Chapter Text
The Thursday before the White Heron Cup marked Bernadetta’s birthday. At her request, the Black Eagles kept the celebration simple by only singing a shortened version of the traditional birthday song and sharing a cake she helped bake.
Her attempt to celebrate the rest of her birthday in the comfort of her bedroom was cut short when Byleth announced that she had accepted a request from Viscount Hrym to help him stop a gang of roving bandits in the area. The request warned that some of them had already crossed the Airmid River into Leicester territory, and his soldiers needed help keeping order along the border towns due to their lack of resources.
“Wait…but I thought Lady Rhea said we didn’t have a mission this month because of the ball and everything!” Bernadetta complained.
“That is true,” said Byleth after erasing a diagram from the blackboard, “but we all need to continue to take exercises to keep our skills sharp.”
“Exercise, huh? I’m always up for a good exercise,” said Caspar, pounding his right fist into his left palm, “especially if it means stopping criminals!”
“Take it easy, Caspar,” said Dorothea. “Let’s wait for the Professor to explain our next move first before we get all excited.”
“We’ll need to move quickly if we’re to make it back in time for the White Heron Cup next Tuesday,” said Byleth. “The Knights of Seiros won’t be accompanying us for this quest, so I’ve been given permission to allow all of you to command your own squadrons. It’ll give you a chance to know what it’s like to give orders as well as follow them. Ultimately, I still want you all to follow my and Edelgard’s commands when we’re out in the field. Is that understood?”
A chorus of students calling out “Yes, Professor!” rang from the desks.
Byleth led her class to the barracks opposite the blacksmith, where hundreds of soldiers trained as they waited to be called on for their next mission outside the monastery. The quartermaster, a bulky, broad-shouldered man with lightly brushed brown hair, took stock of Byleth and her students and guided them toward a group of soldiers wearing the red and black armor of the Imperial army. There were other soldiers wearing the colors of the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus and Leicester Alliance, but the quartermaster explained that he could only authorize them to borrow the services of soldiers from the Empire and Church.
“These soldiers are a picky lot,” he said. “Apparently, they’ll only take orders from ya if they know yer from their homeland. O’ course, if yer lookin’ to relocate…”
Byleth and Edelgard shook their heads, and the quartermaster’s line of thought ended there.
The Black Eagles spent some time meeting with the soldiers and assessing their strengths and weaknesses and how they would complement their preferred fighting styles. Edelgard called a group of armor-clad axe soldiers to her side, a few of whom appeared to recognize her on sight and bowed before her. Bernadetta, who wanted to make sure no enemies got near her when she attacked from a safe space with her arrows, did the same. Monica, after some deliberation, settled on a group of swordsmen to support her. None of them carried shields like she did, so Monica assumed they were confident or skilled enough to survive a battle without one.
When the Eagles had assembled their teams, they watched as Lorenz and Lysithea approached Byleth with their own teams of soldiers following closely behind them – Lorenz was accompanied by a half-dozen lance-wielding cavaliers, and Lysithea with a group of mages wielding various magical implements.
“Good day to you, Professor,” said Lorenz, bowing toward her. “Shall we be off?”
“I’m coming along, too,” said Lysithea, stepping ahead of Lorenz and his retinue so Byleth and her students would notice her. Lorenz’s mounted soldiers scoffed, displeased by Lysithea’s sudden intrusion.
“Huh? Lorenz and Lysithea are joining us? This is unusual, Professor,” said Dorothea. “Not that I mind the extra help or anything…”
“There is no need for skepticism, Dorothea,” said Lorenz. “As this attack involves a territory on the Leicester Alliance border, I feel it is my duty to see to it that the townsfolk on both sides of the Airmid River do not face further harm.”
“And since my lands are on the Alliance side of that river,” said Lysithea, “there’s a good chance they may be under attack as well.”
“Those would be Ordelia and Gloucester counties, correct?” asked Monica.
“Right you are, Monica,” said Lorenz. “We are but two of the five noble houses that comprise the Leicester Alliance roundtable. And one day, House Gloucester shall stand the tallest among them!”
Lysithea rolled her eyes at his boast. “Give it a rest, Lorenz. You’re fortunate that Claude isn’t around to hear you say that.”
“In any case, I want to thank you both for your assistance,” said Byleth. “We can leave as soon as you’re ready.”
Byleth waved toward the exit door, and she, the Black Eagles, and their two Golden Deer guests set out for Hrym territory, bringing enough provisions to last their group through the weekend. Ferdinand and Lorenz led the way on horseback, chatting to each other about the latest blends of tea they had tasted lately. Byleth, Edelgard, and Hubert followed close behind them, carefully watching the roads. Even with such a large traveling party, everyone kept their weapons close at hand in anticipation of a battle.
A little while after entering a clearing where they could see the Airmid River and the towns on the Leicester side in all their glory, the group approached a town on the south side of the Great Bridge of Myrddin, a majestic land bridge of stone and steel that served as the main trade route between Leicester and Adrestia. As they pulled into a stop where they could park their carriages, they entered the town to get a closer look at the chaotic scene – a bandaged man punching a fruit merchant and stuffing a bushel of fresh apples into a basket on one street, a man with a sharpened axe threatening a father trying to stop his young son from bleeding out in an alley, and a group of men and women in gold-colored uniforms wheeling unmarked crates toward the bridge.
“Things are even more dire here than I had feared,” said Ferdinand as he observed a group of a half-dozen bandits ganging up on three members of the local militia, killing two of them and laughing as the third one retreated for backup.
“At this rate, I fear the Hrym soldiers may be overrun if we do not intervene,” said Hubert. “What say we show these worthless reprobates the true meaning of fear?”
“Well, when you put it that way, Hubert,” said Linhardt, “I suppose even I might put in some effort in this endeavor.”
Byleth and Edelgard nodded and stopped to get a good look at their surroundings. The town of South Myrddin was full of wide, twisty roads, with alleys too narrow for large processions of troops to enter without being slowed down. The bandits may have known the town’s escape routes better than the Black Eagles, but Byleth believed that she and her students were more skillful and could cover enough ground to cut them off.
Within seconds, they formulated a battle plan and rapidly gave out orders to the other students. Ferdinand and Lorenz, the two most mobile members of the group, would roam the streets and assist where they were needed, chasing down the faster bandits on horseback. Edelgard and Hubert planned to assist the Hrym soldiers defending the northern area near the Great Bridge to slow down or stop anyone attempting to escape with any more stolen goods. Linhardt, Caspar, Dorothea, and Bernadetta would patrol the central areas of town to assist any wounded soldiers and townspeople they found. Finally, Byleth, Petra, Monica, and Lysithea would search for any enemies on the south side of town, which they suspected to have the most hiding spots.
Along with their rented soldiers, Byleth's group had nearly matched the raiders man-for-man. Enemy reinforcements slowly crept in from the east, raising concerns that their reign of destruction had spread beyond the protection zone. Lorenz’s army pursued one group as they attempted to escape to a smaller wooden bridge toward the eastern city limits. A few raiders fled from the main streets on foot after watching their allies get run through with lances, ultimately deciding not to throw their lives away any further. Ferdinand and his men scooped up whatever contraband they could find from the bandits, including unmarked sacks of gold coins, hoping to reunite them with their owners once the chaos subsided.
“Ferdinand…have you noticed anything unusual about the enemy's movements?” asked Lorenz.
“They do seem to be a bit more organized and disciplined than your usual ruffians,” said Ferdinand. “Speaking purely from personal experience, most bandits simply smash and grab whatever they can before vacating the area. But this group appears very purposeful in its movements.”
“That can only mean whoever is commanding them must either be very skilled or has done enough dry runs of this area to know where to strike the hardest. We must keep moving at once and hope that the Professor and the others can track down the culprit and put a stop to this!”
Ferdinand and Lorenz took their squadrons and patrolled the main streets, watching the alleys for ambushers and dodging arrow fire and the odd thrown object.
When Ferdinand doubled back to the west side of town near the crossroads of Bridge Street and Airmid Avenue, he saw Caspar and his group locked in combat with a quartet of supply crate carriers. One of Caspar’s soldiers, a bulky man wearing a suit of leather armor, punched one of the frontal carriers in the stomach with a spiked steel gauntlet, causing their cargo to spill into the streets and some of it to tumble out of the boxes. In the ensuing fracas, Ferdinand dismounted from his horse and scrambled to salvage what he could while Caspar buried his axe in one of the bandits’ chests after stunning him with the handle.
“Damn! Just how many of these guys are there?” asked Caspar.
“Too many for my liking,” Ferdinand replied as he handed off one of the broken crates to a soldier whose armor bore the design of a silver-colored clipper ship on her pauldrons - the coat of arms of House Hrym. He then ordered two of his soldiers to chase one of the fleeing bandits and block his escape routes, giving another Hrym soldier enough time to apprehend him. “At least we appear to be thinning their numbers.”
Two more bandits emerged from an alley behind Caspar and attempted to sneak up on him with their spears, but he spotted one of them and narrowly dodged the blow before getting gored. A hard sideways sweep of his axe clipped both of his would-be ambushers, with the blood leaking from their chests serving as a final reminder that they'd never pull a stunt like that again.
“How are you holding up over there, Linhardt?”
Caspar looked over his left shoulder and focused on Linhardt, who had concentrated some magical energy in his palms to soothe the pain of a woman who had been bashed in the head with a mace by the thieves they'd just killed.
“Poorly,” Linhardt responded through half-lidded eyes.
“That's funny, Lin…you don't seem to have taken as much of a beating as the rest of us,” said Dorothea, who was carrying a limping soldier over to Linhardt for medical attention despite her own injuries slowing down her spellcasting.
“It's thanks to everyone else's protection that I'm still standing right now.” Linhardt flashed a half-smile that belied his weariness at all the bloodshed surrounding him. “I fear that if I were to fall, then you would only be able to rely on Monica and the Professor for your healing needs.”
Linhardt and Dorothea snapped their heads westward at the sound of a high-pitched shriek.
“Bern?”
To Dorothea’s shock, Bernadetta’s armored troops had drawn the attention of a group of mages, who kept the skittish archer pinned down with hails of fire and ice magic.
“Go away! Go away! Go away!” she shrieked as she loosed a quiver’s worth of arrows at her attackers, downing them one at a time.
Another yelp escaped Bernadetta’s mouth as another mage struck down two of her protectors with lightning bolts, causing the others to scatter for fear of getting electrocuted along with them. Dorothea, fearing for Bernadetta’s safety, stepped in and blasted the enemy mage from the safety of his rooftop with a Thoron spell. She fired another blast at a longbow-wielding sniper on the roof to her right, and while the spell missed, it had thrown the sniper’s aim off enough for the arrow to land almost a foot away from her. Bernadetta took advantage of the enemy sniper’s distraction by firing an arrow in a high arc from her blind spot, piercing her chest.
When they were sure that the nearby threat had been eliminated, Dorothea and Bernadetta breathed sighs of relief as they tended to their wounded, using bandages to slow the bleeding as they waited for Linhardt to use what healing magic he had left to finish the job.
“I think that’s all of the bad guys in this area,” said Dorothea. “I hope Edie, Hubie, and the rest are doing okay.”
“Why do these guys want all this food, anyway?” asked Bernadetta. “And why are there so many of them?”
“It is almost the beginning of the winter season,” said Linhardt. “The simplest answer would be that they’re as hungry as everyone else here.”
“Well, that doesn’t give them the right to steal from others!” Caspar shouted. “The people of this town need that food even more than these thieves. Let them grow or buy their own!”
Ferdinand rode over to the group, scanning the roofs and alleys again to ensure everyone’s safety. “The western and eastern sections of town have been secured,” he said. “Have any of you seen anyone or anything suspicious among these bandits?”
“None more than usual,” said one of the Hrym soldiers. “Can barely tell one ruffian from the next, what with so many of ‘em runnin’ about.”
“Then that means their leader is still at large,” said Dorothea. “We should regroup with the others and continue the search. Can you take care of things from here?”
“Maybe, now that things have calmed down a little. We don’t know where we’d be right now if you lot hadn’t come along, so, uh…thanks for that.”
The soldier took a nearby cloth to wipe some blood from his axe, looking onward as the Black Eagles hurried toward the town square in search of the bandits’ leader. He extended a hand to one of his partners, who had been resting on a blanket while receiving medical attention. “The viscount better be payin’ us double for this job,” said the axe soldier.
“You're assumin’ there'll be enough left after the duke takes his cut,” said the injured soldier as he leaned against the outer wall of a house to help himself stand up. “Not that he ever needed any help gettin’ fed.”
Both soldiers exchanged weary laughs and exhausted sighs before returning to their patrols.
On the north side of town, Edelgard’s squadron of armored knights helped form a shield wall along with some more of Viscount Hrym’s soldiers to cut off the enemy’s escape route. A few lone bandits attempted to get around the blockade by attempting to swim across the Airmid River. While Edelgard attacked those who were being slowed down by the stolen goods they were carrying, the few that reached the river only made it a few feet off the riverbank before dying, with nearby witnesses reporting a pair of glowing eyes flashing in the sky, followed by screams of terror.
Bernadetta and Ferdinand, having taken the main road toward the bridge on horseback, approached two of their fellow Black Eagles to investigate the commotion.
“Hubert! Lady Edelgard! What just happened?” asked Bernadetta. “I just heard the most horrible noise…and for once, it didn’t come from me!”
“Bernadetta, you wound me,” said Hubert, holding his right hand to his heart in a mocking display of humility. “I merely observed our enemies failing to account for the horrors that lurk in the depths of the Airmid River. An unfortunate situation, really.”
“H-h-horrors? In the river?”
As Bernadetta’s hands shook at the thought of monsters waiting to devour her if she got too close to the river, Ferdinand gave her a reassuring pat on the back, giving her a chance to calm down and focus on the mission at hand.
“This is no time for jests, Hubert,” said Ferdinand. “What is our current situation?”
“At the moment, we have secured the south side of the bridge,” said Hubert. “The viscount's manor to the east does not appear to have been attacked by the raiders. I find it unusual that such a high-profile target would go unnoticed. Despite the chaos affecting this town, Viscount Hrym is very well-protected…almost suspiciously so.”
“Based on the areas of town we’ve liberated so far, we can narrow down the enemy leader’s location to the south,” said Edelgard. “The Professor, Petra, Monica, and Lysithea should be tracking them down as we speak.”
“Shouldn’t we go after them, too?” asked Bernadetta.
“We’ll be more successful if we cut off the escape routes for those who remain. Bernadetta, help Hubert and me keep the area around the bridge safe. Ferdinand, reconvene with Lorenz and pass along any information he can share with us on the raiders.”
As Bernadetta lined up her remaining armored troops next to Edelgard and her squadron on the west side of the bridge, one of Edelgard’s soldiers glanced across the bridge for a few seconds before tapping his commander on the shoulder.
“Your Highness…it appears that some of these miscreants also used the bridge itself to invade this town,” he said, pointing to several sets of muddy footprints on the bridge coming in from the north. “Who would be so brazen as to use a major trading port to stage an attack like this?”
“We’ll find out soon enough once we’re finished here,” she replied.
The residents of South Myrddin’s southernmost enclave watched with shock as a dozen gold-clothed men and women pooled into the alleys behind them. Their apparent leader - a middle-aged man in dusty leather armor - held tightly onto a sharpened silver dagger in his right hand and a pouch of stolen gold coins in his left. The other armed thieves formed an increasingly tight circle around him, noticing Byleth, Lysithea, Petra, Monica, and their hired soldiers blocking the exits.
“Wait a minute…I’ve seen that man in the middle before,” Lysithea whispered, peering over the shoulder of one of her mage bodyguards before retreating behind him to avoid being spotted.
“You have? Where?” Monica whispered back.
“I saw him arguing with Anna a few weeks ago. He’s supposedly a rival merchant who calls himself Pallardó.”
“I don’t know of any merchants who would operate a criminal racket like this so openly.”
“We should be taking care of them,” said Petra, “but we should not act with too much haste. There are not many things that are more dangerous than a rabbit who is cornered.”
Byleth, who had kept her Sword of the Creator in its custom sheath in favor of a silver sword like the ones Petra and Monica were using, nodded in agreement. “It doesn’t look like they’ve laid any traps here,” she said, “but we can’t discount the possibility of them having other tricks to deploy. Hold still until one of them makes any sudden moves.”
Several seconds passed, and all Byleth could see was the thieves and their leader muttering to each other. She wasn’t close enough to hear what they were saying, but she could tell by their frantic eyes darting around that they knew they were trapped.
Suddenly, about half of them reached into their pockets and tossed what looked like large stones at the ground, filling the alleys with a cloud of thick, white smoke.
“Now!” she cried. “Take them down before they get away!”
The soldiers on their side charged into the fray, hoping to catch Pallardó and his gang before they could draw their weapons. After the yelling had calmed down, Lysithea crept forward and ordered her bodyguard to use a wind spell to disperse the smoke cloud.
The soldiers, scarred and bruised from the ensuing battle, had pinned down most of the thieves, even catching one of them in the act of setting off another smoke bomb. There were fewer of them than Byleth expected, but she could find neither corpses to prove it nor any evidence of hidden passages in the area.
“H-hey! Easy there!” said Pallardó. “I swear, you’ve got the wrong guys! We were just–”
He barely had enough time to render his excuse when Monica walked over and smacked him across the face with her shield. “Those weapons you and your henchmen are holding say otherwise,” she said after giving him a moment to scratch his goatee and rub the fresh bruise on his right cheek.
More than a month had passed since Monica felt the sting of disappointment after Kronya escaped from her grasp on the night of the Remire attack. She didn't harbor the same urge to kill Pallardó, but she'd cut her way through enough of his henchmen and witnessed the destruction they had wrought upon the town that she felt it would be negligent of her to allow him to get away after all they did.
Panic set in for the bearded thief as he watched the Church's soldiers round up his surviving lackeys, and a sharp pain shot up both of his arms as Byleth tied his hands behind his back with a length of rope. “Then I’m sure Viscount Hrym would be thrilled to know that the ‘wrong guys’ have been killing his soldiers, breaking into his people’s homes, and stealing their food,” she said.
Pallardó grimaced as he struggled to loosen his bindings. As Byleth slowly walked around him to look him in the eye, a lump formed in his throat, threatening to suffocate him.
“Or would you like to tell the viscount yourself, Pallardó?”
With Byleth staring him down, Pallardó took a big gulp of air to force that lump down to the deepest pit of his stomach. “I told you…you’ve got the wrong guy,” he repeated.
“Quit playing dumb,” said Lysithea. “I’ve seen you in the alleys of the monastery trying to squeeze money out of unsuspecting customers with your overpriced merchandise. And now you’re stealing from people to pad your coffers even further? Pathetic.”
“You think you’ve got me all figured out, don’t you, kid?”
Watching Lysithea seethe with anger at his response brought the color back to Pallardó’s cheeks. “Did it ever occur to you that I might not be the guy named Pallardó you’re looking for?” he asked with a smirk. “Or that you ought to be more concerned with what’s happening on the other side of the bridge?”
Petra was the only one from her group not to flinch. “It does not matter,” she said. “You will still be coming with us, and you will pay for all you have taken.”
One of the soldiers forced the man, who may or may not have been Pallardó, to rise to his feet. “Fine, fine,” he said as the soldiers led him out of the alley. “It was worth a shot.”
After the Hrym militia had arrested the surviving raiders, Byleth rounded up her classmates and reconvened with Edelgard’s team at the south entrance of the bridge. They all relaxed their fighting stances once they were assured all of the raiders had been defeated.
“We located and captured the ringleader,” said Byleth. “Lysithea says this man, who allegedly goes by the name of Pallardó, was a rival merchant of sorts to Anna at the monastery. He must have known this area well to hit it so hard.”
“That's small comfort for those who lost their lives and their livelihood to these fiends,” said Edelgard. “I suspect our work here is not finished.” She pointed at the muddy footprints coming in from the main bridge thorofare. “Some of the thieves who attacked this area came in from across the bridge. At this rate, Count Ordelia’s troops should have dealt with the ones on their end. We should now have an easier time figuring out where the enemy planned to take their stolen goods.”
A small jolt of lightning jumped from Dorothea’s fingertips as she rubbed the wrist of her aching spellcasting hand. “I still can’t believe these crooks would stoop so low as to steal food this close to the onset of winter,” she said. “The sooner we put a stop to this, the sooner these townspeople can be assured they can come home to a nice, hot meal every night.”
“These bandits may have hoped to overrun the towns on both sides of the river through sheer numbers, but they falter when faced with opponents of greater skill,” said Lorenz. He trotted over to look at the footprints on the bridge leading into South Myrddin. “This bridge will lead us to Phlegethon territory. I fear that Acheron may be up to his old tricks again…”
“Who’s Acheron?” asked Monica.
“He is the head of House Phlegethon, a minor noble house whose land borders my territory to the south and Lysithea’s lands to the west.”
“And you think he may be involved with Pallardó and his gang somehow,” said Byleth.
“I cannot definitively prove it, Professor, but the possibility still exists,” said Lorenz. “Acheron is never one to pass up an opportunity to exploit someone else’s weakness to enrich himself.”
“I guess this means we’ll have to cross the bridge and investigate for ourselves,” said Dorothea, remembering how quiet their trip to South Myrddin was.
“We won’t be alone,” said Byleth. “Chances are good that some soldiers from Ordelia are already in the area. We’ll need to be careful when we enter so that we don’t unnecessarily scare anyone.”
“It would be hard for us not to scare anyone when we’re walking around with a small army,” said Linhardt.
“That is a good point, Lin,” said Dorothea, quickly hiding her face behind her right arm to mask a yawn after watching Linhardt do the same. “I also think we should rest first. You know…in case we get tangled up in another big battle.”
The other Black Eagles nodded in agreement and prepared to cross the bridge to continue their mission.