We hadn't recovered. But war didn't care.
The reassignment orders came on the fifth day, which was two days earlier than any of them had believed possible and approximately three weeks earlier than their bodies were prepared for. The posting was brief and administrative and entirely indifferent to the condition of the people it was posted about: eastern coalition forces, second push, northern territory advance, departure in forty-eight hours, full kit required.
Full kit. As though kit were the variable. As though the thing that needed restoring was equipment rather than the people inside it.
Bren read it and didn't say anything. He had developed a new quality since the battle — a flatness, not depression exactly, more like a surface that had been sanded down to its functional minimum. He ate. He slept when sleep was available. He carried out tasks with quiet competence. The fear was gone, which should have been a relief and was instead its own kind of worry, because fear at least was a sign that something inside still had opinions about what happened to it.
Orren's arm had not healed. He wrapped it tighter and said nothing to the medical officer and no one reported him, because reporting him would have meant losing him from the group and losing people from the group was no longer something any of them would do voluntarily.
They spent the forty-eight hours in preparation that was also, quietly, grief. Sorin's bedroll was still in the barracks. Someone needed to deal with it. None of them could. On the second morning Ysse folded it neatly and placed it at the end of the row and that was the most any of them could manage, and it was enough, and it was not enough.
Kael spent the hours studying the record book in every private moment available. The shorthand was slowly yielding to him — Orren's analysis had given him a framework, and cross-referencing the coded designations against the names he recognized was beginning to produce patterns. Most designations were simple: front assignment, secondary assignment, support. Two categories he couldn't crack yet. And his own designation, which appeared once more in a different section of the book, in marginalia so small he'd almost missed it, beside a symbol.
The same symbol as on his spear.
He sat with that for a long time and then closed the book and finished packing his kit and went to find the others because forty-eight hours was ending and war, as established, did not care.