lukeoutbelow | Do not be afraid of light

Do not be afraid of light

They smelled the battlefield long before they saw it. The apprentices and little Sisters who hadn't been on this kind of excursion before covered their noses and exclaimed. Vena didn't. As the child of a camp follower she would know to expect this, but her tread slowed and she looked repeatedly at Sister Lashan, especially as the sound of incredible numbers of crows cawing grew louder.

"Nasty, isn't it? Decay is part of death which is part of life," Lashan said firmly, if not totally without sympathy. How young had she been, the last time she was upset by the aftermath of battle? "There's armies that immediately turn around and sort the living from the dying from the dead and take care of that then and there. Not here, they're leaving it for the locals to handle or not and we're local enough. If you fight, you may well fight for people who'll leave you if you fall and move on. Make sure you at least have friends who'll look for you." They pressed on with their wagon. The donkey put its ears back but did not balk.

It wasn't as bad as it would get over the next few days. The bodies - it was now academic who had belonged to which side of whichever meaningless conflict this was - were not much bloated and decayed yet. Flies were not yet overwhelming. Right now the field of bodies was mostly attended by carrion birds, and various other birds that were willing to take advantage of the bounty before them. Finches among them, tiny beaks dipped red. A few other people could be seen picking their way across what had been a perfectly useable pasture. They kept clear. Lashan tasked girls to keep watch for them anyway, pretended not to see the ones who were being sick, and oversaw as dead men were loaded onto the donkeycart. They'd take them away a distance, say the rites, strip them of useful things, get them buried, and come back.

She paused. Something... like a sound. Not a sound. Lashan was hearing something with her mind, closer than the pickers. A threat? She stood like a sentinel and paid attention.

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"They'd better not try anything while I'm down," she grumbles. "Oh, yes, it's mostly up to the archers to scare the vermin off, but you still want swordswomen, and the best after me are merely decent." For all Lashan's self-deprecation, she's not burdened by false modesty. She was a career fighter, and in this cold land that just doesn't seem to be regarded as an option for women, so her Sisters just don't have that kind of experience. Here mixed-gender enclaves of the Twins have barely any fighting women at all, which is one of the reasons she's here at one that does not traditionally accept men.

Her fingers itch as Guts addresses the most pressing wound and here, let me do it is on the tip of her tongue. Lashan busies herself gathering the dishware up and stacked on the tray she brought it in on instead. Privileges of age and position mean she can get children to do a lot of chores, including bringing and taking away the tray when she's not entirely steady on two feet, but it's good manners to not leave them more work than they must.

It was ground in to Lashan early that you never let people know that you have any insight into their thoughts. There was actually a whole ethical code about it on the plains, when and where it was appropriate to use at all, but taking her ability for every advantage it can give her is what's let her survive to today. Dryly she says, "You can see why we'd balk at arming you, I hope. Even if it's peacebonded, you've given a lot of people a scare."

Their best fighter was her? He doesn't doubt she has the experience. Someone with that many scars doesn't lie their way through a dozen battles. But that means the rest of them couldn't match. That would be humiliating among mercenaries, unable to measure up to an old soldier that was nearly as wrinkled as a prune.

"Sounds like you shouldn't get picky if you're short on swords, even if the women are gonna complain."

A rather bratty way to offer to fight for them, but the sentiment is sincere. He was getting room and board, and didn't like being thought of as a pity case. So he'll offer the one trade he knows best.

Or they could keep him here unarmed, and he'll eventually pass out from exhaustion until he heals up. Either way would involve some form of misery, and he rather prefered to endure that with a sword in his hand.

Edited 2022-06-16 03:05 (UTC)

He would think like that. She decides not to comment. Frankly, none of the adult Sisters who've taken up the sword have come to it young enough to be better than decent. For visiting the closest village and guard duty in an area that doesn't usually get more than a sketchy wanderer or two now and then, that's plenty.

"Offering services for a stretch, my buck?" Lashan considers this, narrowing her eyes. "I can't just make that decision for everyone. You were a threat to my girls and to me, yesterday, and my Sisters are not as willing to put that aside as I am. But I could pass it on. They'd ask you to swear on your intent. I don't imagine you put much stock in that." She gives a faint, sideways smile. "What can I say? We all like think of ourselves as good judges of character."

They'd call up the vrondi again and have other mind-gifted individuals present, and they probably still won't want to release that steelbride he came in with back to him unless there's a clear and present threat out there. She could arrange something in the mean time. It's better, as the saying goes, to beg forgiveness than ask permission, but she also has been going quite some distance out of her way for a random mercenary who attacked her. Lashan could lend him a blade after this is sorted.

"I heard something of what happened outside the bathhouse. You'd better continue to turn away from hostility," she continues after a moment. "A number of the girls despise you. You can defend yourself if attacked, though I don't think you will be in any serious way. Bruise them, scare them, hurt feelings, it builds character. But don't be the first to raise a hand. And I shouldn't have to say this, but have restraint. My principal concern is always for my Sisters. I would die for them." That, Lashan says plainly and without any special emphasis.

"You heard all that, huh?"

It was awkward enough having a bunch of girls find him in the middle of getting dressed, much less ones that hated him. Their stand-off out front was hardly any worse than the usual characters he tended to share camp with, and he bore a bristly glare perfectly honed for the occasion. He generally thought little of whatever words were hurled his way (merited or otherwise) and mostly stood his ground silently. Mostly.

At one particular hurled insult, he dared some of the group to make true on their wishes to see him left dead on the battlefield. Do it yourself, if you want it so bad. was his challenge to them.

When nothing came of it, he decided to walk away. That's what I thought - the last taunt that came out of his mouth. Despite the attitude, though, he'd be lying if he denied that some of the words came from the embarrassment of the situation. It made it a little easier to swallow when it turned from teasing to a contest of something he knew.

"If someone comes looking for a fight, then they'll get one," he grumbles to Lashan, "That's how it works where I'm from."

He doesn't suspect he'll be getting that blade anytime soon.

"Some of it," she allows. Throwing it in his face was uncouth and unkind but he probably is going to die on a battlefield. That just happens, when it comes to that career. It can happen to even the best, and especially when they fundamentally fight alone without anyone to watch their backs.

"Yes, well, a fight. Not a murder or a maiming. This isn't where you're from, it's a heathen cult full of strange foreign ideas. The people in these walls aren't your enemy, even the rude ones, even the annoying ones. Even the ones who'll want to see you with a black eye, they don't have a killing intent towards people who aren't their enemy. And you can survive more punishment from these children than they can from you."

She's already planning how she can present the idea of semi-hiring him. Probably the Sister Priests are going to ask him some variation on this same thing.

The way she talks to him seems to hit a nerve, acting like she had to explain to some large monster with claws and dripping fangs how to behave. Ever since he could remember he was always the devil's child, the ungrateful runt, the one that bites the hand that feeds him.

"Too weak for a real fight is what you're saying," he snaps back, acting adversarial to try and hurt her just the same.

"Ain't my problem you've got a buncha lousy warriors playing with sticks."

He's not beneath the petty thought that he should have expected as such from a camp full of women and kids.

Edited 2022-06-17 04:44 (UTC)

The boy's tone surprises her. Lashan blinks, bringing her attention back to the moment. She almost smiles - now he's acting his age. Still, evidently she's hurt him. She opts not to acknowledge the defensive misogynistic cast to his thoughts, though it's pretty typical of males in the area.

"If by 'real fight' you mean the way you do, yes. Most people can't swing a steelbride well enough to make it worth using. I can't, and it's a bit too late to learn now." The plains aren't rich in metal and combustibles to work it with, so steel is mostly from elsewhere, and mostly in forms many different people can use. And which are more manageable on the scruffy little horses the clans ride. But that's not really what she should be addressing, is it?

"Boy..." No, she should say his name this once. "Guts. The fact of the matter is that I don't know you. None of us know you." Mind-gifts just can't take the place of experience and familiarity with someone. Maybe if she'd spent all day and night rooting through his head, but who has the time? "I want to give you the benefit of the doubt. I do. I'm aware that you're very strong and capable. But holding back is an entirely different set of skills. We've had girls here so used to having to do everything they could to survive that they struggled to see lesser problems as anything other than life and death."

Vena, who's appeared in the doorway as Lashan spoke, hastily steps back out of it.

Guts catches the girl in the doorway, but decides he doesn’t care. Let her listen. It’s not like he plans on sticking around long anyway.

“I don’t need you to give me anything. I lived just fine on my own.”

He looks away, suddenly getting rather quiet. He had a habit ironed in rather early on not to waste time arguing with adults. Nothing good ever came of it.

"Stubborn, huh," Lashan murmurs, though she senses it's not just that. How to proceed? Maybe it's better not to push right now. She looks up, though the girl's back out of sight again. "Vena, don't dither. Is it important?"

"Maybe? It's the ghostwards," Vena begins, reappearing immediately. "The Sister Magewarden-"

"Should be able to cover without me. She's not as good as Peoi, fine, we all miss Peoi, but it's been a month," Lashan scoffs. "Didn't she do fine yesterday?"

Vena shrugs, unperturbed. "She didn't like the augury and said come get you."

"Of course the augury's bad. The birds are gorged on human flesh." Lashan sighs irritably, but this issue's rapidly taking precedent. Young, untrained mages are always vulnerable to malign spirits such as are kicked up or created by events like battles, and this one wasn't that far away. She gets heavily to her feet. "Fine, I'll look it over. Vena, show the boy anything he wants to see and don't let anyone poke him. Boy..." She looks back at Guts, frown lines deepening. "I'm sorry to insult you, but not to be suspicious. I'll be back later."

Still using her stick, she'll depart the infirmary and leave Vena eyeing Guts curiously and without evidence of fear, but not with any favor either. Living in the enclave for years always has the side effect of making men - unlike the old woman, of course she sees a teenaged boy as something like an adult man - seem strange.

Guts listens quietly to their conversation, though it may as well as be gibberish to him. He’s had very little exposure to mages and magic, having an incredulous look on his face as the old woman goes on to speak of it as a mundane, daily occurrence.

When Lashan makes her leave, he decides to proceed with his initial plan for the evening: lie down on his cot and fail at trying to sleep.

He curls up on his side to best make use of the bed, barely able to fit on it as is. Vena’s staring goes ignored for the first couple of minutes. But when it doesn’t let up, he makes eye contact and frowns.

“What?”

Vena's crept further into the infirmary by then, as if to pick up the tray, but takes this chance to inspect the big guest closely. His muscles are more sharply defined than Lashan's, or the other bayot Sisters in the enclave. And he breathes more loudly. She's looking at his throat and seeing if he's got a bump in there by the time he finally acknowledges her presence. Frowning right back, she asks, "Why aren't you sleeping?"

She might be ten, or a bit older and runty. There are a few suggestions of old scars visible on her, though nothing clear and distinct other than a few pox marks. Traces of blackberry stain are much more obvious and she's gone some time without missing a meal. Vena's lightly patched clothing has panels of embroidery much like Lashan's but less colorful and elaborate and her long, clean hair is half bound in a square knot.

To Guts, Vena just looked like some little kid. Barring the grumpy look to his face, he seems to loosen up a bit when he realizes it’s just the two of them together.

“You ever tried fallin’ asleep with someone starin’ right at you?” he asks, half sitting up.

“Kinda creepy.”

The deflection comes easy, because there is no way in hell he was explaining to this kid that he was too anxious to sleep.

“I was just looking,” Vena says instantly, fully deflected. “Looking’s fine.”

He doesn’t look like he’s going to murder everyone in their beds, which was something she’d heard a few times. Most of the sisters muttering it were also saying the Sister Swordsmith was crazy, of course, so she wasn’t too inclined to believe it. But you never know. He looked very different yesterday.

Speaking of. Vena informs him, “You shouldn’t fight my teacher again. The healers said she’s not allowed to brawl, ‘cause she’s not fifty anymore.” There had been a number of raised voices, among them Lashan’s in an incredulous oh, so I should’ve hid behind a child? Spellcasting takes time!

Edited 2022-06-20 08:28 (UTC)

She sure as hell didn't brawl like some old woman... he muses to himself. He looks mostly tired, now that he didn't feel the need to be so cagey and defensive.

"Won't have a reason to fight her again if your friends don't prod at me with spears. Sound good?"

That may not have been how they saw it, but he woke up out of an injured daze to a bunch of battlefield scavengers with weapons drawn and at the ready. In his experience, there was very little chance that being left alone is what they had in mind, even if he stood down.

Or perhaps withdrawing his sword had become more difficult than simply going down swinging.

Edited 2022-06-21 04:33 (UTC)

She squints suspiciously at him. Lashan would know what he was thinking, but Lashan knows all about mind-gifts and is a little bit open to people around her all the time. To Vena other peoples' thoughts and feelings are still an overwhelming chaos that she usually shields against most of the way, unless she stops to listen. It's hard to talk or act when that wall of not-noise is pressing in around her.

Guts doesn't seem very different from the soldiers she'd known before Lashan met her, though her auntie had always warned Vena not to get too close to the men. Mostly those had been louder, scruffier people and her latent ability had given her an idea which ones were safer than others. Vena tries lowering her shield a bit, making a frown line appear between her eyebrows.

"I guess," she says, although it's been a distinct pause. "Is that why you attacked her?" With her attention split - this is hard! - her voice comes out fainter than it might have otherwise. It had been really frightening, yesterday. She'd known soldiers in some of their pursuits, but not in battle.

The wood frame of the bed creaks as he adjusts his position, sitting up proper. Guts picks up on the awkwardness, but chalks it up to her being a kid over any magic powers. He'd seen plenty of frightened villagers holed up in their lords' castles, including children. From atop a horse and donned in armor, he didn't seem any different from the other soldiers riding around the place. He could understand her feeling fearful.

"The battlefield ain't some training ground in a cushy village. If you don't win, the otherside'll kill you or put you to work until you die. People lie and stab you in the back to save their own hides."

He's blunt about it, in a way that came from simple lived experience. He was about her age when he'd killed his first man.

"If I had a choice, I'd rather take some of my enemy down with me rather than give 'em a chance to catch me."

Vena realizes he's sitting up and casts around distractedly before getting into the chair at the Sister Apothecary's desk. She can see the man isn't talking down to her. Some people do, here, some don't. There are a lot of different backgrounds represented in the Sisterhood and different views on the young come with it. Usually it's good to be told how it really is but it's nice sometimes to pretend to be safe and like things will all be okay, too. Vena is well aware of how little power she has out there.

"My teacher says the only rules in battle are in peoples' heads and you can break them anyway." Variations on 'Lashan says' make up a fair amount of what Vena has to say. "Did you think we were your enemy 'cause we had weapons?"

She frowns more deeply. "But we have to have weapons. People will attack us if we don't, too." Usually being armed and having tall, imposing Lashan up front scares off people who think they're easy prey.

“She’s right. The only rule out there is that you take what you can by the edge of your sword.”

The one iron rule. That’s all that mattered, in the end. There was no room for kindness or friendship or trust in that world.

“If some stranger draws a blade at you, you meet ‘em sword for sword. That’s how it goes for us mercenaries.”

He matched Lashan’s steel with his own, the closest thing to a ‘rule’ that there could be. Whether it be taking life, or securing his own freedom, it was through the strength of his arm and edge of his blade. And by now, he’d found he had quite a penchant for getting what he wanted with it.

It seems pretty horrible to her. Lashan, Vena knows, thinks of battle as something like a series of connections and intersections with other people and the world around them. A lot of those connections are stabbing, of course. She always, whenever Vena's sensed the idea in her, is in some way thinking of protecting someone else, or avenging them. Lashan's own survival is not as important. It's not lonely in the same way, but there's still a sickening exhilaration and chaos to it, and a kind of pride too.

Slowly she says, "But you like it, kind of." Not a kind of liking that Vena quite understands but she can't think of another word. "She likes it too, but... different."

He could replace her, she thinks with a sudden panic, eyes widening. Lashan thinks this man is like her - noticing they have almost the same scar had tipped her over into taking him home with them - and so, what if she ends up liking him better than Vena? Where will she be? "But she's like me."

"What.. that old bag of bones?"

He laughs, having most definitely picked up on the kid's train of thought after watching her expression. It doesn't take too much to figure out she was worried about Lashan's approval. She seemed to be the only proper warrior that he could see out in this village, and it was hard to explain that life to others. Is that why she'd taken pity on him?

"I owe her one, but you can keep her. No one ties me down."

He assumes the picture of a very Aloof and Cool teenager who is used to living on his own. He doesn't need the approval of some old lady and her nursery.

Vena scowls at him and a defense of the old woman is on the tip of her tongue if she can just unscramble enough to think of what to start with. Then she thinks, if he doesn't like it here and he doesn't like Sister Lashan, even if that's objectively wrong, he won't stay anyway.

"When are you leaving then?" Her eyes stray to his shoulder. Some of the bandaging is visible through the deep V-neck of his borrowed shirt. "It's when you heal and can use your arm more, right? Or do you want my teacher to fix your... your sword wife thing?"

Healing goes better here than with that army encampment where she was born. Faster, and cleaner, and the wounds don't go bad. That's about the extent of her knowledge on that subject, except that she's also heard that sleeping helps.

“Once my sword and my arm are good, I go.“

Same as it’s always been. He prods restlessly at the layers of linens protecting the dressing he applied to himself. The sharp pain had numbed, but it still had quite a bit of healing to do - by ordinary means, anyway.

“A place like this’s too quiet for me.”

He gets up to his feet and takes a look outside. The warmth of the fire was making his wounds burn.

"We don't have a drum to follow here," Vena says. This is what she'd maintained before Lashan decided to bring him home. He won't want to make things or train the girls to fight, he can't learn magic, so he'll get bored and want money and go.

She gets up herself to see what he's looking at, keeping a good arm's length between them. There's still light in the sky but it's darker in general now. A stockade made from rough wood is visible encircling the compound, and a guard tower with a sentry watching the world outside of it. Within, a small procession is making its way around the wall, singing or chanting in rhythm. Lashan watches them at it, easily identifiable even from a distance with her back turned. A few girls have gathered to take very similar poses as if imitating her.

"They're keeping evil things away. My teacher says most people don't need it but sometimes, girls are cursed, or... something." The Sisterhood takes in a lot of strange outcasts, ghostbait included. Vena is vaguely aware that since she has magic she would be ghostbait out there unprotected. She's not sure she ever saw a ghost even before Lashan found her. Strange, creepy things had happened in the camp in those last few months, right?

All she can really remember is a soldier with a whetstone, sharpening his sword before he could go to bed. The sound had carried in a way she hadn't liked, and... wait. Vena turns to look up at the man. "If you've got a sword to sharpen, will you sleep more?"

"A sword and a bit of cold breeze, yeah."

Guts speaks his wishes absently, figuring nothing will come of it. Lashan already made the sentiments of the village clear on giving him a weapon. He approaches the infirmary's entry, getting a good look at the procession at the gate. Their ritual looked and sounded strange, but no less so than the parades of the church where he came from.

He guesses they were just as good at warding off evil as all those priests with their dumb robes and hats.

"I'm gonna go get some fresh air."

He begins to step outside, moving away from the bustle of girls (and definitely away from the bathhouse) to hopefully find a spot that was more isolated. He was never good at staying still for too long.

Edited 2022-06-23 04:14 (UTC)

“Hm,” Vena says, trying to sound like Lashan when she’s acknowledging something but won’t commit yet. As he steps out she re-shields again - the minds of others are starting to press in on her - and picks up the tray with the used dishware. It’s awkward but not too heavy, she spends a moment rearranging things so carrying it will be easier.

It’s as she goes through the doorway that she remembers Lashan told her to show him around and keep people from poking him. Vena does not think to put the tray down, she holds it closer to her chest and runs clattering after Guts.

“Wait! Waaait, I’m supposed to watch you!”

He is very definitely being either watched or conspicuously not watched by everyone around him. They’ll relax a bit if the apprentice is there.

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