Letting Go

The little lordling comes back into the house, and Haalfrin orders the boy, "Set up the fire."

"But… I don't know how."

"Here," Haalfrin says, "Give me your knife."

Once the boy does so, Haalfrin strikes it against his own short sword and shows him how to create sparks. "Now, what you need to do is get some of this hay on the floor and use it as tinder."

"…What's tinder?" the teenager queries,

"Kid, tinder is the stuff that easily catches fire – not those branches or twigs you got. Hay works, as well as wood chips or sawdust – birchbark, too. The point is that it takes a small spark, and it makes a little burst of fire."

After the boy gathers up a pile of tinder, Haalfrin continues, "Tinder burns too quickly, so once you get the tinder aflame, quickly use it to light the kindling. Kindling is things like your twigs. The twigs will hold the flame longer, so you can use it on the fuel – the branches you've brought back."

The boy scrunches his face. "Is lighting a fire really so complicated?"

"Complicated or not, if you want to join a war, you're going to have to learn how to make a fire for starters. Wilderness survival is just as important as sword fighting – sometimes more important. I've seen many people lose battles because the soldiers can't fend for themselves. Plus, even if you're a noble, none of the soldiers are going to respect you if you order them to make your fires for you."

Haalfrin looks up and laughs, "Soldiers who don't respect you usually leave you to die when you're in a dangerous spot."

Of course, Haalfrin did that to several military officers in the past – years before he ever joined the Kareen - all the way back when he was a young teenager this boy's age.

Whenever the nobles questioned him and the other men about some baron's son's death, Haalfrin would always shrug it off by saying, "He died bravely in battle. We'll all miss him." The other men would always join in with a few fake tears, and everything would be settled.

As the young teenager bends down and gets to performing his task, Haalfrin discreetly gets up and goes to the only door in the house - barring it shut and cutting off the only escape route.

After the fire is finally lit, Haalfrin looks at the boy's short sword on his hip, which the boy had probably stolen from his father's armory before he left.

"Ull out your weapon," Haalfrin orders while drawing his.

Once they both have their weapons ready, he tells the boy, "You know, my clan lives off battle, and our last remnants met their end in this small town just a few days ago…"

The boy glances at Haalfrin in confusion. "A few days ago? Isn't that…"

"Embarrassing, right?" Haalfrin interrupts, "Such a long and proud lineage lost to a bunch of nobodies? No... We lost to a single mage and a baron. Did you know that the youth of my clan were like my grandchildren? But the baron - your father - killed them all - even the women and children left behind in the clan halls. Wouldn't killing you be the perfect revenge? Haha! Then your father could be left alive with just as much hatred as me! He'll be neither living nor dead!"

The boy starts trembling, and without even fighting back, he turns tail and runs for the door, only to find it barred shut. He looks up and sees the only other opening, which is the hatch at the roof to release fire smoke. Sadly, it's too high to reach.

"Use your sword, boy!" Haalfrin shouts as he walks slowly toward the boy. "The only way to live is if I die! Didn't you want to do a man's work and join a war? Stop acting like a little boy and fight me like a man!"

Haalfrin seems to lose some of his frailty at that moment, and he stands up straight.

In the boy's eyes, Haalfrin looks like a menacing Kareen raider as the old man kicks one of the crates away with his foot rather than walk around it. Of course, Haalfrin's frail foot hurts horribly from the blow, but he doesn't care.

"Aaahhh!" The boy screams out in fear and swings his sword at Haalfrin. More like, he aims directly at Haalfrin's sword - not his body.

It's a common mistake amateur swordsmen make – all because they're focused too much on that enemy's scary blade rather than doing damage.

Haalfrin lets his sword get batted aside, but he uses his other hand to smack behind the boy's knees with his scabbard.

The boy tumbles forward, and Haalfrin's sword is already swinging for the boy's throat.

However, before Haalfrin's blade can kill the child, his blade stops mere inches from his exposed gullet. It turns out that Haalfrin had aimed the sword so that the tip would hit the ground next to the boy's head, rather than pass through his neck.

Looking up in fear, the boy sees the menacing old man standing over him.

Then, the boy feels mentally lost when he sees his attacker step back and sheathe his blade.

Haalfrin shuffles his left foot and slides the boy's weapon back to him. "You dropped it."

The boy lies down in shock, but Haalfrin doesn't care about that. Instead, he shuffles back to his crate, sits down wearily, and huffs, "Boy. Just go back to your father. You're not cut out for fighting - at least not yet."

"You're... not going to kill me?" Haalfrin starts feeling guilty since he HAD been seriously thinking about it.

"Of course not," Haalfrin lies with a straight face, "I lied about the part about getting revenge against the baron. Hehe... Knowing the fear of death is the most important thing you can learn."

Haalfrin then leans over the boy and stretches his back out - revealing some of the gigantic height he had in his youth. "Boy. If you go on a battlefield, there'll be dozens or hundreds of men younger and scarier than I am trying to kill you. Is that really what you want?"

The boy shakes his head and seems shaken.

"Before you thought you were about to die," Haalfrin asks, "what were you thinking about?"

The young master slowly gets up from the ground on wobbling knees and sits back down. He then replies, "I was worried that my father and sisters were going to miss me."

"The fate of all warriors is death, boy," Haalfrin says seriously, "If you were stabbed to death and left as a nameless corpse on some muddy plain, would you want your family to howl with grief all day long? Are you really prepared for that? What about your father? He'll be so sad that he'll go without eating and spend every day wishing for an early grave. A man who's lost his family is a dead man at heart."

Haalfrin feels something deep in his soul start to light up as he was speaking, and a strange energy ignites in his soul. This feeling propels him into a strange sense of enlightenment, and he feels compelled to keep speaking.

"Being on the front lines of a war doesn't mean you MIGHT die; it means you're already dead. Everyone who picks up the sword will die by the sword," Haalfrin drones on absentmindedly, "If you can't accept that, then go home."

The boy sits down by the cold fireplace feeling very somber. He can tell that the old geezer is thinking of his own dead clan when he said that.

Still, the boy looks over at Haalfrin with worship in his eyes. 'I've never been treated so seriously by anymore before; it was like the old man actually respects me!' he concludes in his mind.

Feeling closer to the old man now, the boy asks, "What about your family? What happened to them?"

Haalfrin lights the fire at stares at the flames absentmindedly. "We came across an enemy stronger than ourselves. They all fell in battle, but I survived. That's all."

With concern in his voice, the boy asks, "How are you handling it?

Haalfrin thinks while stoking the fire with his little branch… and his sense of enlightenment becomes stronger.

His only reply is, "For every 9 warriors who fall, one is left behind… And who knows, boy? If you traipse off to war, you might survive. However, you'll have to bury the friends you fought with."

"What do you do if you're the last one?" the boy asks.

"You pick up your sword, get back on your feet, and you keep fighting. For those who've embraced the warrior's life, every day is a battle, and life itself is a war. Just because some comrades fall, that doesn't mean the war is over. If you slack off and give up, then you dishonor the dead."

Haalfrin finally starts to let out silent tears. 'That's right. I'd given up. I was waiting to die.' He wipes his tears. 'If I died piss drunk in an alley, then my clan brothers would be ashamed of me.'

'Plus, what was this about getting revenge'" Haalfrin curses in his heart, 'My people weren't unjustly murdered. By fighting every day for their bread and meat, they were asking to get killed!'

The Kareen had killed many whom they had raided over the years. Those victims must have been just as angry as Haalfrin himself, if not MORE angry… But for the Kareen, it was always 'kill or be killed.'

"Survival of the fittest" is the basest of all laws. For those who live by these rules, it's always distasteful when they cry and fret about how unfair life is just because they were the loser.

Haalfrin can only count his people unlucky for coming across a stronger opponent. He shouldn't be angry over their deaths, mourn for them, or let their absence cripple his life. Doing so would only dishonor them.

Instead, he should focus on living the rest of his life in a way that won't disappoint them.

The old warrior's gaze slowly goes from absent to firm. 'When I die, I want to be able to proudly stand with them still,' he resolves himself, 'Now that I think about it, it would be kinda' cool if my death is a tale worth telling over a cold drink.'

It's at this moment that Haalfrin falls into a trance, and his mind slips into a strange place…