(Author’s commentary); Look, I am going to skip the commentary this time. If you are reading the novel, you know what’s happening, and if you aren’t, you won’t see these words anyway… so… yeah… but by the end of this chapter, it will be clear to you… if you do read it… that things are going to bust wide open.

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The Seven Kingdoms

Chapter Twenty Four

The following day, Hildy was eating bread and reading yet more reports. The report she held in her hand was cheering her up immensely. She almost couldn’t believe what it was telling her, although she had certainly seen plenty of other reports that had given details leading in this direction. Her army… their army… was growing at an incredible rate.

The four thousand local troops that had been training when they arrived on Smilingman had leaped to seven thousand, spread out across the kingdom. The almost five hundred soldiers she had brought with her were out there now, training the newest members of the resistance army. The eight hundred spear blades made by local craftsmen had now risen to an astonishing two thousand, thanks to the rapidly expanding production capabilities. The five hundred slings had expanded to four thousand, thanks to the women and children being put to work, and children all over the kingdom were hard at work gathering stones. The twenty one ships they had arrived in had joined with the fifty four ships in port, giving them a fleet of seventy five ships.

Sanara was also making great strides in the production of her new toys. Children were making the flame balls, of which there were now thousands. The regular type of slings were now being made with cloth pouches to hold the stones, and the carrying bags for this ammunition was being made of cloth as well, to save leather for the new fire slings, which required a larger pouch to throw the fire balls. Over four hundred of the new slings were ready, and were already distributed to the two forts and to the fleet. It would take a while for the army to get any, but building the wheeled carts to carry the ammunition and oil jars and torches was just getting started. Sanara had found warehouses full of tall, thin, clay jars used to store wine, and was having these emptied. They were being refilled with lamp oil, which fortunately came from a nut that grew wild and was quite common.

So far, only a few hundred of the new throwing spears were finished, and to speed up the production of those might require slowing down the production of the big spear blades. There just weren’t enough skilled metal workers, but more young teens, both male and female, were being trained in these arts, and things would pick up before too much longer. The quivers for the throwing spears, and the new cloth armor and helmets were being made by any women and children not busy doing something else, and all these things were making their way to the army in ever increasing numbers.

Now that they had figured out a simple way to keep the farms going, using the soldiers themselves, who now camped close to the fields and tended the crops in their spare time, food was still in short supply, but large harvests were expected. The troops were even managing to till new fields. As long as they could make the remaining food last until the harvest, the crises would be averted. It occurred to her that less than forty days had past since she had fled her home and family, and that they had only been in this kingdom for ten days. She couldn’t believe how much the entire world had changed in so short a time.

Hildy’s reading was interrupted by the slamming of a door and loud squeals. She barely had time to brace herself in her chair as the triplets ran into the room, around the huge desk, and swarmed all over her. Their high-pitched delight warmed her even as it almost deafened her.

“We missed you so much!” said Miri, in a voice so high as to be almost inaudible.

“We heard about Flame. Are mommy and daddy okay, do you think?” asked Tam Tam, in the same strangely hard to hear yet still somehow earsplitting tone.

“Did you miss us as much as we missed you?” Andita was curious to know, in an octave most humans can’t reach.

“We should take the army and save our kingdom,” suggested Miri directly into Hildy’s ear, as the three climbed all over her in order to all hug her at the same time.

Hildy was laughing too hard to answer any questions, while trying to grab each of the girls in turn in order to plant a kiss on each forehead. From her place in the center of the squirming pile of humanity, she managed to catch a glimpse of Zar, standing and watching in bemused patience. She is going to make a great mother, Hildy thought to herself.

After the triples settled down and she had assured them that they would do all they could, as soon as they could, to free their parents and their people, she sent them off to get some food. Then she went to Zar and hugged her. “You are working wonders out there, Zar.”

“It was smart of you to keep sending me reports on all the new developments, and the pictures you drew really helped,” Zar replied. “I started switching people around, putting some of them on the new projects. I didn’t find out about the new throwing spears until I got back to Smilingmantown, but I will write to some of the local people that I put in charge in the other towns. Once they have the specifics, they can start working on those too. But you will have to do the pictures. I can’t draw at all.”

“We really are making progress, aren’t we?” Hildy wondered aloud.

“I had another little idea that I have been playing around with,” Zar informed her. “A woman working in one of the uniform shops was injured. She had a nasty cut from one of the big blades they use to cut the long strips of cloth as they come off the looms. We had to call for a healer to sew up the side of her hand. One of the other women joked that she could sew at least as well as the healer. And it struck me, all of a sudden, that a lot of men are going to be needing sewing up before too much longer.”

“I’ve been thinking the same thing,” Hildy said somberly.

“Well, it takes years to train a healer, because they have to know all about every kind of medicine, each herb and berry and root, and how to deliver a baby or remove a bad appendix, or get rid of warts. But what if we had healers who just learned the basic stuff to keep someone injured in battle alive until they could be carried to a real healer. You know, bandage wounds, stop the bleeding, put a splint on a broken bone, and even sew up a really bad wound. I got all the healers I could find in every town, and had them start training all the volunteer soldiers I could gather up. A lot of men are just better suited for helping people than killing them. Before we came down the hill, I started the same thing in motion in Smilingmantown.”

“You are a genius!” Hildy declared.

“The men have been practicing by sewing up dead fish,” Zar told her with a laugh. And there are plenty of women volunteering too.”    “Incredible, just incredible,” Hildy said, shaking her head.

“Well, one healer told me that the most important thing off all when people are hurt, is to start working on them as soon as possible. Stop the bleeding, give them medicine for the pain, keep them warm, and keep them from going into shock. So I figured, why not have the army healers right behind the battle lines, where they can get to work on the wounded right away? And why not have other men with stretchers, who can move the badly injured troops to the real healers as soon as they can be moved? And then I had my craziest idea of all. What if we set up tents not too far from where a battle is being fought, and we have the real healers there, ready to work on the wounded men as soon as they are brought in? You would be surprised how many of the healers have volunteered for this. Some of them were so old I had to politely figure out a way to turn them down. It was really quite moving. I pointed out that we would still need healers in all the towns, to take care of the badly wounded soldiers while they were recuperating.”

Hildy was about to say something else complimentary to her friend, when suddenly, a young boy rushed into the room. Hildy recognized him as one of the queen’s young, orphan messenger boys. One look at his pale, sweaty face, and the way he was panting from obviously running all the way there from the castle, told her that the news was not good.

“A Skull fleet is landing troops on the beach not far from the mouth of Smilingman Bay, commander,” the boy gasped, after coming to attention before her. “And there are an awful lot of them.”