The Deepest Poison by Beth Cato

 
    The Deepest Poison
    F ROM MY V ANTAGE point on the low crest, I knew Cantonment Five’s situation had grown ominous since Miss Leander’s missive had arrived in my hand some hours before.
    The rising sun painted a sliver of horizon in the deep pink of a healing scar and illuminated the sprawl of the camp below. The whinnies of hungry horses carried at this distance even as the usual booms of shelling continued on the far side. Airships hovered above, like dark, ovoid clouds, though fewer were aloft than usual. No Caskentian army encampment should be so still.
    Mercy upon us all if the front line fell. Wasters would be on us like ants on a crumb.
    Captain Yancy, the commander of my escort party, conferred with the pickets on duty, their voices rushed. I caught the word “contagious” and immediately brought my horse around.
    â€œIt’s not believed to be contagious,” I said.
    The guard held a fist to his chest in salute. Only his eyes were visible between the thick wrap of scarf and hat. “Miss Percival, m’lady, last I heard, a quarter of the men gone ill—­”
    A quarter of the men. That meant over two thousand. I schooled myself to remain stoic. “Miss Leander said this bore the marks of enteric illness. A matter of the bowels, food poisoning.”
    â€œI’ve been told not to eat or drink,” he said.
    â€œGood. Captain Yancy?”
    We rode down the gradual slope to the cantonment with a heightened sense of urgency. I trusted Miss Leander’s judgment else I would not have left her as matron at this vital base. I was still technically headmistress over her and about a dozen other medician women in training, all of us contracted by the Caskentian government to manage medical wards throughout the northern pass. With me were two of my trained medician girls, ten nurses of my hire, and a squadron of two hundred soldiers. The men were a concession of the Colonel at base camp; my midnight plea had only succeeded because the lout was fully drunk. A happy drunk, one easily coaxed by feminine smiles.
    Captain Yancy rode alongside me. “M’lady, what should my men do?”
    â€œKeep most of your men with me. We will require assistance in the wards.”
    â€œWhatever you need, Miss Percival.”
    I nodded. This old, prickled captain had not been so respectful toward me until recent months—­not until, through the Lady’s grace, I had spared him from multiple amputations. Worshipful officers were useful.
    Army encampments always stank of dust and unwashed male bodies and manure, but this one now carried a strong acidic taint. Green-­clad soldiers stood in the cold morning to watch as we rode past. Others staggered toward the wards, soaked in their own feculence. The quiet, the vulnerability of the place, unnerved me. I’d never seen the like in all my decades of intermittent ser­vice for the Caskentian army.
    To the east of the Fair Valley of Caskentia, across the high peaks of the Pinnacles, sprawled desolate plains known as the Waste. During my childhood, the hardscrabble settlers of the Waste rebelled and kidnapped Caskentia’s young princess. Her loss began a cycle of war that had continued, on and off, for some fifty years.
    I dismounted and bit back a grunt as my stiff old legs met the hard ground. I unstrapped my satchel and draped it across my chest. The dull echoes of bomb blasts carried from nearby trench lines. With a motion to my medicians and nurses, I entered the reception tent.
    My nostrils were bludgeoned by a foulness that cannot be described in proper company. The canvas tent was intended to house thirty swaddies, briefly, during triage. Now it was carpeted in a hundred bodies. Some moaned. Others were eerily still. An orderly waved a medician wand over a soldier. The crusted grime on him was immediately rendered to dust by the wand’s enchantment, only for the patient to immediately soil himself again.