A Dragon at Worlds' End by Christopher Rowley Read Free Book Online Page A

body, nicely muscled, with a young woman's firm, round breasts. Swallowing hard, he cleaned the wound and examined it carefully. Fortunately, while the bruising was severe, the cut was modest. Her one-piece garment had taken just enough of the blow. Still there was an obviously infected place that had to be cauterized. He sharpened the dirk as much as possible and heated it on the hot coals before using it to swiftly cauterize the wound, while ignoring the stench of the sizzling flesh.
    The girl moaned, struck out with her arms, and he had to hold her tightly to keep her still, but she did not emerge into full consciousness. Gradually her struggles ebbed and she fell back into motionlessness once again.
    He then set about heating water. First he and Bazil trekked along the shore in search of rocks. Fortunately they found a jut of rock, much eroded and broken up, not far downstream. From its cracks they extracted a lot of good-sized pieces, which they took back and put into the fire. Then Relkin and Bazil searched for a hollow log. This sent them scouting back along the forest's edge for quite a ways, but eventually they found a suitable one, partly rotted but not entirely, and hollow for much of its length. Bazil cut the bottom part free and carried it to the waterside and Relkin washed it out as best as he might, working with a sharpened stick to rouse out all the loose bits and pieces at the bottom.
    Then he had Bazil fill it and bring it back to the fire. Relkin had already cut down some tree branches with which to pick up the red-hot rocks, which he then dropped into the water-filled hollow trunk. When the water began to steam, he tore up some strips of cloth from his ragged jerkin and put them in the water and stirred them around with his dirk. Then he used them, wet, to wash down the wound area and get it as clean as possible. Next he took an end of a cloth and soaked it with Old Sugustus and went over the wound again. Then he used the strips for a field dressing, under her arm, over her shoulder, and down across her breast, which was darkly nippled. He tied off the dressing and made sure it would hold.
    Relkin knew of several good herbs for poultice making, but he doubted he would find them in these ancient forests. This forest was a strange place. There were very few flowering plants; the trees were mostly conifers, and unfamiliar types to him, too. Few of the familiar herbs were visible, either.
    Still, Old Sugustus and hot water would do wonders, and the worst part of the wound had been cauterized with hot steel. If they could get some water into her and keep her safe, maybe she would wake. Maybe she would even survive. Relkin thought there was an even chance of it. He had seen more than his share of bludgeon wounds, not to mention sword wounds, arrow wounds, and every other wound one could imagine, and had come to hold expert opinions about them. The girl's skull was intact, there was no blood in her ears or from her nose. That was a good sign. So was the furious twitching of the limbs when he cauterized the wound. She was not paralyzed in the least. The heaviest part of the blow had come on the shoulder behind the collarbone, which had not broken. Relkin was pretty sure that no bones at all had been broken, though he couldn't be absolutely certain about the shoulder blade. If she came around, they could find out. Until then she must be kept perfectly still, dry, clean, and supplied with water.
    He brought her water in a vessel made of a gourd he had cut from a forest vine and hollowed out and dried over the fire until it was as hard as fired clay.
    She drank small amounts when he held it to her mouth, but choked after a while so he desisted. Every hour or so he gave her more.
    Meanwhile, Bazil gathered more wood. Some went for the fire. The rest went to build a wall of brush around their position. The tide had come up about halfway to the high tide mark, which it clearly only reached a couple of times a year. They