Pillars crashing down

Ziekden Fortress

We finally arrived, armed with our bows, around the back of the fortress. We would finally save Tietra; we were so close. But the Order had also arrived, and who had accompanied them but that damn Argath. My fist clenched around my bow as Ramza called out to his lord brother.

Why was that snake there? Why was he beside Zalbaag? And – – poor Tietra was there, held by a Corpse Brigade captain who shouted out his demands in return for the girl’s freedom. Even from down where I was, I read the fear off her face, the terror when Zalbaag announced that they would not negotiate with footpads such as the Corpse Brigade captain.

Then, the unthinkable happened. The sound of that bolt piercing the air still haunts me to this day. Nothing else could be heard at the bridge beside the wind blowing, and Tietra’s cry as the bolt lodged in her chest. And Zalbaag watched it happen. Even worse, he had ordered it.

Even the Brigade captain was flabbergasted. None of us had ever imagined that the life of a girl who had been like a sister to lord Zalbaag, would so easily be forfeit. Had they gone mad? Ramza could scarce believe it himself. The words Wiegraf had told him in the Windflats still rang through his ears. He hadn’t doubted his brothers’ integrity then, but now…

As we all stood confounded by the events that had unfolded before our very eyes, Zalbaag was called out to hold back another faction of the Corpse Brigade, with Wiegraf among them. Of course, to him, that took precedence over explaining himself. What use would a holy knight have explaining himself to a bunch of mere squires anyway?

Arsehat

It was just us against Argath then, and he was all too happy to fight us. As Ramza tried to reason with him in vain, Delita was blind with rage. We all wanted to see Argath and his flitting forked tongue fall. For good. Delita most of all. And when he finally went down, we would have cheered. If not for Tietra…

The Corpse Brigade captain, hurt by another bolt from Argath’s crossbow, had hidden in the fortress, and as we fought Argath, the captain had found the armoury and set it alight. A desperate attempt at self-sacrifice by a desperate man. There was nowhere the man had left to go, and he would be damned if he would go alone.

Delita held his sister in his arms, but she was already gone. Ramza called him back, but he refused to listen. Navarre urged us all to go before we would all be caught in the explosion, but Ramza refused to leave, at least until a blast drove him to the ground. We grabbed him and made our escape.

None of us ever looked back. We all followed Ramza. Disillusioned in our roles, we wandered around Ivalice and all but disappeared. That was a year ago now. Today Ramza, Carmen, Greg, Navarre and I are nameless mercenaries. We had promised to stick together, and so we did.

And that is how we ended up at the Orbonne Monastery as a band of mercenaries led by the tactless Gaffgarion, how I ended up hiding from the rain and had unwittingly allowed princess Ovelia to be taken from the chapel.

I am Bathsua, the squire for hire, and these are my memoirs.