Chương 114: The First Day Kichan Was Gone

On the first day Kichan disappeared, Seria wrote the list anew. The list used until the day before was soaked in blood and water. Marks for resurrected people, missing people, and injured people overlapped until it could no longer be read. Seria found an empty grain ledger. She did not draw a vertical line down the center of the first page. Without dividing human and demihuman, she wrote names in the order they were confirmed. Theor brought people to her one by one.

His broken arm was bound to his body with cloth, and his good hand held a wet note.

"This one came out of the river."

"Name?"

"He can say it himself." The drenched human soldier said his name.

"Ern." A demihuman warrior stood behind him. The same rope marks remained on both their wrists.

"Karun." Seria wrote the two names side by side on one line.

"Why are you writing us together?" Ern asked.

"Because you were found together." Karun raised his wrist.

"I tied him to me because if he let go, we would both have been swept away."

"You were the one who almost let go first."

"Now that you're alive again, shut up." The two went to the treatment station under the same blanket while still arguing. The ledger kept filling through the morning. Just because breath had returned did not mean everything was over. Severed arms, severe burns, and legs crushed under collapsed stones remained as they were. Seria and Theor moved people and changed bandages. Someone vomited, unable to look at the place where they had died.

Someone picked up a stone after seeing that the soldier who had killed them was alive. Seria did not take the stone away.

"If you throw it, it will hit."

"I know."

"Think about what you will do after that, too." The person held the stone for a long time before setting it on the ground. The two commanders came to the ledger after noon. Marten could not straighten his fingers properly, and Grad had cloth wrapped around his ribs. For the first time, the two sat at the same table in front of everyone. They did not even send the guards away. Soldiers on both sides had seen the two commanders pull each other out of the collapsed fortress.

They had seen them try to block their own side's attack signal, and had heard them order the children sent out first. This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience. The secret medicine pouches had already fallen where everyone could see them. There was no way to keep hiding that the two had been friends.

"Is the truce over?" Someone asked. Marten looked at Grad before answering.

"I will not declare that a miracle ended the war."

"Then are we fighting again?" Grad said.

"First, we find out which orders were stopped, and where." The two commanders set documents brought from their own sides on the table. Marten's withdrawal order was in a bloodstained document tube. It was the paper that had fallen with Seru after the arrow hit. Grad's red knot remained in the hand of the messenger who had been seized. The limited-reconnaissance authorization bore the seal of Lauren, the human army operations officer. Reinforcement signal records. The firing time of the catapult magic.

The time the leyline battery responded. Seria wrote those in the same ledger too. Lauren had gone to the bridge to recover the scouts and then been rescued from the collapsed fortress. Standing between two guards, he removed his operations insignia and set it on the table. Lauren had both handed Kichan the northern grimoire and authorized the limited reconnaissance after Kichan left.

"I did both of those things." When Lauren tried to take back the authorization paper, Marten raised his injured hand to stop him.

"Leave it here."

"It is a military secret."

"Keeping it secret is how this happened." The demihuman chief who authorized the red reinforcement signal and the three guard captains who bound the messenger also said their records should be handled by the tribal council. Grad threw a piece of the red flag onto the table.

"Whoever raised this will be named here."

"We cannot say it in front of the enemy."

"Yesterday, that enemy pulled your child from the rubble." The chief could not answer. The two commanders wrote their first order together. No unit will cross the river. All attack signals and artillery devices will be disabled. The field command authority of Lauren, the officer responsible for the red signal, and the commanders who bound the messenger will be suspended. Before the joint ledger and in public, we will investigate who blocked which orders and why.

A joint messenger route will be opened across the river. Emergency orders will be made in duplicate and carried by human and demihuman messengers together. Below that, the two marks were stamped side by side. The two commanders did not end it by posting documents. Marten bound his unmoving hand to his chest and went to the catapult spell array. Grad walked to the leyline battery with one arm pressed against his ribs. A human army mage said that if they removed the firing stones, the enemy would attack first.

"You said that yesterday too, while loading them." Marten answered. With his good hand, he pulled the locking pin from the first firing stone. The heavy stone rolled free of its groove. Ern, who had sat at the griddle on the day of the prisoner exchange, put his hand on the second stone. Across from them, demihuman warriors pulled the red flags and resonance spikes from the leyline battery one by one. Both tasks began at the same time so no one could argue over which side had disarmed first.

The last resonance spike did not come out easily. Grad pulled with one hand, and a human army mason struck the side with a hammer. When the spike came out, the red light under the earth went out. The deactivated stones and spikes were loaded onto a cart and brought before the joint ledger. The royal messenger and the tribal council's messenger tried to take down the document. The two commanders personally posted copies on both sides of the bridge.

"Are you doing this because you are friends?" A soldier asked. Marten said,"Even friendship was not enough to stop it." Grad added,"So the story of our friendship can wait." That evening, each camp brought back its first report. The sentence that said the enemy attacked first was crossed out. The human army wrote, We sent scouts first. The demihuman army wrote, We raised the red reinforcement signal first. No conclusion was reached about who was more at fault.

At night, bean porridge was boiled in the shelter kitchen. The pot Kichan had left behind was dented on one side, but it was set over the fire. When Seria added salt, Marena pinched some back out.

"That's too much."

"Kichan put in about this much."

"That included the amount Mr. Argaon ate straight from the pot." The two tasted it again. It was not the same as what Kichan had boiled. Still, the people who had come back to life stood in line with bowls. An old thief held the ladle, and a human soldier offered a demihuman child's bowl first. At the bottom of the first page of the ledger, Seria wrote the number of people served that day. She did not divide human and demihuman columns. It was the first shared record made on the first day Kichan was gone.