Need (Sister Lashan) (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
hasapoint) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
lukeoutbelow2022-06-10 02:56 pm
hasapoint) wrote in lukeoutbelow2022-06-10 02:56 pm
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.
"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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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?"
no subject
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
Great. Now when her arms get tired, who's going to have to carry it back?
Once she catches up, he continues onward towards the opposite end of the compound. The discreet staring doesn't seem to rustle him much, as long as they kept their distance. He is used to fending off a rougher looking crowd.
The terrain was rather flat, he notices. No high spot to look overhead until the moon rose proper. He is drawn to the corrals for the horses, noticing the creatures were rather squat and stout-looking. He had no immediate plans to flee in the dark, but it was good to know where his escape options were.
Circling around the wooden fencing, he stops at the stables, attempting to guess the height of the walls. Not exactly a hill, but maybe a sloping roof will do, if he can find a good handhold.
no subject
She follows him. Here in the cooling late afternoon, not long before evening service, people are out taking a bit of leisure. Children chase around balls and inflated animal bladders. Women chat, massage each others’ sore hands and arms, and relax in various ways. All activity seems to slow and hush as Guts approaches and picks up again as he passes, voices louder. Various people adjust their plunging necklines.
There are one or two taller geldings about. Rangy and past their prime, not that they were ever powerful. The most dangerous animal present is the enormous ox saddled under the girl Ilse, walking placid circuits while chewing cud. When she glares at Guts the ox she’s riding snorts and rolls its head on its thick neck, showing off its horns, but they don’t leave the paddock.
The stockade walls are maybe twelve feet high or so, the large logs that make them up hacked into rough points. Past them, past some amount of cleared ground, pine forest is visible.
“What are you looking for?” Vena asks.
no subject
The ox girl's stink-eye gets a fleeting and bored expression, figuring that'd be more infuriating than properly glaring back. Guts can worry about what she has to think when she gets the nerve to confront him directly.
At the stable, he looks up and down, circling the wooden building. Pretty tall, but nothing he can't handle, he thinks. He answers Vena's question by grabbing onto a jutting wooden lintel with his good arm and climbing up to the sloped roof.
It's not as smooth as he'd like, wincing when he pulled more weight on his left shoulder than he should. He manages to get to the top with some extra support from his legs, putting more force into his jump. Once comfortably on the top, he remains crouched on all fours.
no subject
It's not the best footing up there. The thatched roof is shaggy and shows the signs of weathering in rain and sun, the top layer disintegrating to the touch. Bits of straw compost slide off the roof with his every movement. A small chicken that has flown up here gives him an unreadable bird look, its comb flopping with the motion of its little head, and refuses to budge from its place on the roof's point.
The view is good, though. The woman in the closest watch tower is a bit higher up and gives Guts a startled, concerned look before turning her attention outwards again. The watch towers are each not much more advanced than the palisade, basically a platform on stilts, half enclosed by boards and with a flat roof for shade and a ladder for easier access.
The layout inside is much neater and more organized than the usual sprawl of a village, reflecting that the enclave had been planned out instead of arising organically. Several of the buildings, which tend towards a relatively uniform style and quality, are fairly large. Many have functions difficult to discern at a glance. One really tall pine, its trunk wider across than that saddled ox is long, stands looming besides the building that sports the most elaborate carvings on its walls.
Outside there are a few outbuildings, cultivated fields, pasture sort of fields, and a bit of transitional scrub before it becomes evident that the pine left alive besides the temple is actually quite average for the area. One unpaved road and a few less distinct trails lead out into the woods. Things... move near them, now and again, well hidden. Probably just deer.
Red-faced, making angry little noises of effort, Vena hauls herself up onto the roof, clinging to the thatch with both hands. Having worked herself into a tiny rage thinking about this specific thing, she says, "If you can climb you can wash your own dishes."
no subject
"Climb near the wood beams, not the thatching. The old lady'll get pissed at me if you fall and break something."
Who was babysitting who, exactly? Guess he was looking after this dumb kid now. He gets up to his feet, testing the strength of the diagonal beams by leaning onto it with his boot. He might be a bit denser than whoever typically came up to do work here, but not by that much.
And so, with the hard part out of the way, he strides up to the top point of the roof to join that chicken. The view and the light breeze was nicer up there.
no subject
Errrrrk, is the chicken's only comment. By now the sun is out of sight behind tall pines. The sky is light yet, though shading darker, and the moon is just rising, indistinct in the still-blue sky. Other than the noise of the enclave, it's fairly quiet. Birds are getting in a last round of singing, and the pines sigh in the wind.
"What are you looking for?" Vena asks again, having got up higher rather more slowly. She is not going to unshield and listen for thoughts, this takes concentration and the idea of falling off and proving Guts right on any level is mortifying.
no subject
Satisfied with his perching spot, Guts gets comfy there on the rooftop. No matter how gruesome things got after a war, it was always peaceful to watch the dusk fade and see the stars.
So, for a while, he drinks in the sight of the trees beyond the barricades, the dirt roads and the structure of the town. Fires begin to get lit with the coming of the night, bathing small areas with warmth. He catches the moon, barely visible in its waning stages. Despite lacking a weapon, it was easier to relax away from all the village inhabitants.
no subject
"That's the temple to the Twins," she says, propping herself up and pointing. "And the bathhouse. The refectory. There's the glassworker's forge, and master's forge, and there's the armory and the salle." Vena points out a few more buildings and then hooks her chin over the roof's spine again and lapses back into silence, kicking her feet in the air now and then in a fidget. There are some things she'd like to be doing more but this isn't bad.
As the sky goes to indigo a chiming rings out from the temple, and many of the people below start to move towards it. The sentries in their towers stay where they are.
"That's evening service. I'm not goin' this time. It's not required." Vena doesn't mind the services, even if she doesn't really feel the presence of the four gods called the Twins. They do tend to go a little longer than she likes, though. She looks down at the slowly clearing enclave and, speculatively, at Guts.
no subject
"Never bothered with 'em. I don't think God cares about people like me, anyway."
Or whatever form 'God' took in this little backwoods town out in the middle of nowhere. Mercenaries were not typically a religious sort, though superstitions were rife among soldiers. Bad omens, good signs, Death itself waiting over your shoulder. A priest of the Holy See would condemn such things.
None of it felt as real as his sword or the ground or a panting horse under him. He keeps watching the moon, the silvery crescent becoming more visible as the night darkened.
no subject
She doesn't want to be a fighter herself but it's nice to think that she could be, if she did and called on Her. Assuming She answered. Crafter hasn't in any clear way yet. Everyone's kind of vague on how the Twins respond, if they do.
Owls start to call in the gloom. Vena scratches a bug bite. "If I could kinda... let you borrow a sword, for the nights, you'd give it back, right? And you'd have to not let anyone see it."
no subject
Guts blinks away from the night sky once the girl makes her offer, baffled.
"You'd just trust my word if I said yes? Thought you were all worried I'd stab you outta nowhere."
That was fast. He's actually a little worried Vena would offer him one so quickly. He's a mercenary - Lashan's caution was perfectly warranted, especially with the lack of properly trained guards. But he won't say no to an offered blade.
no subject
She's relaxed her shields after it became evident that she wasn't going to have to wrangle balance at the same time. When there are fewer people close by it's not so bad, even if after a few minutes the man on the roof and the woman on the closest guard tower, and the more indistinct not-sound of the sleeping chicken and the drowsing horses, become louder until it's like they're all next to her shouting. Tuning out the animals isn't so hard but the sentry woman... How does Lashan do this all the time? To her it must be like everyone's always saying what they think out loud.
"Are you actually gonna do that?" she asks, a little distracted by the effort it takes to ignore and a moat with man-eating fish and I could fish in it but would that be cannibalism huh. "You were mad when master told you not to kill anyone. But you wouldn't need a sword for that, it'd just make things easier."
no subject
It was easier to go with the goofy explanation for a kid. Indulging in nice food was so rare and fleeting that he really did appreciate it, even if he never properly thanked Lashan as of yet.
Before he could raise a sword, he was tasked with cooking meals, including his own. As of late, much of it had been game meat and whatever bread and cheese he could get nearby. Anything that required significant cookware was out of the question when he was wandering around forests and fields.
no subject
She frowns, trying to get back on the more serious topic and keep track of what she's actually heard with her ears versus the more intense tumult of other information. That guard is still bored and daydreaming about fish! It's like tasting dumplings and army camp fare and unadorned game and sweet flaky fresh fish all at the same time, and now she's hungry. It would be fun to talk about food and she's pretty sure if they went to the refectory now she could steal something...
"But this is important," Vena says, a little to herself. "You know why people are scared of you. Master's so beat up and she won but you're..." She waves her hand at Guts, unthinkingly using Lashan's same gesture.
no subject
"I'll give it back. Promise."
A mercenary's promise never meant much, he knew, but it felt different here. More tranquil. There were opportunities for soft things outside of a rotten battlefield.
no subject
Oaths are binding to people who follow the Twins, so actually swearing to do something is rare and special. It hadn't been like that in the army camp. Vena finds the way they talk about it here, the various different rituals, so serious and kind of thrilling. Like words and a gesture mean more than they would otherwise. As a child she can't really make binding oaths herself, but that doesn't stop all kinds of little rituals among the kids, imitating their elders.
"You've gotta... you lock your little finger with mine, and then you say you swear to give it back and not kill anyone here, and lean north and east and south and west, and then let go." It absolutely has never occurred to her that pinky promises are anything but cool.
no subject
He wraps his pinkie around hers, hand callused and roughened from his years of handling the sword and crossbow.
"Well. I swear I won't kill your friends," he starts awkwardly,"And, uh - I'll give the sword back. Like I said."
This was goofy as hell from his perspective, but if it got a weapon on him... He leans his head in all four cardinal directions, remembering which way the sun set. He waits for some kind of confirmation from Vena before releasing her finger.
no subject
Swearing totally is cool, and it's not his fault that he doesn't understand that. Vena watches Guts' face intently, what she can see of it in the dim light. "And seal it - let me touch your thumb - okay." She lets go and solemnly says, "And if you lie all oaths to you are null, every man's hand is against you, the gods turn their faces away and you will be eaten from the inside out by your own darkness until the reckoning comes."
Which isn't something you say after finger-swearing, but a promise to not kill the Sisters or walk off with a sword that represents a considerable chunk of their income seems like it calls for something bigger than break your fingers if you lie, stick a needle in your eye. She's probably not quite got the words right but Lashan always says the intent is what's important.
"Okay," she says conspiratorially. "The armory's locked up and I don't wanna go in the bunkhouses or dorms." Most of the people who didn't go to service are in those. Also, the women who'd keep weapons for themselves outside of the armory would notice if they were missing. "But I know there's some finished ones in the forge and everything's done for the day. We just have to..."
Vena looks down the roof and at the ground. "Wait, how do we get down?"
no subject
He watches her incredulously as she finishes off the rest of the swear. Some superstitious part of him felt a little unnerved by that, as if this kid was going to really go up and curse him if he ran off with the sword. He really didn't need any more bad luck after what the last string of years were like.
Guts is sure he will prefer his own over the sword they have when it comes time to depart, so whatever. He happily unlocks his finger before she adds any more weird incantations to the deal.
"You jump down."
He says this as if its the most obvious thing in the world. Shaking off his momentary apprehension, Guts walks over the same wood beam towards the low end of the roof, and hops off. Getting down was easy - he only had to rely on his legs for that part.
no subject
Vena peers over the edge of the roof and cautiously makes her way along it. "You just jump down!" There's a tall pile of hay slated to be replacement bedding when the stalls get mucked out. She peers at it, balling her hands into fists, and hesitates for a moment while she sways indecisively back and forth. "I'm not a little kid," she mutters, imagining Guts coming back up and getting her like she is, again, a kitten.
So she jumps before she can stop herself, and with a rustle disappears completely into the hay.
no subject
He leans over the pile, brushing a few clumps of hay away to look for the girl buried inside. She guessed correctly that he would have offered to at least catch her - though given his wounds, it may not have ended as gracefully as he would have hoped.
If he finds a hand or limb, he'll help pull her out with a shit-eating grin on his face. Around Vena, it was easy to lighten up and act a little more his age.
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)