I Enlisted for My Father, Now the Wolf Army Answers to Me novel · Chapter 8 of 24

Chapter 8: Count the Living

Sergeant Tolley counted the living in the infirmary, standing at the foot of each cot with her cropped head bowed.

The Fenmark had left nine dead on the gravel.

The Ninth had lost four.

Two of them were old hands who had taught me to hold a spear.

Two were recruits from my wagon, and I had learned their names over bread at supper.

I helped carry them in.

I carried the second recruit by the shoulders, and he was lighter than I expected.

Nobody told me to stop, so I didn't.

The healer, a tired woman with her sleeves pinned back, set Wick's leg on a table by the stove.

He screamed once and then passed out.

When he woke, he looked at the ceiling and said, in a thin voice, "Did I do it right?"

"You did it wrong," I said, "and you're alive."

"That's the best way."

"It really isn't."

He grinned with his split lip, and I laughed until my eyes stung.

Sergeant Tolley came up behind me at the water barrel and dipped a ladle without looking at me.

"Corporal Morcant," she said.

"I'm a recruit."

"Not since an hour ago. The Commander wrote it up." She drank. "For holding the bank and carrying a wounded man. That's what the paper says."

"Sergeant, I..."

"I don't know what you did in the river, Morcant."

I stopped.

She was still looking at the ladle.

"I was on the far side of the fight," she said. "I was busy. I saw a recruit shift for the first time in her life and take down two raiders. I saw a raider turn around in the middle of a bite and run. I saw nothing else, and neither did anyone in the Ninth."

I looked past her.

Three of the old hands were sitting on a bench by the door, mending a strap.

They didn't glance up, but one of them gave a slow nod.

"A wolf with good luck," he said to the strap. "That's all we saw."

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