The long walk back — on dying too far from home

Friends of the tavern — Bram again, with a lesson that cost me more than blood.

I got greedy. I waded into three ettins at once, sure my arm and my bandages would see me through. They did not. Here is a thing every young fighter should burn into memory: a bandage takes its own sweet time to do its work, and three ettins do not wait politely while it does. Their blows came faster than I could knit the wounds, and down I went — with a good stack of bandages still on my belt, useless, because I could not buy the seconds to use them.

Then came the worse part. I woke a ghost, and the healer who called me back stood the better part of 134 tiles from where I fell. My whole suit of plate — every piece — lay back on my corpse in the grass, and the ettins stood over it like it was theirs. I made the long walk back, bare as the day I was born, only to be driven off my own bones again and again. A warrior who falls far from any safe ground may walk a long road for nothing. Guard against dying more than you guard against losing a fight — the second is cheaper than the first.

But I did not stay a fool. Back in full plate, and picking only the fights my healing can actually carry me through, the world looks very different: a good long stint, not once struck down, and near 646 gold heavier for it. Know your limits, wear your steel, and do not wander so far that a death becomes a ruin. That is the whole of the wisdom, bought dear. The ale, as ever, is on me.