Louis's steel torrent had already moved on.
What remained in the canyon was not the cheers of victory, but a lingering fear that had yet to cool.
The refugees knelt in the mud, their hands still stained with flour.
So clutched injured legs, biting down on strips of cloth to keep from crying out; others stared blankly at the distant firelight, as if they had not yet woken from that madness.
They had originally thought they would be abandoned here.
But before long, a second wave of troops marched in from the canyon entrance.
They were not cavalry coming to harvest lives, nor were they spear formations coming to clear the area.
They were the logistics and dical teams.
Hundreds of soldiers carried bulging marching packs, their pace steady and fast.
Their uniforms were a uniform color, a grayish-white that was almost blinding, as if specifically designed to stand out against the mud and bloodstains.
Their faces were covered by bird-beak masks and multiple layers of gauze, leaving only eyes that were exhausted yet clear.
The Sun Armbands on their sleeves were particularly striking in the cold post-rain light.
Dozens of alchemical glow sticks were thrust into the ground, their eerie white light spreading out to illuminate the once-dark canyon into a straight corridor. The chaos was forcibly carved through.
The refugees instinctively tried to shrink back, but the troops did not pounce on them.
First, they pitched tents; first, they set up isolation ropes; first, they set up the cooking pots.
Only then did soone stand on high ground.
She wore Red Tide standard-issue light armor, with rainwater rolling off her pauldrons.
On her back was a two-handed greatsword nearly as tall as she was, its hilt wrapped in dark leather.
When she removed her faceplate, she revealed a face that was excessively young, with a faint scar from an old wound on her forehead.
Mia, the squad leader of the Logistics Third Battalion of the Red Tide Knights.
Her voice cut through the damp cold of the rain: "Don't crowd! Line up by color! Red Tide will not abandon anyone who is obedient!"
She didn't need to explain what being obedient ant.
The steel torrent from earlier had already crushed that answer into everyone's bones.
Mia raised her hand and pointed toward several colored cloth flags stuck in the mud.
"Red Zone for the injured! Yellow Zone for those with fever and cough! Green Zone, those who can walk, go get your porridge!"
She paused, her gaze sweeping over those who had just crawled out from the stampede: "Anyone who defecates anywhere will have their rations canceled."
The order was as cold and hard as iron.
But it was precisely this rhythm that caused the crowd, who had just escaped madness, to instinctively begin to obey.
Martha knelt in the muddy water; the child in her arms no longer had the strength to cry.
During the earlier scramble, she had managed to grab a handful of raw flour with great difficulty, but now she felt only despair.
She mixed the flour haphazardly with dirty water and, with trembling hands, tried to feed it to the child.
"Eat a little... please, eat a little..."
The child's face was pale blue, and his breathing was so light it was almost imperceptible.
Mia was managing the crowd from above, but she caught this scene out of the corner of her eye.
In that instant, her footsteps faltered.
The sound of rain, the shouting, and the echoes of the iron gaphones all seed to drift away.
An untily image flashed through her mind.
The ruins of White Stone Village, where the snow fell as if it would crush the sky.
A man knelt in a broken house, holding a little girl who was unconscious with a high fever, his lips white as he cried as if he were tearing his lungs out.
Eight years had passed, but that kind of despair remained unchanged.
Mia jumped down from the dirt slope and rushed through the muddy water.
Martha's hand was about to shove that clump of raw flour paste into the child's mouth.
A hand covered in an iron gauntlet suddenly clamped onto her wrist.
"Stop!" Mia barked. "Do you want to kill him?"
Martha jerked in fear, looking up to see the greatsword, almost thinking she had encountered the Northern Demons ntioned by the knights.
Her lips trembled: "My Lady... I don't..."
"If soone who has been starving for a long ti eats raw flour and dirty water, their stomach and intestines will burst," Mia said quickly, as if racing against ti. "Give him to ."
She leaned down, her movents unexpectedly gentle; the child was as light as a kitten, his forehead burning hot, his breathing as thin as a thread.
Mia held the child steadily and looked up to shout at the crowd: "dical team! Level One Critical! Life Potion! Steam Tent!"
Several military doctors wearing masks imdiately ran over, followed by stretchers, their movents as practiced as a rehearsal.
Martha reached out, wanting to grab the child, but Mia gently nudged her away with her shoulder.
"Follow us," Mia said in a low voice, her tone half a degree softer than before. "Don't wander off. If you collapse, he won't live long either."
Martha stood up blankly, stumbling along behind them.
The dical tent was so warm it didn't seem like the world outside. Steam pipes in the corner hissed as they released heat, and the air was thick with the scent of dicine.
The child was placed on clean white sheets, and the military doctors took over.
When the needle pierced the tiny blood vessel, Martha shrieked and lunged forward.
Mia pinned her shoulder with a grip that wasn't heavy but was as steady as a nail.
"Watch," she said, staring into Martha's eyes. "That is the Water of Life."
The pale gold dicinal liquid dripped down bit by bit.
The child's blue-purple complexion began to lighten, and the rise and fall of his chest beca more even.
A few minutes later, his brow furrowed slightly, and a very soft groan escaped his throat.
As if the bones had been sucked out of her, Martha slumped to the ground, sobbing breathlessly: "Thank you... thank you, My Lady... thank you, Goddess..."
"I am no goddess," Mia said, squatting down to hand her a steaming bowl of at porridge.
The bowl was very hot; Martha's hand shook, and she nearly failed to catch it.
Mia didn't let her kneel: "Drink first. You're about to collapse yourself."
Martha looked up through her tears and saw Mia's face after she had removed her helt.
It didn't have the delicate coldness of a noble lady, nor the aloofness of a knight lord.
It was a face nurtured by training and full als, healthy and sturdy, with a sense of determination in her eyes.
"Eight years ago," Mia suddenly spoke, as if to Martha, yet also as if to herself, "I was just like him, nearly dying in the snow."
"My father back then... was just like you, grabbing at anything, daring to shove anything into my mouth."
She paused, her lips curling into a very faint arc.
"Then soone picked up. He said that the Red Tide Knights are here to save people."
Martha was stunned: "You... you were also..."
"Yes," Mia nodded. "I was once a refugee too, and now I am a knight of the Red Tide."
She pointed to the Sun Armband on her light armor: "In the Red Tide, as long as you survive and are willing to work, you'll have food. Later on, you can learn to read and study the sword. Mud-legs can wear armor too."
...Outside the tent, order was being established inch by inch across the logistics camp.
Receiving porridge was not a scramble.
Everyone had to pass through a narrow passage first.
The pungent sll of a mixture of li water and alchemical disinfection mist hit them.
The knights were shouting: "Wash your hands! Scrub ten tis! You're not allowed to eat unless they're clean!"
So gritted their teeth and complied, while others tried to sneak through, only to be shoved back to the end of the line.
Those showing symptoms of fever or coughing were taken away from the crowd and sent directly into the quarantine zone.
Only at the very end was it ti to eat.
Everyone received the sa wooden bowl.
What bubbled in the pots was not clear water, but salted minced at and boiled oatal, thick and warm.
An old farr held that bowl of porridge, his hands shaking violently; as the steam hit his face, his tears fell into the bowl.
He had lived for sixty years, and never had any lord cared if his hands were dirty, let alone minced at to cook for him.
This feeling of being treated like a human being left him not knowing how to respond.
Not far away, engineers were handling the corpses.
Those who had died in the stampede or been killed by the Supervisory Squad were laid out neatly together and doused with fuel and alchemical powder.
"Plagues always follow the rain," a Red Tide knight explained briefly. "For the sake of the living, they must be cremated."
As the flas rose, the refugees stood in the distance watching... news of Mia quickly spread through the camp.
"That female officer who saved people... she used to be a refugee too."
"Really? She said so?"
"The child she carried away herself almost didn't make it."
The way the crowd looked at Mia changed.
The previous awe was still there—an instinctive fear of steel and guns.
But beneath that fear, sothing else began to grow.
Aspiration.
If she could climb up from the mud, then could their children do the sa?
By dawn, the rain had finally stopped.
Blackstone Canyon no longer felt like a man-eating deep well, but like a rapidly constructed field hospital.
White tents stretched out in a line, and cooking smoke rose slowly into the cold morning air.
Martha sat by the tent; the child in her arms was sleeping soundly, his face having regained so color.
She was wrapped in a dry blanket, holding half a bowl of unfinished at broth in her hands.
Mia walked between the tents at a quick pace but stopped for a mont in front of Martha: "He will survive."
Martha's throat tightened, and it took her a while to squeeze out a sentence: "I... what can I do for you?"
Mia tilted her chin toward the other side of the camp: "Go over there. The logistics team needs people to move crates, and the dical team needs people to wash bandages. We pay daily wages and also provide food."
Martha looked down at the child in her arms, then at the people queuing in the camp.
She wiped her face, stood up, and rolled up her sleeves.
"My Lady... I can nd clothes."
"I can work."
Soon, more people stood forward.
Hand after hand was raised, trembling in the morning light, yet firm.
On the outermost edge of the camp, on a temporary wooden board, several rules had been written with charcoal, simple to the point of being blunt.
No cutting in line. No hoarding food. No assaulting others. No hiding illnesses.
Below them was a slightly more «N.o.v.e.l.i.g.h.t» emphasized addition:
Violators will have their rations canceled and be subjected to forced labor until recovery or departure from the camp.
These words lacked any flowery rhetoric, yet they were hamred into everyone's eyes like nails.
The Red Tide soldiers did not rely on repeated scolding to maintain order; they relied on certainty.
Every violation would bring a clear consequence, and every act of obedience would yield a predictable reward.
When a burly man who tried to claim an extra bowl of porridge was publicly dragged out of line, had his bowl taken away, and was pushed toward the dirtiest and most exhausting hauling area, the crowd did not riot; instead, they fell silent.
When a young man who hid a high fever and attempted to sneak into the Green Zone was exposed and sent directly to a quarantine tent, yet actually received dicine and hot water two hours later, suspicion was also suppressed.
There was no talk of personal favors here, only regulations.
No forgiveness based on whims, and no privileges based on status.
It was precisely this cold and nearly heartless way of handling things that made the crowd, who had just broken free from madness, begin to understand that the Red Tide was not maintained by goodwill.
Unlike most lords of this era who distributed porridge at their own discretion, it relied on a whole set of rules that would not deviate just because soone cried more miserably or shouted louder.
And the Red Tide distributed porridge to keep the system running.
When people realized this, obedience was no longer just coerced, but a rational choice.
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