“Men! Gather your weapons and your armor. If you don’t have any, peel it off of one of the dead.”

Hailey pulled out of Aaron’s embrace. She was grateful for his strength, that he had saved her life, but she still had work to do. One of the spells in the books had directions on how to heal. Aaron limped away. Maybe she could figure out how to heal that, after she practiced on someone who was going to die anyway. She reminded herself of the way the light spell had changed into lighting. Barinon had seemed so excited that she had messed that up.

She pushed away the sorrow, the ache that he was gone now and set to work. She strode to the library, rubbing the flaking blood off of her arms as she went. She needed the spell book, but she couldn’t remember which one it was. This would take her time.

One of the men who had come with nothing but a woodsman’s axe was now wearing leather armor over his homespun tunic. He picked up one of the soldier’s swords and tried a few practice swings with it. He was a big dark skinned man. He had managed to survive and Hailey was certain that if he wanted to leave his farm behind and be part of the king’s army, Derrick wouldn’t hesitate to let him in.

She nodded to him as she passed and strolled into the mages’ library. Inside, she would hopefully find what she was looking for. Pages had been scattered. The chicken had managed to knock over the basket. It lay it’s side. Only feathers and chicken poop remained. She hoped that Henny was still alive somewhere, but knew it was a foolish thing to hope for when her entire world had been turned upside down.

She couldn’t let herself think about Barinon or all the soldiers who had died. She had to focus on what she could do to save the lives of those who might still be able to live. Many of them lay dying in the dining room. She scooped up one of the books and made her way there, flipping through pages as she went.

She hoped the dragon didn’t return. She had barely survived and her fingers still hurt from gripping the ledge. If it weren’t for Aaron… She couldn’t think about that right now. The spells on healing were close together. There was one for knitting bones, another for closing a wound, one for healing a cough and then a whole list of other sicknesses and how to heal them. This was going to be much more complicated than she thought.

Someone coughed. She turned to see a young red haired girl who had been trapped inside the spell. “What are you still doing here?” The girl gasped for breath and coughed again. Then she shook her head.

Hailey figured this was as good a place to start as she could find. The girl was barley able to breathe. Her chest was covered by a large chunk of plaster. Hailey pulled it off of her, but the girl still gasped for air. Then Hailey went through the motions to heal the girl. She could sense what was wrong with her. She cast the spell for coughing on her, hoping it would any good.

“Te cosine,” she said, binding the healing in place.

She thought she did something wrong. The girl was gasping even louder now, then she began panting for breath and then she was breathing normally again. She pulled herself to her feet and hugged Hailey. “Thank you. I think I’ll be ok now,” she said and walked away.

Hailey moved to the next person, who was a soldier who had his leg bitten clean off. He wasn’t breathing. She moved on, trying to find someone she could still heal.

It was mostly broken bones and deep gashes after that. She worked until Derrick interrupted her.

“What are you doing?” He seemed angry that she was healing his men.

She looked away from the soldier whose leg had just closed. It would take time to heal, but he wouldn’t bleed to death now. “Cosano,” she said to the soldier, tying the spell in place.

“I am healing the soldiers. I thought you would be happy to have your men to bleed to death.”

“He’s still too injured to fight. This is a waste of magic. How much do you have left?”

Healing felt natural to Hailey, like this was what magic was meant to do or maybe it was just her magic that was meant to heal. She turned to the captain. “I don’t know. It’s not like I can measure it in gallons.”

“How many more soldiers could you heal?”

“It depends on the damage.” Did he see her as one of his soldiers? Was he going to start bossing her around now? She liked Barinon better.

“Look, little mage, I don’t know if you noticed this but we didn’t exactly accomplish our goal back there. The dragon still lives and it will be back to kill us all.” His face, all the way up to the top of his bald head was red.

“Are you suggesting that it will be back today? I think we injured it enough that it will not be coming back anytime soon.”

Hailey moved to the next soldier who had a massive cut across his chest. She needed someone to organize these people in order of worst injury. If she had taken an longer to heal the girl, she would be dead by now.

Derrick grabbed her arm. “It’s not coming back today, you idiot, but it will be back and it will want vengeance. We have to go now while it’s still injured. That’s why it flew away. We had done enough damage that it was going to die.”

“And some of your men are going to die if I don’t see to their injuries. Are you suggesting that I let them lie here and bleed out?”

“Someone had already gone to get a healer. This is war. Men get hurt and die. If you think you can take on the dragon by yourself without the help of Barinon then yes, we should wait for the dragon to come back! But if you had any sense left in that little head of yours, you’d realize that this is our best shot. We don’t know if that thing can heal itself, but we do know that it is injured right now.”

Hailey paused. Maybe he was right. She wouldn’t be able to take that thing by herself. They didn’t need more soldiers, though they needed two more mages. She didn’t tell him that.

“Aaron, go see if you can find any more swords like the one you have,” he turned and shouted.

Hailey hadn’t even seen Aaron coming up behind them. He glared at the captain, then turned and walked away.

Derrick turned back to her, waving his finger in her face. “You are going to take orders from me, not the other way around. Yes, you might have a big sword you can throw around but you are nothing more than a fledgling mage who let her mentor die!”

Hailey slapped him. She had never done that to anyone, and her hand still stung from the blow. “If I could change it, I’d be dead right now and you’d be talking to Barinon, but we don’t always get what we want.” She turned away from him. She had probably hurt her hand more than she had his face, but she didn’t care right then. She knew it was her fault that Barinon had died, but she wasn’t about to let this fool of a man throw that in her face.

She ran away from him, away from all of it and towards Aaron. He was rummaging though the weapons when she found him.

“I should have stayed behind,” he said.

“I can’t have your risking your job for me,” she said. “Tell your captain to be ready to go after I take a nap.”

Aaron looked at her blankly. “You can sleep right now?”

“If I don’t, I won’t have enough energy to fight the dragon. You can wake me, not him.”