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War is something for grown ups. For men with guns on battlefields in other countries, fighting another man in a different uniform, knee deep in mud and victory, side by side with your comrades in arms. Victory for England and the Allies, to fight back against the evil Huns.
Staring across the field of tents and fires and animals who should never be able to talk but can, Edmund contemplates the lessons he’s had to learn these last days few days.
Long, hard, painful lessons.
For the last ninety six hours, he’s had everything he believed torn down; the lies and the untruths about war and leadership shredded by well meaning but harsh teachers.
He’s learnt that everything he believed about war was formulated by men in large government buildings, spinning the information into the right tone and direction before he was barely able to walk.
Edmund read the books, saw the films, heard the wireless, brought into the mythos and the propaganda right from the beginning, and he thought it was right.
For a time, God forgive him, he even bought For King and Country, the young lad's magazine which promoted the glory of the battle field, and believed in it. He boasted that when he was older, he would go to war for King and Country, clobber the Hun, win the war, and be better than stupid Peter, so there!
He’s a little embarrassed about that now.
But Peter doesn’t hold it against his. Not anymore at least.
When Edmund was younger, he longed for the glory of holding the gun in his hand, commanding platoons of men to glory and to victory, and singing the National Anthem (God Save Our King!) standing in Berlin while the Hun perished around his men.
So he was a bit of an idealist. Most children are at eleven.
But he needed those ideas to cling to, to build up his framework of self in the image that the Government wanted a young boy to have. They didn’t want a weak little sympathetic boy who was gentle and liked books; they wanted a brave, loyal young soldier in the making, rough, tough, and ready.
Not that Edmund was walking in any other footsteps.
His father was a soldier.
He doesn’t remember a lot of his father, to be honest. Plenty of his mother, and his siblings, but his sole male role model in the house other than his brother has been curious absent – posted overseas, training, serving King and country for the greater good.
Back at home, Edmund’s brother overshadowed him from the very beginning in everything he ever did, from the classroom to the athletics field to the social world of dances and church. His sister is the youngest, so he couldn't pull her hair without a heavy brotherly hand on his shoulder, or a gentle motherly voice reprimanding him. Susan is, as his mother's friends put it, a gentle girl, destined to be some pretty actress, or something equally boring someday.
And there is Edmund. The middle child without a pedestal to aspire to stand upon. So he created his own, putting himself in the role of a glorious soldier, daydreaming whenever he got the opportunity about crushing a worthless Jerry beneath his man-sized boot.
And if the soldier happened to share similarities with his brother's face, well, he wasn't responsible. Every child dreams of crushing their competitors, and he was just a little bit more literal than most.
He brought the line about his duty, swallowed the ideology of old men who never set foot on the battlefield, and dreamed of his medals that would one day be the envy of his brother.
And suddenly, he's in a war. A real, honest to God war.
And the whole belief system comes crashing down. Edmund can hear the childhood fantasies come tumbling down like snow down a mountainside, crushing anything and everything in their path.
There might not be guns, and there might not be trenches and there certainly aren’t any Huns around, but it's still war. There's still his side, promoting Aslan and the other side, full of evil, lead by the White Witch.
Only, this isn't a fantasy, and he's not a man. He's not got years of experience behind him, and he really hasn't got the strength of conviction behind him. For King and Country is one thing; for Aslan and Narnia is quite another.
Well... That's not strictly true. He knows Aslan is right in what he tells them about the White Witch’s plans, and even he, Edmund, the little boy who betrayed his siblings for Turkish Delight, has seen the cruelty of the White Witch. She’s dangerous in a way that Edmund, at twelve, doesn’t really understand, but he senses it.
Peter does too, even if their sisters don’t.
Lucy and Susan are curious about what Edmund witnessed but they don’t understand the fear that Edmund endured locked in that cell. The worry, the shame, the guilt, the humiliation all coursing through his body for days on end.
He’s still feeling cold deep inside, even though Winter has almost entirely receded.
Edmund sighs, and the Lion's forgiveness rests heavy on his shoulders, pushing him down into reality - but he can't see a way out from this duty. He doesn’t want this at all. Not one little bit, but it doesn’t look like he can escape. So he must endure.
But it’s hard. He's not riding high on victories past, or surrounded by innumerable faceless men who he can send into battle without a care in the world.
Everything is bizarrely, unfairly real.
When Edmund is finally allowed to help plan the battle, he is uncomfortably aware that whatever he did, people would die; living, breathing creatures that he had spoken to, who had friends, families and futures, would die because of his decisions, or lack of them.
But that is the reality of war, and Edmund is slowly and painfully being taught it.
In the War Tent, he had picked up a wooden carving, and asked how many it represented. When he is told the answer of two hundred, he feels distinctly sick. Scattered across the table are twenty, thirty or more statues of various sizes and creatures, and the centaur, who has virtually appointed himself battle adviser, is just knocking them down like dominos.
Two hundred on the ridge, down. Four hundred on the plains, down. Another hundred in their air, fifty on the slope, fifty on the west flank, they all get knocked down.
This one, that one, half Edmund’s available units, this division, that group, they’re dropped into a bucket faster than Edmund can reassess his plans.
Too slow, the centaur says. Your soldiers are dead. You’ve lost. The war is over.
Gone.
And that’s a plan. And plans change. Plans go wrong. Things don’t adhere closely to the whims of men and beast when you throw swords and blood and revenge into the midst. But he is not able to throw it away, can’t give up before he starts even if he wants to. Desperately. He has to keep going, keep throwing out plans, having them destroyed, starting over as he tries to come up with a solution to save the most men and cause the most damage.
And Edmund must balance that, despite his age.
Every one of the animals outside the tent trusts him to lead them through this battle. He is Edmund, their king, and with his brother, Peter, he is expected to keep command and wield authority. He is expected to rationally and decisively choose who to lose, who to let die, how many he can predict he'd have left after each charge. He has to read battle reports, calculate the strength of Jadis's army, and choose to either spread his numbers out too thinly so they can't hold a line, or bunch them close together where, he thinks, they can die in the company of their comrades.
Edmund is eleven, yet he is expected to anticipate the actions of an enemy who has a hundred years on the throne of Narnia, and spent years before that crushing the uprisings against her with ever increasing skill, while he has two days of hasty training by creatures who have only the vaguest idea of how to fight this kind of war.
Now, Edmund is in charge of creatures who look up to him, who need him to be strong and knowledgeable, and he's still stuck between telling them they might as well give up and knowing that they can never do that because then Jadis would win and so would evil. Even the slightest chance of victory is worth pursuing, even though the death toll will be huge.
So he has to pick who will live, and who will die, and who he can afford to lose, and how long he can let his people be essentially sword sharpeners for the White Witch’s army.
Suddenly, being a leader had nothing to do with greatness, and a lot to do with having a heart of stone.
But Edmund can fool himself, tell himself that he’ll never see the battle himself because maps and diagrams and drawings are not people; they are not animals who call him king and want to kiss his hand.
It could be intoxicating because the level of respect, even though he’s a traitor, would be nothing if he remained at Jadis’s hand and ruled Narnia beside her, and no doubt if he’d stayed under the White Witch, he’d have stayed that way. But it wouldn’t have been real. He would not have been a King. He would have been a Puppet Prince, and he would have no idea about ruling anything except his own needs.
Jadis was the White Witch, someone who ate the Forbidden Fruit in order to gain knowledge despite the fact it would condemn her to a half life, and she ruled with an iron fist. And she ruled alone.
Whether that will continue will be decided in a few day’s time.
Frankly, Edmund is convinced that had he remained with her, as soon as his siblings were dead and confirmed as such, either he would have followed in short order, or she would have condemned him to a life in shackles – the court laughing stock, a boy who threw away a chance of rebellion and victory for nothing.
But it’s still not real. That he, Edmund, is to be crowned a king, that he has to be a leader not just in the battle tent…but on the field too.
It's not until he sees a faun enter his tent, carrying an arm-full of armour, that the reality that he would fight comes home.
The faun won't look him in the eye, and suddenly the traitor brand on his character blazes even though Aslan took it away. This is a make or break point, but he's only eleven, and right now, the break point is very tempting. He stands, arms and legs apart, as a creature he thought only real in story books fastens steel around his legs, the cold seeping through his forest green leggings. A helmet comes down on his head like an axe through the skull, but he hides the wince. His hurting head will be nothing in a few hours.
Edmund stands in front of the mirror, clad in armour and looks at his reflection. He’d hoped he would like a man, confident, and bold, ready for battle.
He looks like a child, frightened and unready for anything. That's not far off how he feels, anyway.
When Edmund first picks up the sword offered to him by a Dryad, he can barely lift it. Still, he thinks he might get used to it, as he waves it experimentally around, until he nearly lops off the head of a dwarf.
It’s not as easy as it looks – the sword is heavy, unwieldy in Edmund’s weak hand, and the blade almost blinds Edmund as it catches the sun on pristine steel.
Not that it’ll stay that way for long if Aslan and the trainers have their way.
Edmund does not look forward to that.
The forged steel, he finds as he runs his thumb down it, is as sharp as a needle, ready to cut through the thickest armour, the strongest shield, the most determined of enemies.
It’s a far cry from the fencing foil that Edmund is used to wielding, the flexible ‘blade’ capable really of only giving a sharp stripe to someone, and only if the fencing master isn’t looking.
But Edmund doesn’t understand the different, completely until he and his brother are taken for their first lesson in swordsmanship.
As he stands beside Peter on the training field, he thinks it will be like the fencing lessons of his school, repeating the same strokes over and over again, watching the master demonstrate the movement over and over again until everybody can reproduce it.
Fencing is an art form.
This is war.
It doesn’t hit him until the faun training him slams an axe down beside his head so close he could see every eyelash, and every sweat drop of his reflection in the blade. This isn't fake war, pretend war, pretend battle when you get marked for points and style, and where flourishes are important.
Edmund was good at flourishes because they didn’t require him to actually do anything to his opponent. That was a particular speciality of his – dancing around the point, rather than actually getting to down to fighting or the chance of being hit.
This is a fight where points don’t matter, and stabbing your enemy through the chest is the only way to win.
And there is no glory.
Oh, make no mistake, there's the illusion of glory. Most certainly, there is the illusion of glory. Sitting astride a beautiful white unicorn, Edmund sees Peter's armour glint in the sun, defiant of the White Witch, as he trains with a centaur. His face is determined, and his sword flashes like fire in the sun as he weaves and twists and strikes. It's a very classic picture. And it would seem honourable, if only he could forget that Peter is only fourteen, almost fifteen, and he is only eleven, almost twelve. They are children. And they will fight to the death for a cause they cannot begin to fathom.
Edmund sits in his tent, sweating and tired as he struggles to deal with what he learnt in the field behind the war pavilion. It’s a far cry from double Latin, prayer before dinner, and two hours of prep before bed.
Edmund pulls a hand down his face, and finds himself wishing for a beard to stroke. He's still years away from such a luxury though, years and years because right now, he is resolutely a child.
As a child, his choices shouldn't have a lasting effect - if an idea fails, it shouldn't matter. Nobody should care if he fluffs something up badly, or cocks up a test.
As a warrior king, who is expected to lead armies, and to be a pillar of strength for those who depend on him, his choices are the only thing standing between the White Witch and Victory. If he fails, if he makes a mistake, they die, and the White Witch rules across Narnia, and the places he has only just become aware of - Archenland, Colormen, and the lands beyond that, all these beautiful sounding nations, with potential and a future, will be encased in ice and die.
All because of him.
Well. Him and Peter. The last two Pevensie children standing, or so it feels.
Part of Edmund would like not to be, but it appears that this is something that was always destined to happen.
And now it’s happening.
Lucy and Susan are missing, and Edmund finds himself grateful for that. Aslan is also missing, and Edmund somehow remains convinced – perhaps misguidedly, but he hopes not – that his sisters are with the Lion, rather than the White Witch.
Or dead.
As much as Lucy complains that they all treat her like a child, and Susan flashes her eyes, and pulls the corners of her mouth down and says she's just as good as any boy, if not better - Edmund knows that war is no place for innocence and gentle people like Susan and Lucy. War is for people who hate, and who remember injustices and who don't believe in honour but retribution.
Susan would tell him that he’s wrong about that, but Edmund knows the truth.
Even though Aslan is telling him it's what must be done, he still can't help but see the bad side to the war from hell.
Edmund might have been forgiven by Aslan for removing the brand of the traitor on his own character, but he can't help but feel as though the Lion has left him to fall alone under the weight of expectation.
Outside, boots crunch on the scree, and Edmund sighs.
The High King.
Peter breezes past him over to his side of the tent, and Edmund adverts his eyes. Despite the initial welcome back into the fold, Edmund is well aware he has yet to earn the respect of his siblings, and the true forgiveness of his older brother is something he’s got a long way to go before he gets.
His betrayal still lingers over their brotherhood, a widening tear that Edmund has no idea how to repair, growing wider by the hour.
Quite frankly, the way this battle is shaping up, he might not earn Peter’s respect again before one or other of them dies from a sword to the gut. That's not a comforting thought.
Peter places his sword down on the bed, and begins the long, arduous task of unbuckling his armour. Neither of them speak. The armor comes off slowly, but the distance between them grows wider by the minute. Because as much as Peter could forgive him, and as much as Edmund would really rather like that forgiveness, he knows it's not possible.
Because regardless if they win or lose, if Narnia succumbs to the White Witch or the armies of Aslan rise up and defeat her hoards, Peter will be a hero.
He will remain a here – stories will be told, legends made, memories made of his bravery, his determination and strength, and whatever else history cares to add.
And Edmund will be a traitor.
Forever and always.
And that's a hard burden to bear, quite frankly, because he's got to live for the rest of his life knowing he sold out his siblings, and by proxy Narnia, as well, for sweeties. He did it out of jealousy, and selfishness. Not exactly the legacy Edmund thought he’d be leaving when he read For King and Country.
People will die. Because he was jealous. People will suffer loss of limbs, and deaths of comrades and unbearable cruelty because he was stupid, and jealous, and prideful.
It's been a long time since Edmund has felt this guilty. Not since he stole his sister’s locket and didn’t give it back for two weeks because he was angry that she’d told mother that he’d been mean to her.
Disproportionate, maybe, but Edmund has never claimed to be rational. Immature, mature, brave, cowardly and proud of it, immune to enticement and ridiculously easily led, all in an effort to shed expectations or buck them or avoid punishment.
But he's never had to choose between the battlefield and being a coward before.
Cowardice as a boy is ugly. Cowardice as a man is despicable. Cowardice as a king is both unthinkable and unforgivable.
Edmund is a boy. He must be a King.
Yesterday, Aslan spoke to him at length about exactly that. Edmund never got the impression of being forced, of being made to go into battle, and he has no doubt that Aslan could do that. It would be very easy to strong-arm one small boy into a suit of armour and give him a sword. But there is something more powerful than brute force. Edmund had been very aware that to refuse to soldier, to renege on his word to Aslan, would be to disappoint the Lion. To cause more disappointment would be quite possibly the worst thing Edmund could do.
Bar possibly joining the White Witch again.
Aslan's words of forgiveness press down on his shoulders again as Edmund watches Peter move around the tent, stripping off armour and weaponry to look like his brother again. Sweat has darkened wings onto Peter’s shirt, and Edmund bites his lip.
Edmund was forgiven, was granted absolution of his previous sins against the people he has somehow managed to gain rulership of, but Edmund understands that that forgiveness must be earned. Or repaid. It’s not free.
Peter's gaze burns through him from the other side of the tent, like a fire brand to the face.
Lucy's hug constricts his breathing, and Susan's soft hand to the cheek feels like a slap.
Edmund will have to endure to win neutrality in the eyes of his people. But he must exceed mere survival to win the respect and love of his family again.
He hopes very much that he will survive, knows that that that is unlikely, but hopes anyway.
A million miles away in another world, his father sleeps fitfully in a waterlogged trench, cradling his gun to his chest, and dreams of another war as his sons pick up swords to Fight the Good Fight.
Edmund’s father is fighting another war, in another world far, far away from this one that Edmund is preparing for, knee deep in stinking mud, shelling making the earth heave beneath his tired body, flares lighting up the night sky and ruining what little chance of rest there can be. It’s a nightmare that keeps repeating. It’s supposed to be the war to end all wars, but it’s been raging for over a year now and shows little sign of abatement.
But Edmund’s father is a British Captain, a leader in the trenches, and there is no higher authority for miles around.
The War is fought for a different king and a different country than the one Edmund has found himself in, but they’re not that different in the end.
Men against men, beast against beast, one power against another, and the victory prize labelled as Freedom.
All Edmund can think is that he would really like to see his father once more.
He could understand him somewhat now.
Captain to King.