Of Beasts and Knights

"You should. Respect, is important. You are due it, you should demand it. They will not respect someone who shows weakness."

"I don't care about their respect. Only yours."

"Fear, then. The first of them who next sneers at you. Cut him."

she nods but does not answer, simply following on behind him.

"Do not kill him, leave him alive to remind others of your strength."

"Must we speak of this sort of thing right now?"

"I am sorry. What would you like to speak of?" the copse is closer now, there is indeed a felled tree.

"I don't know... Just...anything other than...this."
to his surprise, Vorstan feels the gentle touch of her hand on his arm.

He looks down. The eye behind the single hole in his helm betraying nothing, save its slight glow. The metal is cold. He looks back up, eyes scanning the horizon. "What do you know of Lustria?"

"Vague stories. Mostly from a few of the other soldiers who claimed their brother's wife's cousin's dad or something went there on an expedition and came back with untold riches. You know, bollox."

"There is treasure there. Guarded by beasts with teeth like daggers. Gold like you could not imagine. They cover walls in it."

"So it wasn't all nonesense? huh."
Vorsten notes her tone has lightened a little.

"A lot of it probably was. To take gold from them, you would need an army. They have beasts as tall as three men, and almost as wide in the shoulder, with axes and clubs the size of trees."

"Doesn't sound too different to home" *she reaches further with her hand now, linking her arm with his, unless he resists*

It is an awkward maneuver, given the difference in their heights, but he does not attempt to stop her, he just takes his sword in his other hand, as opposed to how he was cradling it in the crooks of his elbows. Now he holds it by the blade, like his hand were a scabbard. "Your homeland is beset by undead, is it not?"

"Almost constantly. The lost state of sylvania is right on our doorstep. The von carsteins rule there, and their minions roam freely."

"I have only seen one of them. It... Unnerved me. Things which live should bleed."

"I once walked through a city after their kind had sacked it. At least, what was left of it."

"That would be... strange. No bodies. they do not eat, so they would not take food, do they take gold, steel?"

"They do. Rumor is that not all those who live in sylvania are the dead. That there are mortal men who willingly serve the vampires."

"Hmn. Many things tempt men."

she shrugs
"My home is probably like that now. Empty, save the ruins, and the ghosts."

"Are your people losing, to the dead?"

"We are not losing. We are not winning. We are just fighting."

"Hmn, like everything." He stops by the first tree of the copse, stabs his sword into the earth, and reaches out to touch the bark. "Noone wins, noone loses. The north, the south, the beasts in the jungle, my people, the dead, the rat men. All fighting, never winning. It is how the gods want things."

"People die. Good people, bad people...innocent people" *her voice drifts off a little at that last bit*