"Are you bleeding?"

Hireia freezes at the familiar voice behind her. She turns around slowly, pressing a palm to the wound running the length of her arm, revealed through the ragged rip in her bloodstained, dirt-mottled tunic.

"I'm fine." She tries for a reassuring tone, raisin her hands palms-forward as though warding off the concern of the woman speaking from her. "It's not my blood. Mostly." The woman now facing her purses her lips and walks towards Hireia.

"Yes, of course you are, and of course it isn't," she mutters. "What was it this time, Hira? Rogue Vashkan mercenaries? A camp of Woodtwisted?" She reaches for Hireia’s arm, trying to pry her fingers away from the wound.

"It was Woodtwisted mercenaries, actually," Hireia corrects, jerking away from the touch of her future commander. "Daiia, I’m alright, truly, you needn’t—"

"I am your future commander and a better healer than anyone in this sorry excuse for an army camp, I know what you need," Daiia snaps, interrupting. Then, softer, she adds: "Keep pressure on the wound. Follow me."

She takes Hireia by the hand and leads her to a nearby tent with one flap propped open with a broken spear, its point dug into the ground. With one hand, Daiia pushes Hireia down gently onto the cot nearest to the entrance, reaching with her other hand for a small box of medical supplies nearby. She replaces Hireia’s clenched hold around the wound with her own hands, cutting away what scraps remain of Hireia’s tunic sleeve with a pocket blade.

"Daiia, I am alright, truly—"

"You are not alright, the blade that gave you this could have been poisoned. Have you already forgotten what happened to Airye not a fortnight ago?” That makes Hireia go quiet, remembering the young soldier’s screams piercing the silky calm of the night as the last healer left to them laboured through the night to draw the poison from the wound in his abdomen. Hireia bows her head, remembering how Airye had not felt the sting of the poison in his system before it was too late. Daiia’s gaze flickers upwards to meet Hireia’s downcast one.

“I’m sorry,” she says, quieter than before. “I know you trained with him. But please, sit still and let me work so that the same will not happen to you.”

Hireia rolls her eyes, trying to shake off the memories. It is always like this between them—Daiia making seemingly insensitive comments about soldiers she knew only from afar, hardly even by name, training with the other future commanders. But to Hireia and the other soldiers-to-be, they were comrades in arms. But as always, Hireia knew she had not meant it. How could she, leading the life of the daughter of one of the most decorated generals in the Dasaari army?

"It was only a graze, you know,” Hireia tries, after some moments of silence, as lightly as she can. “If anything, this theoretical poison would cause but a feverish night and some sluggishness in the morning.” She grins, though it does not reach her eyes. “Should not the better healer than anyone in this sorry excuse for an army camp know that?”

Daiia pauses amid her work of salving and binding, sighing up at Hireia, but a small smile graces her set lips. "Hireia, please be quiet."

Hireia obeys.

Daiia’s hands work swiftly at Hireia’s arm, cleaning the wound with deft movements many times repeated. She spreads a thin coat of medicine over it with the pads of the fingers of her left hand while her right reaches for a roll of bandage.

"Dreii, that stings," Hireia hisses. "Can you not be gentler?"

Daiia scoffs. "Hear ye all,” her voice drips sarcasm, smooth from her smiling lips. “The famed Dasaari warrior Hireia, daughter of Hyrye, who has fought the fearsome Woodtwisted and land-lusting Riverdain and evil Vashkans—cannot even take a bit of salve."

Hireia pouts at this, stifling her smile. "You have no right to speak to me that way, can you not see I have been gravely wounded?"

"But I thought it was only a graze?” Daiia asks with false innocence, looking up at Hireia once more, grinning in that familiar, devilish way for the first time in what might be weeks. Hireia laughs, if only at the joy of seeing Daiia smile again.

"Ai, hush now, you. It didn’t hurt that much at first."

Soft smiles linger on both of their lips as Daiia finishes binding the wound. When it is done, Hireia lifts her newly healed arm and appraises it half-mockingly, half truly impressed at Daiia’s work.

“Not bad for the daughter of Daiye the Glorious, the Golden General of the Threefold Wars,” she declares. “Perhaps you should be a healer instead of a commander.”

She says it in jest, grinning, but the smile falls suddenly from Daiia’s lips at the remark, eyes shadowed once more. Hireia drops her arm onto her knee and takes the other woman’s hand.

“Dai, come now, I didn’t mean it like that. Of course, we will all follow you into battle, you know we trust you with our lives.”

Hireia’s urging gaze forces Daiia to lift her eyes. She sighs. “I know, Hireia, it is not that that troubles me.” Hireia waits unspeaking, knowing it is better to let Daiia monologue through it when she is like this. After a beat, Daiia speaks again:

“It is only—” Another pause. Then, another sigh, taking Hireia’s other hand in her own. “Hira, they have given orders to all the ordained commanders, myself included, that all who are fatally or even possibly fatally injured in the coming battle are to be left on the field. Left to rot with the corpses amid the hills of the Vashkan border.” Hireia is silent, taking this in. “There is a shortage of healers, as we are all aware,” Daiia continues, “and we have been ordered not to overburden them with those who will take too long to be saved, with only a small chance of their survival in any case, and whose recovery will be too long-winded.”

“What does that mean?” Hireia asks uselessly, though she well knows what it means, the realization nearing her like a great wave cresting the shore. Daiia shifts uncomfortably, turning Hireia’s hands in hers so that the palms are facing up, tracing the lines there with her fingertips.

“It means,” she begins, quietly, “that if you or anyone else in this army dear to my heart is badly injured on the battlefield, I will be forced to leave them. I would be forced to leave them. To leave you, no matter what, even if you could be saved through much pain and effort.”

Crash. The wave froths against the shore, soaking Hireia with the horror of it. How many more will be lost for it, for this order? What if she…. The thought trails off unfinished.

Suddenly, Hireia drops Daiia’s hands, edging just the slightest bit away. Something like pain flashes across the other woman’s features. “No,” she says, firm. “No.”

Daiia shakes her head helplessly, wringing her hands. “Hira, you know if they give me an order, I must obey, I—”

“No,” Hireia interrupts her. She slides down from the cot onto the grass floor of the tent, only half covered with threadbare rugs, careful of her bound arm, drawing Daiia down with her. By instinct, their legs cross as they sit opposing each other, as though they are sitting on the floor of a stone temple, praying to the gods, and not in a straggling tent in a makeshift Dasaari army camp. Indeed, Hireia speaks as though praying, as though invoking the names of the Dreii to witness this moment.

“No, Daiia,” she says, taking the hands of her future commander once more. “Remember what we promised each other? We always come out together. Broken, bent over clutching our wounds, half-dead, but together.”

Daiia says nothing, still troubled, but Hireia continues, gaze unfaltering. "If I am injured in the battle.” Her mouth sets in a firm line, a mirror of Daiia. "If I am bleeding and broken and on Death's door, you must not leave me. If I have done my proper duty, if I have fought as I am trained to now, promise me that you will take me home. Carry me if you must. Swear it."

A moment of silence, of trepidation. If they give me an order, I must obey, Daiia had said, not two minutes earlier. Some medals, some decorations will be withheld from her if she swears to this, Daiia knows. But does love not mean more than gold?

At last, Daiia gathers both of Hireia’s hands into both of hers, bringing them almost to her lips, a breath away from kissing the fingertips. Her eyes are earnest.

"I swear it,” she says, in a voice like iron. “I will not leave you."

Hireia nods, placing a hand on the back of Daiia’s head, bringing their brows together. “Thank you,” she whispers, like a secret. There is nothing more to say. “Commander.”

Daiia mirrors her nod, and they rise in almost perfect unison. Daiia moves to gather the medical supplies she had used back into their box, while Hireia moves towards the tent’s half-open entrance, fiddling with the bandages tied around her arm. Daiia’s gaze flickers to her.

“Don’t mess with those,” she chastises Hireia absently. “You should rest.”

“I would rather eat,” Hireia answers easily, as though the oath just sworn had been a dream, a mirage in the haze of this army camp. “I’ll be alright, Daiia.”

She moves once more towards the tent’s exit-entrance, but Daiia’s voice stops her in her tracks.

“Hireia.” She turns, one hand on one of the tent’s support beams near the entrance. Daiia’s face is inscrutable. “Truly I have promised you this, so promise me something in return.”

Hireia’s hand drops from the support beam. “Anything,” she says, trying for an easy gait. Daiia half-smiles, but there is worry in her eyes.

“Try not to get mortally injured, Hireia. This is an oath I do not wish to have to act on.”

Hireia grins, tilting her head to one side. “Don’t worry, Dai. I am the famed Dasaari warrior Hireia, daughter of Hyrye, who has fought the fearsome Woodtwisted and land-lusting Riverdain and evil Vashkans—I can take a bit of battle.”

With that, she slips from the tent, leaving Daiia shaking her head and smiling softly still within. The worry, however, does not leave her eyes.

This is a prequel to my other work posted on here a while ago, Swear It, though that has since been reworked and I don't know how much sense it will make in proportion to this one, and vice versa. For anyone reading the both of them, know that Datha and Daiia are the same person, I changed the name for reasons that would take too long to explain.