UNGLOVED

Chapter Nine

Tucking the last of her silver robes into her bag along with a few small mementos of her life in Kalad, Liriel was now ready to leave. Selana sat on her bed to keep her company.

"Liri, I'll miss you. Will you write?"

Liriel wrapped her arms around her taller older sister. "Of course, every day if I can manage." She released her sister and turned to look around her apartment. "It won't be easy. The work is very difficult and they say soldiers are brought in by the dozens, all torn to shreds and dying."

Tears sprang to Selana's gray eyes. "Oh Liri, how will you ever manage? I don't think I could bear that."

"I'll be fine, sister. You know I'm tough enough to handle it."

Selana nodded. "I guess I'm the soft one. You were always the bolder of the three of us."

Liriel agreed that her sister would not be capable of witnessing the terrible cost of war in damaged bodies. Thinking of Lorenzo, though, gave Liriel strength to drive away whatever doubts that lingered.

Rising to smooth her dress, Selana picked some fluff from Liriel's robe and slipped the veil up over her head to cover her face. "Val awaits you down at the training yard."

For a moment, Liriel thought about sharing the knowledge of Lorenzo, but she knew it was unwise. Selana wouldn't understand. It would be nice to have someone to talk with about it, but Liriel had few friends, and perhaps only Daria would have been less than shocked at her action. Liriel had been forbidden from seeing her or talking with anyone else about what she had done and where she was going.

It was a long ride to the army encampment by the border, and she travelled incognito, so for now she must keep her own counsel.

#

Everywhere Liriel looked she saw blood. She shook her head. The sharp metallic tang filled her nostrils. They hadn't done very much for the soldier who was just brought to her. They never did. The field medics always let the Marulan take care of most of the injuries.

She wondered if she could save this one.

A week had passed since Liriel travelled to the front and already she was exhausted. Soldiers were brought in every hour, each one worse than the last. When she closed her eyes at night she saw red.

Although Liriel could patch up these soldiers who had gone with their swords and their spears off to war, it felt so pointless. It was a selfish war, fought to acquire lands that her country, Kalad, didn't truly need. Their population was stable, neither growing nor shrinking, and the cost in lives ruined and lost was immeasurable.

There was no way to measure all the costs of war just by the number of casualties. The value of each individual was incalculable, and those that lived were often damaged, sometime in body, but deep in their spirit, and would require a kind of healing that few Marulan were capable of performing. Liriel felt there was no cause noble enough that could justify all of this destruction.

Liriel straightened and disengaged her hands from the body she was working on. She was done with her task of stopping the internal bleeding. The supervisor of the local Marulan, a man named Dor, came over to continue her work, repairing the torn muscles, and another came to wrap the wounds that were not completely healed. In order to conserve energy, the Marulan had agreed to repair only the most critical injuries, leaving minor ones to heal on their own time. They worked in teams, each person performing one task repeatedly, then moving on to the next patient. There were not enough Marulan to heal all of the wounded soldiers. The youngest students performed the wrapping of the lesions that remained. Some wounds would eventually heal on their own. Others were left for the Marulan back in the city, if the soldier lived through that long trip. It was difficult to stop, though, when she could see the pain in her patients eyes.