them life from death. Didn't he realize what a blessing that was? Men would kill for less. Her own mother prayed and wished for that very gift every spring in the family chapel where their ancestors were buried, many recently and before their time.
Altina wanted to reach up and feel the petals, but kept her hand at her side and curled her fingers around his. Her touch would rob it of time. It would wilt faster, brown, dry, and find a place in her log book pressed as neatly as she could manage, though it would never be as beautiful. "She'll listen to you," Altina said. She squeezed his hand. "I'll make sure you have time to speak with her. In fact, I'll take you myself. No harm will come to you in my care, I promise - nor will war, if I can stop it."
Lehran's smile was slight, more a shadow, and his fingers smoothed the back of her hand. "Thank you."
..............................................................
Sooooo... this didn't really go where I wanted it to go. It was supposed to involve a kiss, dangit, but obviously I messed that up. Instead, it's a getting-to-know-you installment, and I'm not sure how I feel about that.
.
Author: Amber Michelle
Gauntlet Theme: 34 - I should have kissed you by the water
Fandom: Fire Emblem 10
Characters/Pairing: Lehran/Altina
Words: 4348
Warnings: n/a, unless you count spoilers
...............................................
Altina chose an open space on high ground for their first camp, bordered on one side by a steep fall of dirt and rocks, and on two others by a wood crowded with maples, juniper, and trees she couldn't name. The river meandered through it at the bottom of the hill, a slow murmur of water on rocks, between grasses, the surface a patchwork of blue and gray and the green of fallen leaves. Yune's war was still a month of marching away, and their force was still small: one hundred laguz, dragons and cats - mostly the latter - and a little over a thousand beorc from the outreaches of Syene who answered the Ashera's call. We only need one dragon, Lehran told her when they left the tower. But they march in pairs when they do so at all, and they cannot abandon their king. I didn't have the heart to turn the others away.
He was by the river when she walked beneath the canopy to listen and search for signs it would not be safe. Birdsong skipped between the branches overhead, accented the splash of water while she watched patches of sunlight gleam on the dim surface, tinted orange and pink with sunset. Bushes crowded the shore in clusters, most green, a few dotted with wide, fat yellow flowers. Lehran bent down to twist one from its branch and twirled it in his fingers, flicked his wing to brush aside a drifting leaf. They curved around his shoulders like a shield.
"Kerria rose," he said when her footsteps crumpled the ends of a slim, fallen branch and crunched on dead leaves. "It's rare in the south. I never thought to find it so far from the mountains."
Altina stepped more carefully, smelled the dust of crushed leaves, the deeper dirt scent of the forest loam. He looked up, and the flower tilted inward. "It's common in poetry, but not many other places." She watched the shimmer on his hair. "Has the first watch already been through here?"
Lehran lifted his eyebrow and rolled his eyes upward. "Soan took care of that."
"Hm."
"We're days early for our first skirmish," he said. "It won't happen for some time yet."
"That doesn't rule out the possibility of assassination." His wings looked black in the deepening shadows, limned around the edges with golden brown where the light shined on his feathers. "It would be poor service to you and Lady Ashera if I allowed her favorite servant to sustain so much as a scratch for my carelessness."
"Her favorite?" Lehran laughed, looked down at the flower in his hand, and approached her. The branches bent beneath his step but did not break - didn't even make a sound. If his wings hadn't been at rest against his back, she would have thought he used them to float above the ground to walk so quietly. "Ashera does not single out favorites, my lady. To do so would encourage disharmony."
Altina shifted half a step back before she stopped herself and let him approach. He tilted his head slightly to the side. She jerked her gaze away, looked at the water. The pink and gold sparkles were lost to the shadows of the trees. "What do you call that display in front of the tower before we left?" He smelled faintly of incense, his breath warm on her cheek. His fingertips sifted into the hair above her ear and she stiffened, tried not to flinch back. "Not favor, surely."
"Jealous?" She slanted her gaze back to see Lehran smile, though his gaze was intent on her hair and she felt his fingers brush her ear. "Any mother would bid her son farewell with an embrace." He held her head still when she tried to look at him. "I'll tell you the story some time when we've nothing else to occupy us. There." She raised both eyebrows and he smiled again, the line of his mouth faint and shadowed while the light still glowed behind him. Altina half-expected his eyes to gleam even in shade, but they were dark beneath brushed-ink lashes. "It suits your color."
Heat crept into Altina's throat, warmed her ears when he twisted away and his hair brushed her arm, then his feathers as he passed behind her, walking back toward camp. She lifted her hand to brush her hair, her ear, the flower he'd secured there. The petals were soft and cool.
"I'll stay in camp like a good heron," he called over his shoulder, and she heard the leaves shift. "And I'll tell Soan his ears aren't good enough for you."
Altina spun around with her mouth open, only to snap her teeth shut when his shape was a blur among the dark trunks of the trees, her eyes blinded by the hint of sunset on the water. She reached to adjust the sword belted across her back, straightened her coat-- but she felt again for the kerria rose perched atop her ear and sighed loudly when she caught herself doing it. Herons. "Flirting won't get you out of our safety checks," she called.
His laughter echoed back from the shadows.
.
It became routine to find Lehran after their escort stopped for the day and shoo him back into camp as she would a child, though Altina knew stories to indicate he was many times her senior, perhaps as old as the goddess herself. He coasted on the wind above the army with his honor guard of hawks and a few ravens, so high in the sky at times they were only dark shapes against the blue and sometimes veiled by clouds. She might have joined them on her pegasus, but he'd warned her the first day she would be too cold, that beorc weren't hardy enough to travel at such altitude - that the air was too thin for her pegasus that high, and it would flag before long.
You need to lead your army, he said during a break. They look for your snowy wings to guide them.
If only they were her own wings, she'd thought immediately, to spread as she chose. He mislikes battle, she'd said, stroking the short, soft fur of Leo's nose.
But he likes you. Imagine his consternation if you joined a fight without him.
Altina rolled her eyes, and he heaved a sigh, said her skepticism wounded him, and pressed a hand to his heart. Then he produced an apple unlike the fruit she knew from home, its skin pale red and yellow like a sunset instead of plain green or dark red, and lured her pegasus away when she was ready to mount up and continue. Lehran wanted her to walk, she thought, and while she spoke to her second-in-command to arrange space for her escort in the formation - to give in, lest he give her that sideways look again and make her wonder what she said wrong - his whispers tickled her ears in the background before they disappeared beneath the clatter of hooves on rocks, the thump of five pegusi landing behind them, the chorus of voices acknowledging her orders and marking their formation.
She knew the old tongue as a language for the old and venerable, as it was only spoken by the eldest of her family and the laguz tribes, whose memories were longer than generations. Even they did not write it - they only knew the sounds, and the prayers and spells, and sometimes songs. What he said sounded familiar. Altina turned her head to ask what he was muttering to her traitor of a pegasus that he couldn't say in a common tongue.
"I asked him if he likes flowers," Lehran said. Leo's head dipped, and her heron companion pulled a blossom from his robe and twisted it into the mane, first combing it with his fingers, then braiding strands around the stem so it seemed a row of tassels slapped against the expanse of white neck. "He licked his teeth. I suppose that means he prefers eating them."
Altina laughed briefly, and counted four such flowers already decorating her pegasus - flat, round, yellow blossoms like the one he slipped into her hair the first night of their journey. The sunlight burned on her skin. They neared the Grann Desert, and the western spine of mountains that separated it from the grassland, now a shadow in the haze to the north and east. "Perhaps you should be feeding him, then. It would be a more appropriate use of those blossoms."
"After my trouble in preserving them? Hardly." Lehran's dark hair shined with a halo of sunlight; the scent of his blossoms tickled her nose with green, a hint of the damp southern lands she knew as home to remind Altina there were things other than dust to smell and taste coating her tongue. His wings angled when he leaned down to speak again in the forest tongue. The petals flicked in a breeze. "The color adds a certain cheer to his mien, don't you think?"
She stared at the back of his head. "He's a war horse!"
The ornaments on Lehran's belt tinkled when he straightened too quickly, the flat, oblong coins like chimes. A charcoal eyebrow lifted. "I thought you said he didn't like battle." Leo pressed his nose into Lehran's open palm. "Perhaps a warrior of his refined taste prefers roses to steel."
Altina breathed a sharp oh and lifted her chin. Someone behind her snickered, but her guard met her gaze with straight faces when she twisted around to look. "His dignity will be in tatters by the time you finish."
Lehran snorted, managed a breathy dignity! as he laughed, his other hand still tangled in the mane. He swatted at Leo with his wing when the pegasus turned its head to nicker in his ear and nuzzle his hair. "My lady--" He pushed Leo's face away again and fell back so he walked even with Altina and met her eyes across his back. Lehran's smile was tight and small, as if it wanted to spread wider and he only resisted by a hair. "I think he likes the attention."
She watched the swish of Leo's tail, and the angle of his head - it was higher, and his wings fluffed to spread open. She thought of the way he sought Lehran's hands, his stroking fingers, and knew she'd spent more time managing her subordinates and trying to march with every rank than with Leo. Altina stretched her arm to stroke his neck. If they traveled alone, or with her escort, they would have curled up together under a tree to sleep; they would have bathed together in the river, and wandered across the grassland to rest and eat, and perhaps not move for days.
Even if she tethered him outside her tent it wouldn't be the same. Canvas would separate them. She swatted her pockets, and knew there were no treats secreted away - no apples, no carrots.
"I apologize," Lehran said, a brown shadow in her peripheral vision. "It was not meant to be an accusation."
Altina shook her head. "No need." She rested her hand on Leo's back to feel the shift of his shoulder blades as he walked. The grass whispered and shifted around them, crushed beneath the hooves of her escort or the feet of a thousand soldiers, some of it yellow and dry, some of it pale green. Infantry marched on both sides, in front and at her back in imperfect lines to form shapes one could call squares only if one were generous with the description. "It was something I needed to hear."
They parted company some time later and Altina took to the sky again to scout for an appropriate place to stop for the night. Trees were a necessity because Lehran and his companions preferred them, though he'd been provided with a personal tent. Her second asked if it was not inappropriate for the Elder Servant to sleep in a tree - or worse, on the ground, as he did when the branches proved too weak even for his minimal weight - but Altina told him birds needed room to spread their wings, and their largest tent would not accommodate him. Lehran told her a heron would always be happier with grass tickling his skin and the breath of the trees in his ear. Dust and dirt held no fear for him, and a canvas wall would not stop the charge of a predator or an enemy.
There was truth in that. Canvas wouldn't; wood could be broken. Even stone would burn within the fires of magic. She bore scars to prove it.
The caravan had only plain green apples to offer, but Altina took three when they stopped for the night beside a copse of cottonwood trees, and shouldered a bag of oats for her pegasus. They were hobbled apart from the other mounts, near the encampment occupied by her own honor guard, and while she fed bits of fruit to Leo and felt the feathery brush of his lips on her palm, she wondered if moving her quarters to join them would raise too many eyebrows. She wouldn't give it a second thought if she were simply commanding the other pegasus knights, perhaps as Lehran's guard, the function in which she usually served the temple. Yet Ashera saw fit to place the entire force in her hands - nine hundred infantry, three hundred cavalry, three hundred wyverns - and would it not be an insult to her status to ignore her function as figurehead and motivation for her troops, and step down to camp with common soldiers?
But Altina served - she didn't lead. Never had she dreamed of it before now, nor did she want to continue. Once Yune was subdued Altina would return to her proper place among the holy guard, and someone else could marshal the troops next time. Soan, Dheginsea. Someone with more wisdom than she could claim.
Dusk lay over the grasslands when she returned to her tent at the center of the encampment. Woodsmoke haze lingered around the pyramid top, trapping the orange light of the setting sun and the flicker of campfires and mingling with the dust. Altina had long since stopped sneezing. Her throat felt caked with mud, and she tasted it in everything, felt bits of sand grit in her teeth when she ate her morning porridge and bit into the hand-molded rice cakes that were her dinner. A thousand voices made a low murmur in the background, like a storm wind, joined by the slithering scrape of a blade being sharpened. The commanders for each troop waited outside the flap and snapped to attention when she appeared, fists over their hearts. Lehran was with them. He spoke to the leader of her guard, one of the elder knights by the name of Jessica, who bowed to him with her hands on the hilts of her long knives and left after nodding to Altina. Soan waited with his arms crossed and the light of a fire behind him, limning his bright hair with metallic highlights.
"We're too slow," he said when she entered the circle swept into the dirt before her tent. "They'll know we're marching before we're even halfway there."
"Yune will know anyway," Lehran said, stepping into the circle when she did. "She shares Ashera's prescience, so there's no use in stealth." Soan muttered something, and Lehran frowned. "The pickings won't be any better near her army, either. Didn't you learn any patience in Goldoa?"
Soan's voice was the deepest she'd ever heard; it reminded Altina of resting her head on her father's chest and hearing his laughter rumble deep within. "I spent as little time with Dheginsea as possible."
"I should have known. You're still in possession of all your limbs--"
"Why don't we get back to business." Altina emulated the lion king's posture, crossed her arms, and flicked her gaze to the others. The infantry commander shook his head. "If we go any faster we'll leave the bulk of our troops behind. We won't win any wars that way." Nor would they win a war with fifteen hundred men, though Lehran promised reinforcements from Serenes, and Soan told her the dragons would pick up the slack - you don't have to believe it, just watch. She didn't know how large Yune's force was, either; a thousand, the reports said - nothing major, just remnants of the cities up north, deserters, brigands even. Renegade laguz-- maybe. "Have our scouts reported in?"
The meeting was quick; the birds and lions said the grassland was clear to the river, and the wyvern scouts they sent to the river fork had returned to confirm their numbers. Soan ran north with his laguz to secure their next encampment, and Lehran stayed with Altina, bidding the others a peaceful night, then looking up to the sky with his face turned south.
"You are not usually present for command meetings," she said when the silence stretched more than a minute. "What's the occasion?"
Lehran blinked, lowered his head. "An apology."
Altina let her arms fall to her sides. Yellow light peeked beneath the canvas walls, warmer than the faint firelight; there were no torches planted beside her tent, and the nearest flame was several yards away. The sky was moonless. "Come inside."
He ducked inside, wings curving tightly around his arms, and Altina followed him, let the canvas flap snap down behind her with a brush of air. The hemp flooring sank beneath her feet almost like a rug. Each step summoned the scent of dust to join the residue of lamp oil on the air. A yellow flame burned in a plain glass lamp at the edge of a square table as wide as her arm was long on all sides, and two steps away was the narrow cot she called a bed, hardly wider than her shoulders, the sheets and blanket folded back in a neat triangle.
Lehran pulled his stool from beneath the table and placed it adjacent to her side of the table. "Soan says I should take this more seriously. The war, and Yune."
Altina pulled her chair out and adjusted the angle of her sword to sit down. The wood creaked. "I didn't think you took it lightly, exactly."
"But I've been flippant." Lehran watched the lamp flame flicker and his eyes reflected the the curl of its light. His wings stretched out, perhaps the length of his arm span, before he pulled them in again and the feathers slotted together. The high arches bent slightly forward, over his shoulders. "Yune has always surrendered without a fight before. I can't imagine her intentionally hurting anyone, and I have faith she will see the error of her ways if we have the chance to speak with her."
"Is this why you objected to bringing him along?" His chin snapped up. Altina lifted her shoulder in a shrug. "He rushes in before thinking-- right? I don't know him well, but I've heard laguz fight that way, that they lack discipline. Our wyvern captain objected to marching with them on those grounds."
"He isn't that bad." Lehran looked away. His hands folded on his knees, and his eyes gleamed a bright green, the only point of color in her brown and gray space. "He's more sensible than he used to be. He might even sit still for the negotiations."
She looked at the unpolished grain of the table under her hands. "Not Soan, then."
His shadow shifted. "No." Lehran leaned forward, pushed the lamp to the center of the table, and folded his arms on the tabletop. "Nor does it matter who. We all obey our nature, even if we do not know it."
Altina pulled her braid over her shoulder and picked the knot of her ribbon loose. She had only known Lehran in the recent years of her life, since attaining knighthood and passing muster for the holy guard; until then she saw him only from afar, and only when her family made the trip to the capitol, which was not often. What she knew of Ashera might be attributed to a book of children's tales. Dheginsea was a myth. Yet-- he was eminently suited to the goddess Altina knew: cool, logical, unwilling to compromise.
Perhaps it was ignorance that led her to make such a judgment. She'd only spoken to him once.
And-- perhaps the dragons were present not to overpower an army they already outnumbered, but to exert their psychic influence.
"Then we won't talk about it," Altina said. The braid unraveled between her fingers. It tried to tangle at the end, where the hair was dry and frizzed. "I have another question I hope you'll answer."
"Oh?"
"Where are you getting those roses? We haven't seen a bush since our first camp."
Ah. Lehran chuckled and withdrew his hands. He was watching her when she looked up to see what he was doing, his eyes lingering on the kinks of her hair still half-braided over her shoulder. When his gaze flicked up and met hers, he reached into the first layer of his robe, perhaps into a hidden pocket, and pulled a green stalk out. "A long time ago, my goddess taught me the art of making plants grow - specifically the food-generating variety." He twirled the stem, and she saw its blunt end was shaped like a dewdrop-- a bud, not a scar or a nub. "She encouraged me to rely on the natural cycles, of course, but if absolutely necessary, I may use galdrar to obtain food from a seed or a branch of the right type."
Altina watched it turn in his fingers. "I didn't know galdrar were so powerful."
"Most are not. My clan is ignorant of that particular spell."
"Is that why you're here?" Altina stilled the twisting stem between her thumb and forefinger, felt the heat of his hand very close to hers. "Because you know things nobody else does?"
Lehran lowered his lashes. They hid his gaze with their shadow, cast by the yellow flame of her lamp, and darkness pooled in his hair, in the hollow of his throat, and the line of his lips until they parted and he sang instead of answering her, his silky baritone acquiring a depth in the notes that raised goosebumps along her arms and legs. The light paled, or perhaps he gave off his own illumination; his skin glowed white again as it did in the sun while his lips shaped words Altina couldn't understand, in tones she didn't recognize even from hearing the old tongue spoken so often in spells and prayers at the cathedral.
The green bud stretched, grew, and velvety yellow brightened where the green sepals at the bottom split and parted, becoming slim, young petals-- then ruffling and spreading out like wings to make his kerria rose. Altina felt her lips part and watched the filaments at the center curl inward.
He stood up and Altina started back, straightening, and realized his song had ended. "I-- I've never seen--"
Lehran leaned over, and she felt his fingers comb into her hair. "Another legend for the storybooks, I suppose."
Altina waited to feel him twist it into place, step back, and she pushed her chair back to stand and meet him on her feet. "I--" Her neck felt hot beneath her collar; her face began to heat as well, and she jerked her gaze sideways, away from the shine of his eyes. "I fed them to--"
He laughed. She felt the warmth of his breath on her throat, felt him take one of her hands and press it between both of his. They were warm, slender, soft. "It's all right, my lady." His hair slid around his arms and brushed her fingers when he bent his head. "They're only flowers."
She took a deep breath and gathered the courage to look at him. They weren't just flowers. It didn't matter that their genesis was a bush growing along a nameless river in the south; his voice brought them life from death. Didn't he realize what a blessing that was? Men would kill for less. Her own mother prayed and wished for that very gift every spring in the family chapel where their ancestors were buried, many recently and before their time.
Altina wanted to reach up and feel the petals, but kept her hand at her side and curled her fingers around his. Her touch would rob it of time. It would wilt faster, brown, dry, and find a place in her log book pressed as neatly as she could manage, though it would never be as beautiful. "She'll listen to you," Altina said. She squeezed his hand. "I'll make sure you have time to speak with her. In fact, I'll take you myself. No harm will come to you in my care, I promise - nor will war, if I can stop it."
Lehran's smile was slight, more a shadow, and his fingers smoothed the back of her hand. "Thank you."
..............................................................
Sooooo... this didn't really go where I wanted it to go. It was supposed to involve a kiss, dangit, but obviously I messed that up. Instead, it's a getting-to-know-you installment, and I'm not sure how I feel about that.
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