59

The next day, in the early morning, they were being escorted to the front. Michael managed, thanks to his experience with Dugan, to find a supply wagon that was already heading in the same direction. Their escort was equally grateful; he was an older sergeant with a large gut named Farlin whose greatest virtue was his indifference toward them, rather than the hate they were used to from the others. From what Michael could glean, he was in his final year before he retired, and jobs like this were all they ever assigned to him anymore.

The group they were being loaned to was a small strike team that was harrying the enemy’s lines with a number of hit and runs. They were led by two knight-sergeants and a mage, but their mage had recently been killed, and they needed some firepower. In came Ollie and some fresh Penitents to keep him from dying.

The wagon had a driver and two guards of its own aside from the Penitents. For the first half of the trek, they were relaxed, but as they all got further from the fort, they started to hold their spears tighter and keep their eyes moving back and forth.

Michael leaned toward the old sergeant. “Anything we should be on the lookout for?”

He yawned. “Some aelves have been sighted nearby. Mercenaries. These three think that any pointy leaf or stirring tree is one of them getting ready to loose an arrow and kill us all.”

“A wagon leaving a nearby camp was struck just yesterday,” said one of the guards. “I’m just glad we have some extra bodies with us. I wasn’t eager to make this trek with just the three of us.”

The driver scoffed. “Rather fight some knife-eared fucks than deal with these Penitents, to be honest.”

“It wouldn’t be a fight if it was just us,” said the second guard, who up to this point hadn’t said a word, too focused on the woods around them to listen. “You’d be lucky to hear a dull thud as an arrow hit each of our necks, and then you wouldn’t hear anything ever again. I ran into some aelven mercs last campaign. Slaughtered more than half the camp before anyone even woke up. You might rather die than have to stomach being around a Taker for a few minutes, but I’d rather make it back home someday.”

Michael had noticed that those with aelven features were a bit quicker, bit more dexterous than the average recruit back at the academy, but he hadn’t realized pure-blooded aelves were such a danger. When he’d first heard of them, he’d had high hopes they were more of the Keebler variety rather than the Tolkien type. He could definitely take out a Keebler aelf if he needed to—their cookies sucked.

They all started to keep a closer eye on the woods around them, aside from the sergeant, but it turned out to be a meaningless exercise anyway. The only pointy-eared things they’d wound up encountering were a couple of squirrels and a very strange duck.

At the camp they rode in the cart until it reached the supply officer. Michael and the rest of them got out and stretched to limber themselves up a bit. The sergeant grunted and grasped his knee as he landed.

Michael approached him. “Want me to take a look?” he asked.

Farlin shook his head. “It’s an old wound. Took a bullet to the knee from a Tusynian dragoon. I don’t think any healing would help much at this point.”

“Back in my world I had a bad hip. I was used to the pain, but I still saw a doctor. Let me give it a shot; it couldn’t hurt.”

He shrugged, and Michael got closer, his right hand glowing as he placed it on Farlin’s knee. He could sense all the old scar tissue and feel where bone was scraping against bone. He focused and felt the fresh scrapes mend, and some of the scar tissue turn healthy again, but Farlin was right—he couldn’t exactly return it to what it would’ve been had the bullet not hit it. Not this late after it had healed.

He frowned as the glow faded from his hand.

Farlin balanced with one hand against the cart and bent and extended his left leg a few times, testing it.

“Well I’ll be damned. That is better. Like it was five or six years ago.” He nodded at Michael. “You’re not bad for a Penitent.”

“It’s always good to help a fellow old-timer out.”

He chuckled.

“Any chance you could escort me to the infirmary tent here? See if I can help anyone else.”

He nodded. “I wouldn’t have, but I think the walk will be a bit easier now.” He pointed at the rest of the Penitents. “All of you with us. I don’t want you wandering off before the scouts come to pick you up.”

They shrugged, and all fell in with him and Michael. Only Crick looked a little sour about it, but he didn’t make a fuss. As their token non-Taker Penitent, he didn’t exactly have a lot of room to stand against anything they chose to do.

This camp was laid out in exactly the same way as the other one, which meant Michael knew exactly where to find the infirmary, as well as everything else he might be looking for. This one looked a bit rougher, though, with the regular troops looking more tired with thousand-yard stares as they gripped their spears tightly in their hands. They didn’t even seem to have the energy to send more than token hateful glares in their directions, and their attempts to spit at them were equally half-hearted.

There weren’t too many wounded, as a number of them had only just been carted away the previous day, but Michael did manage to heal more than a half-dozen arrow wounds that seemed to have been made with serrated arrow tips. They’d hit nothing lethal, but the areas they had struck were exceptionally painful.

“Aelves?” he asked one of them, who was near weeping from relief as Michael’s healing made his groin whole again.

“Aye, the knife-eared bastards. They did this just to fuck with me and the other men.” He wiped a tear from his eye. “Thank you, sir, thank you.”

It was the most genuine thanks he’d received since he’d started healing anyone, and he took the man’s hand in his, looking him in the eye.

“You don’t have to thank me. This is one I would heal for any man that needed it. Just do me a favor and don’t think of me the next time you use it.”

The man laugh-sobbed, snorting up a bit of snot as he did so, and let him go. The other Penitents chuckled.

“You’ve good bedside manner,” said Pyotr. “In Russia, they just come in, tell you what is going to happen or if you are going to die, then they do the thing or wait for you to die.”

“Sounds awful,” said Ollie.

“Eh, it was honest. If they tried to make jokes… well, that would be a good way to end up in the bed next to the patient in many cases.”

“Are the Penitents here?” asked a young man walking into the infirmary tent. He was wearing the odd armor of a dragoon and had a bayoneted rifle across his back.

“Over here,” hollered Farlin from a small crate on which he was sitting. His knee was better, but he was still not a young man and had no intention of standing if he could help it.

The dragoon approached and saluted Farlin, who returned it.

“I’m Knight-Dragoon Merk, here to take the Penitents and mage to meet the rest of the raid group. Why were they not in the Penitent part of the camp?”

The question made Michael’s eyebrow go up a bit. A knight was on a different command structure than the sergeant, but he didn’t outrank him by any means, and in the event that the sergeant gave him an order, he would be expected to obey it as long as there were no knights of a higher rank with differing orders.

Farlin pointed to Michael. “This one’s a healer. Made sense for him to help out in the infirmary while we waited for you.”

Michael noticed Marcus scowling.

“What’s up?” he asked.

“He was at the academy with us. A teacher’s pet, and a little bitch. Needed that gun to feel like he had a cock, you know?”

Michael knew more than a few of those types, and he could tell by the expression on Davi’s face that he did as well.

“Well, if they’re done, I’d like to get us to the raid camp by dark.”

Farlin frowned. “I think they should have some lunch first. And so should you for that matter. Not smart to make your way through thick woods on an empty stomach.”

“If you don’t want to release them to me, I’ll go to the knight-commander of the camp and have him do it for you.”

“Go ahead. By the time you get to him, are granted an audience, and he agrees to what you’re asking, they’ll have eaten and rested anyway. Only you will still be hungry.”

Michael smiled. Farlin was sharper than he seemed.

Merk had a look of anger on his face for a few moments but nodded. “Fine. We’ll eat first. Then we leave.”