Lana knotted the cord around the last casualty bundle while Hajin worked down the assault roster across the registry desk. Death records went into a locked drawer, and the wounded recovery sheets stayed with clinic requests, far from the routes.
Outside, three hundred soldiers formed up beneath the muster lamps while drivers checked every supply wagon.
"Twenty-one dead," Lana said, pressing a witness mark beside the final name, "fifty-nine serious injuries after the last clinic count, all checked against the section rolls."
Hajin read Osric, Tallis, Nera, Tovin and Evin, folding the sleeve over their names beside the earlier workers and defenders. Each family's pension allotment sat in three copies, with one set already bound for the fireproof vault below the archive.
'Osric held a bell cord with two blades in him, so make his kids' paper perfect.'
"Make the family copies readable," he said, tapping the eldest brother's address beside its receipt.
