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It wasn’t a hard thing to take a life.
She killed her first animal at nine.
The raids had made large scale farming infeasible, forcing many of the villages away from their subsistence agriculture to survive on mere scavenging. Before her father left for the war, he’d done his best to teach her how to hunt: she didn’t actually know what he’d done for a living though thinking back upon it, she knew he certainly wasn’t skilled. While his equine ability was unquestionable, his martial talents were somewhat more questionable, only leaving her with the bare minimum of skills to survive.
It was a miracle that she and Horse had lived through that time: by the end of the first winter, both were near emaciated. She’d done her best to keep Horse fed through that period but grass alone wasn’t sufficient to maintain a healthy existence for her partner: she needed grain and hay, proper food that was no longer easily accessible with the devastation in the fields.
But they had persevered.
Being called into the Levy was a blessing, plain and simple. She knew that many among their number were bitter about being forced away from their petty, unimportant lives.
What point was there in farming when the world was at threat? What point was there in raising a family if the raids would continue? She’d been told that such things were possible once, maybe even desirable. She didn’t quite understand that.
Those things might have been possible once but they weren’t anymore. She knew that they had once had peace, perhaps even prosperity, but such things were naught but the nostalgia of foolish old men.
The enemy spat on that peace and rubbed it to ashes.
But she knew the truth as clear as day, the truth that the regulars of the Levy had long since embraced. The truth that they had passed on to her.
While that peace may now be little more than ashes, they had a duty to turn those monsters into the same.
Even if they went as well.
It was with mindset that she took her first proper life.
She was fifteen when it happened.
It had been her third, maybe fourth battle at that point: she’d seen little actual action in the prior actions, merely hanging back on the flanks with the other green cavalry. The only difference with this battle was that they’d received the order to charge.
She didn’t remember the circumstances but the experience was still clear in her mind. The toxic mix of anticipation and fear hung heavily in the still air like early morning mist. The other cavalry levies, those wealthy or capable enough to provide their own mounts and armor, clanked quietly in the crisp morning air.
She didn’t know who had let out the first cry, only that it had resounded down the line, a mix of terror and anger rippling across the mounted warriors as they began to surge forward in an unrelenting mass of armor and flesh. The moment they smashed into the enemy wasn’t one of glory, merely a blind whirlwind of blood and violence. Despite it all, she and Horse managed to stay together, undivided within the chaotic and gorey melee of the battlefield.
Her swipes and stabs were nowhere near as refined as they are now, driven mostly by a blind sort of terror and desperation, the base desire to survive in the face of death.
The battles afterward were much the same, the only change being the faces of her comrades and her own capabilities. With each battle, she found herself less perturbed by the threat of death and far more capable of delivering it unto others. Her survival here saw her elevation from the base cavalry levy into the proper cavalry, something that brought a slight increase in status and, far more importantly, a much greater level of armor.
It wasn’t a hard thing to take a life.
Minotaur, bandit, or deserter, all of them died the same.
A sharp blade was more than capable of carving through flesh, hewing through the muscle and sinew, decorating whatever hellish battlefield they had chosen with their sanguine fluids. Armor made it harder but didn’t change the fundamentals: she just needed to know where to cut or stab, whatever armor they had chosen simply serving as a shell for them to die in.
She knew the same applied to her: she’d been cut a number of times, even with her armor. She knew that she had the potential to die as easily as any other. Her one advantage, the only that made her stand out from the countless other skilled forces of the Levy, was Horse. Her stalwart, strong, brave… and ultimately dead companion.
She didn’t have Horse now. She’d die as easily as any of the others.
It wasn’t as unattractive as it should have been.
But she still had a purpose, as base as it was.
She felt more now than she had in years.
Hate.
It was invigorating in a strange sort of way, the feeling bringing a sort of heat to her body and mind as she strode out of the dank cell in the basement. She hadn’t felt anything like this in years, the energy it brought almost revitalizing her as she entered the dimly lit hallway.
One there.
It had made the mistake of leaving its helmet set to the side, leaving it head exposed. She simply murmured a greeting, the being turning in surprise, allowing her easy access to the throat.
A quick cut left the wretch choking on its own blood, unable to call for help as she policed its weapon. The sword was a brutish sort of thing, far heavier than she preferred, far more fit for brutal hacking than her preferred method of fighting which was better suited for her smaller build.
It would be better than the knife though: in a proper fight, reach was everything. If you were trying to fight a swordsman with a knife, you’d die unless they’d somehow messed up.
She took a moment to watch the life drain from its eyes.
She didn’t feel better.
The second was much messier, the brutish being requiring several savage hacks to the back of the head to properly kill. She was fairly certain that she pulled the muscle in her arm during her vicious assault, though that only added an additional stressor to the variety of wounds across her body.
This one was more satisfying, the effort it took to finish the kill expending some of that strange energy that pushed her onwards.
She couldn’t really remember what happened next.
The bodies made it obvious enough.
She’d done well. They were dead. Her only wound was a new gouge in her right arm, the wound still bleeding her lifeblood into the open air.
She was free.
It didn’t make her feel better.
Only tired.
Horse was still gone.
She’d never see the mare again.
Never again charge into battle with her.
Never again shelter with her against the cold.
Never race together against the wind and rain.
Without Horse, who did she have?
She finally brought herself to speak, her voice cracked and sore from the lack of water over the last day or two. She just needed to hear the words.
“Nobody.”
Hatred of the enemy was no true salve to the pain, merely an opiate to sooth a far deeper wound.
She gasped in a deep breath, waves of pain beginning to overtake her as the adrenaline left her system.
Her eyes began to tear against her will, defying her desperate attempts not to cry out at the injustice of it all. Ignoring the tangy and suffocating smell of the air, she once again opened her mouth, her voice weak and pained as she once again uttered the song she had sung before, her words carrying none of the reassurance they had before.
“You’re okay.”
“You’re alright.”
“I'll never, ever leave your side.”
“I will stay and I will fight.”
“With you.”