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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"No, I mean it," one of the Healer-twins says with deliberate patience, addressing not the combatants but the unfortunate Hesri. "What would have happened if either of them broke their spine? What would we do with them?"
"They would have learned to live with it," Hesri says, her cheeks red. "People survive worse. We've supported people through worse."
Galli steps in to take some heat from her, though her shoulders sag as both Twins turn expressionless faces on her. "It's not like they asked permission. Nerine just finally found someone who wouldn't stay on the ground and call her an idiot."
"Galli, why are you here at leisure?" the other twin asks, and Galli absolutely wilts in place as she keeps talking. "Don't you know what danger you brought on yourself and all the rest of us yesterday? If Lashan had died..."
"Here's where you describe my funeral," Lashan says, leaning against the fence and getting some of the weight off her bad knee. "It'd better start with a feast. Children," she says more loudly and sternly, addressing the assorted Sisters, who've done a lot of straightening up and acting like sober, interested parties. "Afternoon entertainment's over. Time to go back to whatever you all are supposed to do."
They disperse, looking back over their shoulders. Huo waves as he's led away. "Bye, Mister Boy!"
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When Nerine's wriggling stops, he hefts her along out of the hay easily. Lashan's crotchety old face was starting to feel less like a stranger's, so he makes his way to her. His hostage is eventually dropped in another puddle of mud on the way over, making the round an acceptable half-win for both of them.
"How's the sword?" he asks, like hadn't just been doing something stupid and dangerous.
His hair is plastered to his head from the rain, and his bare upper body is covered in smears of mud and mottled bruising (some of which were looking a little redder than that morning). The stab wound in his shoulder had healed enough that the muck wasn't of immediate concern - though he should probably rinse it out again along with the rest of him. His palms were still looking a little raw from pulling rope.
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There's a good chance they'd have had to put Guts on suicide watch if he broke his back, Lashan thinks, looking him over. And probably have him dragging himself around by his arms. Like Hesri she's not imagining him dying but suffering a permanent injury. Given that thickheaded stubbornness and the Healers' help he might or might not walk again eventually but things would be bad in the meantime.
"Eh," she says, as if she hadn't just walked over on him doing something stupid and dangerous, and then says something technical about some minor problem that came up in the forge, ending with "But it's sorted. I didn't start learning the forge just last week." Not pausing or changing her tone she says, "Boy, do me a favor and keep this kind of thing on the ground until you get out of here. You're a mess. Did you have fun?"
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But that wasn’t his foremost concern at the moment. It sounded like his sword would be ready soon, barring a few technical hiccups here and there, which means he’d be departing sooner than later. But, she was right, he was still a mess. He’d have to actually rest to be in proper fighting shape.
Pensively, considers Lashan’s question, realizing it wasn’t common thing he was asked or considered. Gambino certainly didn’t care much if the boy was enjoying himself. Looking back at Nerine, remembering their little spar up on the roof, and the tug of the rope, and Hesri too (even if that was more awkward than fun, per se).
“Yeah. I guess I did.” he admits, though the smile on his face is rather understated.
“I’ll have to give the rat another match on the ground, next time.”
Spoken within earshot, so she hears.
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Gruffly, annoyed with herself, she says, "That's the best I can ask for, I suppose," and leaves which statement she's responding to unsaid.
It's a relief to know that he still has fun in him and knows how to pull his punches enough to roughhouse instead of treating every altercation like it's life or death. She hadn't expected this half-feral boy-man to know about headlocking someone to mess with their hair. Maybe she's too cynical about him. Or not cynical enough, since he's going to march himself right back into other peoples' wars once he leaves. She shouldn't worry herself about the future of someone whose face she likely won't see again.
"You should clean off enough to cover up before you give more girls a complex. And go with our firebug back to the infirmary for at least long enough to clean that out and so she can get fresh salve. Aumin's out on a housecall. The apothecary," she clarifies dryly. "I'll send Vena after you. Gotta stay here a bit longer." Gotta underline her girls' authority with their peers while also not letting it go to their heads, that sort of thing.
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The particulars of why girls act the way they do are utterly lost on him, but he should eventually get dressed again to keep his wound covered. He surveys the fence, having forgotten where he’d left Lashan’s shirt in all the entertainment of the day. He finds it half-abandoned where it was, draped over the fence. A bit wet from the rain, but clean. No mud.
To the bathhouse it was, then. He jumps the fence to get going, but one residual question makes him linger on Lashan a bit longer than usual. Should he ask?
“Uh - Where’s the firebug?”
He doesn’t make the connection. He imagines in his head a jar full of firebugs, like captured fireflies. Or maybe it was one big firebug. Medicinal.
It made sense in his head.
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So she’s caught off guard a moment when he pauses to ask. What’s with this insect-catching imagery? Wait. “Hunh. All right, in ancient times when the gods walked the earth, we used to say someone obsessed with flame was a ‘firebug’. Ours is mostly reformed - she’s the tall one with the burns, you can’t miss her.”
The tall one with the burns doesn’t know she’s being discussed and is participating in a serious conversation with the twins. She seems to be holding her own, or at least, doesn’t seem chastised like the other two not dismissed to go about their days.
“She’ll be there soon enough, she knows the way.”
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"Yeah. I know her. Likes to arm wrestle, for whatever reason..."
He couldn't think of any other explanation as to why Hesri would go so many rounds with him when she was all messed up like that. But whatever. Her choice. He sees her having what must be an insufferable discussion with the priests, and takes that as his cue to meet up later.
"I'll get goin'. See ya."
Never a long farewell with this one. He goes to get himself cleaned off. The first few days had felt incredibly awkward bathing with company, but by now he's learned a quick routine to minimize the amount of time getting a wayward giggle or stare. His hair was the worst of it, muddied and half-drying as it was, but he manages to get his head clean with bucketfuls of water and vigorous scrubbing with his hands. He's most attentive with his still-healing wound site, otherwise.
It doesn't take him too long to make it back to the infirmary, though it meant skipping out on any of the nice oils near the baths this time around. He hadn't entirely dried off by the time he enters, shirt draped loosely over his shoulder like a towel. Although his boots and trousers still held dusty evidence of his day in the mud, the rest of him had entered fresh and renewed.
He locks on the sound of knife cutting fruit flesh, turning to find Hesri preparing peaches at the opposite end of the room. He'd been so preoccupied with roughhousing that he forgot he'd eaten practically nothing that day, still. The sweet scent of the fruit lures him over.
"Hungry?" he asks, as if he wasn't also considering what to eat.
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In the afternoon sunlight there are a lot more people about than earlier and Guts gets more looks of both the 'that's a lot of skin showing' and the 'that boy killed a bear?' varieties. Distinctly more attention than the day before, but no incidents stand out.
In the infirmary, Hesri nods without looking up from her task. "This goes better with a snack. You were eating something when you showed up but I don't know if that was lunch, huh? Here, eat the one I butchered. I'm terrible with overripe fruit."
She means one abandoned, sliced several times with disarrayed skin and oozing juices but all still in one piece, clinging tight to the pit. It seems she's doing better with firmer peaches, if slowly. The arm wrestling bout has her relevant joints aching and she's working with clumsier tools that her weak grip can handle anyway. The wooden hilt of her personal knife would suit a much larger and heavier implement, and the blade comes out of it at a weird angle. A heavy juice-stained cloth in her other hand lets her hold fruit without getting any on her mitt.
Hesri looks up, then, and takes in the state of Guts with her eyebrows lifting. Still shirtless! Well, she's not going to complain, even if the bruises and the still-red healing wound do detract somewhat. "Oh, you don't have a change of clothes, do you. How can you get all the way clean?"
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There's a loud noise from his stomach. He had eaten something to quell the growls of the morning, but it wasn't sufficient enough to be called breakfast or lunch. He didn't notice his own hunger until now. He'll have to get something substantial when it was proper meal time again.
Well. There's more food in front of him now. Guts quickly demonstrates that he is not picky, giving the peach only a cursory examination before starting to tear it apart with his teeth. All he had thought to check was if it was covered in juice and not ointment. After ripping a chunk from the pit not unlike tearing meat off a bone, he answers her again:
"If your hands hurt, I can chop up the rest of them." Chew, chew.
For whatever reason, the impulse comes naturally. A fuzzy imprint, not quite a memory, sits somewhere in the back of his head. A half-face marred by the disease - in time, he may end up fully forgeting the details of her with how distant it was. Plague, they said. He was supposed to be afraid, and yet, found himself sticking close to the deteriorating body, grasping as hard as he could. Her death was twelve years ago.
For whatever reason, Hesri's kindness kindled some mote of a similar feeling. He wasn't afraid, so he offers a hand instead.
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When he offers she smiles. "I should say no and prove my independence, but I suppose I've cut up a couple already." Meaning, she does hurt. "Please. You can use my knife, and go ahead and eat some yourself... I suppose this seems extremely fiddly to you."
The Apothecary has left her a mug of something, larger than the cup she gave him last night, with a similar look and smell. Hesri drinks it all in one go, opening her mouth afterwards in a suppressed gag, and starts using a long bulbous-handled fork to stuff peach slices into her face. Once she's eaten enough of them she sits back with a sigh. A certain brightly brittle edge to her demeanor softens as the medicine starts to take effect.
"Did Sister Lashan ask you to help me? You don't have to, Vena will do it once she's washed the forge off." Guts must have just missed her. "I know it's a lot. I suppose I'm something of a memento mori, but as a soldier you wouldn't need to be reminded."
She's saying it as much for her own sake. Hesri knows what she looks like and how uncomfortable it makes people who aren't accustomed. He'd done well to go a few rounds arm wrestling with her, actually touching her, but she'd noticed that discomfort and it's not something she enjoys seeing. And despite what she's just said, she is a sort of memento mori to a soldier, too, not so much a reminder of death as permanent injury. If his hands were like hers, he wouldn't be able to use a sword well enough to fight.
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Preoccupying himself with the knife made it easy to turn his brain off, somewhat. At this point it was force of habit that had him keep count of all the bodies in the room and their proximity to him, even if there wasn't any real danger.
"I end up in here a lot anyways."
For whatever reason, he felt the need to assure her that she wasn't a burden. Death and decay was simply part of the job and he was used to it by now. He pulls a piece of fruit off the blade with his teeth and offers another slice to her. The sweet flavor and aroma was pleasant. It was nice to share it.
"Lashan just said you'd be in here to change bandages."
His excuse for being here was simple enough - the spear wound was in its final stages of sealing up (helped along by the healing sword in his cot) but it hadn't quite yet faded into another light line on his skin. He was lucky being battered around didn't reopen anything. What a foolish thing it was to agree to wrestle around.
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"Does it itch?" she asks with a look at the healing wound. Good thing it has been too high up and too far inside his reach for Nerine to make a go at it, because she would have. Compared to the bear, of course, her attempts had been gentle. "You know, Nerine's actually fifteen. She has her courses and everything, she's just small."
Whether he knows what courses are... well, no matter.
"For me changing my bandages means washing my hands, getting them stretched out a little, and putting on fresh salve first. Which I can do a lot of myself! It's mostly to try and maintain some flexibility, you know. I've healed as much as I'm going to." Hesri removes her mitts and uses her teeth to tease out a clean-ish loose end of bandage from up at her wrist. Otherwise, the cloth is stained with ointment and dirt.
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Fifteen would make them more or less the same age! And he most certainly doesn't see himself as a kid. How'd she end up so tiny? It's not like they didn't have plenty of food in the village, it seems. Maybe she was born as a really tiny baby?
The question seems to trouble him as half a peach sits unsliced in his hand, swallowing the fruit with morbidly curious deliberation.
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She believes in elves these days, and all kinds of other things too. Not every bit of strangeness is magic, though.
"She gets frustrated by people assuming she's about ten. Honestly, I think she'd like to leave to join a regiment or something otherwise." She's frowning now, and makes a deliberate effort to stop. "You know how nobles will sometimes make armor for their children just to show off? She'd have to steal some of that."
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"Why the hell would she want to do that?" he snorts at the idea. "What a lousy dream. She'd be better off with some performers or a band of thieves. At least that kind of crowd would take her seriously."
Guts understood the wandering allure of the battlefield, but it was the only place and purpose he'd ever known. Nerine had people here that cared for her. She had this cozy, sleepy little village in a hidden, peaceful forest. She didn't have to throw her life away for no reason. She could go find excitement some other way.
"Besides, she doesn't want some fancy noble's armor. That's a shiny target for any merc hoping for a big payday."
A hostage, or worse, when they realize they caught some other nobody like them.
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"Huh. I hadn't thought of that." Maybe she shouldn't be telling The Boy about another girl's idle, speculative half-plans half-daydreams. "She's from a gang of thieves originally, actually, that operated out of a city in Volkfeld. My hometown in fact."
Albion, not that she's going to say it was Albion. There are several other kingdoms between here and Volkfeld and it took quite some time to get from there to here, the Enclave of Irminsul, but there's no telling how far Guts has traveled and what, if anything, he's heard about any fires. It's been three years now. She thinks Volkfeld has been annexed in the mean time, but she wasn't and isn't clear on the distinction between a state and a country.
She pauses. Wait. Surely... "Oh, no, I never told you my name, did I? Agh... okay, it's Hestienne, but the little kids started calling me Hesri and that's stuck. Pleased to meet you."
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Right. People tended to introduce each other when they were friendly. Was he pleased in turn? He supposes he didn't mind talking to her. For whatever reason, Hesri was quite easy to get along with.
He moves to another fruit, the last two, leaving them with an impressive plate of neatly sliced little orange pieces arranged to make... some sort of shape. At one point he had attempted a circle. His hunger had been sated by the first fruit, for now, so the rest remained unbothered.
"You're from Volkfeld, huh?"
He was quite traveled, apparently. The name appeared to sound familiar.
"Heard it got swallowed up between Midland and Tudor. Dunno which one of them claimed it lately."
The eternal spat between the two kingdoms seemed to have no end. He'd been considering going to that disputed border between them to find more work. Plenty of jobs for killers in a protracted war.
"How'd you find this place from over there?"
The only people had to hide that far were criminals, usually. Was Hesri more interesting than she first appeared?
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"I was born there. I'm not surprised it got annexed by someone or other, that was always... people talked about it." She blinks sleepily, the medicine making her feel calm and placid and vaguely happy, and gets first one, then the other hand totally unwrapped. There's quite a lot of scar tissue in shiny keloid swellings there, and not a lot of meat. "Memento mori. 'As I am, so shall you be', all of us who are flesh will fail, in our various ways, and we will die," she says, distantly self conscious.
She puts them in the ewer of water and swishes them in an unfocused way. "Well, there was a fire... and you know, it was beautiful." Hesri sighs, an odd light coming into her eyes. "I know it was an evil thing to happen, I know that, but the fire itself was so pure. It didn't want anything but to exist and grow, like a living thing. There wasn't space to feel anything but how great it was, how terrible, and everything else was just... ugly. Meaningless."
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He misses a word or two, but starts to pick up again around the reminder of all their mortal fates. With a thunk from his head hitting the bottom of the table, he stands up straight with indignation. Too thick-skulled to be bothered by the wood, it seems.
“What the hell are you goin’ on about?” He sounds annoyed - partially at all the vague, flowery language and partly from not getting the whole story.
There is way too much admiration of the thing for it to seem like it happened by accident. The only people he heard talk like that were fanatics - either of the Holy See or some other cultish thing. He happened to be a fan of neither, and stayed well clear of them.
“It’s creepy.” he reminds her, emphatically.
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Then Vena is here, scrubbed pink and still damp-haired, carrying a bowl of cream. "Sorry - they were so slow!" She thunks the bowl down next to the slaughtered peaches and dips a piece in the cream before stuffing it in her mouth. Then another. And a third, indistinctly telling Guts, "Try it!"
The rich savor and faint mellow sweet of the cream and the sharper sour-sweet of the peaches go really well together, if he does. Fruit and dairy are a good combination.
Vena chews ferociously, swallows, wipes her mouth, and then says, "Are you being crazy about fire again? What's it this time? Here." She's going to feed Hesri some more cream-dripping peach chunks, which Hesri dutifully takes, the dreamy look fading.
"You'll never let me live that down, will you?" the older girl asks, with something between wistfulness, awkward self-awareness, and amusement. She glances at Guts and says, "I was delirious when I was first brought here and... I may have told a few people I was going to burn the infirmary down."
"She didn't have hair and was all over maggots!" Vena says gleefully, having moved on to briskly washing and drying Hesri's hands.
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He frowns, not seeing the connection. But before he can get into talking about swords any further, Vena bursts into the tent with her (now typical) bright cheer, plunking a big bowl of the cream in front of them. Is that what this was for?
Ever the wanderer, Guts was not very versed in sweets or dairy foods. No easy way to preserve milk in a camp or on a trail. Villages had such things on occasion, but he only ever passed through them. Stays too fleeting to properly enjoy all the delights offered. Most of his earned money went to his war tools, anyway.
So, bending over, he takes in the subtle, sweet scents of the bowl not unlike a wild animal suspicious of offered food. Milk was familiar enough, at least. Dipping a peach slice into the cream, he gets his first bite in, and going by the disappearance of the creases around his nose and brows, appears to be quite enjoying it. Tasty…
And, although Guts should have felt disgust at the story as Vena described it, he finds something a bit more conflicted rising in his chest. Something was clearly off about her in the head, and for whatever reason it annoyed him greatly but also drew out an unusual sympathy.
“The cream’s good.” He says, changing the topic awkwardly. He goes for another.
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Vena shrugs carelessly when she's obliquely accused of theft. She could have gone on with worrying enthusiasm about festering wounds and the treatment of them but milk's a good topic too. "It's good on strawberries. And bread! And in soup. And it's good in eggs too, or sauce. Cows are great, I like to feed them carrot tops and stuff to say thanks. I never saw one up close before I got here - that was just before she did, because Master was with the women giving herbs to the camp followers and I tried to take her coinpurse and, wham! 'What do you think you're doing!' And then I bit her."
Compared to Nerine, Vena is about that same size and a similar shape, but isn't as dense and has vaguer, softer features. She's not clumsy exactly but there's much more of a rushing, thoughtless quality to how she moves. Less so at the moment, bending Hesri's fingers back, curling and stretching them in a practiced way.
Hesri herself has a little half suppressed frown through this, and sweat showing at her temples. Even with the medicine and a lot of experience it doesn't feel good or comfortable. With affection she snorts, "Vena, you're a hoyden."
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He wonders how many of the girls were thieves and criminals. If they had to eke out a living on their own, on the outskirts, it would make sense for them to eventually wander here in the middle of nowhere.
The exercises… Weren’t entirely unfamiliar. Certain injuries that weren’t deadly, but were severe enough to take a man out of a campaign, often required quite a long recovery time. Sometimes they returned entirely healed, but most times they were never quite the same. Burns were always in the latter category.
“They got anything else out there aside from sweets?”
He could only ignore the complaints of his stomach for so long. Now that Hesri had someone else to keep her company, he takes it as opportunity to duck out for the moment being. Guts hopes that they had something more substantive waiting. Maybe a stew with real meat in it?
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Some memory of that has her all tensed up, forgetting about the exercises. She's more worldly and resigned to certain things than Lashan but is after all still a child, still moved by the memory of pain and futile rage at how unfair something had been. Hesri leans forwards and bunts her forehead to Vena's in a light, affectionate gesture, and Vena relaxes a bit, enough to put her head down and resume what she was doing.
"It's early for dinner but they're into it enough to have something, I'm sure. I expect today there's black sausage again," the older girl says, and grimaces. City girl that she was, she did not grow up eating blood or so hungry that she can quickly adapt to it, and it seems appalling every time she considers the idea.
"Yeah, but it's dumplings too. They went and killed some cockerels and old mean hens for some of them," Vena grumbles, not in a mood now to defend sausages made with blood or gloat over a day with meat in it.
"Oh! Well, there you have it." Hesri smiles up at Guts, with just a hint of teasing. "Go on. If you show up without a shirt on especially, I'm sure they'll give you something good."
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