Chapter 122: Volume 3 - CH 4.4

Viola very nearly clucked her tongue, stung anew by the brigadier’s insistent presence.

The margrave himself had deemed this dame a wildcard, a worry the Zaharte captain, too, came to share. Indeed, Felicia’s plight perhaps struck a mite too close to home for Viola: Theodor was her constant companion, a brother for whom she brooked no replacement… but were he to turn traitor as Rolf the renegade had, what would become of her own heart? Her own conduct? The captain could scarce imagine, and that was precisely why she saw in the brigadier a bomb waiting to blow at the slightest spark.

Siren-bells were now blaring in her head, but to stay the dame from sniffing out any foulness afoot, Viola kept her tense visage turned away from the doorway.

“His name sounds a secret upon your lips,” Felicia remarked, walking slowly in. “Why?”

“W-Why? Well, he’s er, he’s… he’s been sighted, Brigadier—on the other side, I fear,” Theodor relented, stammering as he saw to the side his sister racing through a thousand thoughts. Something must be done about this dame. But what? Viola was yet concerned that in Felicia there burnt some secret fire, a yearning to break her Londosian bonds and join her brother in his betrayal.

Such must not come to pass. This sister of Rolf—she must be caged off. Far from the battlefield. Far from her brother.

“Then… then pray let me see him, if he’s there, as you say,” Felicia earnestly entreated. “He’ll lend ear to me. I know he will.”

An amicable reconciliation? Through discourse? Damned words upon the Östbergs’ ears. They rather desired Rolf Buckmann’s very death—nay, they needed it.

“His Excellency said it himself ereyesterday, did he not?” Viola reminded the dame, turning at last to meet her ruby eyes. “I’m afraid parleying is off the table, Brigadier.”

Felicia glanced about the great hall. “And where might he be, the lord?”

“He’s awayed to safety,” answered Viola, “but not before trusting all command to me.”

At once, Felicia’s gaze flashed with urgency. “Th-then allow me in the next battle! I’ll find my brother, for certain! And persuade his surrender! He’ll heed me! He will!”

What ill.

Viola veritably grinded her teeth, if only in her heart. Parleying was impossible, a truth aired with all clarity, and still this foe-sister insisted upon the contrary. More and more she seemed steeped in self-deception, a damsel in denial, coursed away from all common sense.

“Brigadier,” Viola began firmly. “That brother of yours has sore-scorned both Crown and kinsmen, choosing instead to walk the treacher’s way—for why we can never know. And in bringing to bear the full brunt of his fearsome prowess has he made culled and cornered curs of the once-proud Fiefguard. Who with right mind, then, should reckon he surrender when such a storm it is he rides against us?”

Strained silence was Felicia’s only answer. Her gaze was turned away. What emotion moiled in them was beyond the present ken of the Östbergs.

“Brigadier?” pressed Viola, perturbed by the quietude.

After a stifling moment, “…If he’ll not surrender, then I will still that storm of his… and leash him back with all limbs bound, if need be.”

Low was her voice. Uncharacteristically so. Freshly apparent to the Östbergs’ eyes was something… dark, deep within the depths of the dame. A shade in the shadows, roused wroth by some word uttered in the exchange just now. But which word, which phrase exactly, Viola knew not.

There was no mistaking it, then. Fraught as a field of thorns, this Felicia, a thought the Östberg sister was reminded of anew.

“You look to unleash a storm of your own, Brigadier. But even an errant breeze can dare to decide this delicate battle,” said Viola. “The whole of Ström hangs by a thread. Much succour you’ll serve by but sitting still. And I beseech that you do.”

“I’ll not be a burden. Not in battle, not in aught,” Felicia resisted. “I mean only to meet my brother.”

This dame was having none of it. Not of reason, of restraint. Such stubbornness seemed to have pushed the Zaharte captain over some cliff, for her next utterance, while quiet, grated with annoyance:

“…If words shall still you not, then perhaps the lock and chain might.”

“You fancy yourself a keymaster like the margrave, Captain?” Felicia snapped back, undeterred. “Martial command was what’s trusted to you, not provincial rule. So unless you mean to wield the Excellency’s sceptre behind his back, I will do as I please.”

Now was Viola herself strained with silence. And indeed the whole of the great hall’s air. Theodor stood petrified, sweat shining fresh upon his forehead. Little need be said as to what havock his sister could wreak, given enough… persuasion. But aface her was no less than a dame brigadier of the Order, a champion of matching mettle. Such power and authority it was that invested these two, yet they seemed more keen to bicker like irritable babes than battle the foes now affrighting the fief-burgh.

For her part, the Östberg sister was no less urged by the same imperative. The grand plan was nearly in play, the pieces all set to pounce. But barring their way: this mulish maiden of the Order. Not more than twenty winters has she lived, and already was she proving more a handful than hot iron.

Stilling her own storm within her bosom, Viola yielded a deep breath and broached the most pressing matter.

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“…Then allow me this, Brigadier: I trust you’ve not the same mind as Rolf Buckmann’s, yes? To fly the same flag as his? To curse the good name of Londosius, all that you might stand again by your brother’s side?”

“Do you take me for some fawning pup?” Felicia asked back, slightly narrowing her eyes. “My bumbling brother’s the one at fault here. Sisterly duty demands not that I echo his mistakes, but that I put them to rights.”

Viola remained quiet against the cutting answer, calming herself and contemplating in the meanwhile. So bull-like a brigadier would ill-brook a ban from the battlefield. Indeed, force her away and she would force herself back in all the more doggedly, and there destroy all their dearest efforts.

No choice, then. Bring her in, why not? Let her drink deep the battle-air to her heart’s content—but from the far back, where would never be found any sight of Rolf Buckmann. Such was Viola’s new reasoning, which she put to task at once.

“…Very well, then,” she relented, rising out of her thoughts. “The battle moves to the concentration camp. There shall we muster defences against the enemy’s forthcoming advance. You have my permission to participate, but not at the frontlines—the rearguard is your place and only place. Is that clear, Brigadier?”

“‘Tis indeed,” answered Felicia. “My thanks, Captain.” Bowing quickly, she turned heel and headed to the corridor. The Östbergs watched on with nary a word, but then found the brigadier stopping asudden under the doorway. To them she then turned her face, and with a sidelong look, gave them their warning: “Worry not. I’ll churn up no trouble of my own… but for any shadows you send to haunt my steps.”

“…The thought never crossed my mind.”

Verily, for by now, Viola sooner fancied snuffing out the dame altogether than babysitting her from afar. But this Felicia purportedly shared intimate rapport with the Lady Valenius, and was herself set to be the next head of House Buckmann; though her brother’s betrayal might usher in some foulness to her family, Felicia’s was an ire too ill to earn yet.

A tightrope it was that the Östbergs were balanced on. Their dreams, their hopes, all laid at the far end; not now could they afford to fall off, nor invite any sparks that might ignite their precarious purchase. And though Felicia was proving the fire-wind of their fears, not by their hand could she be hushed or hewn. Seeing the brigadier disappear into the corridor, they found themselves begrudgingly content with having leashed her to some lonely corner of the battlefield.

♰

A muffled thud sounded—the shutting of the manor’s main entrance, signalling the brigadier’s full absence. Viola sighed audibly. To his tired sister did Theodor then speak.

“Well. A pleasant little princess, wasn’t she?”

“Pain applauds that ‘pleasantness’ of hers,” Viola hissed.

“I’d say, you had the right of it, though: that Rolf Buckmann bloke doesn’t seem the sort to surrender,” Theodor remarked, earning a nod from his sister.

Dealing with the dame as they did was far from ideal, but better to nip a risk at the bud than after its bloom. Such was the siblings’ reasoning.

Rolf Buckmann—it was his head on a pike they wanted, not his surrender. But that was fine and well, for just as Theodor had concluded, almost certainly would the ungraced traitor not be surrendering any time soon, even when so sued by his very own sister.

Though suppose such a meeting was the hand dealt, one precipitating a stalemate, for certain. Felicia, in all her magicked mightiness, would bring her brother to heel, just as promised. Hardly the unsought scenario, in fact, as the feat will have been performed under Viola’s command, and hence would the Zaharte name earn yet another lustre. Indeed, more and more the situation sounded less fraught than first espied.

“But I admit, the thought of the brigadier jumping to her brother’s ship has me shivering in my boots a little. Even if she seemed unwilling,” Theodor continued.

“Then she’ll burn along with that precious ship of hers. A fitting pyre for a perfidious witch,” Viola remarked coldly. “Justice abets our banner; none shall bat an eye should we lay the torch.”

Yet no torch should be needed; that the brigadier would follow her brother was a fool’s fancy. ‘My bumbling brother’s the one at fault here’ were her own words, and in Viola’s ears, they had nary a note of deception in them. Never, then, should she so much as stain a standard of Londosius—not according to the Zaharte captain’s keen ken, anyway.

“Preferable she never meets her brother, all told. Though if meet they do, he’ll not give in—not even to his own sister. And if she does her ‘sisterly duty’, then all the better: Rolf Buckmann shall be brought before us, with Zaharte claiming the catch. But if our brigadier joins her brother, then it’s the shared grave that awaits them,” Viola explained at length. “All cases covered—our way is open, Theodor.”

“Well… there is one you left out,” said her brother. “The case of the brother vanquishing his sister.”

Quite the fair point.

Rolf was reckoned to be feeble and fangless in battle. Yet what flood was it that he single-handedly dammed and diverted into flight? Why, one by the twin names of Ulrik and Sigmund. Could the Dame Brigadier Felicia Buckmann bring a mightier challenge? Perhaps not. Perhaps she would be undone by the blade of her own bloodkin.

And if so, it would be with the sibling spears of the Östbergs that Rolf would next vie.

“Why, Theodor,” Viola cooed, curling up her lips. “Is that not the best case of them all?”

Hers was a moon of a smile, crescent and crimson-rouged, as though she had found the next prey for her feast.

And contrary to the increasing rays of the morning, a great curtain was now closing upon this battle for Arbel. A bloodfest of a fray, muddied in the myriad motives of its contenders.

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