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“Oh, stop looking at me like a dumb bronto,” Oghren sighed. He fixed his gaze on the young princess, who was trying her best to look innocent as could be. “Ask what you’re gonna ask.”
“It’s only…” Arinda bit her lip, fiddling around with the strap of her little pauldron. Oghren wondered when it had started bothering him to see children in practice armor. “You were there when Bownammar fell, weren’t you, Ser Oghren?”
Of course that would be it. You didn’t spend any time tutoring a child, even a royal child, and not expect that question. At least she asked more nicely than some grown men. “Sure was. Didn’t do much of anything interesting, though.”
She looked down at the ground. “It’s only… Nobody’s very honest with me. They say I’m just a little girl, but I’m not. All this training is so one day I can go into the Deep Roads and fight for our city, and I need to know, don’t I?”
Oghren didn’t tell her that she was a little girl, because that didn’t change anything. There were kids out there in the Deep Roads dying every day.
“I know it’s pretty sodding scary,” he said, “living through this. Scares me, sometimes, knowing that this is the last city of our great empire.” Oghren snorted. “But that doesn’t mean there’s no hope, kid. The old thaigs are still out there, and we don’t only lose ground. Bright kid like you, who knows? You could see a few of ‘em taken back.”
Arinda had always been one of those kids that stared right through you. Oghren had grown more or less comfortable with it, at least once they’d fallen into their understanding with each other. He’d never coddle or baby her, and she wouldn’t tell on him for it.
“It’s going to get worse before it gets better,” she said, her chin set high. “They keep telling me it’s going to get better, but they said that before we lost Bownammar.”
“Most of ‘em think that themselves.” Oghren snorted. “You’re a princess. Most of the blighters you know are spoiled nobles that never set foot in the Deep Roads without having a battalion clear it out first. It’s my job to keep you from turning into one of ‘em.”
“I won’t be.” She straightened her posture out, jaw set perfectly. “I’ll be strong.”
He chuckled and turned to the rack that held the training weapons for these lessons, going through and inspecting each for damage. “Still want to be in the Provings, kid?”
“I can start training for my first season soon,” she said, voice dripping with pride. “I want to test my skills and bring honor to the Ancestors and House Aeducan.”
“Won’t help you in the Deep Roads,” he said. “Those Provings can make a man lose his edge. Make him expect an enemy he’s got an understanding with. What’s the first thing I taught you?”
“Honor won’t save you if you’re dead.”
Oghren nodded. “All you’ve got in those sodding Provings is your honor. If a good soldier is what you want to be, you can’t pick up a sword and feel like it’s a game.”
“My mother fought in the Provings.”
There were some lines that no matter what, you didn’t cross. Speaking ill of a child’s dead mother was one of them. With a sigh, he paused, a child-sized axe in his hands.
“Never had the honor of serving with her,” Oghren said. “But I never heard a bad word about the Queen.”
“Even that women shouldn’t fight?”
He hesitated. “That one, sometimes. Usually with the caveat that she did good work, regardless.”
The princess fixed him with a mischievous gaze. “Before or after she died?”
Oghren snorted. “After.”
“Yeah. So I’ll win the Provings.” She tossed her braid back, staring just past Oghren’s head. “And my daughter after me, and hers after that, until nobody says shit about women fighting!”
“Watch your language, young lady.”
She grinned. “I am.”
Sometimes, Oghren thought, maybe having a kid wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe it wouldn’t just mean throwing more meat into this broken city to fight and die a losing war.
“They catch you talking like that, they’ll think I taught it to you,” he grumbled. “And I don’t even swear around kids!”
“I won’t tell if you do.”
“Who even taught you to swear?” He furrowed his brow. Oghren really had expected himself for the bad influence on the princess. Everyone else certainly did.
“Trian.” Arinda shrugged. “You know, I have brothers.”
“Well, I know he’s not the one anyone will blame. I’m in enough trouble for teaching you how to fight in a war instead of pretty little twirls for a princess.”
“But that’s why I asked for you to tutor me.”
She scowled and sat down in the dust of their training arena, beginning to wrestle with the laces of her greaves. Oghren insisted that she at least try to take her own armor off—it was one of the reasons he probably wouldn’t be allowed to teach nobles much longer.
“I wanted to learn what it’s really like,” Arinda said, making a face as the laces caught on her raw calluses. “You shouldn’t get in trouble for doing as I wanted.”
“Gets in the way of turning you into a selfish bastard.” He leaned back on the rack of weapons. “You’re a pretty tough and smart kid in a world meant for people who haven’t got the sense the Ancestors stuffed in a nug’s backside.”
“That’s why I have to stay strong,” she said, neatly laying a removed greave at her side. The kid was always too tidy, Oghren thought. “Strong and resolute, like Father or you.”
“Kid,” Oghren said, “don’t be me.”
“You’re a war hero.” Arinda folded her legs beneath herself, looking up at him like the innocent babe he tried to forget she was. “I want to be a soldier like you. Just with better manners.”
“A war hero is just someone who got lucky.” He sighed, trying not to let his mind run away with him.
Sometimes Oghren really didn’t know if he was just the only one this angry, or if everyone else was somehow capable of holding it back. If you could hold the pain in long enough, would that make it easier to bear? It didn't matter, even if it did. Oghren would never be able to.
“There’s skill to it, too. That’s what you’re teaching me.”
“I’m teaching you because you told me to teach you.”
Why was he doing this? Someday the princess would grow into one of those bastards who sent good men to die, but today she was a child. He was teaching a child how to kill, and she’d step into the Deep Roads still a child, and she’d step out of them—if she stepped out of them, she’d be a child still.
War didn’t turn children into men. It made broken children of them forever, living or dead.
“I wanted you to teach me because I knew you wouldn’t lie to me.”
Oghren slowed his breath, trying to make the air stop stinking of darkspawn and blood on his teeth.
“You want the truth? I’m a coward who never had the strength to do anything but what he was told. You’re still young enough to want to change the world. Don’t make me piss on that, kid.”
The response, when it came in a little voice, cut through the stench and the weight in his chest. “I don’t think you’re a coward.”
Oghren knocked the rack of weapons behind him, and the din of them falling dragged a piece of his mind back from the past.
“And I’m not even a good liar,” he said, as he walked away and left the mess for Arinda to clean up.