The sounds reverberating through the tents only made matters worse. Flies buzzed around wounds. Injured patients wailed at the cutters sawing away on limbs that couldn’t be saved. Curses of ‘hold still’ came from the cutters. They all added a new layer of guilt for me. My injuries seemed trivial in comparison.
One of the mages adept in healing pushed and prodded my skull. He chanted something in a strange tongue, lessening the effects of my concussion. Tears streaked down his face as he worked. His breathing came in gasps. He was one of the few sorcerers strong enough to heal people with a resistance to sorcery. As a side effect, treating me put him through tremendous pain.
My guilt increased.
“There are others who need your help more. Why don’t you see to them?” I asked.
“General Balak’s orders were to take care of you first.”
The weariness in the healer’s voice was so strongly pronounced I had to strain to hear him over all the moaning and despair. Mages skilled at healing were a rare thing, so they often suffered from severe exhaustion. After the day’s battle, they wouldn’t sleep for days. It wasn’t unheard of for a healer to die because of the toll their bodies endured while healing others.
And this poor fool got stuck with the task of healing me.
My headache continued to subside. I clenched my jaw in frustration, guilt gnawing at me even more as I watched a cutter walk by, cursing audibly. Blood bathed his leather apron. He held a saw in one hand and a severed foot in the other. He dropped the foot in a wheelbarrow with other severed limbs. Someone would be by soon to cast them into a bonfire.
Bile crept into my throat. I knocked aside the healer’s hands and rose to my feet, unsteady at first.
“I’m not finished yet,” he said.
“Close enough. I can walk on my own. Go help someone who needs it more.”
The healer gave me a faraway look that let me know he was barely there. Heavy bags under his eyes added to a sagging and tired face. I hurried out the tent as he sighed and began to stand.
I had plenty of sympathy for the wounded, but that didn’t mean I wanted to linger. The infirmary was the part of military life no one, including me, liked to think about. We faced our mortality every day on the battlefield. None of us needed to be reminded of it afterward.
Those in civilian life weren’t much better. Fairy tales described stories of heroics, maybe even a valiant death for those fighting in war. No one ever told the story of the poor cripple who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time and was forced to find a new standard of “normal.”
It was night again by the time I started toward Balak’s tent. We had been stuck behind enemy lines for nearly half a day before someone picked us up. I lost one other member of my unit during that time. Omar apparently had internal injuries. He collapsed while laughing at one of Ira’s attempts at humor. Ava never even had a chance to look him over before he stopped breathing.
I tried to push my thoughts aside. It wasn’t easy.
The mood around camp changed drastically the farther from the infirmary I walked. If I hadn’t known any better I might have wondered if our army had suffered any casualties at all.
Men from all over Turine congregated around newly tapped barrels of ale. They laughed with half-full cups in hand, happy that there would be no more fighting. It didn’t matter who you were or what you looked like before joining the army, once you fought next to a man in battle, you became brothers.
I passed by the hangers-on attached to any army. Merchants near carts peddled indulgences of all types, trying to convince soldiers their coin was best spent with them. Lines twenty men deep stood in front of each cart. Victory loosened the purse of even the stingiest man, and the merchants smiled ever wider because of it.
Despite the activity at the merchant wagons, none of those lines could rival the rowdy ones waiting for the whores outside their tents. Many men wanted to celebrate the victory and release excess energy carried over from battle. Others just wanted the soft embrace of a woman after coming so close to death.
The guard outside of Balak’s tent pulled back the flap as