𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐏𝐡𝐨𝐞𝐧𝐢𝐱 𝐖𝐚𝐫𝐫𝐢𝐨𝐫'𝐬 𝐅𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 (𝐒𝐂 & 𝐋𝐁)

Chapter 21- No Simple Plans

It felt like I had just fallen asleep when the King awoke me. Jill was just waking up as well. His Majesty looked like he had some sleep so I was satisfied.

"Now," King Tirian told us, "we must go due North of here- by our good luck it is a starry night- and it will be much shorter than our journey this morning, for then we went around and out of the way but this time we will go straight. If anyone should question us, you two remain silent and I will try to act like a cursed, cruel, proud Lord of Calormen. If I draw my sword then you, Eustace, must do the same and Jill you are to stand behind us with an arrow aimed and ready. But if I shout 'Home' then both of you should run for the Tower. Do not try to fight-not one stroke- after I have given you the retreat. Such false valor has spoiled many good plans in wars. Now friends, in the name of Aslan, let us be on our way."

Then on our way we went. It was a cold night. For a time we had went straight but we became stalled and had to stop. We came upon a thicket so dense that we had to go out of the way to get around it. Even after that, we couldn't get our bearings. There were still some branches blocking our path but Jill managed to set us on the right path. She was always a good navigator.

It was quiet. Too quiet in Narnia at night. King Tirian pointed this out and we were worried. There was no cry of Owls being heard overhead and no sound of a flute being played that told us that the fauns were dancing. It just seemed that gloom and fear reigned over all of Narnia.

Jewel, the Unicorn was quite easy to get. The King had walked up the sentry, who wasn't doing a good job and seemed to be half asleep at his post. Jill and I stayed hidden, out of sight. I had missed what had happened next but then King Tirian almost ran into me as he came back with Jewel. He told as that everything had went well and we started to leave.

That was when I realized Jill had disappeared. She had sneaked into the stable while King Tirian had taking care of the sentry. It had scared both myself and His Majesty as she had left without informing anyone. But we relaxed when she returned.

Turns out the had put the false Aslan in the stable. It was just a silly donkey dressed to look like a lion. Jill had done a good thing by rescuing the donkey. He, Puzzle, wasn't the brightest of the talking animals. It seemed he was manipulated into it by some Ape. For that reason, the King decided not to kill the donkey for impersonating Aslan.

Instead he decided to foil the Ape's plan by showing of the donkey, dressed as a lion, to anyone who would listen. It seemed like a good plan. They would understand what was happening, help get rid of the Ape, and fight off the Calormenes. Then Narnia would be back to how it should be. Simple enough. But unfortunately nothing could ever go exactly as planned.

The first Narnians we encountered were dwarfs. According to the Calormenes walking with them and the dwarfs, Aslan had sold them into slavery in Calormen. King Tirian had told them it was all a ploy by the Ape. The dwarfs were upset and even helped us fight off the Calormenes, who had thought we were with them. But after the King told the dwarfs they would have their freedom, they denounced the real Aslan. The dwarfs no longer believed in him and no matter what we said, they refused to believe that Aslan existed. One of the dwarfs-who I believe I heard His Majesty call Griffle- told us that they didn't want any Kings anymore than they wanted Aslan to be real: not at all.

Angrily, the dwarfs walked off. I had watched them go, not quite sure how to respond. Then we all turned around and walked back towards the Tower. Now we were worried about how many other Narnians would stop believing in the real Aslan just because of the Ape's plot. No plan could be that simple and the dwarfs seemed to have just lost hope.

But one dwarf still believed. One out of the thirty we had encountered. He had sneaked away from his group of friends to join us. However this one dwarf scarely made a difference in trying to restore Narnia to the peace it once was. Though the thought of having just one on our side made everyone feel slightly happier. I never really knew why.

We continued to head back to the Tower and finally reached it by morning. Everyone laid down to rest and no one awoke until much later. Then, after a good meal we had some discussions and a problem: Tash, had entered Narnia. We had watched him run through Narnia in fear. It wasn't very pleasant sight to see but it, Tash, didn't seem to notice us.

That was what made us decide rich of our plans to follow next. One was to stick to our original plan of going to meet up with Roonwit and the army he was supposed to be gathering. The other would be to go with the plan we came up with last night and show Puzzle to the Narnians, show them that they had been tricked. But no one was sure of the outcome. It could be the same with those Narnians as it was with the dwarfs.

The final descions was to go see Roonwit because the Ape no longer had Puzzle, the false Aslan, to show the other Narnians. We figured the Narnians would start to grow suspicious. If they were skeptical enough, they just might stop listening. It could work in our favor. That was what we hoped.

On our way to meet up with Roonwit, we spotted a bird flying in the air. Tirian- as Jill and I occasionally called him now- told us to stay still. The bird was much to close and would spot us for sure if we moved. We didn't know whether they were a friend or a spy for the Ape. That was why we had decided to stay still. If they were a friend of the King, it didn't matter. But if they were a spy for the Ape, the King had ordered Jill to shoot the bird. She stood with he bow aimed but had waited for the order to shoot him.

The eagle, Farsight, was a friend of the King. He greeted him but Farsight responded by saying that when he was done speaking, Tirian would be much sadder after hearing what he had to say. We knew it was bad news and listened.

"I have seen two things. One was that Cair Paravel is filled with dead Narnians and living Calormenes. The Tisroc's banner advanced upon the royal battlements and your subjects running from the city. Cair Paravel was taken from the sea. Twenty ships from Calormen arrived in the dark of night, the night before last," Farsight told us and we were silent. "And the other thing I saw, five leagues closer than Cair Paravel is, was Roonwit the Centaur lying dead with a Calormene arrow in his side. I was with him as he passed and gave me this message for you, Your Majesty: 'Remember that all worlds will come to an end and noble death is a treasure that no one is too poor to buy'."
Everyone was silent for a long time before the King spoke. "So, Narnia is no more."