"Gently now." He crossed his arms, observing as the soldiers lowered the wounded man onto the operating table with deliberate care. "Softly, gentlemen." The patient's agonized moans twisted something in his chest. "Place him there... no, not that table—this one here."

  "Bring him back from the brink, surgeon. We're begging you." One of the short-haired soldiers wiped his blood-soaked hands against his trousers after settling their comrade.

  Galenus Dioscorides turned to examine the semi-conscious, delirious casualty. "What's his name?"

  "Don't know his real one. We call him 'Onion Head.' Everyone in the unit does." The second soldier answered, a fresh gash across his face still weeping blood. "We're all cavalry, sir. He means everything to our squad, so I'm imploring you—do whatever you can for him."

  A petite woman with deft fingers inscribed "Mister Onion Head" upon a bleached leaf in a script of surprising delicacy, then carefully tied the makeshift tag to the wounded man's left wrist. "I'll exhaust every possibility, gentlemen." The surgeon's tone carried concern beneath unwavering confidence. "As long as life remains, I'll fight with my final breath to preserve it." He found himself moved by his own declaration.

  The cavalrymen acknowledged with solemn nods and turned to withdraw. "Your face is wounded," a half-elven woman positioned near the doorway called to the short-haired soldier, indicating his left cheek with a graceful gesture.

  "That I am, my lovely lady," he grinned, even managing a roguish wink. "But it is a scratch, nothing more. And there is still a war to be fought."

  This structure had once served as a roadside inn, now transformed into a field hospital situated just behind Godma's trebuchet artillery line. Galenus Dioscorides ranked among the most accomplished surgeons throughout the Godma Empire; he asserted that he and several colleagues had preserved, refined, and advanced the most sophisticated surgical methodologies from the Ptolemaick era, ensuring their transmission to subsequent generations. War inevitably provides the ultimate crucible for a healer's art. Ever since the Crividsylvan war, these hands of his—stained and scarred by the caustic touch of a thousand alchemical tinctures—had snatched countless lives back from death's embrace, restoring a glimmer of light to faces that had been grey with despair, even if the men behind those faces would carry their broken bodies for the rest of their days.

  Unlike conventional field hospitals, Galen's ward lacked the cacophony of pain-wracked groans, desperate prayers of the mortality-fearing, or bitter rage from those rendered combat-ineffective. His domain maintained an unusual tranquility—punctuated only by intermittent snoring and the incoherent muttering of newly arrived casualties. The rows of silent patients resting on rudimentary wooden pallets, two idle half-elven women, a female assistant methodically verifying identification tags, and the impeccably attired, soft-spoken, meticulously mustached Galenus Dioscorides created an atmosphere reminiscent of legendary Elysium, the Sage's Paradise the elves speak of in reverent tones—reserved exclusively for souls of exceptional virtue and nobility.

  "Shall we commence the procedure, sir?" inquired his petite assistant, her face illuminated by a perpetual smile.

  "Proceed, Florence." After brief consideration, he added, "And please remember—I'm present in my capacity as physician, not nobleman. Address me as 'mister,' not 'lord.'"

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  "Certainly, sir." He exhaled a resigned sigh.

  Onion Head released a sharp cry of agony; Galen immediately identified the source—his right leg, penetrated by a splintered arrow shaft. "Close the door, Teresa," he instructed one of the half-elves, his tone unexpectedly gentle. Galenus Dioscorides invariably addressed everyone with extraordinary tenderness—a gentleness that startled even experienced mothers. Unlike his rough battlefield counterparts, who claimed indifference to mortality and employed crude humor as emotional armor, Galen reserved his detachment exclusively for his own mortality. He too had long made his peace with death, but only with his own. When faced with the life of another, a life entrusted to his hands, he treated it with the utmost reverence and gentleness, for he believed the last, best thing he could offer a suffering soul was a measure of mercy and human warmth. He placed his hand delicately upon Onion Head's left shoulder, uttering the universal physician's merciful deception: "You'll recover completely, sir." Perspiration streamed more profusely across Onion Head's contorted features.

  Florence presented a substantial wooden basin containing an array of surgical implements. "Teresa, Treni," Galen beckoned to the half-elven sisters with a graceful gesture, "approach, please. You'll conduct Mister Onion Head's procedure."

  The sisters exchanged alarmed glances, their heavily painted features momentarily comical in their astonishment. "Surely you jest, sir," Treni interjected before her sister could vocalize her protest. "We might inadvertently kill him."

  Galen emitted a skeptical snort. "Direct extraction of the arrowhead would indeed risk that outcome. However, under my guidance, ladies, such catastrophe will not transpire."

  The two half-elven sisters locked eyes, and Teresa unleashed a torrent of rapid-fire Elvish, too swift for any human ear to follow. Treni's face, in response, became a mask of weary resignation. "Join me here, please," he invited, creating space at the table with welcoming gestures. "Remember your purpose in volunteering."

  (Indeed, we mustn't forget our true purpose.) Treni reflected silently. Two days before Godma initiated its primary offensive, medical officers had requisitioned assistance from logistics personnel, anticipating overwhelming casualties requiring treatment. Predictably, volunteers proved scarce—most preferring to drive stakes into resistant earth, excavate trenches and latrines, or confront wild beasts alongside supply convoys traversing forests. Anything was preferable, it seemed, to the gore, the stench of death and viscera that clung for days, and the sight of men's lives guttering out faster than a candle flame in a gale. Consequently, when two female half-elves volunteered for medical service, Galenus Dioscorides remained perpetually astonished.

  On this initial day of decisive combat, the casualties already proved overwhelming. Galen observed with pleasant surprise that the half-elven sisters' resilience exceeded his expectations, both physiologically and psychologically. They did not swoon, nor did they retch. Even when a viscount was brought in, his groin pulped by a flail into a bloody, unrecognizable ruin, pissing blood all over the floorboards, the two sisters had merely wrinkled their delicate noses in mild distaste. He admired it greatly, this strength, this self-possession. He knew they had been camp followers, but they were something more now. They had seen men inside and out, in every sense of the word.

  When questioned regarding their motivation for volunteering as surgical assistants, Teresa had responded without hesitation: "To heal and preserve life." Treni had simply smiled in confirmation. They hadn't fabricated this response, though it represented only a partial truth. They desperately required reliable intelligence from the frontlines—information unavailable in kitchens or beside streams. They harbored profound concern for Carl Clawyn and Tyler Wynlers' fates, having grown weary of extracting fragmentary, unreliable reports from indifferent strangers. They sought proximity to combat operations—and this position offered a rare opportunity. Teresa had once admitted hoping for brief reunions with Carl and Tyler—albeit upon the operating table. Treni, shaking her head vehemently, had expressed fervent hopes such circumstances would never materialize.