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Seventeen years since Lambert and Rodrigue cried victory at the northernmost border and the Srengi tribes haven’t so much as been able to sit in the same mud hut together without reaching for their axes. With all that interminable, petty squabbling, an incursion to reclaim a former mining quarry should have been a guaranteed victory, over by teatime and home for dinner.
Gautier cavalry, backed by Fraldarius infantry and spirited on by a good harvest, were to come out of the fight with little more than grazed knees and whatever keepsakes they’d scavenged from the bodies of their fallen enemy.
But who knew that Barbarians could pull together in a crisis. The unification of Fódlan had put the Chieftains on edge, and somehow they’d manage to cast aside their differences to collectively protect their desolate backwater. Now they’re all brothers in arms raising their spears together against the nascent New Kingdom. Their weapons may be primitive, but amassed as a hoard they are relentless.
Sylvain’s a week deep into this mess and already too many Kingdom soldiers are down. Those who aren’t dead are in the make-shift infirmary along with Felix’s broken leg and his own simmering anxiety. It’s barely past daybreak but the riots have already started.
The flimsy cotton of the healer’s tent does little to stifle the cacophony of war. Sylvain’s calves are starting to cramp as he sits on a low stool, squashed between Felix’s cot and the cot of a Fraldarius archer who’s lost an eye. He balances a bowl of something tepid and beige on his lap, trying not to breathe in the smell.
Felix shifts on his cot, trying to leverage his body up using only his arms. He gets half way before his right elbow buckles and he slides back down, failing to mask his grunt of frustration.
Sylvain moves the bowl to the floor and leans forward to hoist Felix up by the armpits. In return, Felix gives Sylvain a motley expression of resentment and contempt, but grumbles a grudging thanks before saying, “I should be out there leading my men.”
“Leading your men,” Sylvain says, not meaning to laugh, “After all these years, you still take me by surprise.”
Felix’s expression sours from pissed to venomous. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Calm down,” Sylvain says, not at all mollifying. “You’ve misunderstood.”
“What exactly am I misunderstanding?” Felix says, glaring at him.
Sylvain stares straight back, unblinking. He takes this opportunity to consider Felix’s face. They’re not yet thirty and already crow’s feet are starting to fan out across his cheekbones. Shallow lines cut a scowl around his mouth. He’s taken to wearing his hair down to hide the patches of silver budding from his temples.
Despite time’s relentless march across Felix’s features, Sylvain stills sees what he’s always seen: that no matter how high Felix builds his walls, how hard he pushes back against his own happiness, or how caustic the words he spits out are, underneath it all is still the anxious little boy who wants to right the world and protect the people he loves.
Sylvain was being entirely sincere earlier—after all these years, Felix does still take him by surprise.
There are several paths he can walk down to fix this, and he decides to take the one that leads to him giving away an unpolished piece of himself by way of an apology.
He softens his expression and says gently, “All I meant was that I’m happy for you. You’ve found meaning in your Dukehood. And you’ve grown into a better man than I could ever hope to be.”
He leans forward and lays a hand on top of Felix’s own. Smiling, he says, “You’ve made a home in what matters to you. Seeing you like this makes me happy.”
For an ephemeral moment Felix’s shield comes down. Sylvain doesn’t miss it—the shine of something deeper peeking through the cracks. But Felix blinks it away as quickly as it appears, turning his head and conceding the fight.
Sylvain’s younger self would have read into that; searched the tea leaves for a deeper meaning in Felix’s pensive scowl and cagy shoulders. Does this mean...wait, don’t say it. Meet me at Goddess Tower at sundown. He’d have brought a ring and everything.
“What, lamed and pathetic in a hospital bed?” Felix says.
But age and understanding finally caught up with Sylvain. Felix’s demeanour belongs not to a brooding pillow-book protagonist, but to a cannon with a severed fuse that’s been readied with gunpowder. All it would take is a single spark and everything in it’s path would be destroyed.
“Hush,” Sylvain says, letting go of Felix’s hand and picking up the bowl once more. It’s gone cold, but the smell is no less pungent. He gives it a tentative stir and cloaks his grimace with a practiced, genial smile.
“You should eat this,” Sylvain says.
Felix eyes the bowl with rightful suspicion. “No.”
Sylvain sighs. “Look at it this way—the sooner you get this down your throat, the sooner we’ll have you back on your feet, leading the charge and dodging the clubs being swung at your head.”
“Don’t patronise me," Felix sneers.
“I’m trying to help you, you prick.” Sylvan huffs, lifting a gloopy spoonful from the bowl and angling it towards Felix’s face. “For once in your life can you do as you’re told and eat your damn breakfast.”
His hand is not steady. A droplet of soup spills off and soaks into Felix’s bandages. It smells as sour as the look Felix gives him.
“Who on earth eats soup for breakfast,” Felix grouses, pulling away from the spoon.
Sylvain has done this once before, when an Albenian statesman and his entourage passed through Gautier to discuss tariff relief on winter crop prices. The noble had brought his young son along with him who was three moons shy of his third birthday, and Sylvain had thought it more fun to try and feed him porridge than to listen to a treaty on tax agreements.
But making a game of this would only piss Felix off further, so instead Sylvain looks at him imploringly and says, “Felix. Please.”
A beat passes between them before Felix’s pinched expression releases. He lets out a huff through his nose and his shoulders slacken. He looks deflated and miserable.
Sylvain gets it. Nobody likes to impose. But for Felix it’s more than that—it’s an affront on who he is as a person. Asking for help is no less than an admission of his failure as a soldier, a person and a friend. He is as terrified of being a burden as he is of letting people down.
Felix reaches a hand out.“Give me that,” he says. Sylvain hands him
the bowl.
Felix stirs the soup and then puts the spoon in his mouth. His lips pucker like he’s eaten a whole lemon. Somehow he manages to swallow. The spoon falls back into the bowl with a plop.
“Goddess above, what is this swill?” he says, flexing his jaw. His tongue sticks out of his mouth as he grimaces, making him look uncharacteristically childish. He passes the bowl back to Sylvain.
Sylvain, despite himself, chuckles.
“Is this funny to you?” Felix says.
Sylvain rests his chin on his palm, “A little.”
Felix opens his mouth, ready to sound off, but then a harrowing scream so violent and loud stops him in his tracks. They both still as they look towards the entrance of the tent.
A Gautier lancer is being carried in on a stretcher by two healers. Blood drips from her wounds and soaks into the ground beneath her. Her howls of agony only stop when one of the healers casts an anaesthetic spell that knocks her out cold.
A bitter gust of wind blows through the tent before a nurse manages to buckle down the door flap. It makes the cots and the bedpans rattle and leaves Sylvain feeling numb. He turns to check that Felix is alright, but Felix doesn’t seem to notice the chill.
No, it’s worse than that, Sylvain realises.
Felix is flushed and sweating. His eyes are glassy and unfocused. He reaches out and presses his palm to Felix’s forehead—his skin is hot to the touch.
Damnit. How did he not notice earlier?
“You have a fever,” Sylvain says, low and somber.
“No I don’t.”
“Yes, you do. I’m getting a healer for you.”
“I’ll be fine,” Felix replies, pulling away.
Sylvain lowers his hand onto the bed. “No, you won’t. Your leg is probably infected. It could go to the bone,” he makes to get up, but Felix grabs him by the wrist and pulls him back down.
“Don’t,” Felix hisses through gritted teeth. He meet’s Sylvain’s gaze once more, but this time it’s imploring instead of aggressive. His expression is tight. His eyes are wide. Fragments of that anxious little boy shining through his eyes. “Others need help more than I do.”
There you are, Sylvain thinks, Felix’s expression stealing a breath
from him.
“You could die.” Sylvain says quietly.
Felix lets go of Sylvain’s wrist and looks down at his thin wool blanket, “I can cope with dying.”
I can’t, Sylvain doesn’t say. Instead he says, “Maybe so. But what would your men do?”
Felix looks back up, exhausted and vulnerable. Sylvain wants to hug him—tell him everything is going to be ok.
Felix nods once, slowly, giving Sylvain permission to get help for him. Sylvain smiles in return, small and honest.
Outside the tent, the world has succumbed to a chaos that will linger on until there’s nothing left to give. This is not the battle to end all wars.
This one won’t even make it into the history books. It’s just another day in a chronicle of bloodshed—of young men slaughtering each other for no higher purpose than a flag and some barren earth, for reasons nobody wants to understand and even less to care about.
But Fraldarius supplies Gautier with iron and Gautier returns the favour with wheat, and if Felix and Sylvain give up on their duty then they give up on each other. That alone is reason to carry on.