Chapter Two: Barren Light
The noonday sun filtered in through narrow windows, casting slivers of gold on the terra cotta floor. The boy sat beneath the cruel sunbeam, the tiny room stifling from both the summer heat and its pressing walls. It was a brick oven. A coffin on fire.
He smothered his flush cheeks with his hand, wiping at the sweat itching his face. Then he picked up the pliant twig he'd found in the wood stack. Carefully, he tied a piece of thread to its ends, bending it into a crescent.
His mother hummed under her breath, an old song with secret lyrics. She sat in a chair under one of the windows, a glimpse of the pale sky outside more comforting than any shade. She balanced a sateen gown on her lap, its richness contrasting with her simple dress made from undyed linen.
In her hand, she held a tiny blade, a seam ripper, and with effortless precision, she began to pluck at the gown's embroidery. Her cuts were light and quick, snapping tightly sewn threads without scoring the silky fabric underneath. The beautiful garland of flowers and vines that decorated the gown along its hem began to disappear. By her hand, it was as though it were growing in reverse, turning back to buds and then seedlings. Until finally, they were nothing at all.
Footsteps clapped down the hall outside, growing louder as they approached. The door swung open and cool air rushed in like a refreshing sea breeze.
A man entered, his coifed, black hair graying at the temples. He wore silk and linen, each layered piece tailored to his thin frame and decorated with fine metals. His skin was light, matching the boy better than his tanned mother.
The man strode into the room, his polished boot carelessly kicking the boy as he passed. A bit of clutter in his way, undeserving of thought. He touched the boy's mother on the shoulder, staring down at her with silver eyes. She met his look, her face a neutral mask.
Then she stood up, leaving the gown on her chair and the seam ripper laying on top. The man left and she followed, her eyes downcast.
The door shut.
Alone now, the boy crawled over to her chair and plucked up the seam ripper. He turned it in his fingers, watching the blade glint in the sunlight. Then he nocked it on his makeshift bow and tried to make it fly.
OOOOOOOOOO
The young soldier turned fitfully on his cot, the blistering summer in his dream manifesting as a fever and drenching him in sweat. A wave of fire rolled over him, and he bolted up, the stink of blaze and roasting bodies in his nostrils. Then nausea and lightheadedness slammed him back down. A choking breath caught in his throat. He clawed at the cot's frame, and using all his strength, he clambered onto his side. He clung there as the nausea resolved into a stream of vomit.
He coughed and spat, each spasm a burning agony.
"Take it easy, son," a man said, his voice hollow as though he were underwater.
The young soldier searched the room, his bloodshot eyes rimmed with red, making his silver irises all the brighter. He spotted the man seated on a short stool by an oil lamp, and he glared at him.
The man raised an eyebrow, and the lamplight caught the line of his jaw and his aquiline nose. It was the lieutenant, and he said, "Having shared the field with you at our last battle, that angry look of yours should be absolutely terrifying to me." He crossed his arms comfortably. "But I also just saw you puke all over yourself and the floor, so I'm not exactly intimidated."
The young soldier continued to glare.
Fashav sighed, then gestured to a clay pitcher and cup on the table beside him. "How about some water? You must be thirsty. Your wounds have left you with a nasty fever and the beginnings of an infection. Could become sepsis or worse. The herbalist corpsman made you a potion to clear it up."
"Corpse-man, you mean," the young soldier scoffed, his words all rasp.
Fashav snorted. "Seems like that's the case more often these days. No fault of their own, of course. War can be funny that way. Even a single battle can turn like a tide." His thoughtfulness passed, and he leveled a look at him. "So, do you want some water and medicine or an agonizing, pointless death in a puddle of your own bodily fluids?"
He glared at him.
Fashav waited, time as meaningless to him as it was to a statue.
Then something relented behind the young soldier's eyes. Or maybe it was the sand grating in his throat. "Water."
Fashav leaned forward, his finger tapping his ear.
He sighed. "Water, sir."
Fashav smiled and picked up the pitcher and cup. The cup brimmed with a green, syrupy fluid, and he handed it to him. The young soldier sniffed it, trying to parse the grassy notes from something synthetic, an ingredient distilled from inside a machine. But his raw throat clawed at him, and any reservations he held passed as he slammed the concoction back.
"Whoa," Fashav said, surprised. "You're not supposed to..."
The concoction roiled and bubbled in the young soldier's gut. It kicked up in his throat, sending him heaving, and he doubled over, desperate to keep it down. He hung there, dizzying nausea rolling through him, and a long tendril of bitter saliva seeped from his mouth.
"You need to slow down," Fashav said, and he reached out to give him a steadying hand. "The corpsman said you're supposed to sip it."
The young soldier swatted him away while snatching the pitcher from his other hand. The lieutenant stared at him, mouth agape and his hands open as if in shock at their own emptiness. The young soldier tipped the pitcher to his lips and poured the water down his throat faster than he could swallow it. It overflowed his mouth and began to stream down his chin and drench his chest.
Fashav shook his head, his expression bemused. "You don't do anything by half-measures, do you, son?"
He shoved the empty pitcher back at him. "I don't. Never have. And don't call me son."
"I understand," Fashav said, accepting the pitcher. He turned it over in his hand. "I only meant to be friendly. I know you already have a father."
"I don't. Never have."
"Your enlistment record says otherwise…"
He gave him a arrogant smirk. "That doesn't mean it's true."
"Ah," Fashav said, and he walked back to the table, setting the pitcher down. "I suspect that goes for your age, too? You're a little thin in the shoulders for eighteen."
The young soldier watched him, sizing him up. He pressed a pleasant joviality into his expression. There was nothing better than affability to throw an enemy off balance. If they believed it, they lowered their defenses. They softened. And if they saw through it, they were unnerved and gave ground just to get away. It was time to see which way the lieutenant leaned, and he let the warmth bleed into his voice. "That won't be a problem, will it, sir?"
Fashav paused, staring at him, his lips pursed like a man working out moves in a game of strike. Then he scoffed under his breath and shook his head. "You know it won't be a problem after Cinnabar Sands. A snapmaw could have squeezed you out its asshole and you could still march with Meridian for all our sun-king cares. You're a hero."
"A hero, huh?" the young soldier said smugly, "Is that why you, a lieutenant, are here in the medical tent, sir? Tending to me like a nurse instead of some corpse-man?"
Fashav snorted. "First off, it's captain now. Field promotion when our former commander had his head blown apart by shrapnel. And secondly, I'm here because I'm the only one willing to be in this tent with you."
He blinked.
"Does that surprise you? It shouldn't. You have quite the reputation among the other new recruits. An intensity to put it mildly. Before, you made them uneasy, but nothing worse. You were still a comrade. A fellow Carja soldier-in-arms. No, it was when we tried to rescue you from the field that they became terrified."
The young soldier's brow furrowed.
"You don't remember, do you?" Fashav said, frowning. "It would make sense since I'm reasonably sure you weren't conscious for it. It was all animal instinct and violence. The adrenalin of war and survival burning in your veins. You killed the first man who touched you and stabbed another in the gut. The third one got off easy with a spiral fracture at the elbow, but I doubt he'll ever wield a sword again. After that, we just left you there with the dead."
The young soldier looked away, feeling an old ache in his chest.
Fashav continued, "At nightfall, we convinced a couple of the Oseram porters to fetch you up onto a body cart. Lucky for everyone, yourself included, you were too feverish to do anything about it. Now you're in this tent. Alone with me."
"Aren't you afraid, too?" he asked.
"No," Fashav said, warmly, "You're one of my soldiers, and you need help. Also, like I said, you just puked on yourself. That doesn't exactly inspire terror. Neither does watching you flounder on your cot with sweat pasting your hair."
Unconsciously, the young soldier ran his fingers through his short, sticky hair, then winced when they hit the crusted edges of an open gash. He felt around the scalp wound, tenderly probing it.
"Sorry," Fashav apologized, "Hadn't had time to treat your wounds earlier. Or get that arrow out of your chest."
He looked down and spied the snapped end of an arrow shaft just below his collarbone.
"I can do it now, if you're ready."
The young soldier ignored him, and instead he gestured to the table, "What else do you have over there other than awful-tasting medicine and water?"
Fashav turned back towards the table and plucked up a small, hinged box. He flipped the lid open and fumbled through its contents. "Needle and thread. Forceps. And some alcohol."
"Is there a mirror?"
He fumbled through it again. "Yes."
The young soldier waved him over. "Good. Bring all of that. You can yank the arrow out and sterilize the wounds, but I'll do the sewing. If I have to stare at a puckered scar from shitty needlework for the rest of my life, I'll wish you had left me for dead."
"Who said I was a bad stitcher?"
He stared at him, his expression stony.
Fashav raised a hand in a placating manner. "All right. No jokes. If that's what you want to do. That's what we'll do." He tucked the box under his arm and picked up the oil lamp.
The young soldier grabbed the cot's frame, bracing against it, and he started to swing his legs down. His muscles trembled and faltered, a simple effort draining his energy. And when his toes finally felt the ground, they clung to it as if he were freeclimbing a cliff face.
Fashav set the supplies down onto the foot of the cot, and as he turned towards him, his mouth parted with the promise of help hovering on the tip of his tongue.
The embarrassment spurred the young soldier, and he hoisted himself into a sitting position before a word could be spoken.
"You're all right?" he asked.
The young soldier nodded, his face sour with nausea. He swallowed it down, and the pressure in his throat and gut eased.
"Ready?" Fashav asked. The forceps appeared in his hand, gleaming dully.
He nodded again, then arched his spine. His shoulders rolled back, exposing his chest. His skin looked pale gold in the lamplight, smooth and unblemished except for the cloud of darker bruising surrounding the arrow shaft and the dried crust of blood beneath it.
Fashav clasped him on the shoulder, his grip firm and steadying. The forceps opened, revealing jagged edges, and he plunged them around the arrow shaft. The forceps' jaws pried beneath swollen flesh, parting it to reveal the metal glint of the arrowhead. The young soldier smothered his wince with clenched teeth as Fashav tugged on the arrowhead, testing his grip. He felt the captain give his shoulder an apologetic squeeze. Then with a hard yank, he ripped the arrowhead out.
An unbidden gasp sputtered from the young soldier. Blinding pain radiated throughout his chest, and he sucked down air in raspy gulps trying to quell it.
"Are you all right" Fashav asked worriedly, giving him another squeeze.
He nodded.
"You don't have to do the next part. I can sew it closed for you."
"No... I'll do it."
Fashav nodded. He picked up a cloth swatch and doused it with a bottle of alcohol. Fresh blood filled the wound like a well, and he gently wiped around it, soaking up the fluid.
Still reeling from the arrowhead's extraction, the young soldier barely noticed the searing prickling of the antiseptic. For a moment, he faded out, and when he came back, Fashav was kneeling in front of him.
"Here," he said, and he held out his palm. A threaded needle and spool laid balanced upon it.
The young soldier accepted it. He unwound some more thread and picked up the needle, pinching it between his thumb and forefinger. And when he blinked, he was alone in a sweltering sunlit room, admiring a seam ripper. He rolled the needle between his fingers, mesmerized as it glinted in the light.
"I know I keep asking you if you're all right," Fashav said, angling the mirror towards the chest wound, "But I do mean it every time." He paused, considering his words. "I care."
The young soldier watched him, searching for something dishonest in the man. Or in himself. And when you couldn't find anything, he whispered, "Thank you."
Fashav smiled gently.
The young soldier pressed the wound closed, matching the swollen edges until they were even. In his other hand, he held the needle, and with effortless precision, he began to sew the wound shut. His stitches were light and quick, binding the skin together in a neat row as smooth as if there had been no wound at all.
"Amazing," Fashav breathed in astonishment. "Who taught you?"
But the young soldier didn't hear him. His mind lost in an eternal summer.