James White - The First Protector

'What of the seventh man?" he said.

She paused for a moment, her face clouding over and plainly seeking for inner composure, then went on, "He is the young man, Liam, and the worst of them all. He took a deep thrust in his lower belly that opened his boweL so it did not matter whether or not the blade was poisoned because his own wastes escaped into his body with the same effect. He has a high fever and is in great and continuing pain, and moans softly and constantly when many another man would be screaming in agony, but he tells me that doing such a thing would make him feel unmanly and ashamed of himself. There is no way that I can save his life, which will end in four or five days' time. The potion I administered, which is itself a slow poison, deadens his pain a little but does not remove it.

"In greater strength the potion would kill him within a few moments," she ended, "with no pain at all."

"Healer," said the captain gravely, "is that the action you yourself would take?"

"It is," she said, looking at his face for a long moment without either blinking or looking away. "But the final decision must be yours because you are his captain."

"I am much more than his captain," said the other in a low voice that was filled with pain, "I am also a good friend of his family who has known him since he was a babe in arms. Neither I nor they would disagree with your proposed action, so your recommendation is approved. But before you put him into the endless sleep, I shall say my last words to him and, when you are administering the potion I would like you, too, to speak to him, not as another boy but with gentleness as the last woman he will ever meet."

"I will do that," she replied softly as the captain was leaving.

Ma'el looked at Sinead, picked up his folded map and rose to leave. "I hear the captain and Seamus outside with your patient," he said. "Regrettably, I can be of no help in what you have to do. I wish steady hands and calmness of mind to all of you, and to Tomas the best of good fortune…"

"Please, before you go," Brian broke in. "Declan and I were too busy last night to see the magical beast that frightened off the Romans. What did you do, what was it, and what did it look like?"

"I merely shone a light onto the foresail," said the old man gently, inclining his head toward Sinead. "It was the healer who conjured up the terrifying beast."

"Sinead," said Brian, "you're a healer, not a magician. What does he mean and what did you do?"

The captain and Seamus arrived carrying Tomas at that point and Sinead, looking uncomfortable, told him that she had done very little and she had too many instructions for them to waste time answering unimportant questions. But suddenly the subject and the question arose again and from a source she could not very well refuse to answer.

They were ready to begin work and the medical situation and their plans for remedying it had been explained in detail to Tomas. He had already downed almost two flagons of wine so that, he told them with a wide and completely relaxed smile, if he had not been roped tightly to the table he would have been floating close to the ceiling. But before the work began he, too, wanted to know all about the terrible monster that had been conjured up to protect their ship, and which he had not been able to see for himself.

He said that if he was to die this night it should not be from curiosity.

'The magician lit up the foresail," Sinead said, her face coloring with embarrassment, "and I produced the monster. Are you quite sure that you want me to do it again?"

"No," Tomas mumbled, then immediately contradicted himself, "I mean, yes. Captain, you told us that it wouldn't hurt any member of the crew. If it is too fearful, I'll tell myself that the wine is affecting my mind and I will simply disbelieve in its existence."

The captain laughed quietly and said, "It will not hurt you, drunk or sober. But your mind is working clearly and with the logic of a philosopher, so it may be that you are still too sober. Have some more of Brian's wine, look at the monster and then, Tomas my friend, we must take off your leg. Healer?"

Sinead nodded and reached up to the lanterns hanging from the low roof beams, turning down the wicks of all but one which she lowered on its chain to chest height before closing all except one of its windows. A single square of yellow light shone on the cabin's aft wall in clear sight of everyone. She placed her hands between the light and the wall.

"When I was very young," she said. "My father showed me how to make shadow pictures…" her hands clasped together in different ways as she demonstrated, "… of a dog, like this, or a duck or my favorite, a butterfly that moved its wings. Later I became more imaginative and made pictures of fearful demons and flying monsters including this one. of which, to humor me, my father pretended to be afraid. Last night this same one appeared briefly in giant size, filling the entire expanse of the foresail which rippled and bellied in a wind which made the monster's body move with great realism. The boarders glimpsed it for the few moments that Ma'el's light was shining and thought that we had conjured up a terrible, winged demon. Unlike my father they were not pretending to be afraid of it and so they ran back to their boats."

For a moment Tomas stared wide-eyed at the dark picture and the illuminated hands that were making it, then he swore and began to laugh. "It frightens me, a little, even when I know what it is." he said, and looked into her face for a moment before he went on. "Thank you, healer, for the most hilarious and outrageous joke I have ever heard, as well as for everything else you are trying to do for me. I am ready."

Declan was to remember the sights and sounds of that night for the remainder of his life, and they were to trouble his sleep for many weeks to come. Tomas had screamed throughout, stopping only to breathe, and Declan had not blamed him because in the same position he would have been doing the same.

Despite the padded cord that had been twist-tightened around the upper leg to reduce the flow of blood, after the first deep, circular cut was made to the depth of the bone there was a frightening amount of it oozing and pumping sluggishly onto the captain's table. It was even worse when Sinead, her words calm but her face the palest he had ever seen on a living person, made two more deep vertical cuts at the edge of the original one and asked him to hold the resulting flaps of muscle and bleeding flesh backward and away from the bone while she used the saw. The job had fallen to him because, in spite of the tight ropes encircling his body, both the captain and Brian had been needed to hold the struggling Tomas still. As she worked Sinead had explained that the bone had to be cut short so that a flap of muscle and flesh could be folded over the end of it to form, if the work was successful, a fleshy pad that would support a wooden leg.

But then she had asked him to hold tightly a slippery, pulsing artery between two tightly pressed fingertips and a thumb while she tied off the end with a length of poteen-soaked catgut while explaining, as if he had been some kind of high druid examiner of healers, or perhaps her dead father, that the ends of the knot were being left long so that they would project beyond the wound and be withdrawn when healing was complete.

She had done many other intricate and bloody things before he had been asked to hold the edges of the fleshy flaps together while she joined them together with more cleansed catgut except for a small slit containing a short length of quill which, she had said, would allow bad blood and pus to flow away so that the wound, if the fates willed it, would not go bad on the inside. By the time that had been done and the stump bound firmly in washed rags, Tomas was quiet again. She had given Declan a small, serious smile, then thanked everyone and told them that their faces were paler than the patient's and that they should all sit down for a while.