fw sir heron shaw is not a casualty of war. (adjustments) wrote in emillion, @ 2014-04-29 22:48:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, !log, bram thornton, heron shaw |
But when the blast of war blows in our ears...stiffen the sinew, summon up the blood.
Who: Sirs Bram Thornton & Heron Shaw.
What: War breaks out.
Where: Hellwyrm’s dining hall.
When: Backdated to the first day of the attacks.
Rating: PG-13, references to violence.
Status: Complete.
The mess at Hellwyrm was as crowded as it ever was at midday, as Heron imagined it had been for millennia, with bodies short and tall, knight and squire, samurai and monk, all mingling together over that ever-democratizing element: food. Innumerable mentorships were formed here, one of the few places both the lowest and highest representatives of the Guild could be found at once. He and Bram had met here for years, often at the same worn spot at the same worn oak table, continuing the weekly tradition even after they'd gone their separate professional ways. The biggest interruption they'd had was last year, after Bram's only child had been put in the ground, and a shadow too long to see the last of had been cast over the councilor’s life. They sat without shaking hands, more than enough said between them with a nod even as the conversations around them drifted up to the vaulted ceiling in a dull, colorful roar. Straight from training, a small pair of double-edged backswords in crisscrossed sheaths clanked over Heron’s shoulders. “How’s the day, Councilor?” “Well enough. Last night was busy, however.” The man speared his meat with a fork, each motion direct and businesslike, not taking much pleasure in the food. He relayed his tale as simply as if discussing what he’d had for dinner last night: “Went down to the warehouses with Monaco, Min, and Paget, had a throwdown with some Dark mages. Big bloody hullabaloo.” Bram rarely swore, seldom finding it necessary—well, the mess of that ramshackle fight in the gloomy warehouse certainly merited the language. For one of his oldest friends, there was even that slight (so slight one might almost miss it) hint of amusement, lurking somewhere beneath his gravelly words. One of his cases had finally wrapped; the councilor was in a good mood. Heron’s brows lifted; his face creased into one of the cryptic half-smiles he was known for in the dojo before he too joined Bram in tucking in. Forkful of leafy veg halfway to his mouth, he paused. “Can’t think ‘bloody hullabaloo’ covers it. Case closed?” From one terminal understater to another, a nod of recognition between the lines. Their plates matched almost perfectly, the same balanced, utilitarian spread of nutrients they’d both had drilled into them as squires (and which they in turn drilled, to this day). Heron’s habits had changed only marginally since his effective retirement, and his feelings on diet were still strong enough that half the youngest edged their bodies over their plates when he passed, lest the preceptor glimpse the extra slice of cake or the lake of gravy. Half the days it was hard to hide a chuckle. He took up his knife and soon reduced his meat into a grid to be disassembled. Bram, meantime, took to gesturing with his fork as if painting a sketch in the air in front of them, his kitchen utensil a baton to describe the strategies which had unfolded. There might as well have been a scroll of paper in front of him, so he could draw out the warehouse layout for his fellow instructor. Heron watched with interest, jaw working idly, lips pursing with professional appreciation at the tactically appropriate intervals. “Closed, and neatly. We had one spineless coward of a corsair at the door, three mages inside. Took them all in. Better turnout than I’ve had in a while.” His voice went tell-tale tight at the end of that sentence, reminded of Siana’s disappearance: another mark in the tally, the chalkboard of failure writ on Bram’s soul. One simply learned to carry the weight, and live with it. Or, one told oneself one did, and got on with the rest. Heron’s regard was intent, but not pressingly concerned; the patient, critical blankness of his namesake ruled most of his interactions with his circle of late, his do-unto-others distancing reserved solely for those who could already decipher it. No one understood the urge to retreat and lick one’s wounds better than he, but there was a point at which one was simply rasping off the scabs anew. “Cheers,” he said, bringing up his glass tankard of water in a toast somehow both sardonic and earnestly congratulatory before downing nearly half the contents in one swallow. “And a sight neater than anything on the political front, imagine. In the Guild or out of it.” “Aye. Always been difficult, but with these—” Whatever Bram had been on the verge of saying, the words were drowned in the back of his throat: a distant scream drew the attention of both men, their instincts still knife-sharp for the smell of adrenaline, the sound of fear. The passing years had made them sensitive to the shift of mood in a room, like a barometer attuned to the hindbrain. Their heads swung towards the door, senses and hackles already rising. There was nothing, for a moment. Perhaps a false alarm, just some squires horsing around— But then the ground trembled beneath them, rattling the plates and glasses and cutlery on the table. Bram was back on his feet before he even knew what he was doing, hand automatically darting towards the oversized halberd which had been propped against his chair. He’d hoped it wouldn’t see action again so soon. Heron was a half-beat behind, pain wrenching when he stood and drew with a swiftness he rarely allowed himself, instinct bringing the body to bear. His cane was still propped with a suddenly absurd banality against the mess hall table. In a flash, his arms crossed and the steel sang as he pulled a sword from over each shoulder, barely audible over the pandemonium already bubbling up in the room, even full of fighters as it was. Another crash, and an entire table toward the great door lept up as if of its own accord and fell just as fast, splintering with a groan, drinks and food and people flying like seeds scattered in soil. A cloud of dust concussed through from the street. Heron’s voice was churning forth even before his thoughts, the echoing general’s voice, ordering squires to fall back, directing battalions (for diners were troops, now, in their minds, in an instant) to the sturdier sides of the hall, weapons to hand, weapons to hand. Without trying, he and Bram had maneuvered themselves squarely back-to-back. In moments like these, the old men communicated without a word, muscle singing to muscle. Bram corralled his guild members even as Heron signalled to the smattering of Blades and Holy Knights at the corners of the room, bringing the older and more experienced fighters forward as they started moving towards the cause of the trouble, towards the noise and clamour and roaring coming from the exit and the street. It may have seemed foolhardy in some light, this fighters’ urge to go straight to the danger—but it was how they worked. Their guild threw themselves into the storm again and again, all for the sake of their city. Once more unto the breach. And some of them had already sacrificed more than enough. “You’ll be all right?” Bram asked, low and under his voice, with a significant look to his friend and the weak leg. They didn’t even make eye contact, but Heron nodded and somehow, inevitably, it was understood. Not a moment was spared for the quibbling of doctors; their concerns (and their operating slabs, their strangely peopled waiting rooms) belonged to a world a thousand years hence. The pain was still keening out for attention, humming through him like a piano wire struck with a hammer and promising dire consequences, but somehow it blended with the tremors beneath their feet, and he steadied further as they moved, taking turns advancing toward the door as their flanks assembled behind them, true as the chiseled edges of an arrowhead. The two united generals stopped at the threshold, taking in the new world unfolding before them and agreeing wordlessly to meet it, in its smoke and crushing fury. Their hands lifted, pausing as triggers on a gun, before crashing down. An army, assembled in a moment, poured from the door. With fighters rushing past, a razor-edged river, a thought alighted as if from far above his body, as when a sky filled with a familiar meaningless scatter of stars aligns itself abruptly into a constellation: he hadn't stopped because he'd been defanged, a killing machine blunted irreparably, not quite (though he had been, he was). He'd stopped altogether because otherwise, in the sick high pitch of battle, he couldn't stop himself. None of them could. He advanced, twin blades spinning at his wrists like the threshers of his youth, as if nothing had changed save for a faint drag in his foot. “Big bloody hullabaloo,” Heron grunted, and then they too were throwing themselves from the edge, coursers rippling through the fray. |