Gladiators Of Hapanu

Chapter 10

Swebon's canoe was the last one in line as the raiders withdrew, but Blade saw no sign of pursuit. The whole area was certainly alarmed and alert, since arrows were fired from the banks several times. Only two men in the canoes were hit, neither of them seriously. By mid-afternoon the raiders were nearly out of Yal territory.

They still kept on going after that, but more slowly, with only half the paddlers in each canoe at work. The rest drank water, ate dried fruit and seed cakes, and tended the wounded. Fractures were splinted, sprains were bandaged with dampened cloths, and men with head injuries got compresses of wet leaves. Minor wounds like Blade's were left entirely alone. More serious wounds had wads of leaves stuffed into them. The results looked ghastly, and Blade was very happy his own wound was so light. The seriously wounded men were doomed to agonizing pain at the very least, and possibly to fatal infections from bacteria carried into the wounds by the leaves.

By late afternoon they'd reached the marsh where the Shield of Life had been prepared. By the time Swebon's canoe reached the patch of dry land deep inside it, the lead canoes were already pulled up on the bank and their men were ashore. The priests were unloading iron pots and the gourds filled with the Shield of Life. Warriors scurried about, bringing moss and twigs, cutting up fallen logs, and clearing spaces for fires.

When the fires were blazing nicely, the iron pots were filled with water and put on to heat. «Now begins the healing of wounds with the Shield of Life,» said Swebon. «You may ask to be first among those healed, for what you have done this day and on other days.»

«Thank you for the honor,» said Blade. «But I'll wait. There are many others with worse wounds than mine.» This was true, and apart from that, the more Blade learned about the Shield of Life before it was applied to him, the happier he'd be.

«So be it,» said Swebon. He signaled to the priests, who picked up a pot and two gourds and went over to a wounded man lying at the base of a tree. He had a long spear gash in his leg, running almost from hip to knee, and was nearly unconscious from the pain and loss of blood. One of the captive women sat by him, fanning the insects away from his face. In the twilight Blade didn't recognize her until he stepped closer, then saw it was Meera. She looked up at him and smiled.

«The Fak'si will now be my people. It is a woman's duty to care for the warriors of her people. Is this not so?»

«Yes.» That attitude did credit to both Meera's cool head and her warm heart. Blade wondered if she'd be feeling so charitable if she'd fallen into Guno's hands instead of his.

Meera rose and backed away as Swebon and the priests approached the wounded man. First they poured hot water over the blood-caked leaves until they were soft, then picked them all out of the wound. Mercifully the man was so nearly unconscious that he hardly seemed to feel what must have been agony as the leaves came out.

When the leaves were all out, the priests went on pouring water over the wound, washing away all the caked and clotted blood until the wound was bleeding freely again. For a moment Blade wondered if the poor man was going to bleed to death before the Shield of Life could do anything for him. Then the first priest opened a gourd and poured the Shield of Life out onto the wound. Almost as it struck the raw flesh, it started to congeal. The second priest worked it vigorously with his fingers to spread it all over the wound. Within a minute the wound was completely covered by a glazed layer of the Shield of Life, looking vaguely like gray plastic. It smelled as ghastly as ever, but at least Blade knew now he wasn't going to have to drink it.

The wounded man seemed to relax as the Shield of Life hardened over his wound. His breathing slowed and became more regular, and his eyes drifted shut. Instead of tossing half-conscious in a red haze of pain, he now seemed to be sleeping naturally. Meera came back, moistened a rag, and mopped the sweat off the man's face and the blood off his lips where he'd bitten them.

The priests did the same thing with each wounded man-clean the wound, pour on the Shield of Life, and make sure it completely covered the wound by the time it hardened. With each man the effect was the same-a calming, a soothing, an apparent easing of their pain. One man had the Shield of Life poured on a maimed hand and recovered so quickly that he grabbed one of the captive women with his good hand and tried to pull her down to the ground beside him.

Swebon laughed at that and lifted the woman to her feet. «Enough, Fror,» he said. «We Shield your life, not your manhood. Save your strength until you can do this woman some justice. Or would you have her believe that the Fak'si are less than men?» Fror smiled and let Swebon lead the woman away.

It was nearly dark by the time the priests finished with the last of the seriously wounded. By then several more fires were blazing merrily, and fish were broiling on spits over them. Fat hissed cheerfully as it dropped into the flames.

Blade lay down and let Swebon and the priests go to work on him. The hot water stung as it flowed into the wound, washing away the clotted blood. Then the Shield of Life came down on his flesh, and it was as if a cool, soothing oil was touching every part of the wound. The touch was so gentle that Blade's senses barely registered it, but under that touch all the pain vanished as completely as if he'd never been wounded. Blade felt a faint prickling on his skin as the Shield of Life began to dry, but nothing else. The most advanced Home Dimension anesthetics couldn't have done a better job.

Of course killing the pain of his wound wasn't the same as curing it, but he was willing to take his chances. The wound had been at least partly disinfected, and the hardened Shield of Life seemed to be sealing it as well as any bandage. Meanwhile he was getting sleepy, and he was incredibly thirsty.

He lay back, and was vaguely aware of Swebon calling for the sentries to take their positions. Meera appeared suddenly out of the darkness and held a gourd of cool water to his mouth. He drank until the gourd was empty, but satisfying his thirst didn't clear his head. It only seemed to make him sleepier. He felt slim, muscular limbs against his and soft hair brushing his cheek, then he felt nothing at all.

They were on the move again the next morning, as soon as there was enough light to make out the channel back to the main river. «It would be best to stay here another two days,» said Swebon. «The Shield of Life is a great blessing, but the Forest Spirit asks a price for that blessing.

«However, we can do only the next best thing. We have struck the Yal a mighty blow and they will be in a mighty rage. To wait here two more days would be as foolish as throwing a stone into a hive of wild bees and standing by, waiting for them to swarm out.»

Blade saw what Swebon meant by the «price for that blessing» before they'd been on the river an hour. One by one, all the wounded who'd received the Shield of Life became feverish. How feverish they became depended on how badly they'd been wounded. Those with light wounds like Blade's merely became uncomfortable-confused, tired, and continuously thirsty. Those who'd been seriously wounded burned with fever, and many of them became delirious. One man went into convulsions and died just before noon. Swebon, Tuk, and the priests said the death rites for him and his body was slipped overboard as the raiders paddled on.

Blade spent the day paddling as well as he could with one shoulder half immobilized and the rest of his body hot and aching with fever. Meera was always on hand with drinking water, except when she was needed to pour water over one of the more seriously ill men. She worked hard, and by the end of the day Blade wasn't the only man who looked at her with respect and even affection as she moved up and down the canoe. She was still as naked as a baby, but didn't seem to care.

By the time they made camp that night, Blade and the others lightly wounded found their fevers were passing off. The more seriously wounded were slower to recover. They tossed and turned and moaned all night, and a second man went into convulsions. Swebon and the priests let Meera take charge of him.

«The Forest Spirit has blessed her greatly,» said Swebon. «Young as she is, she knows as much of caring of the wounded as any of our priests or women. She also seems not to care whether the man before her is Yal or Fak'si. That gift is even more rare than the skills of healing.»

Swebon shook his head. «I no longer can doubt it. That both you and Meera have come to the Fak'si at this time-it is a sign. I think it is a sign of some great change coming to the Fak'si. I only hope it is a good change.»

Blade nodded. «I do not know much of signs and omens. But I know I have found a home among the Fak'si, a friend in you, and a strong woman in Meera. This says to me that things will change for the better.»

Blade was quite sincere in hoping that all the changes coming to the Fak'si and the Forest People would be for the good. They had enough problems already. He was also glad to see Swebon in a mood to look for omens and expect changes. That should make him more open-minded about any new ideas Blade might offer. Those ideas were now beginning to take a definite shape in Blade's mind.

Thanks largely to Meera's nursing, the convulsing man didn't die. His fever broke just before dawn, and so did all the other fevers, both high and low. The seriously wounded were sleeping like exhausted children when the able-bodied and the lightly wounded loaded them into the canoes for the day's journey. They slept most of the day, and only awoke when they were being carried out of the canoes into the night's camp.

When they did wake up, they were clear-headed, but weak as kittens and ravenously hungry. The hunters and fishermen were kept busy catching dinner, and the cooks kept even busier preparing it. Blade found that his own appetite was returning. He also found that the Shield of Life over his shoulder was beginning to prickle and itch. The wound itself no longer hurt at all, but the itching rapidly became uncomfortable, then positively maddening. From the strained expressions of the other wounded, Blade guessed they were all having the same trouble. He decided to leave the Shield alone. He still had his doubts about Fak'si medicine, but interfering with a wound that seemed to be healing fairly well was never a good idea, no matter how weird the treatment you'd received for it.

Because of the wounded and the prisoners, the raiders returned home by a different route than they'd used coming out. This one was considerably longer, but didn't involve any overland portage. It did involve passing along a stretch of river swarming with Horned Ones, but Blade was able to help out there. He showed how to make and use the jawbracers. By the time they reached the dangerous stretch, there were half a dozen carefully-made jaw-bracers in each canoe. Blade's status among the Fak'si went up another notch.

Meanwhile all the wounds were healing with amazing speed and practically without complications. Within five days Blade's Shield of Life turned from gray to brown and started cracking and peeling around the edges. One of the priests examined it and decided the time had come to remove it.

With a knife he picked away most of the dried Shield, then washed away the rest.

The wound underneath was going to leave a scar, but that didn't worry Blade. He already had more than his fair share of scars, picked up in one Dimension or another. What impressed him was that the wound was almost completely healed, with no sign of infection.

This wasn't an isolated miracle, either. One by one over the next few days the Shields of Life came off the wounds, and one by one all the wounds appeared as clean and well-healed as Blade's. By the time the raiders returned home, eleven days after the raid, only three men were still wearing their Shields.

Blade still found it hard to believe, but after a while he thought he understood what happened with the Shield of Life. The combination of kohkol sap and uglyfish gland made a powerful compound with several different effects on the human body. First, it acted as an anaesthetic, numbing damaged nerve tissues. Second, it acted as a purely natural disinfectant by stimulating the body's own defense mechanisms-specifically, stimulating the production of white blood cells. That accounted for the absence of infections, at the inevitable price of the fever as the white blood cells multiplied and fought their battle. Finally, the Shield of Life seemed to stimulate cell growth in general, and therefore the regeneration of damaged tissue. That explained the rapid healing of all the wounds, with a minimum of scar tissue.

In short, the Shield of Life was nearly the ultimate treatment for any sort of wound. No wonder the Forest People had been able to indulge in their tribal wars for so long with so little damage! Not only did they keep the bloodshed down, they had a reliable method of dealing with many of the wounds that did happen.

When Blade realized what the Shield of Life really was, he would have made any sort of bargain at all to be sure of getting a large sample back to Home Dimension. With a gourdful to analyze, the biochemists there should be able to synthesize it. After that many things could happen, most of them good.

He was also going to be able to pay the Forest People for their gift of the Shield of Life. There'd been some sleepless nights in the riverside camps, and during those nights he'd finally realized what the Forest People needed to fight the Sons of Hapanu and the Treemen. He'd also figured out how to make the weapons, although he'd need to make some private experiments before he could be absolutely sure. He'd have to start by talking to Swebon, who should be in a mood to listen. Then he'd go to work-and see what happened.