The tent hospital announced its presence at first not with a sight, nor a sound, nor even a sign, but a smell. A vicious, rancorous, squirming kind of smell; the kind that made you retch on impact and then seized the chance to infiltrate your entire head, writhing through the sinuses like a worm in mud. A smell you could feel burying into your flesh, right beneath the skin. An odor that didn’t choke you so much as invade you. The kind of stench no amount of water would ever really wash out.

  I spotted a flash of white through one of the rolled doors and ducked through, but it wasn’t him. A nurse, moving at a pace I’d only seen in training sessions, a stained bucket in each hand. She’d long passed the door but the stink of them wasn’t fading.

  A hand to my face, I followed, peering through. A long hall. Open doorways all the way down. Occasional nurses flitting here and there, occasional dull laments rippling the fabric walls. “Oh, hey,” came a voice from behind me. “I wasn’t sure you would come.”

  All I saw of Robin were his eyes, still sparkling. A thick cloth wrapped around his lower face and the hood was firmly up. I still couldn’t work out where his horns would be under that. “You can trust my word to you,” I said.

  “I… I’ll try. Most of what I put on the cart has been taken already, but the nurses said they need spare hands to keep up with the anodyne doses and applying antiseptics. It’s not much, but…”

  “I think I’ll be okay if I stick by you.”

  “You can’t really do it wrong, which is what the nurses said. They’re dealing with the difficult stuff, like changing the bandages. And they’ve convinced some city surgeons out of retirement, who are…” He pointed past my shoulder. “Down there. In surgery.” His hand was the same mottled blue-green lichen tones as his face, but the nails were all worn down right to the quick. Perhaps… bitten? “So I’ll be over here in the shrapnel recovery tent. As far away as I can be from, uh… I really don’t want to hear any of the shouting or yelling.” A shudder ran through him.

  He led me through to a tent room that was fairly clean, in as much that you could still see half of the cobbles that made up its cold floor. Bodies laid anonymously on cot beds in thin grubby sheets and under varying degrees of bandage, dense rows of them and only some separated by curtains, like a miserable hostel for those halfway between the dead and the living. All of them were Foresters and I didn’t want to look any closer. Some of them grumbled in lethargic, moribund aches. Some of them didn’t. I didn’t know which was worse. “Oh, and you’ll want this.” Robin handed me a thick flannel cloth like his own, and I drew down the hood of my rough old cloak and leaned forwards as he carefully tied it around my head, fitting it exactly like his own. Soft fingers dancing it into a knot. He stopped for a moment like he’d only just realised what he’d done, then shook himself out and bumped into the handcart sitting in the room and bustled away. Quickly.

  I took one of the bottles of antiseptic and uncapped it, the astringent waft only marginally better than the malignant odor around, then went to the cot across from Robin and took a thick breath through the thick cloth. The body here groaned, the sheets at waist level, a gaping cutaway ripped from their shirt around the flank and heavily bandaged. A Forester. Skin like mine, but they were tall and lanky. Or they would be if they ever stood up again. The back of the bottle told me five drops for a small wound, ten drops for a large wound, so ten is what I did, and the body wheezed like a barren tree in a blizzard and I told them it would be fine, that they’d heal up alright and they’d be back home before too long. Think of where they most wanted to be in the world. And then go there when they’re well enough to leave this place.

  I wished I could do more for them. I wished I could fix this whole damn mess. I glanced across at Robin, already on his fourth patient, doing his best to help. That’s all we could do here. Our damned best.

  The next one was worse. Tall and broad, still and silent, face ensnared in bandages, hair burnt down to the raw and charred scalp, horns smashed to smithereens. Smithereens was never a good word: it only ever came up when things had gone very badly wrong somewhere. But at least it wasn’t as bad as the massive punch of deep red in the bandages around the shoulder.

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  People weren’t meant to bleed that much.

  Through gritted teeth I breathed slowly, purposefully. This felt like a fifteen-drops kind of wound but I stuck to the bottle’s instructions. The anodyne medicine we had came in vials with droppers, and the label said to apply liberally to the area, so I did. Bright pink washed through the bandages and the sheets rustled, so at least they were still alive – if that was a good thing. I stood back, couldn’t help scanning over the body, but as much as I didn’t want to recognise them, I doubted even their closest family would recognise them under all that mess. I couldn’t let myself think about that – I had work to do here, and I forced my gaze to the rest of the room. Only fifty or so more for me and Robin to attend to.

  *

  I must have spent half the morning with my eyes squeezed shut. It was the only way I could get through it. A thousand rancid thoughts swirled in my head and I chased them back down. This was not the time nor the place. No, this place was for healing. And Robin seemed to take to it far better than I.

  Every time I looked, he was actually leaning over a cot, remonstrating in soft tones and applying the treatments as gently as if he’d known the injured for a lifetime. No idea how he did it. And yet he flew down his row, even taking care of the last dozen on my side for me. “Oh, we should take a break before starting on the other ward,” he said when we finally met up.

  I almost choked on my next breath. “There’s more?” I said in a harsh whisper.

  He nodded solemnly. “But we’ll take a break. The nurses had food in their rest area.” His eyes ran over me, all over me, and I felt suddenly… better. “You can go stand outside. I’ll bring something for you.”

  My body took me out of that place entirely on its own, and the air wasn’t much better out under the sky, but I was so glad for the distance, mere as it was. The thoughts swarmed back and I slapped them away, but I couldn’t get all of them by the time Robin appeared with a basket and another cloth, dripping with something. “Use this,” he said. “Your face as well.”

  It was hot on my hands, the cloth, hot and wet with something that smelt like oranges and alcohol. I pulled the rag from my face and dabbed the cloth on, then took a breath and instantly regretted the lungful of repugnance. “It’s sick,” I grunted, and wiped my face again.

  “They are sick, yes, but they’re the lucky ones,” said Robin.

  “I meant it’s sick, the whole idea of it. The way they’re left, beaten and crushed and with nothing to help them. I know it’s the Forester way but why do they – why do we do it?”

  “Oh. I don’t know. I’ve had my side of it, but, uh, yeah. I don’t want to say about that. Not ever. I just want to help.”

  “And they’re all Foresters. What gives?” Searing heat pooled in my chest. Visions flashed in my mind of the training sessions marching through the untracked woods, intermittent melees starting and ending on Oldfield’s whistle, then trekking on and leaving the injured or exhausted behind. Visions of what happened to Omen on that first week… “Where did all the injured Clearlanders go? Who’s looking after them?”

  “The nurses said they’ve been meeting the medical barges every few nights when they float downstream. Doctors from the proper city hospitals take the Clearlanders away. I think there’s some kind of agreement higher up in the city to care for them. And the nurses take all those left behind. Or at least those still worth taking.” I seethed and kicked at a bollard the tent was tied to, and my boot absorbed most of it but it still hurt. “Though they also said a guy’s been coming down with a wagon lately, pulling up in this square at dawn, looking for the Foresters who are well enough to leave so he can take them back home. Paid for by the war front.”

  A strange, vague relief welled up, in everywhere except my foot. “Well, that’s nice at least. Surprisingly so. Still fucked up to abandon them until they get better.”

  “We do what we can,” said Robin in a small voice. “I’d ask that place up the hill where all the arcanists study but I doubt they’d care, and I’ve never heard of them using their magic to heal people anyway. Not one single time ever.” He opened the basket lid and held it to me. “We should eat.”

  Right here? “I can’t. Not with all of that.”

  “Then take it with you somewhere.” He pulled a couple of sandwiches out and pushed the basket into my hands. “Go take some time and eat. You’ll need it.”

  I was still in the mood to argue with someone, something, anything… but not with Robin. He’d been so considerate to me over the weeks at the apothecary and he’d always looked out for me. A few extra squares on every payment. Insisting on a bandage and iodine for the tiniest of knife nicks on my finger last week. “Alright. I’m… not sure how long I’ll be.”

  I expected him to look at least a little disappointed for leaving him. He’d taken off his face covering too and there wasn’t a hint of downturn. “Oh, that’s okay. I’m really happy you helped out already. It was super nice of you. Thank you, Morgan.”

  My eyes went to the basket. I couldn’t stay here. “No worries. I’ll still be there next Felday with the gripweed, so… yeah. See you soon, I guess,” I said as I finally set away from that damned stench and the stagnant groaning.

  “Miss you.”

  “Huh?” I turned back.

  “See you.” He was looking at the cobbles, or maybe my boots. “I said I’ll see you.”