10 Years Before Plegian War II

The seagulls were the only living things who didn't notice the shift in the atmosphere that day.

They wheeled around overhead, calling out to the people on the harbour. Usually, they would make tourists smile as they arrived and the locals think wistfully of the home they were leaving as they went. But lately there were fewer ships coming in and going out, and those who did stand on the harbour scowled at the birds when they became too loud to bear.

Especially the soldiers.

They stood next to the jetties, examining the lines of people waiting to board the ships or looking inside the boxes of cargo that were coming off them. The citizens of the little port town hoping to be passengers stood in neat rows, almost silent in the presence of the swords and axes that dangled from the soldiers' hips. Some of the men were on horseback, riding up and down the docks. More were on the high walls behind them that surrounded the rest of the town.

That was the way one of the passengers was facing — towards the walls she was leaving behind. She was a young and beautiful woman, her blonde hair whipping around her face in the sea breeze and obscuring her fearful eyes.

She had never left her home town before. That was why she'd turned around, for one last glimpse of all she had ever known. Then the mounted soldiers on the walls had caught her gaze, and she had been unable to stop looking.

They were not wearing the usual brown uniform of the town's patrol but were instead dressed in bright red like flecks of blood against the horizon. It was the same uniform that the soldiers by the ships were wearing. Soldiers who had not been there the day before.

She was afraid that the rumours were true. She had been hearing them all week, but no one had produced any evidence to prove them. They'd said Walhart had finally overthrown King Marcus and was sweeping through Valm, defeating those who dared to stay loyal to their dead king.

Last night she'd heard a commotion from somewhere else in town, and she had tiptoed down to the chapel and prayed. This morning, the rumours had said that Walhart's men had come in the night and Valm Harbour had surrendered to them.

That worried the young woman. She'd heard all sorts of things about the kind of man Walhart was. Peace was important to her faith, but she did not think that peace was a concept that existed in his mind. To think of him ruling Valm sent a shiver down her spine.

"Priestess Pheros!"

The young woman startled and turned around. Their line of travellers had started to board the ship, and her companions were moving away from her.

Priestess Lilah was looking over her shoulder, beckoning. "Come!"

Disgruntled murmurs rose behind Pheros. She was holding up the queue.

She dashed forwards, her face hot, and kept her eyes on the ground when she reached her colleagues. She did not want to see the looks of spiteful amusement on their faces. "Thank you, Priestess Lilah."

The queue shuffled up some more, and then it was the turn of their party to be inspected by the soldiers. First Hierarch Briathos, their superior. Then the next in the hierarchy: Priest Maro, Priest Geoffroi, and Priestess Hosannah. Each were old enough to be her parents, but they did not have a nurturing bone in their bodies.

She was not fit to be a priestess, they always said. She was too frightened when she should be brave, and too fiery when she should be silent. She was supposed to be celibate, but she turned the heads of everyone in the town. They called her a slut and a whore. The fact that she was celibate seemed not to matter.

She couldn't get anything right.

She prayed to Naga that the soldiers would find something in their possessions that they did not like, something that suggested they were still loyal to King Marcus. To her disappointment, each of them were waved on.

Then it was Lilah's turn to have her bags searched. One soldier looked through them on his own, while a second examined her face. When he was satisfied, he moved his gaze to Pheros.

Her heart seized. She had never seen a real soldier this close before, apart from the occasional member of the wall patrol. He had a long scar running down his cheek, and his mouth was set without expression. But his eyes were filled with ice.

Pheros began to shake. Please, Naga, don't let him arrest me. I do not even know who is in charge of Valm, let alone who to support.

The first soldier stepped away from Lilah and gestured towards the plank that would lead them on board the ship. "All right."

Lilah strode up the plank as if she was thoroughly acquainted with boats and the sea. As if she was not terrified of leaving home and living on the ocean for a while.

She probably wasn't.

Pheros took a deep breath and stepped forward to be inspected. The first soldier pulled her bags away from her shoulders and yanked them open. He pawed through her belongings. The second soldier continued to stare at her.

Apprehension rose in her stomach. She was terrified that they would find something in her bag that she did not want them to, even though she had nothing to hide. Geoffroi said she tried so hard to be a goody-two-shoes she could make sugar feel sick, but she wasn't good on the inside.

He was probably right. She did try to be good, but some nights she dreamed of her three tormentors dying, and she called those good dreams. Last night she had dreamed about pushing them off the side of the ship and watching them drown. Naga would not approve.

Finally, when her legs were shaking so much that she thought her knees would knock together, the soldier stepped back and waved her on.

She lunged forwards, eager to get away from them. But she hesitated at the bottom of the plank. The shallow waves of the sea lapped beneath it.

"Priestess Pheros!" Lilah came into view on the deck and leaned over the railings, her pink ponytail streaming out behind her. "You need to hurry! The others are growing impatient!"

That gave Pheros enough courage to board the ship. She wanted to avoid being humiliated in her first moments on the vessel. She had been looking forward to the pilgrimage so much.

She reached the deck and stopped again, glancing around for her companions. The vessel had seemed gigantic from below, but it looked even larger now that she was standing on it. The deck alone was possibly the size of half a street. It was covered in an array of masts, rigging, hatches, and...cannons?

She stared at them in alarm.

"Pheros!" Priestess Hosannah growled.

Pheros whirled to the side and saw them all standing in a cluster by the opposite set of rails. Her stomach sank. Maro and Geoffroi were already laughing at her.

She lowered her head and scurried over.

"What were you doing?" Hosannah asked. "Walking the plank as if it were a tightrope?"

"I saw her face when the soldiers were checking her over," Geoffroi said. "She looked like she was about to wet herself."

"How old are you now, Pheros?" Maro asked. When she didn't answer, he elbowed her in the ribs. Hard. "Well?"

She tried not to lift a hand to where the sharp point of his bone had been; tried not to think about the bruise that would be there tomorrow. There were so many bruises. "Almost one-and-twenty."

"A little old to be wetting yourself, don't you think?"

"I think she would have died of fright before she would have wet herself." Hosannah examined her nails with a frown.

Geoffroi and Maro hooted with laughter.

"What will she do if they ever draw their weapons near her?" Maro asked.

"Have a heart attack!"

Pheros kept her eyes on the floor. She was so hot that she thought she might explode.

Lilah linked their arms, but she said nothing. She had been the youngest until Pheros had arrived a few years ago, and Pheros often wondered if she was secretly glad that the attentions of her colleagues had moved to a new scapegoat.

"Enough," Hierarch Briathos said wearily. The laughter quietened down. "We should put our belongings below deck."

***

Pheros didn't like it below deck. It was too cramped, too dark, and too difficult to find any privacy. It also smelled of sick. No more than five minutes after the ship had started moving, she had to go back up on deck to be sick herself. She hoped that Naga wouldn't mind the small pollution of the sea.

They had been advised to stay down below for now because the winds were picking up, but Pheros liked to be where everyone else was not. Besides, Maro and Geoffroi would tease her about her seasickness if she went back. So she stayed by the railings.

She had to hold them so tightly that her knuckles turned white, and when she looked at the waves her heart galloped. She looked at Valm Harbour instead, waiting for it to fade into the distance.

She had never felt so terrified and so excited at once. For all her short time as a priestess, she had longed to hear Exalt Emmeryn speak more than anything else in the world. The rumours of the hostility her people had once held against her were gone, and they had been replaced with enthusiasm about her belief in peace and her powerful words. She got that power from her father, they said, although unlike him she used it for good.

Pheros had not known much about the history of Ylisse until she had become a priestess, but now she knew more than any of her holy brothers or sisters. What Exalt Loys had done was unspeakable. His actions, and the fallout that they had created, was one of the reasons why she feared Walhart so much.

But Exalt Emmeryn had fixed her people, and though she had only been reigning for five years the change in Ylisse was enormous. She was Pheros' greatest idol and her greatest source of envy. The exalt was only fifteen, but she held the competence to rule an entire nation. And she held the gift to make the people who had once scorned her now show her respect.

Pheros wished that she had that gift. She was risking her life in the sea winds just to get away from her tormentors, and she was sure Exalt Emmeryn would never do that.

A flash of red and silver caught her eye, and she focused on Valm Harbour again. It was far enough for her to see the whole town on the hill that rose beyond the port walls. It looked small enough to be crushed under the heel of a boot, and to look the only place she had ever known in such a vulnerable light brought her heart to her mouth.

The silver grew, marching down the road. Silver ants. It took her a moment to realise that they were silver ants on horses.

They were men in armour.

Standards were beginning to fly, staining the horizon red like the uniform of the new soldiers. They were not the standards of King Marcus.

What she had been afraid to believe all morning was being presented before her.

Walhart was the ruler of Valm.