Chapter 40: Two Nights

Chapter 40: Two Nights

"Put him down."

Bram’s voice came out louder than Silas had ever heard it. Alden looked back, still wedged between the front handles and the turn.

"We can get him through," Bram said. "But not while you’re standing there. Down first."

Alden lowered his end. Bram followed, and the stretcher settled with only a small change in the dummy’s chest indicator. Behind them, Mira parried another strike and gave ground toward the shelter of the wall.

Silas sent one spiral piece past her shoulder, well clear of her, to force the swordsman to check his approach. The protective covering dulled its edge; it still made him raise his weapon.

"Call it before you send one near me," Mira snapped.

"High left," Silas said.

This time she moved with it. The second piece crossed where the man wanted to step, buying her enough room to recover her stance.

Bram crouched by the stretcher. "Alden, go through empty. Take the far handles when we feed them around. I’ll push from the back. Rooke, can you lift this side while I move?"

"How much?" Silas asked.

"Just enough that it doesn’t drag. Don’t carry him for me."

That, he could do.

Alden squeezed through the turn without his sword drawn, reaching back for the front handles. Bram folded the unused carrying straps inward so they would not catch. Silas put two weapon pieces into their case and divided his attention between the stretcher’s near rail and the pair covering Mira.

The frame moved a handspan, stopped, then moved again.

"Rear toward me," Alden said from the other side.

"Wait." Bram looked down the length of the casualty. "Now. Together."

Silas lifted as Bram turned. One handle passed so close to the wall that Silas expected to hear it scrape. It cleared, and Alden drew the front end into the collection yard.

The swordsman pressed Mira harder as soon as he saw the opening. She took one small burst sideways to keep the wall from trapping her, landed carefully, and caught his next blow with both hands on her practice weapon.

Silas’s closer piece wavered.

He felt the mistake before he saw it: too much attention following Mira, not enough on the weight beside him. The stretcher tilted toward his side.

Bram stopped pushing at once.

"Stay with me," he said.

Silas steadied the rail, heat crawling up his face. "I have it."

He left the weapons in simpler positions. One threatened the approach beside Mira; the other stayed close enough to interrupt a straight advance. No chasing the man’s blade. No trying to win a fight across the courtyard while threading a patient through a doorway.

Bram moved again. This time Silas matched him.

The rear handles cleared. Alden drew the stretcher onto the marked ground, and Bram followed with a stumbling last step that he caught before it reached the patient.

"Through!" Alden called.

Mira retreated into the opening. Silas sent his nearest piece across the swordsman’s line, withdrew it before the man could trap it against the wall, and backed after her.

The collection marshal raised a hand.

"Complete. Weapons down."

Silas barely remembered putting his pieces away. He was watching Bram lower the dummy while Alden kept its head level. When the stretcher touched the collection blocks, all four of them remained standing around it as though someone might ask them to carry it back.

Mira broke first. She sat on the low wall and began loosening her ankle support.

"Your left one nearly hit the partition," she told Silas.

"It didn’t."

"I know. I was beside it."

He wanted to defend the distance he had left, then remembered how little of that moment he could confidently reconstruct. He sat at the other end of the wall.

"I’ll call the line earlier next time."

Mira nodded and returned to the strap.

Alden handed Bram his water flask before retrieving his own. Bram drank, coughed once, and looked at the dummy.

"I thought we’d tipped him too far at the turn."

"You stopped," Alden said. "That helped."

Bram gave a small, tired smile. "We get cabinets through worse doorways at home."

Silas wiped sweat from the inside of his collar. "Does the cabinet usually have someone trying to stab it?"

"Not usually." Bram considered that. "My uncle has threatened a few."

The laugh escaped Silas before he could make anything of it. It hurt his dry throat. He drank and let the others discuss which of the dummy’s limbs should have been removed to make their morning easier.

Ferrow joined them with the readings a few minutes later.

They had passed. Their completion time was ordinary, with much of the lost time spent at the first junction. The injury record was considerably better: one minor handling fault at the turn, no significant aggravation of the assigned injuries.

"You made a workable change of route," Ferrow said. "You took too long to decide whether the first one was workable."

Alden looked at the ground briefly. "We should have checked how much cover the carriers would need."

"Yes. Winning an exchange and opening a route are different requirements." Ferrow turned to Bram. "You had something to say during the briefing."

"The narrow entrance," Bram admitted.

"Next time, say it before you’re holding the casualty."

Bram rubbed the strap mark on his shoulder. "I’m used to letting the drivers argue first."

"Family business?" she asked.

"Transport. Small loads out to the gate settlements, mostly. My father and the older crews decide the roads. I do the carrying."

"Today you understood that entrance better than your drivers did." Ferrow let him consider that, then continued through the assessment.

Mira had covered the retreat well but needed to call for relief before her ankle limited the next move. Silas’s control had held through most of the extraction; his attention narrowed too sharply when he became tired. Ferrow had seen the stretcher tilt at the finish.

"I know," he said before she finished.

"Then remember it before something living is on there."

He looked at the dummy again. The remark annoyed him partly because she was right, and partly because he had already spent the past several minutes being annoyed with himself.

Alden gathered the used straps. "We got him out."

"We did," Silas said.

Their eyes met briefly. Alden still had the recorded arm hit against him, and Silas still remembered how close the first passage had come to swallowing all their strength. Neither mentioned it again.

Silas was permitted to leave after his recovery check. He took the shortest route home, ordered lunch, and fell asleep in his chair before it arrived.

The reminder woke him. He ate, moved to the bed, and slept properly.

By the following morning, the exercise had left sore muscles rather than the sick, hollow exhaustion he had expected. He still moved cautiously while dressing. When Kerr asked at his scheduled appointment, he told her exactly what had hurt and how long it had lasted.

"That is an improvement," she said, comparing the readings. "It doesn’t make repeated fighting sensible."

"I’ve recently had that explained to me."

"I expect you’ll hear it again."

She continued his course and gave him the adjusted schedule. Silas left with time to collect a library reservation before going home. Ten days ago, that additional errand would have required its own calculation. Today he walked there, borrowed the book, and returned while his lunch was still warm.

He had almost finished eating when the assignment notice appeared.

The practical results had cleared their team for its first supervised field placement. Greybank Frontier Station, beside a stabilized gate on an established supply route. First-year duties covered stores, a marked supply-path survey, and casualty transport under station personnel. Departure in six days, subject to the infirmary’s final clearance and individual restrictions.

Silas recognized Greybank from the geography volume. He brought the map over and found the settlement: road, station, gate, and a cluster of buildings too small to receive their own names.

It looked manageable. Staffed accommodation, academy transport, duties that did not involve wandering through an unknown realm looking for something large to kill.

Then he opened the full schedule.

Three days. Two nights.

The accommodation was at Greybank.

Silas put his spoon down and checked the return transport, although the answer was already in front of him. The academy convoy would bring them back on the third afternoon.

He looked around his studio. His bed was unmade. The comfortable chair had yesterday’s coat over one arm, and his medicine stood beside the cup he used every morning.

For two nights, none of the room’s recovery would reach him. Boundary Ward would go with him, and Remote Grasp. His damaged body would go exactly as it was.

He reopened the equipment requirements and pulled his notebook closer.

He had six days to prepare for two nights without the place that had kept him alive.