Chiudka tightened the cloth around her head and tucked in the trailing wisps of hair with shaking fingers. She leaned over an injured youth -- Faina, who always loved her stories -- and stroked the child's pale face while she murmured prayers to the ancestors. But even as she pleaded with the spirits for help, an anger was beginning to knot in her stomach. How was this allowed to happen? Weren't they [i]protected?[/i]

A hand rested on her shoulder, and it took Chiudka a moment to realize that Vasily was kneeling beside her. She stared at him, wide-eyed, unsure whether he was a spirit, for she'd assumed in her stricken state that everyone else had perished. As he offered to help she let out a slow breath and nodded, gathering strength from his steady voice, from the fact that he [i]trusted[/i] her with this, as no one had truly trusted her before. She thought of Antonina, and she dreaded to ask where the child was -- but then there was a shout outside the door, and he was gone. Soon he might return with more injured. She struggled to move young Faina closer to the fire in the back of the tavern.

At that moment Tjasa burst through the newly unblocked door and Chiudka rose to receive her. "Thank you," she said breathlessly, taking the bag and giving her niece a reassuring kiss on the forehead. The moment the bag's weight fell onto her arm, Chiudka's fear and sorrow were locked tight into the back of her mind. Only the anger and the sense of duty remained, fueled by Vasily's confidence. Her eyes were firm when she looked into Tjasa's face. "Please stoke the fire and boil some water. A little so we'll have it quickly, but we'll need more as the night goes on. Adrian --" She looked up, but Adrian had gone without so much as a glance at the injured around him. The anger boiled into her stomach -- but the final snap was the blubber of sobs from the corner. Over a [i]dog.[/i]

"[b]Bogdan.[/b]" Chiudka reeled on him, standing taller than she had ever seemed before, and her eyes flashed. "[i]Help[/i] me move the injured closer to the fire -- take the dead to the side. Move the tables." She didn't care anymore that it wasn't her place to order a man around. It was going to be her way or no way from now on. "I need blankets," she told Bogdan and Tjasa together, even as she leaned over Faina and splashed vodka in her wounds, followed by a thick salve. She opened a bag of herbs from her father's satchel and shoved them into the girl's mouth. "Now chew. It'll help with the pain." Tea would be better, but they needed hot water. She moved to the next, touched him, and discovered that it was only a corpse. She kissed the dead face, murmured a heartfelt prayer and motioned to Bogdan that this one should be moved out of the way. Immediately she was stooped next to another injured one, and pressed her hand into the squelching blood of a deep wound. There was no way she could cure this -- but her eyes were calm as she looked into the dying man's face.

They needed her. They needed her to be calm. Everything was falling apart -- she would be a stone, steadfast and trustworthy for the first time in her life, for them.

And still, the anger boiled.