Chapter Four The Arithmetic of Survival #2
“Comfrey,” she said. “For swelling. They let me keep a small amount because it helps the archers’ hands.”
Caelan’s stomach tightened. “If they catch you giving it away, they will stop letting you keep it.”
Morna’s voice stayed flat. “Then we use it in small amounts and we use it wisely.”
He did not argue. Morna was not reckless. She was surgical.
When she smeared the comfrey paste along the bruised line on his shoulder, pain flared, then eased into a dull throb. Caelan’s breath hitched despite himself.
“Better?” Morna asked.
“Aye,” he admitted.
Her mouth pressed into a thin line that might have been satisfaction. “Good. Now stop clenching your jaw. You will split your lip again.”
Caelan forced his jaw to relax. The simple act felt like surrender, and he resented it, though the resentment was as much at himself as at the camp.
A commotion rose in the yard as the wood party returned earlier than usual. Men stumbled through the gate carrying half the usual load, faces pinched. One of them collapsed in the mud. A guard kicked him to make him rise. The man did not.
Valerius appeared, moving with unhurried steps, coat clean, expression calm. He crouched beside the fallen prisoner and pressed two fingers to the man’s throat as if checking a pulse out of mild curiosity.
Then Valerius stood and nodded to a guard. Two men dragged the prisoner away toward the holding shed.
The message was clear. If you stopped producing, you were removed. Whether removed meant rest, interrogation, or death did not matter. The uncertainty itself was a tool.
Caelan’s hands tightened on the paddle. He felt Morna’s gaze on him, reading his posture.
“He is measuring,” Morna murmured.
Caelan’s voice was low. “He measures everything.”
Morna’s eyes narrowed. “Then we should measure back.”
A guard barked, ordering Caelan to carry water skins. He did it, moving across the yard with careful neutrality. As he passed the barrack door, he saw Elara scrubbing straw-stained boards under the eye of a guard. Her hands were red and raw. She did not look up.
Caelan stopped just long enough to set a skin within her reach. It looked like a mistake, a skin placed down for anyone.
Elara’s fingers curled around it instantly. She drank without lifting her head, as if ashamed to be seen needing anything.
Caelan moved on.
By late afternoon, the barrack smelled worse. Too many bodies, too little air, and damp straw that never truly dried. Morna tugged Caelan’s sleeve as he passed the doorway.
“Inside,” she whispered. “A moment.”
Caelan slipped in under the pretense of retrieving empty bowls. Morna crouched near a corner where a thin boy lay curled, breathing fast.
“He is burning,” Morna murmured, pressing fingers to the boy’s forehead. “Fever.”
Caelan’s stomach tightened. “From what.”
“From this place,” Morna said. “From filth and hunger. From a cut that turned angry.”
The boy’s eyes fluttered open. He looked no older than fourteen. He tried to speak and coughed instead.
Morna glanced at Caelan. “I need clean cloth.”
“We have none,” Caelan said.
Morna’s gaze sharpened. “We have rags. We have sleeves. We have choices.”
Caelan swallowed. He reached for the hem of his own thin shirt and tore a strip, the fabric ripping with a soft sound that felt too loud. He handed it to her.
Morna wrapped the strip around the boy’s wrist where an infected cut oozed. She cleaned it with water from the skin Caelan carried, then pressed a dab of salve. The boy whimpered. Morna’s voice stayed steady. “Hold. It will sting, then it will ease.”
Caelan watched, helpless and furious. This was what famine had looked like too, bodies failing while men in power counted coin and called it order.
When Morna finished, she looked up at Caelan. “We need to keep the barrack cleaner,” she said.
Caelan’s jaw tightened. “They do not give us tools.”
“Then we make a routine,” Morna replied. “A schedule. If we can move straw, we can move waste. If we can scrub boards, we can scrub hands.”
Caelan felt the impulse to laugh, humorless. Routine, in a prison camp. Yet he understood what she meant. Order, even a thin imitation, could slow sickness. It could also slow despair.
He nodded once. “Tonight,” he said. “We begin.”
They returned to the shed and finished the last chores under watch.
When evening came, Caelan carried bowls as usual.
He kept his portions cautious, his face blank.
He made the same three small changes again, then one more, a half scoop for the feverish boy, delivered through Brenn with a look that said nothing aloud.
Brenn’s eyes flicked to the bowl, then to Caelan. “You are building your own little clan,” he murmured.
Caelan’s voice stayed low. “I am keeping people breathing.”
Brenn’s mouth tightened. “Same thing, in places like this.”
Night settled. Guards made rounds. The barrack filled with exhausted bodies and the stink of wet straw. Caelan waited until the guard’s boots passed, then shifted closer to Brenn.
“How many men in the wood party,” Caelan asked quietly.
Brenn’s eyes narrowed. “Why.”
“Because I want to know how many knives leave the camp each day,” Caelan replied.
Brenn stared, then exhaled. “Ten to twelve. Depends on who can stand.”
Caelan nodded. “And the archers.”
“Six on each platform,” Brenn said. “Two rotate at a time. The late watch is weaker. One drinks. The healer knows him.”
Caelan’s gaze slid toward Morna in the dim. Morna, sensing his look, turned her head slightly, a question in her eyes.
Caelan did not answer yet. Questions had to be weighed here.
He moved to the center of the barrack where straw was thickest and spoke softly, not as a laird, not as a commander, but as a man offering a plan that might keep them from coughing blood.
“Tomorrow,” he said, voice low. “Before the guards come, we shift the straw. Those who can stand, stand. Those who cannot, stay against the wall. We keep a dry layer where we sleep. We keep waste away from the corners. We wash hands when we can.”
A few prisoners looked up, eyes suspicious.
Ivor’s grin appeared in the dark like a cat’s. “Listen to him,” Ivor murmured to someone. “He thinks order will save us.”
Caelan ignored him and kept speaking. “It will not make us free,” he said. “It will keep us alive long enough to see another day. That is all.”
The coughing woman nodded faintly. Brenn shifted, then grunted, “Aye.”
Others followed, not because they believed in Caelan’s authority, but because sickness was worse than humiliation.
When Caelan returned to his corner, Morna leaned close. “That was risky,” she murmured.
“It was necessary,” Caelan replied.
Morna’s eyes searched his face. “You are becoming visible again.”
Caelan swallowed. “I cannot fix what Valerius does. I can fix straw and water and hands.”
Morna’s mouth tightened, then softened. “That is what healing is,” she said quietly. “Fixing what you can, even when the world is broken.”
A pause stretched between them. Then Morna added, “The archer who drinks. His name is Jory. His hand is healing well. His gratitude is not deep, but it exists.”
Caelan’s pulse quickened. “He is late watch.”
Morna nodded once. “Aye.”
Caelan stared into the dark, mind turning over numbers and rotations, locks and keys, hunger and bargains. Ivor had offered a way out and demanded food as price. Morna had offered small remedies and demanded only that Caelan stop pretending his body was made of stone.
Between those offers lay a path he did not yet want to walk.
Ewan whispered from the straw, voice small. “What were you talking about.”
Caelan’s throat tightened. “Keeping the barrack from turning into a grave,” he said.
Ewan swallowed. “Will it work.”
Morna answered before Caelan could. “It will help,” she said, and her voice held the calm truth she gave to the dying. “Not cure.”
Help mattered.
Caelan lay back, shoulders aching, but his mind refused to rest. He watched the shadowed ceiling and listened to the camp’s night noises, boots, distant shouts, the occasional crack of wood.
He thought of the feverish boy. He thought of Elara scrubbing boards until her hands bled. He thought of Morna trading her skill for crumbs and then turning those crumbs into triage.
He thought of Ivor’s bright grin and Brenn’s bitter practicality.
Survival here was arithmetic. Add a strip of cloth, subtract a shred of dignity. Add a half scoop of porridge, subtract from the guard’s bucket. Add a small routine, subtract a little chaos.
It was not the kind of order Caelan had devoted his life to, but it was order all the same.
If he could build even a small pocket of it around Morna, around Elara, around Ewan, then Valerius’s system would not own every breath.
Not yet.