Earth Afire (The First Formic War)

no other explanation. And then somehow Mazer had tried to treat his own wounds. Bingwen knelt beside him. Yes, one of the packets from the kit was still in Mazer’s hand. Bingwen should have noticed that instantly.
    “Mazer.”
    No answer.
    Should he try shaking him awake? No, that might tear something inside him. Instead, Bingwen reached out a tentative finger and poked Mazer in the arm. The skin was warm. The tip of Bingwen’s finger came back bloody. Mazer didn’t respond.
    Then Mazer’s chest rose, just slightly, almost imperceptibly. A shallow intake of breath. Then an exhale. He was alive. Barely maybe, but he was breathing.
    Bingwen had to get him back to the farmhouse, back to Grandfather. But how? He had hoped to find the soldiers awake and able to walk. And if they couldn’t walk, Bingwen would build a travois for the water buffalo to pull and then ask the wounded soldier to climb up onto it. But Mazer couldn’t even do that; he couldn’t move at all. Bingwen would have to lift him somehow onto the stretcher.
    Bingwen ran back to the water buffalo, tied it to a tree, and came back with all the supplies from the tool pouches. He found a grove of bamboo nearby and chopped down three large stalks with the hatchet. It took him forever because he had to do it one-handed, using only his good arm. He then chopped one of the three stalks into shorter lengths and built the travois, lashing the bamboo together with the rope. The shorter pieces went between the longer two, making a ladderlike surface for Mazer to lie on. Bingwen then cut out the bottoms of a few of the harvesting bags and pulled those up over the two shafts, creating a flat surface like the bed of a cot.
    The travois was heavy when Bingwen finished, almost too heavy for him to drag with one hand, but he heaved and strained and pulled it across the dirt until he had it on the ground beside Mazer. He had hoped to pull Mazer’s body up onto it, but after a few tentative tugs it became obvious that wouldn’t work. There was too much dead weight, and he couldn’t pull with his broken arm. He’d have to lift the body, suspend it in the air, slide the travois underneath, and then lower Mazer carefully onto it.
    By now Bingwen was sweating and thirsty and tired. He hadn’t brought any water; he hadn’t wanted to take any from the little supply the group at the farmhouse had. Now he wished he had. There wasn’t any drinkable water nearby, and even if there had been, he wouldn’t have drunk it, not with the mist in the air and the threat of contamination.
    He ignored the thirst and got back to work. He had built pulley systems out of bamboo before—he and Father had made a small towerlike structure to lift the bags of harvested rice up onto the load trucks last season. But this would be different. Mazer was twice as long as a bag of rice and far more floppy and collapsible. Nor did Bingwen have Father helping him or two good working arms.
    It took him hours to prepare everything, chopping down the bamboo, cutting the proper lengths, separating the threads of the rope into twine because he needed more rope than he had. He used scrap from the wreckage as well. There was a winch in the cockpit with cable and D-rings and fasteners. He was aware of charred human remains in the seats, but Bingwen held his breath, averted his eyes, and retrieved the equipment quickly.
    Then he started building. He made a series of A-frame structures with a long shaft between them, then slid several thinner bamboo shafts underneath Mazer at his shoulders, lower back, buttocks, and bend of the knee. He made a special pouch for Mazer’s head so that it wouldn’t loll back sharply when Bingwen lifted him. He lashed both ends of the bamboo shafts underneath Mazer to a lifting pole that hovered above Mazer, running the length of his body. Then Bingwen threaded the rope through the three pulleys he had made from narrow cuts of bamboo.
    The sun was far in the western part of the sky, dipping toward the horizon, when he finished. He was hungry. His arm ached. His whole body was slick with sweat and covered in dirt and soot.
    The structure was elaborate; it looked like a giant bamboo spider standing over Mazer, ready to seize him and wrap him in its webbing.
    Bingwen pulled on the ropes, and Mazer’s body lifted gently off the ground, his head holding steady. All that work for so little movement, he thought.
    Bingwen tied off the line, slid the travois underneath Mazer, and