Chapter 4

"When I was a young lad of sixteen my older brother Marcus came home from his five years of military service. Those were still the relatively sane, peaceful days before the worst of foul wizardry had destroyed this land that we now both still fight for. His war had been a hard one though, as he had fought as a Marine mostly in or near the delta swamp areas near Neuport. He had killed more than his share and wanted now to spend the rest of his life tending our family's small farm and our herd of sheep. His lady love from a nearby village had faithfully waited for him and they soon made their Consort-Oaths together. Whether she now holds at night the same young man she fell in love with who went to war five years earlier, I do not know. Being still little more than a boy with not a hair on my chest at the time, I saw nothing of his soul pain but only the heroism of deeds boldly done and the glory of war and vanquishing of all of his foes. The next time the recruiting drummers came to our remote highland village, I was one of the first to sign my name and volunteer, nearly two years before my obligatory service time. Yes, I was an idiot."

"As I was barely sixteen and underage (having lied to become accepted — they didn't take mere boys in those happier days, but sadly nowadays they force them into service even younger) and had none of my manly hair, my request to also join the Marines also was denied. Being undersized and thin (I was still growing like a weed) it was decided that my best use might be as a Scout and thus soon found myself in the care of Old Venial, even then our most senior veteran scout and trainer. He didn't think much of me, nor anyone else of our group of 10 trainees and pointedly said as much."

"What a pitiful collection of young heroes!" He exclaimed. "You wanted adventure, and so decided to be a scout?" He asked. Most of us nodded but I was too scared to move a muscle.

"Tell me," he asked earnestly, "you're here for the glory? To learn to kill our King's enemies and fill the trenches with their foul dead and not mention the chance to snag up a fine plump coin purse or too, eh?" Again, quite a few of us bobbed our heads up and down eager to agree with anything our new master might wish of us.

"Wonderful!" He gushed with seeming pride. "Which of our fine young new heroes wishes first to go into battle to claim the lions share of the dead and their spoils?" Two of the bigger lads stepped forward immediately and after a moment was joined by another boy barely older than myself. All three lads had tended to be the louder braggarts in our group, and already boasting of the glories and riches they would earn.

"Congratulations!" He gushed. "You pitiful idiots are off to the regular army. No scouting life for you! May you find whatever glory or shallow grave awaits you. Good riddance!" With that, our three bold volunteers were hustled off elsewhere and none of us ever saw them again.

"You remaining men are either gutless cowards or else you might possibly have a functioning brain. Unlikely for a young man but we will see. There is no glory in being a scout and even less glory in being a GOOD scout. You're almost never going to sleep in a soft bed let alone get any of the better looking camp girls. You'll spend half of your time running for your life in the pouring rain or freezing snow and the rest of your time wishing that you were because the boredom is sometimes worse than the fear."

"Over that next year he taught us remaining seven how to live and survive far from home, help, or any prayer of survival. Three of us managed to live long enough to become veterans and help train the always arriving newcomers. Old Venial never appeared to show much personal interest in a recruit and rarely ever bothered to remember or use our names until we had been with him a good long while. Now I realize that he did actually care a bit about us, but that it was a constant pain to him to see new faces constantly arriving for his training but usually dying far too soon and much too young. The ones that usually survived past the first six months learned his most important lessons by heart:

- The only purpose of a Scout is to get information and return alive to report it

- The best way for a Scout to get information and return is not to be seen or discovered

- The best way not to be discovered is move always carefully or quietly and use every scrap of cover available to you, especially when you think you are 100% safe

- If you think you are safe, think again

- If you think you are definitely not safe, run like hell

- When you're too tired to run, stop bitching and run some more

- Hiding is almost as good as running, but not quite

- Your enemy is probably just as smart as you are; leave him alone to think his smart thoughts about someone else, besides might have a friend taking a piss break that you don't see

- The best scouting mission is one where you safely arrive home to report whatever you've seen and with every arrow remaining unused in your quiver — unless you've also shot a deer for us to enjoy for dinner

- Bravery leads to drama; drama leads to adventures; adventures can make you very late for dinner

"There wasn't an ounce of glory in him and I think he was just sick and tired of digging graves for stupid young kids that couldn't learn that there was no glory in what we did. When he died he was training another new batch of young pups that was perhaps even younger and had less sense than I did when I was new and green. He also thought he was "safe" and in this war, as he had trained us, there is no such place. Is there?"

"Death is everywhere - he knew that. Did he really make his last fatal mistake or was he by then just too tired and worn out to care? I don't know. My father was a good man and raised me as decent lad but it was Old Venial who taught me everything I needed to know to be a grown man. I think I loved him better than I did my own father and I think he came to think of me as his son."

I remained quiet for quite a long time. I didn't cry; but I wanted to very badly.

We tried to keep the conversation lighter for the rest of the wee hours of the night but other than childhood stories neither of us could come up with much that was amusing or even remotely light-hearted. When we started discussing childhood pets (I'd had a couple of sheep herding dogs and she had a beloved but neurotic semi-tamed forest cat) we both knew that we were circling the main issue: relationships and sex. She gave in first.

"Wulfric was my lover. You know that. He was also my first male lover as I had a few close girlfriends in my early days in camp." She said softly and very tentatively.

I didn't blink an eye at this. Good contraceptive charms were like gold these days, there was little non-military magic to spare and our leaders 'encouraged' as much procreation as possible. The death rates were just getting too frightening as this war stretched over generations. Both sides wanted a fresh pool of potential draftees and recruits for the next generation. A pregnant belly was now a ticket out of the war and back home for all female recruits and most couldn't wait to get theirs. The rest largely kept their needs for love and comfort amongst each other. Lesbian love had always been common and even fairly open in aristocratic circles and no one would think twice about two women exchanging an open affectionate hug and kiss. In recent years I've heard that it is now much more open and acceptable in back home in the towns and villages where most of the men were now permanently absent. I can not speak about the love affairs between male soldiers as that sort of relationship holds no interest for me and I keep a blind eye to most of it, but I'm sure it's not uncommon either.

"I thought I loved him with every ounce of my soul," she continued, "but I didn't really. He was just my first serious relationship and I wanted more from him than he was willing to give. I wanted us to be married — I wanted to have his baby and was willing to be forced from his side to bear it. In reality I was still young and infatuated and Wulfric was a wise enough man to recognize that we were not destined to be lovers forever and that my soulmate was still elsewhere, undiscovered."

After we had been together for about year," she continued, "We took a leave together and spent our coins together as if there would be no tomorrow. In the town where we stayed there was a celebrated seeress, a true gefaemne-lyftfaet or Moon Woman, reputed to also have Ylfen blood flowing in her who could predict the future with harsh and uncanny accuracy. I was seething with anger at that moment with Wulfric, as he had told me recently while in a tender moment that he would not offer his vows to be a husband and consort to me - that our destinies lay elsewhere. I rejected this outright, and with a gold piece in one hand and dragging Wulfric by the other, we went to visit this reknown but very unpredictable Moon Woman."

"She did not want to see me and initially rejected my offered gold coin that surely far exceeded her normal fee. I spoke harsh words to her and demanded that she both accept my coin and speak of what I was sure would be a happy future together, so that my man would feel bound to accept me as his Oath-Consort. Seeing that I would not be denied, at length she stared penetratingly at me as if she could see deep into the marrow of my bonesand gave me the saddest of smiles. At length, she spoke to in a strange and oddly remote tone of voice but little of what she said did I then understand or fully comprehend. She spoke in an odd meter and using an older variant of the Ylfen tongue, of which I then knew little and Wulfric knew none at all, she pronounced my 'Doom', my fate as woven by the three Great Goddesses; the Maiden, the Matron and the Crone. It was a terrible Doom."

"Even to this day I have but little understanding of it but the intent was plain. I would have Wulfric for just a short while more and our paths would only pass again next in the 'Shadow-Life', before our souls went onwards for judging and weaving into the thread of our next life. Signs she gave me, lost in clues within her rhyme by which I would know my true beloved. But she said my 'Heart was a hard one' and I would only truly recognize and fully accept him as my soulmate at our final moment of death together."

"That is indeed a very hard Doom." I replied, giving her a bit of a comforting hug. "You must have taxed her good nature, if she had any, severely. I met a kindly Moon Woman myself once, back in my old highland village at a harvest fair. She traveled with a gleeman and they had many stories to tell for those that could spare even a copper bit for their time. My family had little good coin and even less for wasting by an excitable young lad sure to 'waste' that hard earned money on either sweets or worse, upon ale.

"I kept to the back of the story fire and let those with coins request the tales they wished the word-weaver to relate or the fortune hopes they wished the Moon Woman to reveal and I listened avidly long into the night, as I have always loved a good story. Before I left to return home I offered her a poor well-handled bit of copper coin in payment that certainly had seen better days, but it was all of my fortune. She laughingly accepted it as such and while admitting that she did not see the patterns of the Ymbwyrca, the 'Great Weave' well, she thought my thread shone quite brightly indeed. I would certainly travel and go far; seeing both many wonders and strange and terrible things. However, in the end, she said, the happiest days of my life would be spent at my 'Green Hills of Home' happily tending my sheep and basking in the love of a faithful wife and a great many grandchildren. Her parting words to me with a wink of her eye were that this had been the 'happiest fortune she had ever before offered'."

"I think I still believe her. I would give everything I own now to lay down in a beautiful quiet green pasture with a flock of sheep, and forget all of my cares and have no fear, worries or bone weariness in my heart and soul."