to illustrate a point

"Private? Private Blue? Thomas?"

Thomas woke, opening his eyes to blazing white. His breath misted out into cold air but he felt feverishly warm. The white was eclipsed by Captain Brookhart leaning over him, looking concerned. "Captain?"

"Welcome back, Private. How do you feel?"

Thomas considered his body. Every bone ached. "Ow?"

Captain nodded as if he expected it. "Can you sit up?"

Thomas tried and found that he could, although it made his head swim oddly. He had an eldritch sword in his right hand with power shimmering up his arm like heat waves off stone. He frowned at it, puzzled, until he remembered that Klaus had thrown the Kingmaker out onto the ice, and how the blade and sheathe spun off in separate directions, each sliding toward open water.

"Put the sword down on the ground beside you, Private." Captain said in a tone that was more suggestion than an order.

Nor following the suggestion easy; Thomas' fingers were locked tight around the sword's hilt. He forced his fingers to relax and drop the hilt, hissing in pain. The blade vanished into the snow bank beside him, leaving behind a thin hole in the snow that slowly widen.

Captain crouched down beside him and commanded this time, "Let me see your hand."

Thomas gritted his teeth and held up his hand for inspection. Captain peeled the glove from Thomas' hand and studied the beet red skin for a minute before nodding. "It will blister up, but it's not badly damaged. Put it in the snow."

The snow was blessedly cool. They were on the banks of the lake, where the land rose up steeply from the flat ice. Klaus was still out on the ice, a bloom of red against the white. Drag marks led from a massive set of cracks in the ice to where he sat – apparently he'd been pulled to safety after falling unconscious. The rest of the troop was scattered along the edge of the ice, spikes of blue, poking in the snow as if hunting for something.

"Where's the scabbard, Private?" Captain asked, indicating the sword with the nod of his head. It lay on bare earth at the bottom of shallow grove in the snowbank, whiffs of steam rose coming from the snow still touching the blade.

"It went in the water." Thomas said. "The hilt slowed down the sword so I could grab it." There was no "good job" or "good man" like he expected for saving the sword. "I couldn't save them both, sir. I could only reach one or the other. I figured that the sword was the important one."

"The sword should have killed you." The captain growled, like he'd done something stupid.

"But it didn't."

"Yes, I know. But begs the question, why didn't it?"

Thomas pulled his hand from the snow and gazed at it. Like the captain predicted, the skin was starting to blister. "I don't know."

The captain studied him hard for another minute and then stood. "Sergeant, call them in. Private Blue says it went into the lake. There will be no recovering it."

"Yes, sir!" Sergeant Fisher turned and bellowed out commands, recalling the others.

"We'll have to jury-rig a sheathe so you can carry it," Captain said.

"Me?" Thomas said.

"Yes, you. You've proved that you can handle it without getting yourself killed. I doubt that would be true for anyone else in this regiment."

"Even you, sir?"

"Even me."