Chapter 14 #3
The damage came into view piece by piece.
Bullet holes stitched across the front of one building.
A window shattered inward, glass scattered across the porch boards beneath it.
Blood on the ground near the barricade, dark and already drying.
A wagon lay overturned near the gate, one wheel broken crooked beneath it.
People moving among the wounded, calling for cloth and water.
One shape lay under a coat near the fence line, and Grace didn't look at it longer than she had to.
A woman ran past them toward the buildings, calling a name Grace didn't recognize, voice cracking on the second syllable. Somewhere behind the main building, a child was crying, the kind of crying that came from fear rather than injury, and Grace hoped that was true.
Harlan came around the corner of the main building, hobbling worse than Grace had ever seen him move, rifle in hand, covered in dirt and looking furious and entirely alive.
He saw Grace and stopped walking.
Harlan's eyes moved from Grace to Russ to Luke, then past them to the motionless shapes scattered across the field beyond the barricade.
He understood the shape of what had happened without needing it explained.
"You came," he said.
"You sent for help."
Harlan looked like that answer bothered him more than gratitude would have. "Didn't know if you'd come."
"Then you don't know me very well," Grace said, and left it there. There'd be time later to let him sit with what he owed her. Right now wasn't it.
The fight wasn't over in the only sense that mattered anymore. People were hurt, several of them badly enough that Grace's stomach turned looking at the row of them laid out near the main building.
A man held pressure against another's shoulder, blood soaking through cloth already.
A woman sat with blood tracking down one leg, pale and gritting through it.
Someone lay with a hand pressed to his side, breathing too fast, skin gone the wrong color.
A younger man sat propped against a wall, conscious but clearly losing more blood than his body could spare much longer.
An older woman moved between them with a stack of torn sheets, doing what she could with pressure and clean cloth and not much else, her hands steady despite everything happening around her.
She glanced up at Grace once, hopeful in a way that made Grace's chest tighten, before going back to her work.
"How many hurt?" Grace asked.
Harlan gave her a rough count. Five, maybe six, with more being checked. One dead that he knew of for certain. Maybe a second.
"What medical help do you have?" Grace asked.
Not much, and both of them knew it before he said so. Somebody who'd read a first-aid manual once, doing their best with instinct and clean cloth. That was the whole of it.
Grace already knew what came next.
Before she gave the order, Luke's attention drifted toward the field where the fighting had ended, toward one body lying where their group's fire had been concentrated.
He stared a beat too long.
"You know who got him?" Luke asked, quiet enough that only Grace heard it.
She understood exactly what he was really asking. "No."
"Could've been me."
Grace didn't soften it with a lie. "Could've been any of us."
She let that sit only a moment before adding, "Don't try to figure it out."
That was all she had for him right now.
Grace needed Rebecca, and she needed her fast.
Luke was the obvious choice — young, a strong rider, knew the road, and Grace wanted him away from the bodies and the wounded and the raw edge of what had just happened as much as she needed the message carried.
"Luke."
He looked at her.
"Go get Rebecca."
"How bad?"
Grace looked toward the row of wounded. "Bad enough."
She told him plainly — ride hard, but don't ruin the horse doing it. Tell Rebecca the fighting was over. Several gunshot wounds, at least one that worried her badly. Bring whatever she could carry, and another rider if she wanted extra hands for supplies.
Luke nodded and turned toward where they'd left the horses.
Grace caught his arm before he'd gone two steps. "Luke."
He turned back.
She had ten things she wanted to say to him and none of them were the kind that helped right now.
"Be careful."
"I will."
Luke ran for the horses, and Grace watched until the trees swallowed him from sight before she let herself turn back toward the settlement.
Harlan was already moving among his own wounded despite the leg that clearly cost him with every step.
Russ had gone to check the dead attackers from a careful distance, rifle ready in case anyone out there had only been playing dead.
People called for cloth, for water, for pressure held here and there, the ordinary desperate business of keeping people alive after the shooting stopped.
Grace had no room yet to sort through what had happened. People were bleeding, and that came first.
Harlan came toward her, favoring the bad leg. "You have a doctor?"
Grace looked at him. This was information she'd guarded carefully since the day Rebecca came through the Hollow's gate, and now it didn't matter anymore. Lives mattered more than secrets today.
"We do."
Something shifted in Harlan's face, but Grace didn't explain further. There'd be time for that too.
"How long?" Harlan asked.
"Five miles."
Grace looked south, toward the road Luke had already disappeared down.
"He'll ride it fast."