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.
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There was a problem with the plan. He'd done enough horse-riding to know forcing the animal into the thick of a dense forest would be a good way to break its legs or scratch out its eyes. Then he'd be out of a horse to sell. Then he'd be stuck with the longsword, short on money to feed himself and make a new weapon. He would have to make do.
Not that it was a bad weapon, but he had a rather strong attachment to his lump of metal. And maybe he rather liked the food they were giving him on top of that. It was richer than the salty dried meats and nuts and fruit. So the thought is dismissed with the enticement of a good dinner after all this. He gives Safflower a few little pats to the neck. She seemed to have snorted in response to his devilish thoughts.
"Should we bring it with us?" he asks, bringing the mare to an easy stop next to it. He wasn't about to ask a rickety elder to go get it, so he offers. He's done more outlandish things than swoop down on a horse's saddle.
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"Sure. Give her shoulder a slap on that side, that'll let her know not to turn sharply or do something creative when you lean down." Lashan looks back over her shoulder. "I suppose I should tell you the commands for fighting with her. She'll rear or kick on command. Hasn't actually seen combat like Thistle here, but we've got her trained not to bolt when things get lively."
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Some minor relief that the horse had some training. Not as bad as attempting to drag a farmer's workhorse out in to battle, then. He cues for Safflower to stay still before swooping down to give the half-buried arrow a swift tug out of the dirt. He could be limber despite the cobbled together armor plating.
The wooden shaft is spun in his fingers to present the arrow to Lashan fletching-first. Once could dare say it was a playful gesture despite himself. The arrowhead clinked against the metal of his gauntlet.
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She opens up the gap between them and tests her stability in the saddle, starting to call on Fighter's blessing to reinforce her fading strength. Her armor stops being so heavy. Picking up on some otherwise imperceptible shift in her posture and attitude, Thistle tosses his head vigorously, making his tack click. Lashan clucks to him and tells Guts, "Here, watch this."
Leaning forwards she gives the gray gelding a word in her native tongue and he stops to rise up on his hind hooves and paw at the air, snorting with excitement. When he comes down she gives him another cue and he rocks forwards to lash out behind him with his rear hooves in a very fast motion. It's likely to dislodge any sticks and dirt stuck to his hooves and send them flying at Safflower and her rider.
"That's my good boy," Lashan says, and similar, rubbing Thistle's neck and generally getting him to calm back down. She has an advantage in both training horses and getting them to fight for her, in that her gifts work on animals. Compared to people they're uncomplicated creatures, brimming with fear but willing to trust her when she's calm and steady.
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"Hey - " A small protest in annoyance as some twigs land on his helmet. Safflower seems largely undisturbed, huffing and shaking her head to get the dirt out of her mane. Dissatisfied with leaving the interaction end like that, a noise of indignance rises up from somewhere deep in his boy chest as he brushes the detritus off him. He gives the horse's chest a gentle squeeze of the knees to get the mare to trot ahead.
"All right. Is there secret word to get 'em to bite, or...?" He decides to take point, because what good would he be wielding a sword behind the archer? "And what was that word you said?"
He pronounces it about as well as your average Midlander - which is to say, terribly. It was almost as if he was emphasizing all the wrong syllables on purpose. It earns him a puzzled tilt of the ears.
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Instead she grins at the affront to the boy's dignity and lets him pull ahead. Tactical consideration aside he's clearly hoping to shower her with trail debris.
"Oh, she'll decide on that herself if you're both agitated and there's enough targets. She trusts her rider, boy, unless given reason not to. If you're calm, she'll be inclined to calmness. If you want someone dead, well, she won't get it but she'll figure you're on the same side and have a good reason." There's absolutely a couple of specific commands to tell the horse to bite but she doesn't want to tell them to him because right now there's just the two riders and two horses.
The mangling of her language makes her wince. "Break it down into three parts separated like the two parts of 'isn't', first of all." It's going to take some coaching, and Safflower's still not going to do the trick yet. "It's not just the word, it's your posture. You've got to have your weight shifted and your legs clamped enough that she won't throw you and you won't upset her balance and topple her over on top of you. That is not fun, believe me."
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Guts frowns at the trees, reacting in what must be a rather typical fashion to suddenly finding himself in the middle of a language lesson. He'd never learned much language beyond what was necessary to survive, never touched a pen to paper, and finds himself lacking the curiosity of a more scholarly type. At least, he thinks so. He can never see himself piled over books and scriptures. Too boring. Maybe he'll ask again when they aren't in the middle of tracking some lost hunter girl, and a horse-riding lesson might be more tolerable.
Safflower's hooves are muffled by the dirt as they continue onward, his eyes scanning the trail ahead for any signs of a fight or a hunt. The earth and the twigs held nothing for him.
"What about that other word? Bayot? Does that come from the same place?"
Clearly the village had a touch of the foreign to it. There was plenty of syncretism between the quarreling kingdoms he was frequently hired by, but influence from the plainsfolk was less commonly seen. Beyond the nest of six kingdoms, your average inhabitant of Tudor or Wallatoria or Midland was vaguely aware of the Kushan Empire to the east, and that was about it. The knowledge got more specific depending on who was neighboring who. Merchants of Vritannis seemed to have a bit more worldly knowledge, but those were rare to come by.
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Guts mispronounces 'bayot' too, in a way she won't bother correcting. Most of the plains words used day-to-day in the enclave are housefolk-ized, adapted to use the syllables of the region. "That's right. They're words from some ways south and east of here, where we don't pretend men and women are two different clans without a treaty between them. Swing left ahead - she went where the trail forks. Down towards the river. Can you hear it?" He'll have sharper ears than she does. In more ways than one.
She's not best happy about the girl going to the river. It's wide enough to get boats coming through now and then, and potentially is a supply line and source of transport for the peoples she's concerned about. At the moment Lashan still senses nothing, but she hasn't exactly stopped to let her awareness flow out to its furthest extent.
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Safflower is cued to the left with a light pressure from his thigh.
“What do you mean by that?” He asks, not entirely understanding the metaphor. “Most women around here are pretty different from you. Don’t see many of ‘em pick up a sword.”
It wasn’t impossible, of course, but a woman warrior was rare enough to be notable. Maybe there were some that had good disguises. He’d heard stories like that - girls dressed up as boys to travel unbothered.
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She purses her lips for a moment. Lashan's explained variations on this to many young people but Guts, if she takes a charitable read, just doesn't have the imagination or attention span of many of the others. How can she keep this simple enough without being too reductive and without seeming to talk down to him? "Around here many of the women most like me think they're men. Believe me, you've seen some, looking like men, acting like men, and thought so too. If they were born to the Plains they'd know they could be womanly and no one would hate them for it. Since they're here, they just wish, except the luckiest ones."
'Womanly' means something quite different on the Plains than here, too, which would make the whole topic more fraught here even if the housefolk cultures welcomed men-who-became-women and women-who-became-men. The 'clans' of Man and Woman are kept so strictly apart here in the north.
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He mulls it in his head, making an attempt to process, at least. Guts was well-traveled enough to have passed by a traveling troupe here and there. Slender bodied men with long hair applying make-up for their feminine roles to act. Some tournaments held similar events, but he was never one for participating in festivals or enjoying theater.
It was all an act of course, just pretend - or in the case of the women, a disguse - but he'd seen a little transgression nonetheless. People found a way. Some of the actors looked quite dazzling, he recalls, even if too much attention tossed his way elicited the same cagey bristling anyone else did. The only emotion that can really be pinned to such a thing was that it all seemed quite frivolous to him.
The tributary's whitewater roar mellows down to a weak gurgle, having yet to spot the glitter of water of the main river between the gray trunks. He presses on, the mare trotting over the thick roots of the tree that had spilled over onto the dirt path.
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Players like those Guts is thinking of come into the enclave sometimes. Most don't stay, not if they're young and healthy. Sisters live like reasonably comfortable if isolated common villagers, without a great deal of excitement, with plenty of dull work. A beautiful performer can aspire to a much better life, especially if they have a high tolerance for buttering up wealthy patrons.
"But there are also ones who aren't small and pretty and don't think they can even play as women. Especially if they're in some backwater and never even hear it could be an option." She ruminates for a second and uses her 'man voice', a good octave deeper and with slightly different inflections. These days she only puts it on when selling her work to brokers, so they won't haggle or draw things out as painfully. "Here, if I talk like this you wouldn't even know, huh? Not when I'm in armor especially. There's not always a way of knowing who someone is by looking at them."
Thistle, not liking the shift in his rider's tone, blows air and stamps. Lashan shifts her voice back and chuckles at the gelding. "Anxious child, aren't you? There there."
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"You tellin' me you were some kinda performer a century ago or somethin'?"
This is the first explanation that tumbles clumsily into his brain. Clearly, if some men could learn play women's roles, then the opposite must be true. Even if he'd never seen it, Lashan was from some far away place. Anything was possible. And it made sense in his head that's how this old ox made it all the way from her home to here.
She was so ancient, he wouldn't be surprised if she fit in some soldiering and sword training somewhere between now and then.
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"I'm not that old, fledgling," she says after a moment, amusement still in her tone. "I'm still a callow stripling in this, only my seventy-first summer." She can't be the oldest person the very young Guts has ever seen, but most her age and older aren't still putting on armor and taking up swords.
She might just have to be crude about it. Fine, Lashan's not squeamish. "I'm trying to tell you everyone expected I was a boy-child because I came out of the womb with a pizzle. I grew up big and inclined to fighting and if you'd met me when I was your age you would have thought I was a boy." Especially with the local paucity of women warriors. "But I'm not a man. My inner self is female even if my outer self isn't. Not every bayot is little and pretty."
It's on the tip of her tongue to say that not every lakinon is big and muscular either, but he hasn't actually voiced that thought. Sometimes Lashan thinks that if she'd been born different she might have been lakinon anyway. Not all of them are quite men, just as not every bayot is quite a woman.
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The crude explanation, on the other hand, seems to finally hammer the idea of a bayot in. He blinks a few times in puzzlement. Guts realizes he can't imagine what a baby Lashan would look like. She could have emerged fully formed and seventy-one, riding around on horses with her throaty voice, and that seemed to sit right in his head.
"Huh." Is his immediate response. He finds the peculiar tale rather easy to accept, even if he didn't relate. Lashan had shown him an undeserved amount of kindness, which weighed heavier than whatever it is she had under her clothes. Mercenaries weren't supposed to pry into each other's pasts, anyway.
"Sounds like a rough way to grow up."
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The world of being outside of the simple coin-flip that's how so many housefolk think of gender can get a lot more complicated than she's letting on but she should stick to one revelation at a time. She'll give Guts this, he doesn't get derailed into thinking a whole lot about what's in Lashan's pants, which is just one of those perils of reading minds that she's learned to live with.
Lashan shrugs and tries offering an opportunity to change the subject. "Aah, I had a good youth all in all. Harder than my little Sisters in the enclave, I think. We were nomads always moving our herds and flocks about. If she was a Plains girl Vena would've trained a horse already and be working on her sling and spear, so she could keep wolves off. There's a bit more excitement in that than in a remote compound, even without the inter-Clan raiding."
She can sense... some of the wildlife ahead is cautious, just as the birds and beasts near the two riders are made more cautious by the presence of humans and horses. Her immediate thought is another Mind-seeker who can shield themselves, but it might not be so, Lashan's not close enough to be sure without closing her eyes and focusing on the world. There's nothing to see or hear yet, but she straightens in the saddle and takes her strung bow from its leather holster.
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The question his caught in his throat when he sees her reaching for her bow, and he silently takes the hint to focus ahead. Body tensed, senses alert, his eyes dart back up the dirt trail, seeing nothing in the trees but hearing the weak gurgle of slow river water. He could see the twinkle of the moving water catching rays of light. It appears they were practically at their destination, but something was off. All the birds had gone quiet.
He scours the underbrush for hints of any human movement, left hand at Lashan's scabbard in case he needed to draw.
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It's easier for Lashan, suspicious and practiced as she is, to detect shielded people somewhere like this than it would be in a city. It's rare and very difficult to become invisible to normal senses, so even when shields keep her from hearing someone's mind the animals and people around them know they are there, and wild animals are markedly aware of humans and create a space in a way other people in a crowd usually don't. She's not up to the kind of multitasking it takes to use animal senses and piece together what they see, but she knows they see something.
Either there's a whole band of trained Gifted here - here in lands technically under the purview of the Holy See, which suppresses those traditions and forces them underground as the Sisterhood's are - or one stronger person, probably qualifying as a mage, has prepared several others for an encounter with people who rely on mindreading. Neither is good. Lashan leans back, signalling Thistle to stop, and waits and listens.
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When his eyes catch nothing but the boat bobbing lazily in the water, he decides to dismount.
"I'm getting a closer look." he says, leading Safflower out of Thistle's way where the path fanned out. With the thick tree roots and big rocks by the riverbank, being on horseback wasn't going to help him much. His pride wouldn't allow him to consider hiding behind Lashan.
He scans the ground for hints of footprints or signs of struggle, finding a few trails from where the boatmen (or women?) had disembarked from the water. He approaches the boat to look for clues the mud and the creaking wooden planks.
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That arrow's perforated bulb-shaped ceramic head making it immediately distinct at a touch. Lashan takes a deep breath and sets aside some more ordinary arrows from her quiver first, reciting the blessing and feeling the tug of her energy sinking away into them. She can close with a mage but it'll be better if she can just shoot them. That done she sights with the singing arrow and with shifts of her weight and legs gets Thistle to step forwards into a better position. There's a trick to using these properly and part of it is trajectory.
There are absolutely footprints in the mud, some of them quite deep. People have been carrying some curious kegs out of that boat and setting them up on shore, but it's a bit too well-appointed to be a proper smugglers' boat. There is the a campfire smell, and the general sense of having people right close by, just out of sight.
Lashan looses her arrow. As the air rushes through the holes in the bulbous arrowhead it doesn't so much sing as keen, an uncanny high note that gets higher as it flies closer and lower as it gets further away. In response there are thumps and yelps along the lines of "What was that!" A man who'd been concealed by a bush actually stands up and takes his helmet off to peer in the direction the sound had gone.
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Safflower’s front hooves bounce off the ground, inadvertently drawing the man’s attention as she kicks up dirt. A short, agitated neigh from deep within her chest answers his baffled question of: ’A horse?’ And the dawning realization that he’d been discovered. He curses under his breath.
In that moment, Guts had vanished from the boat and moved a few paces behind him, sword drawn. The visor was slid over his face, his eyes peering out from the steel rim like sinister black wells.
A twig cracks beneath his boot, giving him away a pace or two early. Guts clenches his teeth at his mistake, a flash of white in the muddy green, but leaps forward to make his move.
It’s over after a brief struggle. The pommel of Lashan’s sword is slammed down on the man’s skull. With a grunt of pain and his opponent dazed, Guts moves to grapple. He was a little shorter than his enemy, but the difference wasn’t so great that he couldn’t leverage their weights to slam him on his back.
Knees pin the armored body to the ground, the sword edge is held a hair’s width away from skin and all the delicate blood vessels in the throat.
“Scream, and I’ll cut your head off.” the boy hisses out, and the crazed look in his eyes seems to freeze whatever panicked words were waiting in the throat beneath his sword.
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Drawing a fresh, ordinary arrow back, she sees two others reacting to the singing arrow and makes her judgement. This isn't a boat associated with the smugglers the Enclave has dealings with, she doesn't recognize these men, they're armed and armored like people who have some funding, she can't touch their minds. That's all she needs to decide they should die. She shifts her aim, correcting for drift and the peculiarities of the bow, and the bowstring whaps hard against her armguard as she looses, nocks and draws and sights, looses again.
Lashan doesn't practice as obsessively as the boy - she has actual things she has to do - but she still makes sure to keep her hand in at the archery range, afoot or on horseback, trying to keep old skills from degrading. The first arrow finds the eye of the man who'd been building up a small fire; he collapses, smothering it. The second doesn't quite hit where she wanted, with a target who's considerably further away and moving and who she had less time to sight on. That arrow takes him through the throat. He goes to his knees clutching at it and gurgling, taking longer to die. She doesn't spare him another glance, looking for more targets and any other movement with a tight intensity. Are there only three men?
In the woods, out of sight, another horse answers Safflower's neigh.
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"Want to join your friends? Or do you want to tell me where you came from?" he raises the blade off the hair's edge of his neck.
'You rotten brat-,' the man spits at his visor as he uses the brief opportunity to slip an arm free. The two struggle in the dirt. It appears less like a coordinated fight and more like two animals twisting their bodies around each other, one desperate to escape further and the other trying to keep his catch pinned long enough to tire out his victim.
The size of the blade works against Guts so close, and he is forced to half-sword to maneuver it around each other's limbs. A knife slipped from his enemy's belt, the blade flashing sparks on steel, edge briefly tasting flesh. It ends up knocked a few feet out of grasp with a good elbow from his gauntlet. Blunt metal strikes skin.
In the end, once the dust settles, said brat finds himself still on top, collecting a few cuts and deepening bruises for the trouble. His knees are braced against the ground, his arms pressing down against the weakening struggle of the man's crossed forearms beneath. A wrong slip could send the longsword's tip plunging deeply into his neck.
'Wait - ' the man wheezes out, spitting blood from his mouth where it painted his nose and lips, freshly stricken by blunt metal. The yellowish white teeth were painted red.
'To hell with this.' he coughs out, the man - mercenary or otherwise - appears to be second-guessing whether he wants to die for his cause. 'Ain't worth the damn money like this.'
The pressure lets up between the two of them as Guts slowly sits straight. He doesn't keep his eyes off either hand, grip on the sword tense and ready to spring to action. He was coated with a fresh layer of sweat.
"Smart move." he says, eyes black in the shadow. It appears that he would be honoring the promise to talk.
The intruder lets out a sigh of relief, letting his trembling arms finally rest. Once he catches his breath, he opens his mouth to speak again, but his words appear be caught in his throat.
'It.. He...' The man's eyes go bug-wide as his words turn to wheezing gasps like a fish breathing air. There's an unnatural gurgle up his throat that Guts couldn't help but compare to a plague victim in a late stages of their disease. The gasps turn into violent coughs, the man's hands grasping at his own throat in futility.
Guts looks down in alarm, leaning back as a glob of dark blood erupts from the man's mouth. The coagulated mass ruptures and coats his jaw and neck in black-red fluids, settling into a wet halo in the dirt around his head. His eyes were rolled back into their sockets, but the rest of the body rapidly slackens beneath his weight. Just like that, he was dead.
"What the hell...?" Guts stands to his feet, disturbed. He'd seen many ways men could die by the sword, but never like that. His blade hadn't nicked any major arteries or veins, he was sure of it!
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Thistle makes a displeased noise in his chest and shakes his big head, making his tack click, as the smell of the man Guts caught enters his sensitive nostrils. He still carries Lashan closer so she can see and click her tongue as she recognizes what's happened. In stories told to scare Plains children, breaking blood-oath always means catching fire or exploding. In reality the expenditure of magic energy it takes to lay an oath that did that is extravagant, something hardly anyone would commit.
She tells the lightly battered boy, "Bad contract. If anyone ever hires you and wants a drop of your blood for it - probably to press a bloody thumbprint on something - you ought to refuse. It needs a kind of consent to work."
Blood-oaths are a more immediate cousin of what Vena tried with him on the stable roof. There is no inherent compulsion to most oaths and promises. They're just words, the only rules about them are in peoples' heads. A mage can change that. Lashan has put people under blood-oath, in her desperate past. She doesn't like this evidence that someone - Heshain? - knows the technique.
"You good? Think there'll be more action before we're done."
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"What the hell...?" he repeats. "What's that supposed to mean? What happened to him?"
The viscera and blood of the battlefield was something he was used to. This smelled of something entirely unnatural, something foreign and that shouldn't be. It disturbed him the same way seeing the dead rise would, while at the same time second-guessing if he'd just hallucinated the whole thing. A heated fight to the death was exactly the place where superstitions are born, and he liked to think of himself as being fairly grounded. Maybe he had nicked an artery and missed it in the scuffle.
The immediate shock of the death shakes off when he catches more noise on their periphery. No time to dwell on it. There might be more men for them to kill. He lowers his head, peering around Thistle to catch a glimpse of what was approaching them from Safflower's rear. The mare was pawing the ground restlessly, throwing her head with agitation.
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