Slowly, with weary fingers, he loosens the leather in its knot. He slides the strap up and out and spreads the belt, careful of the blade now slightly blunted, but still honed enough to hurt. Unweighted by the steel; it seems a loss, oddly naked, his hip exposed. The sword become as much an extension of his body as his arm. The steel has been cleaned on the field. He has had his first ale, but not his first drunk. Perhaps that is to come tonight with his brother, as they sit around the fire with his comrades. Some will recount how they saw the Haradrim fall and he is almost unscathed. They will raise a cup and toast his passage, no longer a boy they will say, but a man.
He is still a boy. Seventeen springs he has had to grow. A Dunadan, he has inches yet and a beard to come. Shoulders will spread but not the slimness of his hips. Pounds of muscle to gain, though never bulky with it. Calluses to form on his palm from the sword and on his fingertips from the bow-string. Just like the callus on his heart that covers his first loss.
He is still a boy. He has had his first kiss, his first touch upon a woman's yearning softness, his first descent into the little death of shuddering release. His first infatuation: uncertain how much to give of his heart or if she would accept it. His lips have yet to learn to play the horn of battle, but with a secret smile he remembers them learning to play upon her. She says she will be not be bound to any man, but in those moments he sees she cannot hide her heart for long.
He has yet to feel the boundless love that sneaks up on quiet cat feet or gallops roughshod through the heart. A love that turns the act to benediction; mind and heart and body and soul; that no longer wants for self but seeks to give. He has not yet known the heartbreak of love's first loss, the struggle to heal and the faith to love again.
Oblivion of battle he now knows. Where the world recedes and the sword slides in with startling ease. The exquisite clarity, where he thought there would be hesitation and time for thought. In the danger of the moment, muscles, mind and senses on fire with anticipation, all in concert, knowing what to do. Relief pouring out in strength. It is not blood lust, no, but it is lust, so alike to the oblivion of release that now hours after, his loins still ache with need.
They said it would make him a man, but this fiction they all repeat; to hide behind ritual what they do not speak aloud. He is still a boy, but one who knows the secret. That to kill will become far too easy and far too easy not to think.
Faereld: Old English for a passage or journey
Many thanks to Annafan for her great suggestions.