Connor—The First Rule of War

	There was an old rule on the island that said that, before a war began, both sides had to meet one more time, to see if a peaceful solution could be reached.  Now, it was only a formality.  There had been three such meetings in the last sixty years, and none of them had done any good.  Connor was certain that there wouldn’t be any difference this time, either.  But if he didn't go, his own fighters might turn against him.  All too often, he though, tradition was valued over common sense.
	Because he believed in doing things right, he had made an effort to make himself look imposing.  He wore a suit of light, hardened leather armor, a cloak of red and white, Cearnach’s state colours, and he carried a long, broad-bladed sword he didn’t know how to use.  Not that it would have made a difference anyway, since the blade wasn't sharp.  His horse was a big brass-colored mare of uncertain parentage and uneven temper, that he had kept for himself because she was the fastest horse in his stables.  She seemed to have some idea of the importance of what was happening, and she pranced at the head of his column of soldiers with her head held high.
	It had taken them almost a full day to reach the hill where the meeting would take place, and everyone was tired.  There was a good deal of shifting and grumbling from the infantry when they stopped, but no-one broke ranks, and at a bark from his captain, they all fell silent.  The captain, a scarred vixen with only one ear, rode up their lines and down, and then turned her horse and joined him at the bottom of the hill.
	“I really think you should let me go,” she said.
	“No.  We've already discussed this, and I've made up my mind,” he said.
	But when he urged his mare forward, the captain kicked her horse in the ribs and cut him off.
	“You know what the cats are like.  They are completely honorless, and they will kill you.  At least let me come with you,” she said.
	“I'm going alone.  There's nothing else I can do,” he said.
	It made him nervous to leave his guards behind and ride on by himself.  But he had to, to show that he was not afraid.  He made it to the top of the hill before Sabia’s envoy arrived, and he took advantage of the extra time to compose himself.  He was the ruler of the second most powerful kingdom on the island, and the commander of the second most powerful army in the world.  But he hadn’t been more than a mile from home in sixteen years and he felt vulnerable without walls around him.  He let his horse graze, forced himself to relax, and wondered what would happen if he went back home and announced that he had decided to make peace after all.
	Whe he opened his eyes again, Blackpool’s envoy was at the bottom of the hill.  She was a short, thin swift fox dressed in the black and silver uniform of her city, and she was mounted on a buckskin with a long blue flag draped across its shoulders.  She didn’t carry any visible weapons, but she wore a general’s patch on her left shoulder.  She spurred her horse into a canter up the hill, .  When they were stopped, she drooped her ears and gave him a small, bitter smile.
	“Didn’t you learn anything last time?” she said.
	“I know what I did wrong the last time.  I wondered where you'd gone Deirdre.  The last I heard, you’d gone to the mainland.”
	“I did.  But I got bored, and I came back.  Guarding merchant caravans just isn’t the same,” she said.
	Connor swallowed hard, to clear his suddenly dry throat and he leaned forward a little to examine her rank patch, just as an excuse to keep looking at her.  She had gotten several new scars since the last time he’d seen her, and she’d lost another quarter inch from her tail, but she was still as beautiful as she had ever been.
	“Why on earth did you go to Blackpool?  I can pay you as much as Sabia can.  You were the best soldier I ever had.  Why didn’t you come back to me?” he said.
	Deirdre’s ears flattened slightly, and she looked down at her horse’s neck.  Then she reached back and pulled a thin sheaf of papers out of her saddlebag.
	“Here.  These documents were drawn up by Sabia herself, and you can still have peace if you’ll sign them.  I can never remember the way this speech is supposed to go, but I think you already know it,” she said.
	“No.  But it doesn't matter.  I'm glad you're safe.  I've been worried about you, ever since you left.”
	“I know you aren’t going to sign them.  But you’ve still got to take them.  For the look of things.”
	Connor slid wearily to the ground and dug a similar bundle from his own pack.  They traded packets, and he let the papers she gave him fall to the ground by his feet.  She glanced down at them, but she did not pick them up.  Instead, she folded the ones he had given her neatly in half, and slid them into her pocket.  Then she took his hand in hers, and moved to stand close to him, the way she used to do.
	“You know Sabia wants Oseille,” he said.
	“So do you.  You can hardly take the high ground on this.”  
	She took a thin, silver flask from her pocket and removed the stopper.  The liquid inside smelled of good, strong whiskey, which he remembered she always used to drink before going into battle.  He'd tried it once, and had been sick for the best part of a day after one sip.  They both took a long drink, and Deirdre let herself sag against him for a moment.
	“Did I say that I was?  I only wondered if you knew,” he said.
	“Better than you do.  You and Sabia are more alike that either of you would ever admit,” said Deirdre.
	“No we're not.  She wants to take Oseille over.  I only want to protect it from her, and you know it,” he said.
	“I don't know anything, except that the result will be the same.  And Ciara will never forgive you for it, no matter how good your intentions might be,” she said.
	She wiped the top of her flask with her sleeve and offered it to him, sloshing it gently to show it was still full.  He drank, and tried not to wince when the alcohol burned his throat.
	“Why would she care?  I know you sent her there to get her out of the siege, but that was years ago.  Even with your staying behind to help clean up, she couldn't have been there for more than six months.”
	She bared her teeth at him, but her ears drooped with guilt, and her stub of a tail curled around one leg.
	“I never went back to get her,” she said.  
	She reached out to take the flask away from him.  He grabbed her arm, which made them both jump, and pulled her closer.  He felt suddenly angry at her, and at himself, and he had to clench his teeth over his sudden urge to bite or kiss her.
	“Why not?  She was just a child, Deirdre.  You abandoned  her in a strange place, all by herself?” he said.
	“You didn’t go and get her, either.  I hoped you would.  She would have been miserable with me.  I haven’t stayed anywhere for more than a few months, and I was always fighting.  You had peace, and the sense it would have taken to give her a stable life.  But you didn’t, so you can’t yell at me like thatt,” she said.  
	Her ears were flat, and she was close enough that he could smell the whiskey and peppermint on her breath.  The smell aroused him and made him feel guilty, which made him angrier.
	“You’re her mother, god damn you.  I’ve got a wife.  I love Ciara, but I love Fithir, too, and I wanted to start clean with her.  Do you understand?”
	Deirdre looked away first.  Her ears and tail went limp and when she took the flask she drank like she never intended to stop.  A thin stream of alcohol leaked out of her mouth and dribbled down onto her uniform jacket.  When she finally stopped, she brushed at the spot it had made and swore under her breath.
	“Nothing changes,” she said “We haven’t seen each other in all this time, and we’ve picked right back up where we left off.  Now there’s going to be another war, and we're right back where we were twenty years ago.”
	“Nobody ever said it would,” he said.  
	He leaned heavily against his mare’s flank.  She stomped a foot and snorted at him, but she was too busy grazing to raise a more serious objection.  Deirdre sat down crosslegged on the ground and plucked idly at the grass, flicking the loose blades at his ankles.  He caught himself staring at her, but she either didn’t notice or didn’t mind, so he didn’t look away.  She was not a pretty vixen, like Fithir was.  Even without the scars, she was bony and breastless, and her fur never looked properly combed, even when made an effort to tame it.  But he still thought of her, every time he took his wife to bed.
	“Why didn’t you come back?  I would have given you anything you asked for, just to have you back,” he said.
	She closed her eyes flicked her tail, just once, back and forth.
	“I can’t come back.  I thought it would have been easy to figure out why.”
	“Because we lost?  That was just bad luck.”
	She got up, recapped her silver flask, and brushed a few pieces of grass off of her uniform.  Her knees popped audibly, and she wobbled a little and let him put his hands on her shoulders to steady her.
	“You always have had a talent for making things harder than they need to be.  I can’t because it would be good for either of us.  You can't go back in time.”
	She picked up the papers he’d dropped and shoved them into his hands, clamping her fingers over his so he couldn’t drop them again.
	“If you still love your daughter, sign these papers.  Nobody worth listening to wants a war,” she said.
	He folded them, and put them into his saddlebag.  But they both knew that he wasn't going to look at them again.
	“I don’t have any choice,” he said “I’m sorry.”
	Her tail went stiff, and she stepped away from him, her fingers tightening into fists.
	“You always have been an idiot,” she said.  
	She mounted again, and kicked her horse in his ribs, which made him squeal and bolt down the hill.  He watched her ride away, alone, across the plain, until his abandoned bodyguards came to get him.