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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"Its pelt won't be good for much either, patchy as it is," she says with real regret. Not that she'd want to take the kind of time they'd need to skin a bear out here in the wet night with, still, enemies. "Maybe we can get the head or a paw... Hah, if you were clans this would make you a man."
She is tired, that the thought slips out without her vetting it. She can see how it got there, from the bit about the skin. In the enclave Lashan still has what's left of the hide, the tusks and teeth and bone-beads from the grand old boar she'd hunted and worn in a long-ago ceremony. Certainly she still carries the ink in her skin. That's the last strong, purely sweet memory she has of that time. She snorts like a horse and clears the old pain, regains some of her distance. "You got anything broken? I don't want to stay out here any longer than I have to."
The gore drains gradually from the blade of her longsword, the metal showing pale and bright between rivulets running to the tip. The hilt, unfortunately, acts like any other hilt in this situation and is not washed clean by rain and gravity. Galli, trying desperately to not get chewed out anymore, has let the leads slack and the animal's body slump back down. She takes Lashan's words as a cue to climb on it - she is a fraction of its size, if she curled up she'd be about as big as its head - and start cutting industriously with a curved knife.
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He gingerly presses his fingers into his side. It felt bruised as all hell, but his breathing felt fine. The armor probably saved him from breaking any ribs. He's fairly certain his chest will look completely purple once he takes the plate off. It's a sobering thought.
There'd never been any real threshhold between boy and man, now that she mentioned it. There was just the burden of staying alive that got easier as time went on and leveled his strength with that of his enemy's. For all intents and purposes, he already considered himself one.
But despite playing aloof, even Guts would find a claw or a fang to be a pretty cool keepsake. He gives the bear's paw a brief look, shivering slightly in the rain.
"Where'd the rest of the soldiers go?"
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It will break Lashan’s heart if she thinks too long about how Vena and Guts and so many of the others passing through the enclave and out in the world haven’t had that. They just go from less power to more, at best. Guts is better off than a lot of the others, as terrible as that thought is, because he can be on his own and that's better for him than being used by evil guardians. Better not to think of it, Lashan knows. She peers out into the rain, silvered by her lantern. A bit of the ozone scent is still detectable under the coppery reek of all this blood, and something acrid and burnt.
“They got hit by lightning. It’s attracted to metal and they were on a rise,” she says shortly. Which is all completely true. There are still flickers of lightning and murmurs of thunder still going, all further away. “All the more reason to get gone. Even you can’t fight a storm, my buck.”
Galli has determined that taking the head would be too difficult so she’s pried the jaws open and cut into the gums, then started hammering with the hilt of the knife to loosen teeth, her head down. Thud! Thud! Crack!
Lashan lets out a breath and holds out her sword. Her joins are burning in a slow mutiny. "You're in better shape than me. If you wanna cut off a forepaw..."
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Once he's out of range of Safflower, his footsteps are a lot less steady than they were before the fight, but he manages to make it to Lashan to grab the sword and plop down on his knees near the bear's patchy forearm. He'll make something useful out of it, he tells himself, sitting there in the mud. The lighter blade works to cut tough tendons and cartilege. Sure. Something useful.
As he works he notes that the bear's paw was massive, much larger than his hand. And the claws were easily as long as his fingers. A set of proper knives that nature gave this thing. If it had connected properly with his body, he'd be long cold and dead. And for what?
He pauses, staring stiffly, before continuing. The wrist bone makes a cracking sound as he hammers down lightly with the pommel of the sword. Now they have some teeth and a paw. Lashan gets a miserable little side eye to indicate he was done, now properly soaked to his own bones.
"Let's get out of here already."
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With a pouch full of yellowed teeth Galli starts for her pony, turns back, and hauls on the knife buried in the bear's eye socket. It's harder than drawing the sword out of its chest, she has to brace with a foot on its face and strain. When it finally pulls free she reels back to the point of almost falling into the puddle. She cleans the knife off on her cloak, though that's so blood-splattered that it's basically a symbolic gesture, before she gets back to her horse.
The ride back isn't good. Without a solid road to follow Lashan refuses to risk the horses by getting them to speed up, and as puddles form they become more wary and reluctant. Horses can't tell how deep a puddle is and stepping in a hole can mean a broken leg. Galli ends up slogging ahead with a stick and a woebegone set to her shoulders to reassure them, which does mean getting back to a fast walk. The light of the witchfire lantern shines cold and bright, mostly illuminating falling water coming down in such sheets that it's not immediately evident when they leave the trees.
A party from the enclave does meet them at that point with a canvas-topped wagon to take them back. There are horse-blankets and a tureen of steaming hot milk. Several burly Sisters have to help Lashan off her horse and get her sodden armor off - by that point, she's looking grey in the face - and one who works in her forge sits her down with a horse-blanket around her shoulders and a mug in her hands, and starts off with "If you get pneumonia off this I'm killing you myself!" By the time they're back to the palisade, light has come back to the old woman's eyes and she's denigrating her striker's power and endurance.
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He winces on his way down from the saddle, guided to the cart by a lone girl staring at the massive bear paw in his hands. The plate armor is removed much quicker than it's mounted to his body, eager as he was to untie all the leather strings and straps. The blood is somewhat cleaned off his skin by the rain, though it remains staining Lashan's shirt. He takes this off, too - both to see the damage and to remove another sopping wet layer off his body. He only needed a glimpse of the ugly purple blotching on his chest to know he was going to be deeply sore for another few days at least.
Guts occupies the corner opposite to Lashan and the others around her, blanket wrapped tight, sipping the warm milk wordlessly. He seemed content to keep the company of his armor, the sheathed sword, and all the unused arrows sitting in their quiver. Still, the gray in her face was worrying.
“How’s the old lady? Didn’t keel over yet, right?” the question is tossed into the air, earning him a dirty look. Cold could easily do in someone her age, he knew.
Luckily, it seemed like she was getting some color back into her cheeks, from what he could glimpse between all the other Sisters.
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"Lashan, why do you think we would just leave them out in the rain? Sit down!" is the wrathful response, but she doesn't actually settle until told the names of the girls who're on that. The old woman, complaining in a mutter, submits to her striker checking her over for injuries, though there's quite a lot less and rather more diluted blood than on Guts.
There's a Healing charm in her longsword, though it's not as refined as the ones she developed more recently. It has some effect in proximity to Guts, as it has for the whole ride, but that feels like another layer of discomfort. Breaks in his skin have mostly scabbed over and now itch. His bruised ribs burn faintly. A bit of some weird twisted spikelike growth from the bear, that had been driven into a gap in his armor and broken off, feels hot and ferociously itchy.
One of the Sisters peels off to look Guts over. She doesn't demand he unwrap so much as check the color in his face - there are more witchlights in lanterns here, and normal lanterns with flame - and see if he's favoring anything, and ask a rather pointed, "Well? Do you up and hide it when you get hurt, or are you actually fine?"
"Damn you Miria, I don't hide it," Lashan complains. "It's arthritis and a levinbolt and too cursed long in the rain. The boy's the one who fought a bear." A third person is checking over Galli, hunkered down in a sullen heap.
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"I'm fine," he replies flatly,"Aside from being stuck in the rain."
Guts was a mirror of Lashan in that way, apparently. He would have said he was fine even if he was in much worse condition, if the previous fight was any indication. As it was, his face was a bit pale from the cold, but not nearly as gray as Lashan had gotten. The blanket had stayed his wet trembling, and he seemed rather attached to it. The cloth concealed much of the beatdown his body received, and he wasn't about to explain how his head still hurt as ferociously as his ribs did.
The uncomfortable itchiness around his leg does get him to notice a shard or two of horn embedded in his thigh. His legs were sparingly armored compared to his upper body, and tended to be nicked with small wounds more often. Thoughtlessly, he sets aside the clay cup (now devoid of warm drink) and fiddles with the things to attempt to pluck them out. They were more thorn than arrow in shape, so he wasn't too worried about bleeding out.
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This does leave Guts with two women peering at him trying to see if he's bleeding out or about to die and a third who decides to just examine the pieces of his armor and Lashan's irreparably stained, sodden shirt and forensically determine that most of the blood probably isn't his. One of the two, suspecting he won't like to be helped, offers him a pair of little bronze tweezers before slipping out of the wagon, into the rain. If anything it's gotten worse out there. The rain appears to be sideways and makes a steady, constant noise against the canvas.
The tweezers will make it easier, but it hurts to pull these things free. The really unfortunate thing about this Healing charm is that the scabs cling to the foreign objects like he's left them for longer than a few hours, and there's more bleeding as those are taken off. It's also kind of satisfying though. The spikes are disgusting, sort of hairy at the non-sharp end.
"Do you want to wash off?" the forensic Sister asks. "Or are you too wet already?" This spurs a small side argument with the other girl about blood in the bathhouse and if this is worse than moon-blood.
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Guts curls up into a ball beneath his blanket once he checks his legs for the fourth or fifth time to make sure there were no more thorns embedded in them. They still itched like a scab as the wounds spilled over slowly with bright red. Hopefully it wasn’t infected from the rancid creature.
He earnestly felt too miserable to say something smart back to the girls, eyes drooping half-shut with weariness. His face looked okay, beyond a few scuffs and the ebbing sharpness in his eyes. The adrenaline of the fight had worn off, leaving him with a rich buffet of burning and aching. A post-fighting drink (a real drink) would do a lot better for him now, he thinks.
“The bath’s for washing the blood off, ain’t it?” He says, not considering the particular Enclave Sister that would have to take care of the aftermath.
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In her corner Lashan is complaining some more. Someone has told her she's getting taken to the temple. "I am not that badly off! Just drop me at my loft and I'll come let children poke at me in the morning."
"You're not climbing into that drafty loft with this knee," someone tells her. "It's the infirmary or the temple, Sister, they'll both be warm and dry."
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"Warm water would be nice..." he admits, voice muffled through the bundle. A thoughtless wish tossed into the air in earnest. Too hot and his body will ache and throb, too cold and he'll be miserable and shivering.
It was hard to make out the infirmary from the village gate, but he catches a glimpse of the familiar arrangement of lanterns through the sheets of rain. So much for being kicked out. Guess he'd be roommates with that apothecary witch for longer than she'd like.
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When he's exhausted and baffled Guts is not terribly strange or frightening. He seems, in fact, not unlike one of the girls. Sister Faler wavers and then, knowing she'll probably regret this, says "We're here. I'll bet it's hard to move now that you've stopped. You can lean on me." She will go red in the face and make an involuntary noise like a protesting kitten if she has to bear too much weight - the spirit is willing, the flesh is a weaver! - but is game for a short distance.
Being away from the sword with its Healing charm makes the sort of feverish aspect diminish and the pain increase. That could just as easily be having to get up and step down out of the wagon and be pelted by cold rain and have to climb the few steps into the familiar infirmary, though.
"Oh dear, and you just recovered," the Sister Apothecary says soon after Guts comes in. She's supervising as other Sisters work something into Lashan's shoulder and wrist and just glances back at him, more of her attention on the older woman. "Were you bitten? Clawed enough to break the skin? I need to know what salve to give you."
Crowding in after Guts, a skinny girl comes huffing and blowing with two buckets of water from the bathhouse. "I did it," she tells Faler. "You owe me."
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As she guessed, it takes a little wind-up time for Guts to find his legs from his comfortable position in the wagon. He's dense for his size, earning that protesting peep from Faler when he steps out onto the mud, grasping for the point of stability.
"Sorry." he remarks sheepishly. Once his two feet were planted on the ground, he's able to ease the wobble in his step and walk on his own. He lags behind Lashan at his own pace, aches gradually increasing and throbbing painfully. He didn't pay it too much attention as he stepped through the door. The discomfort was a familiar one.
The infirmary is busy, again, and he has nothing he can give the Apothecary but a shrug at her observation. Yep. He'd just left that morning. Not even a day had passed and he was back under her roof again with more work to give her. At least this time, he had a trophy to show for it.
"It's nothing. Just got some scratches and scrapes." he replies, parting the blanket open like a cape so she could get a look. "Head hurts, though."
The lacerations on his skin were minor, small streaks of red that had scabbed over. The result of being dragged accross rocky gravel or shards of wood jammed into gaps in his armor. The punctures from the horns were among the worst of it.
The bruises on his chest and shoulders looked uglier, mottled patterns of deep red and purple. The blotches mostly followed along the edges of the plate armor where it had been slammed against his skin. The bruising of his ribs radiated from the bottom, the bottom edge of the armor. Being thrown around by such a large creature had done its number on him, but the plate metal had spared him lethal injuries. Nothing seemed to be irreparably broken.
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Everyone is suddenly quite busy and looking at anything else. The Sister Apothecary is intent on Guts in a much more detached, clinical way and ignores all that, inspecting him gravely, rising on her toes to look into his eyes, asking if the blood in his ears is his and how many fingers she's holding up. At last she says, "I don't know if you're the luckiest boy in the world or the most deeply unfortunate." Just like Lashan had had a funny look when he'd survived, there's some change in this Sister's manner. She is impressed and a little unnerved. "You're going to be fine with rest. I'll make you a willow tincture for the pain. Use this for a sponge if you want to clean the blood off - don't let it in your eyes, though."
She's rummaged for a little cheesecloth bag filled with sweet-smelling ground herbs and offers it to him. Faler's tugged a folding screen open to enclose a corner. It's a wooden frame with cloth panels - there are similar dividers in the bathhouse, but they're carved wood - painted with water lilies and goggle-eyed fish. Guts is already tall enough that the top of his head would be visible behind the screen, but that's it. There's a basin there to stand in, and one of the buckets of sulfur-tinged warm spring water with a big dipper in it, like in the rinsing-off section of the bathhouse. Faler also drapes a drying cloth over the screen and has to rummage through general supplies to find a robe that might be big enough.
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Avoiding the peanut gallery to focus on the Sister Apothecary instead, he answers her questions agreeably enough as she examines the injuries with a practiced eye and hand. She was right, in the end. He was incredibly lucky to only be battered rather than dead. It wouldn’t be the first time a surgeon has told him this. The change in her expression was notable as she says this, but he figures there’s no sense no dwelling on it. He would risk his life again soon enough. That was his line of work, after all.
The boy simply nods and takes the herbs, giving the top of the bag a curious sniff or two.
“Smells nice…” he adds. The Infirmary tended to have plenty of pleasant herbal scents abound. The blood and rot of the battlefield hadn’t infected this place.
On his way to the basin he briefly looks at Lashan, as if wanting to say something, but reconsiders it given the crowd of Sisters around her. Maybe another time.
Faler gets a quiet ‘Thanks’ for her assistance, slipping behind the screen to wash the dried blood off his body. Fastidious as a cat, just as she said.
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The Sisters talk quietly on the other side of the divider. Snippets like "-really, a bear?" and "all by himself?" and similar can be heard. Lashan's lower, weary voice carries a little differently. She sketches out what happened without mentioning her part in killing the animal, not being someone who cares about credit, but describes it. "-a minor change-beast, probably a yearling. The growths were all horn-formed and they could only half control it. Those were mostly green men not really prepared to handle it. We caught them with their pants down."
Someone asks a question and she says, "It'd make me think about backing off but I mean, I'm not a lord. What has me the most worried is the blood oath," and then her voice drops a little softer.
The robe Faler ends up flopping over top of the screen is made for late-stage pregnancy. It's tight in the arms and shoulders, and in front wraps around with a whole lot of excess. The fabric is heavier than his borrowed clothes, more absorbent, and smells like cedar from storage.
The Apothecary, now with a distracted air - she's been writing something at her desk - gives him a little ceramic cup of sediment-filled brown liquid. "It's bitter. All at once now and then you can have soup to chase the taste out." 'Bitter' is understating it, but the soup looks good. Someone's set up a pot. Egg noodles, chopped carrots and turnips and fennel, butterfat shining on the top. Lashan's striker is bullying her into drinking a bowl of broth, she would clearly rather rest.
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The robe disappears behind his side of the cloth panels once he dries himself. The robe fit more awkwardly than Lashan’s hand-me-downs, the sleeves feeling small around his arms while the neckline left more of his chest exposed to the cold air than usual.
He awkwardly gives the sleeves a tug or two, assuring himself that the shoulder seams won’t split if he moves, before realizing in the middle of it how soft the clothing was on his skin. The wooded scent was pleasantly familiar, the smell of lone nights under quiet pine-crossed starfields. Of course, he would also carry an herbal scent with him once he leaves the bath to take the cup of medicine from the Apothecary.
Following her instruction, he tips his head back and downs the entire solution. The flavor is strong enough to make his face twist up in displeasure. Gross.
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The willow mixture is wetted by some form of alcohol stronger than the weak beers available at most mealtimes here. It burns and leaves a trail of warmth as well as being hideously bitter. The Sister Apothecary, taking the cup back, tells him, "Yes, no one likes that one, but it will have your head feeling better. Drink something else before you go to bed or your mouth will taste like that all night."
There's the soup and there's a steaming pot of another herbal infusion, which owes its deep red color and tartness to hibiscus, that rather overwhelms the other herbs steeping with it. Hibiscus tisane seems rather popular with the girls, who snuffle over their cups of it. Some are already asleep. No one, at least, has claimed the bed Guts has been using.
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“Don’t tell me what else you mixed in this.” He really, really doesn’t want to know. He just hopes the headache goes away.
Following the Apothecary’s advice, the boy saunters to the large pot, suddenly aware of the loud growl of his hungry stomach. A Sister nearby seems to have heard it too, and he does his best not to awkwardly meet eyes with her. He fishes around for a good amount of substance for the broth, and takes some tea with him for good measure. It was red, like blood, but smelled tart like a fruit.
Sitting cross legged on his cot, he nurses the soup a little bit at at time, enjoying the warmth. The egg noodles were new for him, but he slurps them up without thinking twice. Now that the activity was settling down, he tries to steal a glance at Lashan.
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The flavor profile of the soup is one Guts has got to be familiar with by now. An elusive chicken taste from broth boiled with bones and scraps, the sweetness of the carrots, aromatic fennel, salt that's mostly from pickled eggs, butter, the various herbs the Sisters grow. The egg in the noodles makes them richer than noodles made with just flour. They're a bit overcooked and gluey but still much more filling than the vegetables. The red tisane tastes remarkably close to how it smells, sharp and assertive in a fragrant way. Even when there's just a swallow's worth in the mug, it's quite red.
The shortsword with the Healing charm is still stashed under his bed, and it's made with more refinement than the quick and dirty version on Lashan's longsword. Between it and the little cup of bitter potion, the pain blunts and fades into a general ache except when Guts puts pressure or any strain on his bruised flesh. Rather than an itch, there's a sort of heaviness. But that could just be an effect of slowly winding down and taking in food and warmth.
Lashan's striker has sat next to her, thigh-to-thigh, and laid her head on the older woman's shoulder. She's one of the handful of Sisters who work with Lashan in her forge; all but Vena are stout or bandy and extremely familiar with her. Lashan herself has looped a long arm carelessly around her striker's shoulder and is drinking broth right from the bowl. She looks a little older, a little smaller, than she had earlier in the day. Having closed off her Mindspeech for once, she doesn't notice Guts looking.
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His body was tired, but with the pain easing away alongside the warm food, Guts finds it easier than expected to relax from the adrenaline high earlier in the day. He was expecting to be hurting a lot more by now, but the old witch’s brew must be taking effect. He can particularly feel the weight on his eyelids by the time he tips up the bottom of the bowl to finish up the soup, and leaves an empty cup of tea to go along with it. The sated feeling of a full stomach was a nice reward for being battered around. The meal had been well earned. This satisfied him more, somehow.
He normally disliked having so many people this close to where he slept, but it felt different this time. Less like a constant pending threat, and more like a sea of company. Safety, even, in knowing there were dozens of eyes and ears keeping watch rather than just one pair. The thought felt ridiculous if he reflected on it too much.
He was ruminating. Going in circles. In the end, he’d still have to leave once he gets his sword back. Best to not get too attached to the pleasant feeling.
The boy curls up in his cot to rest, succumbing easily to the pull of sleep.