Bread and Bandages

By afternoon, the Western Gate no longer looked like a battlefield.

Somehow, the aftermath felt uglier.

Battlefields at least had the decency to explain why everyone was bleeding.

Relief areas collected the consequences and arranged them beneath canvas.

The cooper’s yard had become a treatment station. Two bakeries distributed bread from their rear doors while somebody with better organisational instincts than the rest of us had turned an old cloth warehouse into a temporary shelter for families whose homes were damaged during the battle.

A woman I didn’t know directed three mercenaries towards water barrels. An elderly shopkeeper had opened his cellar to store medical supplies and now stood outside refusing payment with increasing hostility. Children carried folded bandages from one table to another because revolutions also required employing anyone tall enough to reach the baskets.

I helped move a wounded knight onto a pallet and nearly walked away before noticing the boy beside the next bed staring at a loaf of bread.

He could not have been older than seven.

A volunteer tore a piece off and handed it to him. He ate it quickly, then looked at the remaining loaf.

“Can I have another?”

The volunteer hesitated for less than a second.

“Yes.”

The boy smiled.

Four weeks earlier, missing grain had been numbers in Gideon’s ledger. Medical supplies had been routes marked in ink. Iron fittings had been another reason Rafael looked tired whenever he came to the dockyard. Here, a child asked permission for a second piece of bread. A woman across the room had an infection around a cut that should have been treated days ago.

Two streets over, an apothecary had emptied half his shelves onto a table and was apologising because he did not have enough fever medicine for everyone.

The Crown had not lost the supplies.

It had stored them for a war nobody here had chosen.

Valemont had been one house.

This was an entire city.

Near the gatehouse, several sacks recovered from an Imperial storehouse had already been opened and divided between the bakeries rather than locked away for later.

Nobody had waited for an officer to approve it.

A woman with flour on both sleeves had taken responsibility instead.

When a Rochefort Knight tried to set aside two sacks for the men still holding the gate, she asked how much food they already had, then pointed towards the families sheltering inside the warehouse.

He argued for perhaps ten seconds. Then he picked up both sacks and carried them where she told him.

She counted the families sheltering nearby, told two knights how much each street would receive and sent them off carrying grain.

The revolution had spent weeks moving supplies in secret. Using them openly was much simpler.

“Leon.”

Gideon stood near the entrance carrying a stack of written reports. His sleeves were rolled to the elbows, which meant somebody had successfully convinced him that being guildmaster did not exempt him from physical labour.

“The other gates?” I asked.

“Not yet.”

He handed the top sheet to a runner and pointed him towards the gatehouse.

“Eat something.”

“I already have.”

“When?”

That required some thought.

“Recently.”

Gideon gave me the expression he reserved for disappointing children and mercenaries. With me, the categories had apparently merged several years ago.

Before he could improve the lecture, someone called for help near the far wall. A wounded Imperial Knight sat against a stack of folded canvas, one shoulder wrapped and his armour piled beside him.

I recognised the dark hair before the face.

The knight who had nearly ridden down the woman and her child.

He recognised me too.

“He surrendered near the north end of the square.”

I made my way towards him. The knight watched me approach; his expression was that of a man trying to decide whether surrender remained legally binding.

“You saved her,” he said.

“What?”

“The woman. With the child.”

He looked down at his bandaged shoulder.

“I didn’t see them. I was just following orders. I never meant to—”

My hand caught the front of his shirt before I had decided to move. He hit the canvas behind him.

“You didn’t even think about her.”

The words came out quieter than the anger deserved. The knight’s eyes widened.

“I told you, I didn’t see—”

“That’s the problem.”

My grip tightened.

“You were riding through a street full of civilians, and you never looked. You had armour, a sword and a horse, and every person around you had to move because you had decided that whatever was in front of you mattered more.”

He said nothing.

“A knight is supposed to be the person people run towards when something goes wrong.”

The words tasted older than the afternoon. Sir Edmund standing at the tunnel exit. Valemont Knights turning around in the corridor.

“You aren’t supposed to become the thing they need protecting from simply because you were following orders.”

The knight looked at me for several seconds, then his shoulders lowered.

“I know.”

I became aware that my hand was still twisted in his shirt and released it. The fabric stayed wrinkled where my fingers had been.

“Sorry,” I said.

He looked surprised.

So was I.

I left before either of us had to decide what came after that.

Outside, the street had changed.

Someone had stretched lines of cloth between two buildings to mark a safer path around fallen stone. A group of surrendered Imperial Knights carried water under guard because sitting uselessly seemed to offend the woman organising supplies. One of them stopped to help an old man lift a broken cartwheel. People were extremely difficult to arrange into sides once the swords were put down.

By late afternoon, the first reports from the other gates arrived.

North was holding.

South had pushed closer to its gatehouse but had not taken it.

East had gone silent.

I found Gideon in the cooper’s shop with a Rochefort Knight and three messengers bent over a city map. Tessa stood beside the window, cleaning blood from one sleeve. Marek had acquired food from somewhere and was eating while pointing at streets with the hand not holding it.

I entered.

“How’s the Eastern Gate faring?”

Gideon lifted his eyes.

The room had become too quiet.

“It’s bad.”