"Hell."
"Like hell, yes. Think about what it takes to get people in that kind of condition. Unless we're good and lucky, that's what we're about to go through." Her dad's voice didn't have any of its accustomed warm humor. If anything, it sounded like the tone he had in the operating room, doing trauma work. Describing the injuries in detail to his support team, so they would know what to expect from the coming work. A tone of voice for describing flesh torn, bones broken, and blood leaking away. Or, for the optimistic, a voice enumerating the things that had to be done to save another life. Businesslike or dispassionate, take your pick.
It was a callousness Sharon hadn't yet acquired. She knew her own operating manner was a lot more involved. Which was showing in the way she was handling this godawful mess.
Her dad put his arms around her. "You'll be okay, princess. You're doing fine. Better at this kind of thing than pretty much anyone I know. So long as we start before they get here, we'll be okay. You heard the report, no cavalry worth talking about. So long as we move quicker than guys who keep stopping to loot, we'll be fine. Other than that, it's bandits, and between the Marines and everyone else here who's got a gun, those are going to be some mighty sorry bandits if they try anything."
Sharon chuckled. "Daddy's going to keep me safe," she said, in a little girl's singsong voice.
"Heh. Daddy's going to kick back and let that fiery young Catalan feller do all the hard work."
"Young?" Sharon turned and smiled at him.
"Young. Man's at least two years younger'n I am—maybe even as much as five—and has the attitudes of a teenager to boot. Not like my own august and reserved demeanor, at all." He puffed up his chest and thumbed a lapel.
"Hooey," came Melissa's voice. Sharon was starting to think of the former schoolteacher as her stepmother, in a way she'd never really expected to. She and Melissa had become friends before Melissa had moved in with her dad, and she'd thought the relationship would stay on that basis. She'd thoroughly approved of her getting together with her father, of course. Mom had been Mom, and couldn't ever be replaced, but it was just plain right that Dad should be happy again. That it was her friend Melissa, her best friend's old history teacher, was just a happy bonus.
"Really? My dad's claim to be respectable is all just a front?" Sharon caught the ball and ran with it, "Who'd a' thunk it?"
"Really. I woke this morning to the sight of him cleaning his pistol. And him a doctor as well."
"Nothing wrong with drumming up a little trade in a righteous cause," he protested.
"Leave it to the young men, you ageing juvenile," Melissa said. "They've got the energy for it."
"Oh, I've not got the energy, have I? That wasn't what you said—"
"Dad!" Adult or not, there were some things Sharon really didn't need to know about. Not, at least, in any detail.
Melissa's heavenward roll of the eyes was all the agreement anyone could want from that quarter. "Are things getting moving yet?" she asked.
"Soon." Sharon hadn't been the only one to remain awake all night. Adolf had kept watch too, and she'd found him just beginning to rouse his people to get the evacuees marshaled. "We'll be a couple of hours after dawn, I think. We have to get the horses loaded up again, breakfast for everyone, and then hit the road. Normally, that's an hour, tops, but here . . ."
"But everything becomes simple, and the simple becomes difficult," Melissa said. "As an old warmonger once observed. I think it'll be midmorning before we finally get moving, myself."
"Still plenty of time, though," Sharon said. "The Spanish were in Ostia yesterday afternoon. They simply can't be here before noon."
Melissa frowned. "I don't want to suggest that they're superhuman or anything, but is there any way they could be here earlier? I think Ruy was assuming that the Spanish commander would rest his troops before marching into town. What if he doesn't?"
"I asked him that," Doctor Nichols said. "He thinks that he's better assuming that we're up against someone with some smarts, and that he'll want his troops reasonably fresh today. Plus, if he tries to push them too hard, they'll just refuse to move. It's not quite that following orders is an optional extra for these guys, but it can look that way sometimes. I think I'll take Ruy's judgment on that one."
"Still, perhaps we could get at least some of our people on the road quickly?" Melissa asked. "I find myself thinking that there are a lot of children coming with us, and giving them as much of a head start as we can might be . . ." She let the suggestion hang in the air.