The Last Stand (The Eleven Years War: Book One)
Chapter Forty-Three

Elise walked towards the medical corebuilding, relieved to be back. Though she’d enjoyed her time at the castleother than that last part, she’d missed the large building. It wasn’t anywherenear as beautiful as Castle Matisse, but the medical core building wascomfortable and fairly peaceful, without the politics and scheming that thecastle had. Now, she didn’t have to worry about spying or politics or peacetreaties; all she had to worry about was doing the job that she’d come toSemata for: becoming a doctor.

Justas he was the first time she’d walked through the medical core’s doors, Mathiswas standing outside the door, assessing the sick and the injured who werebrought to his door, and instructing them on where to go based on what was wrongwith them.

He’djust finished inspecting a boy who looked to have a fever when Elise approachedhim. He got a relieved look on his face when he saw her.

“Oh,thank the gods, you’re back!” he said as the boy and his mother rushed insidethe building. “We don’t have near enough people, right now; between this fluoutbreak by the eastern wall and the war, we’re stretched pretty thin.” Withoutanyone else coming towards the building, Mathis lead her inside the building.

“So,recruitment hasn’t gone well?” Elise asked. Before she’d left, Mathis and someother officers in the medical core were planning on going on a massiverecruitment campaign in the city to try to raise their numbers. It seemed likeeven that didn’t help to raise their numbers.

“Wemanaged to get a few gutter rats from the international district and aseamstress from the west wall,” Mathis said. “The kids aren’t old enough to domuch more than run supplies around, and the seamstress won’t be a doctor foranother year at the rate she’s going. As things stand right now, you’re outonly recruit we have that’s anywhere near ready to graduate.” They walked up alarge flight of stairs to the second floor, where all the patients who had lifethreatening injuries were laying in the cots that lined the walls.

“Speakingof graduation, Olrick told me that you’ve finished your weapons training whileyou were gone,” Mathis said. “Is that true?”

By the skin of my teeth. She’d only metthe graduation requirement by a stroke of luck. “I did, but barely.”

“Then,you’ve passed off all your graduation requirements,” he said. He pulled a redstrip of cloth from his pocket. “Normally, there’s a ceremony with a big dinnerand everything, but that was back when people believed that studying medicinewas a good cause.”

“That’sjust fine, thank you,” Elise said as she took the red band in her hand. Eventhough it was all a little anti-climactic, she was still excited about it. Fora long time, she’d wanted to be properly trained as a doctor so she could be morehelpful. Now that she was finally ready, she couldn’t wait to start work.

Shetied the red band to her forearm. When she got to her room, she would have tosew one of these onto each of her dresses.

“Wherewill my first posting be?” Elise asked. Mathis held his arms out.

“This,”he said. “I’m afraid that this room is even more short of staff than the othersare. We’ve got a lot of people upstairs in quarantine with the flu patients.”Elise nodded as she looked around her. Most of the patients there were asleep,exhausted from what had happened to them or drunk from the painkillers theygave them when they first arrived. It didn’t seem like they had anyone therethat absolutely needed care at the moment.

“Alright,”she said. She’d imagined that they’d have her start off in a part of thebuilding that was a little low key. It seemed that that wouldn’t be the case.“Do I have time to get settled before I start working?”

“Ofcourse,” Mathis said. “We’ve been pretty quiet in here, today. Get yourselfsettled, then come back-“

“CommanderMathis!” When Elise looked to the side, she saw one of the gutter rats Mathishad mentioned he’d recruited. He looked much cleaner and better fed than mostthat she’d seen in her time in Semata, but then again, that was probably frombeing involved in the medical core; no matter the rank, everyone was requiredto take baths every day and everyone got three good meals a day.

“Whatis it?” Mathis asked. Judging by the boy’s wide eyes, it wasn’t good.

“Th-there’sbeen a skirmish a few miles away, sir,” the boy stuttered. “There’s a lot ofwounded coming our way.”

Elisebit her lip. It seemed that she wouldn’t get a little down time, after all.

Mathisgot a serious look on his face. Things were about to get a lot busier.

“Ineed you to get General Polain and Commander Silas,” Mathis told the boy. “Ithink they’ll want to talk to the soldiers when they come.” The boy nodded andran back down the stairs.

Mathislooked over at Elise. “I’ll take your bag to your room. You make sure our boysare taken care of, alright?” Elise nodded, and Mathis turned his attention tothe rest of the room.

“Getready, everyone!” he called to the rest of the staff as she ran down thestairs. “We’ve got a lot of our boys coming in, and from the sounds of it, mostof them need some help!”

WhenElise got to the front door, she saw a long line of wounded soldiers at thedoor. It seemed that most of them at least had tourniquets on, but that was it.Most of them were leaning against their less injured comrades, some lay on thedirty ground, some were on litters, unconscious; they all looked like they’dbeen through hell and back.

Elisetook a deep breath in an attempt to calm herself down. Getting scared wasn’tgoing to help anyone, especially not these soldiers.

Shebegan leading the soldiers upstairs, praying to the gods that they’d haveenough people to help all these men.

Whenshe got back inside, she saw that, not only were patients flooding the stairsbelow her, but doctors were flooding the stairs above her; it seemed thatMathis was pulling many of the doctors stationed upstairs, where the sick andrecovering patients were, downstairs to help with the soldiers. Some of themwere even carrying down spare beds, since the ones they had in that ward werealready filled up with soldiers.

Witha deep breath of air filled with the sickly sweet stench of blood, Elise got towork.

Asshe worked that day, Elise saw just about every injury one could imagine:broken bones, sliced heads, crushed hands, amputated limbs; every terror thatthe Giskens could inflict on them had been inflicted on those soldiers.Whatever happened to them was bad enough that physical injuries weren’t theonly kind she was seeing. Those that weren’t hurt on the outside simplywandered around like ghosts, their eyes empty. Though they quickly took thosesoldiers to the ground floor, where patients’ families were supposed to wait,the memory of the looks on their faces haunted her even more than the gore thatsurrounded her.

Thatwas only the beginning of the horror that she saw that day. As much as shewished she didn’t have to, Elise ended up having to inflict even more pain onthe soldiers

in order to keep them alive. She setbones, amputated limbs, gave stitches, and almost all without pain killers;they ran out of cocca leaves pretty quickly after the soldiers arrived, andmost of them didn’t have the time to wait for alcohol to get in their system.Throughout the ward, the soldiers that were conscious enough to know what washappening screamed in pain as doctors like Elise tried to help them all, whilesome of them just continued to moan in pain.

Theworst part of it was watching some of them die. Elise had known the second shesaw some of the soldiers that they wouldn’t make it, but some of the boys whodied really could have lived, had things been different at the battlefield.Most of them would have lived, if their tourniquets hadn’t been changed ontheir way to Semata, or if they’d tied them on tight enough. Those were thedeaths that hurt Elise the most; they were the ones that she couldn’t help butthink that she could have prevented.

Onceall the injured soldiers were either dead or stabilized, Polain and Silas wereshown up to the ward. Gods, did Polain look tired; he had dark bags under hiseyes, and he seemed to have aged by ten years since she saw him last. It lookedlike preparing to fight the Giskens again had really taken a toll on him.

AsPolain walked along the rows of injured soldiers, a solemn look in his eyes,Silas approached her. He now had a big, purple bruise forming on his cheek,likely from some sort of training accident.

Henodded at her hands. “I see that everyone’s favorite pyromancer has had aneventful day.”

Eliselooked down at her hands. They, along with her once white apron, were drippingred with blood.

“Itlooks like I’m not the only one,” Elise said, looking back up at Silas. “What’sthat bruise from?”

Silasgently touched his cheek, where the bruise was. It seemed that whatever causedit had been pretty recent. “I made the mistake of doing a few staff trainingbouts with Eza. Let me tell you, that little shit might be short, but she canpack a pretty big punch.” He began to scan the room, looking around at all theinjured soldiers around them.

“Idon’t suppose you know what happened, do you?” Silas asked.

“Iwas told that there was a battle near the city,” Elise said as she watchedPolain. He’d stopped at the foot of a particular soldier, one whose skin on oneside had been blackened by an attack from a glaciomancer. “Apparently, welost.” Silas cursed, running a hand through his hair.

“Thatseems to be a pretty common theme with this damned war,” he said. “I just got areport from one of my men in the Rayal Mountains. Apparently, the bastards aremarching their way through the pass as we speak.”

Elisebit her lip when she heard that. Though the Rayal Mountains to the north ofSemata were the biggest in the country, they were still pretty small. Theywould probably have the city surrounded by the end of the week.

Eliselooked up at Silas. “We don’t have much time left, do we?” He shook his head.

“Raul’spretty intent on killing every one of us, at this point,” Silas said. “Ithought that we might be able to hold out long enough to get some help fromMirinia or something, but the way things are going, I’m not sure that we caneven put up that much of a fight.”

Eliselooked down at her feet. Never, before, had this situation been so scary toher. She’d known that the Giskens wouldn’t be very merciful to them when theyfinished their invasion, but knowing that many of the people she’d befriendedin the past month might be dead by the end of the week was really hard for herto hear.

“Whatare you guys going to do?” she asked. “Are you going to evacuate?” Silassnorted.

“Ofcourse not,” he said with that famous smirk of his. “The army needs everyfighting man they can get. Besides, when have I ever said no to a challengelike this?”

Elisetried to smile back, but she just couldn’t. As much as she wished she could,she couldn’t share in his confidence. After seeing all these soldiers in thecondition that they were in, it was hard to see how any of this could turn outalright. How would all of them survive all of this? They couldn’t, that was theanswer; if the Giskens didn’t kill them during the battle, they would kill themin the weeks and the months following that as they hunted him down likeanimals.

“Oh,try not to look so sad,” Silas said. “The Giskens are going to have a hard timekilling us; the only one of them that’s as good as us is Raul.”

“Andwhat about Bram?” Elise asked. “If he hits you with one good bolt, you’regone.”

“Then,we’ll just have to avoid him,” Silas said with a shrug, as if that was such asimple solution. “Besides, he’s just one man out of a million. They can’t havetoo many people like him in their army, right?”