followed him.
I think I’m about to hear more from the would-be warrior.
Val’s thoughts had obviously turned back to the barbarians, and he accosted Darian as soon as they were out of hearing of the adults. “Say, Darian - you’ve fought before, right?”
Darian made a sour face. “Fought the barbarians the first time around, and had some skirmishes with bandits in Valdemar. That’s fighting people - we took out some Changebeasts in Valdemar, too, but that isn’t what you meant, is it?” He continued walking, and Val kept right up with him.
“No, I meant combat. Real fighting. The clash of sword on sword, the thrill of meeting man to man, facing your enemy and bringing him down - ” The cliches poured from Val as his face grew more and more animated. He obviously suffered from a surfeit of heroic ballads and tales. Darian decided to quash him. It wasn’t that he disliked Val, that was far from the truth. If anything, he liked Breon’s heir too much to let him go down that particular path of delusion.
That path leads to an early grave, given bad odds.
“I’ve done that,” he said flatly. “You want to know what it’s like?”
Val nodded eagerly, his earnest face alight.
“All right. Here, sit down.” They’d come as far as the lake while talking, and Darian gestured to a boulder. He took his seat on another, and gave careful thought to exactly how he was going to say his say. “First off, this isn’t a duel, it’s a combat. No rules. Do you know what that means, at all?” When Val shook his head, he continued. “It means that the enemy is going to try to kill you before you can get close to him, so he’ll be flinging mucking great rocks at you, shooting at you, doing everything he can to keep you from getting close. He would much rather kill you from a distance, given the choice. If you get stuck with an arrow or knocked out by a rock, he’s going to rush at you and try and whack something off while you’re down and helpless, because it’s easier to kill you then. If you don’t get taken out by flying objects, every fellow on the other side is checking out the people coming at him, and he’s going to try to make sure that he is bigger than you. If you’ve got fancy armor or weapons, he’s going to want them, too, so his best bet is to cut a leg out from under you or whack off an arm and leave you lying there, screaming and bleeding to death. The other thing is that he’s a greedy bastard, and anyone who looks even slightly important is going to have a lot of people coming at him, all at once, all trying to be the one to get that fancy sword and armor. If he can’t manage to cut off a limb, or at least cut it half off, he’ll try to bash in your skull because that’s the second easiest way to kill you. There’s no fancy swordwork going on; there’s no room for it, you’re mashed in with a bunch of other people, all whacking away. Meanwhile, as you’re trying to keep him from doing awful things to you, and trying to do awful things to him, you’re stepping on and stumbling over all the poor beggars who didn’t manage to keep that from happening. They’re bleeding, screaming, and dying; if they don’t have fancy armor, their guts are spilling out and you’re stepping right in them. Some of them are people you know. Some of them are friends. Some might be relatives. And you’ll be seeing them as nothing more than things you don’t want to fall over.”
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.
