Death After Death

Chapter 389 - A Strange Pair

True to his word, Simon stopped early that day, as much to let his new squire rest as to answer all of his questions. They were equal parts reasonable, but he always returned to fighting. When would he get a sword? When would Simon train him to kill monsters? When would he slay his first goblin?

Those were all brave enough, but the boy still cried himself to sleep that night, and Simon held him, reassured by that fact. Varten grew up into a bad man in the lives he’d known him, but there was nothing that said that had to be the case. Freya only became a monster in a single life; in the rest, she seemed happy enough. If only the same could be true for him, Simon told himself, offering a silent prayer to no one in particular for there to be a reason for all of this suffering.

The next day Varten rode the horse for most of the day, while Simon walked, and kept an eye on the horizon. The further they got from any city proper, the more likely they were to run into a herd of horselords. That evening, they made camp between a pair of large boulders, and Simon started to whittle a wooden sword.

“A wooden blade?” Varten complained. “Those are for babies! I want steel!”

“Oh, this is for me, so when I hit you, it hurts less,” Simon explained. “I’d hate to maim you during one of your first lessons. You can wield my blade if you like.”

A few days later, they actually practiced like that, which amused Simon to no end. Varten could lift Simon’s blade. He could even swing it, but the long sword weighed a fifth of the child, and the momentum put him on his ass more than once. True to Simon’s word, he wielded the wooden blade and used it to poke and prod his squire, showing him how little he knew.

It only took one lesson like that for the boy to accept the much lighter blade for practicing his sword drills, and Simon set about making a second wooden weapon so they could spar properly. Of course, most nights did not involve sword fighting, even when they were alone in the wilderness. That was the reward, and Simon made Varten work for it.

Before that, he had to attend to chores, which were a foreign concept to him, as he’d grown up in a life of privilege. “Why can’t we bring along a few servants to fetch our wood and cook our meals?” the boy asked. “That would be much more reasonable.”

“There’s nothing reasonable about asking another man to work for you instead of living their own life,” Simon responded.

“But isn’t that what you’re doing?” Varten countered. “Making me work for you? It's not fair.”

“And if you were a man, I’d agree,” Simon answered. “But you are a boy, and when I was a boy, I was in the same place. Now go fetch more wood before I make you gut this rabbit instead while I get firewood.”

Varten didn’t respond, but he made such a face that this time Simon did laugh, long and loud once his charge had moved off to pick at deadwood in a nearby wash. He tried to maintain perfect stoicism and equanimity as a teacher, but it was hard in the face of such accidental humor.

It would be a lie to say that he didn’t enjoy humbling the arrogant young boy on a regular basis. Really, he didn’t have to do all that much work, though. Life did that easily enough for him. In the wastes, forcing him to gather dried dung to make a fire damaged the boy’s dignity, and in the towns they passed through, being forced to eat whatever was warm in the common room was a far cry from the sweets he was used to eating.

Slowly, though, the boy grew, and week by week he became a little less insufferable. Some nights, he didn’t even pester Simon as he pored over Jorgen’s grimoire in search of clues. The man knew half a dozen words, but none of them were particularly rare or powerful.

The most dangerous were Dnarth and Farzeh. Command and manipulation were as dangerous as they were hard to detect, and the man had doubtlessly wormed his way into the Baron’s confidence. That was enough to make Simon wonder if he might have misjudged the family. The tree might have been poisoned instead of rotten. It didn’t change anything, but the context was interesting.

What was also interesting was that it was clear the man hadn’t tried to summon demons. The book contained three different summoning circles, and two out of three of them were trapped so that the devils they summoned could devour their summoner and then retreat to hell once more. Simon found that interesting and wondered if such things were the products of mistakes, demonic subterfuge, or simply mages seeking to sabotage one another by trading poisoned information. Regardless, Simon made sure that the names for all three demons ended up in his mirror along with any other passages that seemed important.

With a squire in tow, he didn’t have the chance to research from his archives very often. However, that didn’t mean that he couldn’t add to it, between adventures, while Varten was sleeping. His presence required a lot of little changes to Simon’s routine, but Simon didn’t resent it; he just kept moving forward and looking for new communities to help and creatures to vanquish.

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When Simon went out alone to deal with an orc that had become separated from his tribe, the boy demanded to fight at his side and was sullen when Simon forbade it. However, none of that resentment was in evidence when he returned splashed with green blood. Then Varten was nothing but enthusiastic, and peppered Simon with questions until he made the boy clean his armor with sand.

“Killing is bloody business,” Simon said, “And if you don’t clean your equipment regularly, it will turn to rust, and fail you at the worst possible time.”

Simon expected the boy to complain about servants again, but he stayed silent this time, so Simon rewarded him by telling the story of his duel with the orc. He skipped over some of the more esoteric bits, about using his sight to see the monster’s movements a moment before they became visible, but he did confess that a single misstep almost got him killed when he nearly tripped while moving backward.

“You think the sword is the most important part of the battle,” Simon said when the story was done, “But in some ways it's the least. Knowing your own abilities, and the strengths and weaknesses of your foe… knowing the ground you walk on… all of those things are more important than where or how you stab them in most cases.”

The next few encounters were largely the same. Simon let the boy watch from a distance when the hazard was known and contained, like in a gnoll den, a few weeks later, but if there was any risk to Varten, he made his squire wait at the inn they were staying at, or their campsite.

He didn’t like that, but as the weeks passed, he learned to complain less, at least to Simon. He would still bicker with local boys, or men whom he didn’t see as his betters, but even after a month, he’d matured noticeably. There was no real kindness or joy to go with that newfound maturity yet, but then, murdering monsters and learning how to do it better didn’t generally inspire such positive feelings.

That maturity and obedience didn’t extend to fighting either. When they broke out the wooden swords at the end of a long day, Varten became a little monster. By the tenth or twelfth time of being put on his ass, he was so angry that he made every mistake there was to make. Simon had to use his sight just to make sure he didn’t accidentally hurt the kid during those times because his movements were so erratic. He never complained about losing, though. He only vowed to get better.

There was a tremendous anger in the child that, while understandable, made it impossible to say whether or not he had any real gifts. Simon tried to get him to work on that too; he had to. In nine months, he’d bring Varten back to the Broken Tower, and he had no wish to see the boy killed for failing some part of the order’s tests.

Varten showed little interest in things related to morality or philosophy, though. He would listen to Simon and repeat it back to him, but there was no introspection. That’s probably normal for a ten-year-old, Simon told himself, even a bright one.

When they reached another town of reasonable size, Simon lingered to have a new outfit tailored for Varten that was more appropriate. Though Simon rarely encountered problems from anyone in this neck of the woods, especially after word had gotten around about his deeds, Varten looked more like an orphan than a squire, which often led to misunderstandings.

So Simon had three grey outfits crafted for him, and a proper leather jerkin, though that was to make him feel more like a warrior than any actual protection. He didn’t expect Varten would need to protect against any blows that he didn’t deliver himself for a long time.

“Why don’t I get a breast place like you?” the boy demanded.

“Breastplates are for knights,” Simon responded. Varten countered again, trying to get chainmail at least, but Simon explained that there was little point in paying so much for armor that he’d outgrow in a few years.

Years, Simon reflected. On a long enough timeline, what’s the point in anything? He’d chosen this life to learn more about hunting witches, and so far, he’d barely made any progress in that regard. Of all the nations Simon had traveled through, Brin had the least.

Perhaps I should just go to Montain and ask a coven to teach me their ways, Simon considered. He’d never do that, of course. To start with, they seemed to only allow women in their little clubs, and as fun as it had been to spend a year or two as a child, he had no wish to see how the other half lived.

He’d figure it out. While he walked the long roads between one village and the next with Varten, he contemplated it often, and eventually decided that what he needed was a tattoo he could draw on himself without magic, that would simply kill him if someone tried to use soul magic against him.

He couldn’t nullify it outright until he knew more about Helades' soul knot, but he could make it so that as soon as someone tried to touch him like that, the level was over. He could probably expand that further so that if he crossed the boundary of a magic circle that would lead to hell, he could automatically off himself.

Simon lay awake for several nights while Varten slept by his side, trying to imagine how those would tie together. While the former was simple enough, he wasn’t sure he had the right words for the latter. The real problem, though, would be the tattoo itself. With magic, he could easily imprint the thing with melanin under his hair; it would be like strapping a shotgun straight to his brain.

Unfortunately, if he wanted to keep his sight intact, he’d have to either pay someone else to tattoo the thing on his brainstem or brand himself above his heart. None of those options were great, and destroying his heart wouldn’t be fast enough. So, Simon resolved to make some kind of tool to address the problem, even if that wouldn’t resolve his underlying questions about soul magic interactions.

Maybe that will be my question when I reach level 40, he decided. I could learn a lot from seeing the magic that powers all of this, assuming it's even comprehensible to me.