Treatment of Wounded Soldiers

In Brodick Town, Bitter Melon Face the steward followed Roger's instruction and spent four silver pennies to hire two oxcarts at a high price. Assisted by a few tenant farmers who had tagged along, they hauled two corpses, three wounded soldiers, and the weapons and armor of "father and brother" back to Milkhouse Manor. Ma'en the sergeant and four other lightly wounded soldiers also limped along behind the oxcarts back to the manor.

Compared to those corpses and wounded men who could only lie on broken wooden doors and be carried home by two or three friends and relatives, the soldiers of Milkhouse Manor enjoyed a special privilege.

Just as the oxcart procession reached the intersection outside Milkhouse Manor, the crowd welcoming the expeditionary heroes had already been weeping and wailing for a long time.

The wailing lingering in his ears made Roger's head ache a little. He had just enjoyed a few days of rare, leisurely life on Holy Island, yet now he was entangled in these troublesome matters.

He thought about washing his hands of the whole affair and quitting. Anyway, these people had little to do with him, and he could entirely leave it to Bitter Melon Face the steward to worry about. Yet now that the two masters of the house at Milkhouse Manor were both corpses, and having eaten and drank at their expense for the month or so since he arrived in this world, he felt somewhat like one who takes short hands and speaks with a soft mouth.

More importantly, when he learned that Milkhouse Manor now lacked a steering master, his lingering notion of contenting himself with a corner and letting things drift underwent a subtle change. This psychological change grew all the more intense on the road back just now.

Perhaps this was also a new beginning.

"Master Roger?... Master Roger!" Bitter Melon Face pulled a dazed Roger back to reality, the wailing still echoing in his ears.

"Hmm?" Roger, sitting on horseback, glanced down at Bitter Melon Face, who was gripping his reins.

"Master Roger, I'm asking you how these wounded soldiers and corpses should be settled." Bitter Melon Face looked with a distressed expression at the manor tenants weeping around the oxcarts.

Roger also turned his head to frown at them, then turned back and asked, "How do you think they should be settled?"

Since Allen Island saw warfare every year, Bitter Melon Face must surely be familiar with the placement of wounded and casualty victims.

Sure enough, Bitter Melon Face replied, "Those who died or were wounded are each sent home. The manor gives fifty pounds of wheat to each deceased family, thirty pounds to the severely wounded, and whatever they seized on the battlefield is also brought back to their respective homes."

Roger nodded and waited for Bitter Melon Face to continue.

After a long moment, Bitter Melon Face still didn't speak. Roger raised his eyes to stare at Bitter Melon Face, asking doubtfully, "And then?"

Bitter Melon Face looked baffled and shrugged. "The master is a benevolent lord. If it were the manor of some other lord, they wouldn't even necessarily be allowed to take all the small spoils they plundered back home."

In troubled times human life was cheap as a dog. It seemed this saying wasn't false at all.

Seeing Roger's gloomy expression, Bitter Melon Face simply assumed Master Roger begrudged giving grain to the dead and wounded soldiers. With a pleading tone, he lowered his voice and said, "Master Roger, they are all loyal tenants and the very hope of survival for their respective families. Now that they followed the master and the young master on the expedition and suffered casualties, we truly ought to..."

Bitter Melon Face paused with a sigh. "Two sergeants, three farmhands, four sailors, and these wounded soldiers—the casualties this time are indeed somewhat heavy, but the wheat in the manor grew quite well this year. Perhaps it will be a bumper harvest." Bitter Melon Face was desperately striving for a relief grain ration for the families of the dead and wounded so they could survive the bitter days between harvests.

"Hand the bodies of the dead over to their families, and give one hundred pounds of grain to each household. We'll talk about the funerals tomorrow after I return."

"Bring the severely wounded back to the manor and settle them in the barn alongside Blackhide Dog. I will treat them personally. Give fifty pounds of grain to each severely wounded family."

"Distribute twenty pounds of grain to each of the other soldiers and disperse them home first."

"Oh, and for those who went missing and failed to return to the island, treat them as severely wounded for now. If it's later confirmed they died, make up the full relief then."

Roger's voice had not been loud just now, but at this moment everyone beside the two oxcarts fell silent, as astonished as if hearing some peerless piece of folklore.

"Master Roger, did you—did you just say?" Bitter Melon Face thought he had misheard.

"Settle the wounded soldiers, relieve their families, and reward the fighters. I made myself quite clear." Roger raised his tone.

In fact, calculated according to the island's current prices, the highest-priced wheat went for no more than thirty pennies per hundred pounds. This was partly due to Allen Island's relative grain scarcity in recent years; in the rolling plains of central and southern Scotland, a hundred pounds of wheat cost barely over twenty pennies, while grain prices in southern England and Ireland were far cheaper.

Under the benevolent Sir Colin, a farmhand's life was worth no more than fifty pounds of wheat, equivalent to a dozen or twenty pennies.

Roger didn't feel it was particularly cruel; when he was wandering the streets back then, a life might not even have been worth a sack of flour.

Without paying attention to the crowd's lingering astonishment, Roger dismounted and walked over to Ma'en the sergeant. "Ma'en, go alone with the old steward to the manor estate in a moment to collect fifty pounds of wheat and two blocks of smoked meat to take home. Once you've settled affairs at your house, come see me at the estate tomorrow evening."

Having not seen him for a mere month or so, Ma'en always felt this Master Roger before him had become like a different person. Yet at this moment he was still immersed in the sorrow of a disastrous defeat and had no heart to ponder these things, simply nodding silently in agreement. He then arranged for the severely wounded soldiers to enter the manor and the lightly wounded soldiers to help the families carry the fallen soldiers' corpses back to their respective homes.

For the entire remainder of the afternoon, Roger was busy in that empty barn at Milkhouse Manor.

A few days prior, Blackhide Dog had been stabbed by a not-quite-dead fierce bandit. After giving him brief emergency treatment, Roger had brought him back to Milkhouse Manor and nursed him carefully, resulting in this ruffian stubbornly surviving and already able to barely support himself as he sat up from the hay pile.

Originally Roger had planned to take him to Holy Island to continue recovering before "father and brother" returned, but now that proved unnecessary. Beside Blackhide Dog were three more fellows who had narrowly snatched half a life back from the battlefield.

Roger instructed the cook to boil a large pot of drinking water in the kitchen and had Bitter Melon Face the steward fetch several somewhat clean strips of linen from the estate to boil in the water for disinfection.

Then he inspected the soldiers' wounds one by one, having their kin use warm-to-cool boiled water and boiled linen to carefully clean the wounds.

Roger's healing techniques were all fumbled out through practice, so they lacked any orthodox method—he dropped a veterinary gelding knife into boiling water, used the small knife to carve away the rotting flesh beginning to fester on the wounded men, and then wrapped the wounds in disinfected linen.

If he could stem the bleeding, he would apply a bit of fresh honey to the wound. At least half the credit for Blackhide Dog being able to survive belonged to that precious honey.

However, the condition of these three wounded soldiers was far more severe than Blackhide Dog's. Blackhide Dog had only been lightly stabbed by a dying bandit, and his rescue had been timely enough that his wounds hadn't suffered deep infection, allowing him to pull through the ordeal of high fever.

Yet among these three wounded soldiers, two had been pierced through the chest and abdomen by iron spears and sword blades, with multiple other lacerations across their bodies. Their wounds had not been treated promptly when they were injured, and after fleeing back to the boat they had merely used a few dirty, ragged strips of cloth to crudely bind and stem the bleeding. Their wounds had already begun to putrefy, and their bodies were showing signs of infection and high fever.

Roger knew these two fellows were probably goners.

A doctor? It wasn't that none existed; the last time Blackhide Dog was treated, Bitter Melon Face had brought in a "barber." But that filthy old codger had immediately wanted to bleed, give enemas, and smear garlic paste, making Roger's head crawl with dark lines until he finally used a simple surgery himself to save Blackhide Dog's life.

After treating the wounds of the three soldiers, Roger instructed the accompanying family members to feed them warm drinking water and pay close attention to changes in their condition.

When he finished these tasks, the sky had grown dim and Roger was covered in sweat.

The wounded soldiers had been dealt with, but Bitter Melon Face's worried frown had not eased. Handing a clean strip of linen to Roger, he asked in a low, cautious voice, "Master Roger, just when did you learn these things? Why have I never seen these healing arts before?"

Bitter Melon Face had asked the same question the last time Roger treated Blackhide Dog, and Roger had ignored it and glossed over it back then.

Yet today Bitter Melon Face asked again. Knowing that without offering some sort of reason Bitter Melon Face would worry he had strayed into heretical and crooked paths, Roger raised his head and answered solemnly, "The almighty God taught me the secret arts of saving the world."

Bitter Melon Face was full of skepticism.

"During those days when I was unconscious, I dreamed I entered heaven. There were many white-robed angels serving God there, and they were the ones who taught me these things..."

Hearing this, the people in the barn muttered in low voices. Naturally they were willing to believe Master Roger's words; only in this way might those wounded soldiers lying on the hay in the barn still retain a sliver of hope for survival.

These words had been spoken with utmost solemnity. Coupled with the fact that Master Roger truly seemed like a different person after waking from his severe injuries, and connecting it with how he had spent all those years in the monastery constantly flanking God's side, it was not entirely impossible for him to have obtained a divine miracle.

Half-doubtful, Bitter Melon Face accepted the reasoning of the "God-Given Healing Art".

After all, God could always create miracles; who was there to question it?

"Master Roger, there is one more matter I must discuss with you." Bitter Melon Face glanced at the little horseherd carrying a candlestick into the barn, changing the subject.

"Speak." Roger wiped the sweat from his brow with the linen cloth and answered plainly.

"We've had quite a bit of rain recently. According to past years, the weather will be very fine for a period going forward. We should arrange for people to go to Salt Beach to boil salt."

"The master and the young master have ascended to the heavenly kingdom, but the people in the manor must go on living."

"I've looked over the spoils the baron brought back to the castle. Milkhouse Manor probably won't have any extra gains this year. The master's sea-going vessel was also seized by the enemy, so we can only rely on wool and sea salt to barely scrape by." Just now Master Roger had made a grand sweep of his hand and six or seven hundred pounds of wheat were gone. Bitter Melon Face had thought Master Roger benevolent and magnanimous at the time, but thinking about it now, it was pure squandering.

"Understood." With that, Roger tossed the face-clot to the little horseherd beside him, dragged his somewhat weary body back to the estate's attic bedchamber, and lay down on that small wooden cot, pondering his upcoming path in his mind.

Before long, he drifted off into a hazy sleep amidst the weeping of his cheap mother downstairs...