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
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.