John Ringo - There Will Be Dragons

Deann and Karlyn were apparently suffering from the same maladies, but they had gone back to work almost immediately on doing whatever the women were doing to manage it. Deann mentioned that she was feeling cramps and a certain amount of weakness, but in Karlyn’s case there seemed to be no effect other than the bleeding and not much of that. Courtney, as soon as her cramps passed, was back at work as if nothing had happened as was Shilan. Nergui continued to complain of intense pain and while Jody tended to be unsympathetic, without any way to judge the amount of pain involved there was no way for him to order her back to work.

At the end of the fourth day at the site Herzer came over with his food and sat down with Courtney and Mike. As he did Cruz and Emory wandered over as well.

Courtney looked at him and gave him a wan smile.

“How you doing?” Herzer asked, spooning up a bite of beans. The mixture this night was really good, some sort of meat had been minced fine and added to the beans along with a slightly hot spice.

“Better,” Courtney answered. “The cramps are gone at least.”

“So… this is going to go on for five days?” Herzer asked. “I’m sorry, we’re all pretty curious. If you really don’t want to talk about it…”

“No, it’s okay. It just came as a shock at first. In a way I’m glad we’re out here; I don’t want to think what it was like down in the camps.”

“Ugh,” Mike said, spooning up another bite of the stew and taking a bite of cornbread.

“Basically we bleed all the time, so we have to keep a pad of rough cosilk on.”

“That was those strap things they brought up?” Cruz asked.

“Yeah. We don’t know exactly when it stops. And they say it might get worse than it is this time. Karlyn is hardly bleeding at all and Nergui is like a fountain.”

“Yuck,” Herzer said, looking at the rather red mixture in his bowl doubtfully.

“I had the cramps for about twelve hours. Shilan and Karlyn didn’t get them at all. Deann was just about put out by them. You couldn’t tell by the way she was working but she was. Mine were… pretty bad. I couldn’t work through them; I just wanted to curl up in a ball and put heat on them so they wouldn’t hurt so much.”

“Sorry,” Herzer said.

“Why? There’s nothing you could do,” she replied with a smile. “I don’t know how long it’s going to last; Dr. Daneh says that five days is just an average .”

Emory didn’t talk very much, but he started chuckling now.

“What?” she asked.

“You won’t want to hear it,” he replied in a gravelly voice. “What I was thinking is ‘never trust something that bleeds for five days and doesn’t die.’ ”

“Oh, thank you very much!” Courtney snapped, fire in her eyes.

“Said you wouldn’t like it,” he chuckled.

Herzer and Cruz coughed in their hands while Mike just smiled.

“Thanks so very much,” Courtney said with a frown then shook her head. “Men!”

“What about ’em?” Deann said, sitting down on one of the stumps.

“Can’t live without ’em and there ought to be a bounty,” Courtney replied.

“You’d better think about living without them,” Deann replied. “Unless you want to be carrying around a baby.”

“What’s that mean?” Mike asked, sharply.

“I’m not trying to cut you off from your… friend,” Deann replied just as sharply. “But bleeding means we’re fertile again. Just like the other animals. So if you go making whoopie with Courtney, you’re going to be looking at a baby in nine months.”

“Well…” Mike looked at Courtney who blushed. “We’d… we’ve been thinking that having a child might make sense. But with the replicators gone…”

“That’s the point lover boy,” Deann said. “The replicators ain’t gone. All us women are replicators now. We’re fertile, Mike. We can have babies . That grow in our bodies like some sort of damn parasite!”

“It’s not that bad!” Courtney replied. “I mean… I don’t know. I’m sort of… looking forward to it. I want to see what it’s like.”

“How many times?” Deann asked. “You’re talking about carrying around ten kilos of material in your belly.”

“So? Deann, we’re designed for it! That’s what our bodies are for . Sure, if I had my choice I’d use a replicator. But I don’t have that choice anymore. So…”

“So you’re going to get pregnant?” Deann asked, aghast.

“If it’s a choice of that or giving up guys, yeah,” Courtney said with another blush.

“What a choice,” Herzer said, shaking his head.

“Man, is this stupid war going to screw up everything in our lives?” Cruz snarled.

“Nice pun,” Emory muttered.

“Wha… Oh, shit,” Cruz said and laughed with the others.

Mike reached out with his boot and tapped Herzer on the foot.

“I think you’ve got a visitor,” he said, gesturing over Herzer’s shoulder.

“Hello, Herzer,” Bast said, looking around at the group with a nod. She was carrying her usual panoply of weapons but also had a basket on her back.

“Bast,” Herzer said, reaching towards her.

“Hello, lover boy,” she repeated, swarming up him in a full-body hug. “Let’s take a walk.”

“If you’ll excuse me,” he said to the group.

“I’ll carry your bowl back,” Courtney said with a smile.

“Thanks,” he said as Bast flipped off him and took his hand, leading him into the woods.

“Are you headed somewhere to take a bath?” Herzer asked. He knew full well that the clothes he was wearing reeked of days of sweat.

“Not yet,” she replied as they passed out of the clearing into the woods. “There will be time later. There’s a full moon tonight.”

“And what does that mean?” he asked as she stopped to pull something from the ground.

“That we can see well enough to take a bath, silly,” she smiled at him, stripping the dirt from the root she had dug up.

“What’s that?”

“ Armoracia, ” she replied. “Horseradish. It’s a hot spice to be added to food. It also can be used for poultices and to help clear the passages in bronchitis.”

“This is Rumex, ” she said touching another small, spreading plant. She tore off a small leaf and handed it to him. “It’s best when cooked, especially with some pork as seasoning, but it can be eaten raw.”

He nibbled at it and found it at tad bitter but overall quite tasty. He tore off a couple of more leaves and followed after her, feeling very much like a foraging horse.

“ Lindera, ” she said, touching a small tree. “It can be used for spices or teas. The bark is the best but buds can be dried as well. Betula, ” another tree, this one tall and spreading at the top. “It’s found along creek bottoms where you find willows and poplar. Its buds and twigs are pleasant to chew with a spicy taste and the under bark can be used as a sort of chewing gum.”

They wandered on the through darkening woods as Bast pointed out plant after plant. She knew its growing habits, environment, medical and food uses as well as what animals fed upon it. Occasionally they saw small animals that crossed their paths, and she named each and gave its season of growing with barely a glance.

“Bast,” he said finally, well stuffed with the various plants she had shown him were edible. “Is there anything you don’t know?”

“I don’t why humans cannot leave these woods to their own life,” she answered sadly.

He paused beside one of the small creeks that were everywhere along the mountains and looked at her. The sun was down but the moon had yet to crest the mountains across the valley to the east. The light from it was dimly visible over their shoulder but the valley was still in blackness. She was a barely visible shape in the tenebrous black under the spreading trees.