(Valerian Alzette POV)
Corporal Marsh had been telling everyone for three days that he was ready to go home.
The wound in his thigh had closed a week ago. It was a good closure. I had done it myself, and the scar was flat and pale and would barely show by next summer. By every measure a soldier could see, he was healed.
"Stairs," I said.
He looked at the watchtower steps, and then at me.
He went up anyway. At the eleventh step his hand found the rail. At the fourteenth, the leg began to shake, very slightly, as legs do when the muscle has been cut and closed and hasn't yet been told it is allowed to work again.
He reached the top and turned round, breathing harder than he wanted me to see.
"Fine," he said.
"I know you are," I said. "Your leg isn't. The wound is closed. You aren't. You go home when you can do that twice without the rail."
He came down slowly. He didn't argue.
