Steph Swainston - Dangerous Offspring

They had stripped him down to his padded gambeson but he still had armour on his uninjured leg. He was covered in many smaller excruciating wounds, bleeding heavily through tears in the jacket. Most of them were deep punctures, where larvae’s fangs had slid in like curved smooth thorns, but they were nothing compared to what had happened to his leg.

Rayne was resuscitating a man with a crunchy broken jaw and a mushy nose. She left him to her assistant and dashed over, leaving sticky footprints.

She gave Wrenn an injection into the crook of his arm, pressed a cotton pad on the place, withdrew the needle. She quickly dropped some clear liquid on a white tile, and mixed it with a drop of blood pricked from one of the three soldiers who looked most like him. The mixture did not go grainy but stayed smooth, so she patted the windowsill for the lad to sit up there, and she rigged up a waxed cotton tube that would transfer blood down from his arm into Wrenn’s.

Wrenn was yelling all the time. ‘No! Put me back on the field! Leave me there! I want to be left! Bitch!’

She grasped his hand and he tried to fend her off, but he calmed a little as the scolopendium took effect. ‘Leave me! I can’t be Eszai any more! Let me die!’

‘Let him die unbeaten,’ I said.

Wrenn glanced in the direction of my voice, with unfocused eyes, and smeared blood across his cheek with the back of his hand.

Rayne was furious, ‘Ge’ ou’ of t’ way, Jant!’

‘He can’t be the Swordsman now. He’ll die anyway. Let him die without the indignity of being beaten by a Challenger.’

‘There’s more t’ life than tha’!’

‘I’ve never had pain like this before!’ The fear was stronger than the agony in his voice. ‘And…and…Oh, god, I’m so bloody cold.’

He turned his head and spoke to empty space: ‘Skua? You can’t be. You died…I lost Sanguin. I left it out there…’ He stared, glazed-eyed, and then passed out.

Rayne pointed to a tourniquet on his thigh, and looked at the soldier on the window ledge. ‘Did you pu’ tha’ on?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good. You did t’ righ’ thing.’

Wrenn’s stump was bone surrounded by meaty pulp. The end of the artery dangled, swaying loosely and dribbling blood. Rayne pinched the end and expertly wound turns of silk thread around it-four, five, six times. She tied the thread and then smeared on an ointment of turpentine and phenol, with tansy extract. Then she bound a poultice loosely around it. The poultice, a pad of spongy elder pith wrapped in linen, had been steam-cleaned then infused with a lot of rose honey.

She stepped back and surveyed her work. ‘I can feel him pulling on t’ Circle. This could’ve killed any other Eszai bu’ Wrenn. He’s such a figh’er. Wha’ are you doing here? Have you brough’ a message?’

‘No. I’m passing through. Do you have anything to tell Frost or San?’

She shook her head. She was untying the tourniquet from Wrenn’s thigh. ‘You’re no’ encouraging, Jant. Saying “leave him”! How dare you!’

‘But how can he swordfight now?’ I protested. ‘Even if he survives, he’ll lose his place in the Circle to the first Challenger who comes along.’

‘I’ve deal’ with maimed Eszai hundreds of times. I know I’m righ’.’

‘I’d hate to be forced back to obscurity,’ I said. ‘Wrenn is the same. Do you expect him to win duels on a wooden leg?’

Rayne said, ‘Stranger things have happened.’

I huffed. ‘A Swordsman with one leg? How likely is that?’

Rayne said, ‘Look. There are all kinds of freakish abilities in t’ Circle. We even have a man who can fly. Tha’s pret’y damn weird.’

I took her point. She continued, ‘He migh’ go on for a year or even more before get’ing bea’en. He may well have t’ come t’ terms wi’ being mortal again. Bu’ a’ least he’ll have more life. He can change his outlook. He can change from being t’ Swordsman t’ someone else. I am giving him time t’ think. Once he thinks abou’ i’, he’ll thank me for no’ let’ing him die. They always do. As long as they can continue t’ live wi’ digni’y, and have the chance t’ die peacefully in bed surrounded by grandchildren, i’s bet’er than dying on the field. Isn’ i’? Dying in shi’ and confusion means nothing. You gain nothing. He’ll prefer living and growing old t’ dying in bat’le. If he wan’s to die in bat’le he can do i’ later. He needs time t’ clear his mind. No ex-Eszai has ever told me any differen’.’

‘He’s gashed here as well.’ I pointed to a deep, narrow cut above the knee of his severed leg. The black tip of a broken Insect mandible stuck out.

‘T’ poleyne plate mus’ have come off his knee. Tell Sleat those clips don’ work. A shard is still in there. I’m going t’ take i’ ou’. T‘ soldiers tried t’ pull i’ ou’ and i’ broke.’

Insect mandible shards are much worse than their leg spines. I know many people living with Insect spines embedded in their bodies. If Rayne can’t extract them without causing further damage, she leaves them in. But jaws are highly septic, considering what Insects eat, and broken pieces will rankle in wounds and cause fatal septicaemia. I helped Rayne as she began to operate to extract the shard.

She eased the blood-hardened cloth away from his skin. Then she took a scalpel from the steamed-clean tray and made a cross-shaped incision at the point where the mandible had gone in, widening the cut. She squirted spirits of wine into the wound with a syringe, and grasped the end of the triangular shard with forceps. It had one very sharp edge, and to prevent it cutting Wrenn’s flesh when she drew it out, she took a little hollow steel cylinder like a straw with an open slot along its length. She slid the tube onto the shard’s sharp edge. Then she drew it out firmly and smoothly along its path of entry. In time with his heartbeat, blood welled up, overran the camp bed and pattered on the floor. Rayne rinsed out the wound and put a dressing on it.

Then she detached the tube from the arm of the soldier who was giving Wrenn his blood. He looked very pale and weak by this stage. She nodded to him. ‘You can go. Take a sip of juice, over there…Then go and ea’ mea’ and drink a lo’ of water, and have a res’.’

The dazed soldier wandered off. Rayne crooked her thumb at Wrenn. ‘Even if their blood is incompa’ible you can risk i’ once, but a second time would be fatal.’

She felt his pulse with a couple of twiggy fingers on his neck. ‘No’ a’ home.’

‘When will he wake up?’

‘Could be any time. Migh’ not. But if I know Wrenn, he’ll wake as soon as he can. Tha’ one never gives up.’

‘We’ll see.’

‘And i’ makes a difference from having t’ cure him of VD.’ She smiled without any trace of humour. Invisible flies were buzzing around my head. I hunched my shoulders and an avid pain ran between my wings; I stretched them against the stiffness.

Rayne wiped her hands on a cloth. ‘I have Tornado in here as well, you know.’

‘What’s wrong with him?’

‘He lost an eye.’ She pointed across the room to where Tornado was sitting on another stretcher bed, with his head in his hands. Bandages covered his eye. He was stripped to the waist-you could reconstruct the battles of eight centuries from the scars on his body.

‘What! By a larva?’ If they could wound even Tornado, the Vermiform was right; we were finished.

‘No. In the crush someone’s spear went into his eye. Don’ talk t’ him. He’s very pissed off about i’-he’s embarrassed, too.’

‘I told him not to advance.’

‘If you remind him of tha’, he’ll punch you. Fescue’s jus’ lef’ here, dead. And Vir Ghallain has been mauled. From wha’ I’ve seen, they’ve los’ him too.’