A guard captain in these rain-sodden hinterlands ought not expect chivalry. We are in employ of the Order, not of it. Our pay does not cover trite courtesies to the likes of you.
This guy looks like someone I'd laugh at most days.
The Zeirchele River was known for its raw power; fed by the snow and rain from the Algost mountains, the tallest and most weather-beaten peaks in Ivalice, the river was too wild for water transport. Almost its entire length was riddled with rapids, creating a near impossible border to cross; there were only a handful of passable fords.
The river was one of two that served as natural defenses for Fort Besselat. From Mount Germinas to the east came the Dorvauldar—though a calmer river, it made up its difference in size, a wide, deep river that had once fed Lake Poescas, but now traveled uninterrupted across Zeltennia and Limberry, dividing them in twain, before reaching the sluices at Besselat and draining into the Dorvauldar Marsh. To reach the isolated Besselat, you must cross the well-guarded dam to the east, or cross the Zeirchele to the west.
While most came to Besselat via the Bethla Causeway, which crossed the river directly at the fortress, the group had agreed that Delita could not dare show himself there with the princess. The causeway, a broad stone bridge that passed the fortress on its southern side, was a taxed crossing. While King Denamda IV had instituted the tax under the pretenses of keeping Besselat's upkeep, it was largely a defensive measure – inspections were commonplace. Even with the fortress likely being Delita's goal, Duke Goltanna could not accept the princess into Besselat publicly without announcing himself as party to the plot. More likely instead that he would travel north to the falls and Germonique's Crossing.
The Algost Mountains formed a shelf where the highlands ended. During the dry season, at the river's calmest, there was a fordable pass which some enterprising merchant or cutthroat had found in a century past and linked with a simple bridge of rope and wood. Lesalian nobility had men come and fix it annually and kept it tax free, not out of largesse but to provide a route for their own to ferry contraband. It was patrolled, but only lightly. At some point, its nature as a way around the official crossing had left it named for history's most reviled traitor, but its location was something of an open secret. He'd have to bring the princess there, but once across, he might well be into the arms of the Black Lion and lost to them.
Technically the foot of the mountain range, travel was slowed for the group as they trudged through wood and glen and riverbed north to the falls. Boco time and again would snort with impatience, led along by Alicia to stay with the group. Chichiri, for her part, was more content to follow Lavian, ferrying their packs and gear. Agrias was more in the male chocobo's camp, honestly. Every muscle in her arms tightened, and her hand kept finding the pommel of her sword and then releasing it. Days of travel, and now they were sprinters approaching the ribbon-line, and they may yet have lost the race.
The mercenaries, though, seem unconcerned. Since leaving Araguay Wood, Ladd's usefulness as a guide had begun to fall away, and he now hung back, walking in a loping, casual gait that suggested either surrender to the delays that had kept them from reaching the falls sooner, or perhaps merely apathy in the day's outcome. And Gaffgarion walked alongside her without giving her a moment's notice, eyes slightly narrowed, clearly thinking about something. She didn't like his expression.
And then there was the boy.
Ramza Lugria wore a pained expression every time she glanced over to where he walked alongside Alicia. He stumbled at least twice, even, because he often marched with his eyes pinched closed. Whoever this Delita truly was, clearly the boy dreaded the confrontation. It was a far cry from the young man who had demanded he be taken along on this quest against his master's objections. At one point during a minutes-long break to rest and recollect breath, he had pulled a blade of grass from the ground and had merely stared at it before flicking it into the river, where it had spun in circles before being swallowed.
The rise grew steeper; the falls were ahead. She let her hand stay this time at her sword's hilt and increased the pace of her march. Boco ruffled his feathers. Lavian spit out the jerky that she had been chewing.
A hawk somewhere in the sky cried out, and Ramza's eyes opened and he began to jog.
The sudden movement caused Agrias to turn and find that at some point Gaffgarion had gotten ahead of her—ahead of all of them—and was taking point, vanishing into the trees. She nodded Alicia ahead to follow him, and she handed her reins to Lavian before sprinting to catch up with the older man. Boco was loosed, and he flapped twice and then started following as well. Wild chocobo or not, his previous master had trained him well.
The woods enveloped them into the dark, and then broke away of a sudden, and they were at the falls. The roar of the falling water seemed to erupt from nowhere. She couldn't see anything around the bend of the path and the cliffside. But she heard shouting. Ramza rushed ahead of her. She drew her sword.
***
Ramza vaulted over a boulder and turned to scale the last of the climb. Something had plagued his thoughts the last half-day that he could not name—in addition to all that he could—and when Gaffgarion had decided to lead of his own accord, he had understood at least as far as something was terribly, terribly wrong with this situation. When he reached Germonique's Crossing at last, he yet still was unprepared for what he saw.
The crossing amounted to two cliffs at about the height of a village church bell above the water, with a single-file rope bridge spanning the width of the falling water. The water fell unevenly—there were many crags and jutting rocks splitting the stream that dry seasons had saved from being worn away. On their side of the crossing, Gaffgarion and Alicia were two-thirds of the way up the hill to the crossing, their swords drawn. On the other...
“Princess!” Agrias was at his side, Lavian and Ladd both catching up from where they'd tied Chichiri to a tree at the bottom of the cliff. And there Ovelia indeed was, on the rope bridge, with Delita.
His old friend was dressed in a red tunic and golden armor, and the sun glared off his shoulders so brightly that Ramza could not see his face. He had his sword drawn as well, but not at the princess or even Gaffgarion, but instead at the five knights who faced against him on the crossing's opposite side, bearing weapons of their own. They stood astride corpses of their own, and Delita's sword was already red. They were hungry-looking knights who, despite standing on the Limberry side of the crossing, wore the standard of the Order of the Northern Sky.
“Stand aside, ser!” The knight's leader pointed at Delita with his blade. “You are defeated! Surrender the princess, and no more blood must needs be spilt!”
Ramza's friend, his brother, the man he'd betrayed, began to laugh. It was an ugly laugh, high and mad, that reminded him of Ziekden. “Do you so enjoy the taste of lies? Your orders are to see the princess dead! And once I've watched you feed the falls her blood, I'm to believe you'd let me live, a witness to your crime?”
“What foolishness is this? We came to save the princess, not to kill her! What could we possibly gain by Lady Ovelia's death? We wish only to see her freed from the Black Lion's claws!” Contrary to his words, he took a step forward, towards the bridge. Delita's sword lanced forward, and something exploded beside the knight, sending him falling back to his own troops. The bridge rocked back and forth dangerously, and Ovelia clung to Delita to halt herself from falling into the rapids.
“Your highness!” Agrias roared, and this time she was heard. Ovelia did not release Delita as she turned, and her eyes widened to see her knight had arrived.
“Agrias!” She reached out with one arm, as though she could pull the Lionsguard up with the strength of her heart. The leader of the knights, however, saw their arrival and spit.
“Hmm. It seems we are no longer alone. Gaffgarion! Kill them all!”
Ramza's eyes widened, and he turned, but it was too late, as he watched Gaffgarion kick Alicia in the small of her back, sending her tumbling off the cliff into the water below.
***
Agrias moved to scale the cliff, but Gaffgarion's sword began to glow with the powers of his sword arts. Despite everything, they were at temporary stalemate. She raised her sword. “You would now betray us!?” Less from surprise than a hope to buy time. Lavian was somewhere behind her, but Gaffgarion's man was at her side, and they were outnumbered three, maybe four to one.
Despite accusing the older man, her eyes were on Ramza.
“Betray you? You have a viper's tongue, milady.” He was laughing, that disgustingly damp moustache of his trembling as his helmet shaded his eyes from view. “I betray no one. I am in the Order's employ, and they are of it. My task was to see the princess safely abducted. And theirs, to see the one responsible silenced.”
She took a step forward slowly, her blade off to one side, praying he saw it as emotion rather than tactics. “You mean to say the kidnapping was a ruse?” One of her eyes kept flitting to the cliffside, in hopes of spying Alicia. The fall might not have been fatal.
“The princess is an obstacle to the throne. So long as she lives, the threat remains that someone could assert her claim above Prince Orinus's. Two heirs are one too many!” There was a whimpering sound from the bridge. It was then that Agrias resolved: there would be no justice here—she would murder him.
The man in gold, the kidnapper, called back to them from the bridge without even turning. “If her death is certain, then let it least not be in vain. Kill her if you must, but let it be held she was taken by Goltanna's men. Do that, and the stroke that fells a problem princess at once brings down a rival Lion. That was no doubt Larg's plan all along... Or was it his? Such a plot has more the feel of Dycedarg's thinking. Would you not agree, Ramza?”
Ramza stood halfway up the rise, between Agrias and Gaffgarion. She could not see his face.
“That one has the right of it, Ramza. Come, let us earn our pay!”
