Need (Sister Lashan) (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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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
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.
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"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."
no subject
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.
no subject
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."
no subject
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.”
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"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."
no subject
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.
no subject
"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.