Mercedes Lackey - Owlsight

Val’s face had gone rather sick, which Darian was extremely grateful for. Breon’s son - thank all the gods! - was intelligent, and had imagination. That was probably why he’d gotten all caught up in the idea of adventure in fighting in the first place. That imagination would save him from his misguided notions of honor and glory, if Darian had any say in the matter.

“When it’s all over, if you’re on the winning side, you’re absolutely sticky with blood, ready to drop with exhaustion, and every place on your body aches. Hopefully the blood you’re covered with is other people’s; if some of it’s yours, this is when you realize just how much even a little wound hurts. If you got a big wound, if you aren’t on the ground already, or you aren’t dying, you generally fall down when everything’s over, screaming with the pain. You could have broken bones sticking through your skin, and you’re seeing parts of the inside of yourself you never wanted to see. If you are really, really lucky, someone recognizes that you’re an important fellow and gets the Healer to you in a hurry. If not, you’ll be lucky to get yourself to the Healer’s tent somehow to wait for candlemarks while he works his way down to you. This is also when the excitement and fear and so forth that carried you through wears off, and you start to remember that you stepped in your cousin’s face, you saw your uncle’s head caved in, and you’re not sure if your best friend is still alive. There’s stuff besides blood on you that used to be parts of people. That’s when you look around, see all the dead, dying, and wounded, and you throw up. Practically everyone else who never fought before - and some who have - is doing the same thing. That’s what real combat is like.” He stopped for a moment. “Oh, and after a fight, Healing takes second place to wound closure, so you may wait days or weeks before that wound in your leg that was cauterized closed - burned closed with a red-hot poker - gets properly Healed up.” Val licked his lips, which were just a shade greenish.

“It’s not like that in - I mean, I’ve never heard anyone talk about it like that.” He seemed shaken, but not inclined to doubt Darian’s word. Darian was quite glad he’d made a point of never exaggerating in front of Val; this was turning out as he’d hoped.

Darian shrugged and tried to look weary and worldly-wise. “That’s because no one wants to remember those parts, but ask your Weaponsmaster, and let him know you want to know what it’s really like on a battlefield, before, during, and after the battle. If he’s honest, he’ll tell you the same things I did.” He thought of something else. “If you want, I can get one of the dyheli to give you the memory. They were in on the forest-battle four years ago.”

“Oh.” Val remained silent, looking out over the lake for a while. Darian let him stew things over; he needed some time to get his mind wrapped around Darian’s blunt description. But Val had, out of incredulity, gotten a dyheli to give him a memory of k’Vala Vale. He hadn’t believed the descriptions he’d heard of it, until he’d experienced Tyrsell’s memory, and he knew that Darian would never have offered him access to a memory of combat if it wasn’t as vivid - or more so - than Darian’s own description.

Actually, given that the dyheli aren’t predators, their memory is going to be a lot nastier than my description. Bloodletting offends every instinct they’ve got.

“I wondered why Father, and you - ” Val shook his head and looked mortified. “I came very close to making a serious mistake. I have to apologize to you.”

“Thought I was a coward?” To Val’s obvious surprise, Darian grinned. “I’m not offended! I used to think the same things that you did about fighting. Honor, glory, adventure, fame, all that stuff. Probably everybody does, until he does it himself. Maybe a mercenary’s children know better, and probably anyone who’s had a fight go over his land does, but unless you’ve seen it for yourself, how can you know?” His grin turned cynical. “Well, think about it, how could they get us bone-headed youngsters go out to get bits hacked off if they didn’t make it sound glorious?”

Val managed a sickly sort of smile himself. “You’ve got a point.” He blinked, as if something had just occurred to him. “Now that I think about it, battles almost never happen in empty land, do they?”

“Not unless somebody manages to force it that way, no,” Darian replied. The fellow was thinking, all right! “Obviously, we’re going to try to choose the ground ourselves, but we may not get to make that choice.”

“So Father isn’t going to want something like that rampaging through the village, or over the crops, ruining them - ”

Darian decided on a final ghoulish touch. “Imagine trying to eat crops that came up the next year in a field where people died! Crops fed on blood!”

Val shuddered. “I’d - rather not.”

“So we bluff them, or negotiate with them, or - well, Firesong, Snowfire, and your father have a lot of ideas, I expect. They’ve all fought before, and they’ve got all the reasons in the world to make peace first, if it can be done without making a bad bargain.” It was Darian’s turn to look pensively out over the lake. “Believe me, if it were up to me - These people, or ones like them, killed Justyn right in front of me. They hurt a lot of people I knew, and killed a couple. They tried to kill me, twice, and they nearly managed it. I’m the last person to want them to get off easy, but - ” He shook his head and looked back at Val. “If we force them to fight, things will almost certainly be bad, and more people I know will be dead or hurt. I don’t want revenge half badly enough for that.”

You know, I think Justyn would be very happy to hear me say that.

Val nodded, very slowly, and Darian decided to change the subject so that they could part on a good note. “So, tell me about this girl you’re marrying! When does she get here? What is she like? How did you meet her?”

Since Belinda was obviously a subject Val could wax eloquent on for hours, this was the best thing he could have done. Until Lord Breon came to fetch his son for the trip home, Darian heard so much about Belinda that he suspected he could write a book - or at least several pages - about her many virtues. Val was completely smitten.

When Breon did come to get Val, though, the handclasp Darian got from the younger man, coupled with the thoughtful look and the nod they shared, let him know that Val had not forgotten the earlier subject. As Breon and his son rode off on the trail back to Kelmskeep, Darian felt quite proud of himself.

Firesong came up beside him at that point. “You look like a cat that’s gotten into the cream,” he said. “What have you been up to?”

“Convincing Val that fighting in battle isn’t the way the Bards sing about it.” He glanced sideways at Firesong to see how the mage would react.

Firesong laughed aloud, crossing his arms over his chest. “Good for you! I knew you had more sense than he did about that particular subject, but I didn’t know you’d take it on yourself to talk to him.”

“Somebody had to. I’d as soon not see his bride become a widow, you know?” He turned to Firesong, and grinned. “I’d have felt responsible.”

“Good,” Firesong nodded. “You are responsible. It’s when we stop feeling responsible for each other, for the people we know we can affect, that we become the barbarians.”

Firesong waited, and Darian sensed that there was another Talk with his Teacher in the offing. On the whole, he didn’t mind those, except when Firesong seemed to expect an unreasonable level of magical expertise from him, given how short a time he’d been studying with good teachers. One of those had been just yesterday, in fact. Firesong had shouted impatiently at him, and he had left the lesson abruptly rather than lose his temper.