The walk back to Black River took half the time it had taken to leave it.
Funny, how that worked.
You run toward something with everything you have, bleeding and half-broken, and then victory deposits you back at your own gates with your legs barely holding and nothing left in you but the hollow ringing of someone who survived when others didn't.
I counted faces as we moved.
Kept a running inventory the way Helena counted doses and bandages， Martin, limping but upright, his left arm wrapped against his chest in a makeshift sling someone had fashioned from a torn cloak. Giga, covered in someone else's blood, her right eye swollen nearly shut. Theron, walking with the stiff carefulness of cracked ribs.
And the ones I was not counting, because they were being carried.
The gates opene
