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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"If you get kicked out can I have your stuff?" the eavesdropper asks as she's crowded out and left behind.

Inside it's busier than before, with multiple women who've started out the other door looking over their shoulders at Guts as he enters so abruptly. Most people in the enclave just look like villagers of some sort. These have the look of priests, with cleaner, less weathered robes in clearer colors and a lot more embroidery and repetitions of a particular symbol, and tend towards being older. The youngest and slowest to leave are a pair of identical twins that look about twenty. Plainsfolk, they're tall and brown with straight black hair and black eyes, who walk very close together and each with an arm around the other's waist or shoulders. They have to walk like that, they seem to be bound together at a point on their midsections, though fabric obscures just what's going on.

"If you're going to undo all that work," one says while looking at Guts, and the other picks up, looking rather more pointedly at Lashan, with "Then at least do it outside."

"Don't teach me how to curry a horse," Lashan retorts, getting to her feet. "And the divine twins act doesn't work on me, I changed your diapers. Get out of here, I want to have a private conversation."

"All right. Aww, Vena," one says with a concerned frown, noticing the girl wearing an utter non-expression. The other says, "I'm sure it will be fine. See you, Vena," and steers them out.

Lashan looks... actually, quite a lot better than yesterday. Her nose isn't so swollen, her bruises have faded as if they'd had longer to heal then the ones she left on Guts' wrist and forearm, the stitched up cut is more pink than red, and she just seems to have more energy. When she gets up and goes to the door The Boy and her apprentice - who draws back a little - had come in through, to open it and tell off the eavesdropper for loitering, she doesn't use her cane, though she does still favor one leg.

Vena seems to have only shrunken more after he pulled her inside. He doesn't think to comfort her. It was up to her if she was going to take this standing or shriveled up like a desiccated flower.

The first thing Guts notices is that the infirmary is crowded. He sees the finery of religious clothing, with all its delicately woven thread. This lot didn't seem as severe as the clergy he knew, with lectures about their lord's judgment and their self-flagellation. But he couldn't be sure.

Some stare at him, as he expected. Dark eyes looking back, much like his own. His upbringing left him wondering where he came from, sometimes. He never did match the fair color of his adopted father, and mercenaries came from all sorts of places. Such thoughts are quickly quashed by more immediate necessities of food and money. He tilts his head to try and get a glimpse under the layers of fabric, expecting a rope or chain to jingle between the two women to explain their weird positioning. Being forcefully tied together to enact penance sounds right for a religious ritual.

His quest to find that answer is dropped when he sees Lashan herself, and his brows furrow. He recognizes the change in her almost immediately. The wounds looked like they had over a week to heal, at least. Magic isn't the immediate solution that comes to mind, as that simply didn't exist in his world of grime, sweat and meat. Such things were only for dreams and fairy tales.

"What the hell? What kind of medicine did they stuff into you?"

He blurts out the question, breaking the silence in the room after they had been given some privacy. No wounded soldier recovered from a knife wound that fast.

Whatever else is happening, the twin priests of the Healer walk together with the smooth ease of long practice.

Lashan herself is dressed a bit more formally than before. Not on the level of the priests, the cut of her clothing isn't so different from yesterday and she hasn't donned any jewelry more elaborate than black iron earrings, but her tunic is a deep red and supports panels stiff with embroidery. Some of the same symbols recur as on the priests. The faded, angry eyes and the up-pointed tusks of the tattoo on her chest peek above her low collar.

"That's something for the Sisterhood to know," she says coolly. "And trusted allies. Here's a question for you, boy." Lashan returns to the bed where she had been sitting, where she's bundled up her near-white cloak. That is a status symbol; in this world, where bleaching is mainly possible through laborious effort with lye and acid baths or through leaving fabric out in the sun, it's hard to get white cloth and harder to keep it white. This... isn't quite there but it's quite pale.

She unrolls it and lays a hand over the sheathed sword that it had been wrapped around. "Care to tell me how you got this?"

Vena, still near the door, makes a tiny noise and has gone as rigid as a board. Her face is an admission of guilt, not that Lashan looks at her.

The boy shrugs in response.

"You ought to do a better job of locking up your swords, if you don't want 'em wandering around."

He picks the dirt out of a nail, thumb to the finger of the same hand, holding himself with a very teenaged aloofness as he delivers his words of advice. Guts is happy to take the brunt of her anger and attention, undaunted by the formal clothing with its lavish patterning and heavenly whites. Not quite like a bishop's rich silks or velvet, more revealing, more mystical with the furious ink peering out of her low collar. He'd tell a bishop where to stuff it if he had to, he decides.

Lashan had already shown that she was keeping secrets from him, so he can't see why he can't have some of his own. It's obvious to him that if he'd wanted to hurt someone, he'd very well done so by now. And he wasn't wearing the sword publicly, frightening people. He'd mulled it over the night before, and this was the conclusion he'd come to. If they banish him for it, then so be it. He'll go.

It never occurs to him to toss blame to the girl.

The corners of Lashan's mouth try to twitch and she conceals that by pressing them together. She is, unfortunately, impressed and the kind of person who tends to find teenaged bluster endearing. Her demeanor is cool and hard, not that of someone holding back a fit of temper - the days when the old woman's personality better aligned with the symbol of her clan are long passed.

"How interesting, since the 'lock' I use for these is one that takes cunning and foreknowledge to circumvent. You must have slipped away from my apprentice." Her eyes go to Vena, who's turned the color of cheese, and then back to the boy. "What I want to know is why steal from us, after everything?"

"Can't blame a kid for getting distracted by sweets."

The lie comes easily, half truth and half falsehood. Lashan can take what she wishes from the statement.

"Anyway, I told you already. Sleeping without a sword's pointless for me. Bad idea out on your own. Then you ran off to go do some dance all night, and I'm not gonna just sit around and wait."

He leaves out the detail of not being particularly convinced by the village guard, either, but figures the rest made enough sense. It wasn't even particuarly false, beyond muddying who physically took the blade from the forge.

She folds her heavy arms over her chest and frowns skeptically. "So you're saying you're as untrustworthy as that? Do you always run around at night taking things because they're there and you can use them?"

Vena makes another little noise, wringing her hands together and clearly torn between trying to melt into the wall and bursting in protest.

Sooner than she'd wanted to, Lashan takes pity on her. "Vena, I'm not going to beat you with the flat of the blade or send you into exile or whatever that twerp said I'd do. Temper up your spine and spit it out."

"Promise?" Vena says faintly, swallowing hard.

He scoffs at her: “Who ever heard of a trustworthy mercenary? That’s on you, old lady.”

That world was full of lying and backstabbing and fear, and he has no qualms accepting he was a bad person with a wretched vocation. He was good at it, too, which only confirms how much of a devil child he must be.

But Guts doesn’t try to argue the point further when Vena peeps somewhere behind him. He doesn’t stop her or obscure the two from making eye contact.

This boy has certainly been through it and has internalized a lot of things, some of them familiar. Many of the people who come to the enclave, for however long they stay, have become convinced that they are terrible people, having been told so again and again. Lashan doesn't react to that. She doesn't really know how to solve that kind of conviction, only some things that very much don't help and one is letting on that she doesn't feel comfortable around people unless she knows some of what they're thinking.

"Little one," is all she says out loud, because the boy doesn't need to hear this. :I wouldn't cast you aside so lightly. You can disappoint me, you can have flaws in your judgement, but I know your heart is good. You wouldn't deliberately do anything so terrible that I would come to hate you for it.: "Let's hammer it out already."

Vena sniffs wetly and pinches the bridge of her nose to keep from crying. "I did it. I took the sword - Master, it's not like that, I had him swear first!"

"You are so eager to please," Lashan says, managing to restrain her sarcasm. She doesn't want the girl melting down. "Vena, that doesn't mean anything to outsiders. Let me guess, blind him and break his hand? That's not even binding."

Well. Guess the jig was up. Guts likes to think he was decent at lying, but he got the distinct feeling that Lashan was seeing right through him. Like she could read their thoughts, or something.

He turns to watch Vena sniffle and cry in her corner, frowning in turn. A part of him reels at the display of weakness, but only because he could recognize it as something familiar. The part of him he tries so desperately to finish strangling in its bed.

"Don't worry, she included a buncha other cryptic crap in there, too."

That part was honest. Something about jinxes and being cursed by man or whatever. Pinkies were involved. Not that it held any particular meaning to him, here.

Excuse him, Vena is not crying. There are tears in her eyes and trying to come out her nose but if she just doesn't blink they won't spill out onto her cheeks. It turns out that totally suppressing tears is a skill and one she's let go out of practice. She can still keep from sobbing or having her voice go too weird, if she keeps taking a moment to breathe. "No, I was - I swore, oathbreaker, an' darkness. If he stole it, or - or killed someone. He did the directions."

This is not the clearest verbal description of what she'd pinkie-sworn Guts to on top of the stable, but Lashan picks up enough overall that she presses her lips together again and leans back. "You're not supposed to know that one, let alone use it... never mind, that wasn't a question."

As a mage, even a young one with just a bit of training, there's some power in a voluntary oath Vena makes calling on the Twins, even indirectly by indicating the cardinal directions. Feeling altogether annoyed and put-upon including by her own reactions, Lashan frowns at both children. "I suppose I deserve this. Can't repeat 'it's better to beg forgiveness than ask permission' so many times without someone listening," she says with disgust. "You know if just about anyone else here found out they'd ride through the avenues shouting it."

“If I run off, it’ll be with my own armor and sword. Why would I trade that for some blade from a random village? Nothing in that shop of yours fits my style.”

A straight sword that wouldn’t make his arms strain and sweat wasn’t a blade that was right for him. He needed something large, something that made him plant his feet and brace with his whole body.

He could work with what he had, but the large thing sitting in Lashan’s forge was his preference. That was what his limbs responded to the best.

“When are you gonna finish fixing that, anyway? If you want me to take care of your bandit problem, I’m gonna need my tools.”

Vena's had a chance to calm down some and squint at the sword Lashan had kept bundled up for a dramatic reveal. "Hey, that's a spring sword," she says suddenly.

"So you finally noticed! Yeah, that was the only fall one, as you well know." Vena had taken a sword with the Healer's blessing on it, not hard to imagine why. Soft-hearted girl, Lashan thinks, aware of her own hypocrisy. "You'd better uncover it. Let him hold it for a minute, even if he thinks he's too big and strong for a good short sword."

The girl's just going to start rustling through the mattress now. Lashan bites back another comment and turns again to Guts. Surely he doesn't think he's just going to go clear the bandits out himself without even finding out how many or what exactly they're doing. She says, "Come by the forge. See how much effort it actually takes to mend a sword, let alone make one. Maybe you can even manage to help."

Spring sword...? He ponders the significance of that.

Soon enough, Guts ends up holding the Healing Sword in hand, wondering why all the morning drama turned out to be for something that was not a big deal at all. He could've finished the rest of the milk he left behind! How annoying. Maybe he should make Lashan wait, next time, if it was all going to be a bunch of theater.

"I'm not a blacksmith," he replies, starting to notice something odd about the blade.

His pain was fading, somehow. But that couldn't be related to the sword. Swords weren't tools for healing. Still, he gives the make a more thorough examination, having only stolen a small glance at the steel the first time around. While he wasnt a blacksmith, he was most certainly a swordsman, and he balances the handle in his palm with an easy and confident smoothness.

Oh, Lashan is still going to have a talk with Vena about this. Good intentions or not, having been in on a mind-searching session or not, the girl shouldn't be so cavalier about Lashan's work or about oaths! Vena is clearly aware of this and her panic seems to have faded, but when she pulls the fall sword out of the mattress and gives it to Guts her eyes are downcast and her lower lip is prominent.

"You're not, but you should see how it's done. Any fool can work a bellows, and if you can handle precision and consistency maybe you can do some hammering. If not, you can break up some of the salvage, you're strong enough. What me and mine have to do is make a rod of new material and weld it to your sword. Big as it is, it won't take a delicate touch."

Pain is such a subjective, nebulous thing that its ebbing and increasing can be attributed to all kinds of causes. This isn't big and obvious, especially without an actively bleeding, uncovered injury to notice. It could be placebo.

There's not much to notice about the sword that he hadn't seen before. It's elegant rather than ostentatious but still a decidedly fancier weapon than the ones Guts is familiar with. Curving blackened quillions clasp the blade and mark the transition from it to the hilt, with its gently flared weighted pommel and the blue river stone set into it. The stone is not a gem or even semiprecious, but it's polished and gleams dimly. That handle-sword join is completely sound and those crescent quillions are sturdy enough that they must have been made able to be able to serve as spikes. The maker's mark is four characters, not letters typically found in Midland, etched into the blade.

It must seem very light to him, but it's still the active weight of live steel and has good balance. Both edges are very sharp and the metal has a subtle, abstract rippling pattern, hard to discern clearly except in sunlight, lent by the many small individual chunks of steel that made up this blade.

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Do not be afraid of light

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