"Evacuate!"

There was a blaring horn somewhere outside Astraea's tent. An attack horn she realized and bolted upright. Teresa was already rustling around the tent putting on clothes and tying her hair back.

They were up and out in less than five minutes. Teresa rushing to the field hospital and Astraea running to the planning tent.

The generals inside were all talking over each other as she pushed open the tent flaps. Astraea banged her fist on the table and the talking stopped all at once.

"What is happening?" Astraea pulled her coat closer around herself.

"We got a report this morning that some Vallsia troops are moving towards us." General Taok reported as he ruffled his papers.

General Lyis took her coat from the wall and started to walk back outside. " I need to get our troops organized to get ready to defend."

Astraea nodded and waved her out. "Aside from immediate damage control, what can we do?"

"Not much." General Pola scanned the maps. "We have had very little time to prepare for this but we think that if we move the hospital first we can escape by leaving just enough troops to cover ourselves and make it look like everyone is still here."

Astraea grimaced but nodded. "I still would like to know how people knew how to attack here."

"We suspect a spy," General Toak said. "But we have no evidence of one yet…if our next location is revealed then we will know and will have to try to rough them out."

Astraea nodded and examined the map more closely. "Alright, let's get things started. Everyone has their priorities?"

Her generals nodded and then they all exited the tent to close down the camp.

*****

The hospital was a mess when Teresa got there. Anyone who wasn't secured in a bed was running around trying to prep supplies and get ready to move.

She stood in the middle of the room for a second taking in the chaos happening around her before she jumped into action. The closets needed to be packed up and the supplies on the floor were a mess too. She grabbed a few boxes and tried to block out the screams of the wounded people being moved onto temporary beds so that they could be loaded into wagons to evacuate as per the protocol for when the alarm bells go off.

The fear of legitimate attack was strengthened when General Pola ran and started to help load people onto horses and wagons to get them moving. The rush to move supplies and people had Teresa randomly stuffing things and bags and tossing them onto the carts. She would help resort everything when they got to the new location and new camp so they didn't need to be an order now with the importance of time and speed not on their side.

The hospital was packed up more quickly with the extra helping hands. Teresa rode out with the last boxes of supplies right as a fire started to spread throughout the hospital. Clearly the Vallsian soldiers had broken through the line of soldiers defending the front. The driver urged the horses to go faster and they broke into a dead run.

Half of the supplies were headed to a different camp and field hospital and the other half along with all the wounded and Teresa were going back to the castle so Teresa settled herself in for a long ride. They wouldn't be able to stop as they didn't want any enemy pursers to catch up to them.

After almost an entire day of riding, they were greeted near the edge of the castle grounds by royal guards and escorted into the training camp and hospital. The critically wounded soldiers were carefully pulled into care to be properly treated while the supplies were unloaded. As they had suspected, this training hospital was not equipped to deal with patients in such bad shape so the supplies were much needed. Teresa tossed boxes to those helping unload before getting down and heading inside to help dress wounds.

Her training was not extensive enough yet to help with the more serious wounds but ones with less bleeding that did not require a special background she could clean and dress.

The fifth soldier she treated was covered in mud and she brought over a bucket of water with a rag and a cup so he could rehydrate while she cleaned the mud out of his wounds. When she wiped the rag over a cut of his face, Teresa saw that it ran higher up over his eye than she had anticipated. As she cleaned mud off of his face, the familiar face of Lord Cante's son was revealed.

Lord Cante had moved his entire family to a remote castle to help Queen Astarea maintain control over the vast kingdom. It had been a year since Teresa had seen Pavlo but his smug annoying face hadn't changed at all. At least with a scar running though his eyebrow, his face might match his ugly personality. He had never grown out of his annoying habit of tugging on Teresa's hair or telling Daphne frightening stories, making Teresa spend the night with her sister to convince her there were monsters under the bed or in the hallway.

Even now with one leg badly sliced and a bleeding cut on his face, he reached up to tug a strand that had fallen out of Teresa's braid. Teresa moved her head away before he could touch it and then gently helped him settle his hand back down. Annoying Lord's son or not, he was still a wounded soldier in a great deal of pain and she would not make that worse by smacking him like she wanted to. There were others that needed attending to so Teresa finished getting most of the mud off before wrapping the wounds tightly.

As she walked away, Teresa realized they hadn't spoken one word to each other. She shook that off and told herself she would go back later to properly say hello. In the immediate future though, there was no time with too many still needing attention.