The Dragon on The Border

by Gordon R. Dickson

  His estimate was remarkably correct. The only surprising thing to Jim came from the fact that he had imagined Liseth and Snorrl, following the tops of the cliffs, would find it slower going than they. But evidently he had been wrong. When they came at last to the level stretch of the ground Liseth and Snorrl were already there waiting for them.

  Curiously, the falcon was no longer on the wrist of Liseth's heavy leather riding glove.

  Giles had evidently remarked this also.

  "What did you do with Greywings?" he demanded when they reached his sister. "Send her back to the castle? There's no one back there she can talk to, or who'd understand her if she does. They won't know whether she simply couldn't find us or… what."

  Liseth shook her head.

  "Greywings told me something, on our way back here," she said. "Ranging above the forest, high up—you know how peregrines are—"

  Jim remembered from his reading that the peregrine was indeed a high-flying bird. Greywings could very probably have been cruising at two thousand feet or better, looking for them.

  "—Greywings caught sight of a laidly Worm. There's never been any such creature around here. In fact, there've been nothing more than old stories about such; I sent her up to see if she could find it again and come back to tell me where it is."

  They had been continuing to ride on together as Liseth had been talking. Jim suddenly drew back on the reins of his horse, bringing it to a stop; and the others automatically stopped with him.

  "Wait," said Jim, in answer to their inquiring faces. "We'd better stay here, hadn't we? So she can find us again?"

  "Greywings can find us anywhere," she said. "Stop to think of it, m'Lord. She flies so high she can see miles in every direction; and if even a hare moves below her, she can swoop on it—although it's true that being a peregrine, and trained, she likes to take her prey in the air. Even if we reach the castle before she comes back looking for us, she'll follow us there and fly in through the open window to her regular perch."

  "You're sure?" said Jim doubtfully as they started their horses up again.

  "I? Yes, I'm very sure," said Liseth. "Your ordinary falconer may occasionally lose his bird to the wild. But Greywings and all the other birds and animals I know are like brothers and sisters to me. She'll come back to the castle if we've reached it before she does. I can talk to her then, if there's been no chance for it before."

  "She's right, James," said Giles. "Because of that 'talking' there seems to be a special bond between her and them."

  "All right, then," said Jim.

  "We'd best trot," said Liseth, "now we're out of the rocks and it's safe to risk the horses' legs on open land."

  They urged their horses to the faster gait, therefore, and headed for the castle.

  It was a shorter distance going back than Jim would have guessed from the ride out. Possibly they had come back from a different angle and the distance itself this time was less. It was only a matter of about fifteen minutes before they were in the courtyard of the castle and dismounting. As he stepped out of his saddle onto the ground, Jim himself noticed Brian getting down. Brian staggered a bit as he got out of the saddle and kept his grip on the saddle horn. The face that Jim saw in side view was now white as a sheet.

  Jim opened his mouth to ask Brian about himself; but Liseth was quicker, both in getting out of the saddle and in speaking. In fact, she was already up to Brian and putting her arm around him by the time she spoke.

  "Sir Brian!" she said. "Have you been hurt? Were you wounded in the fight back there?"

  "I have indeed, it seems, had some small touch," said Brian, in a thin voice, and collapsed on the ground.

  "Help me!" cried Liseth, trying to lift Brian from the ground and failing, what with the man's weight and armor. "We must get him to bed and bleed him immediately!"

  "No!" snapped Jim. "No bleeding. Carry him gently up to the room where we've been staying!" He was already taking a bundle from behind the saddle of his horse.

  Giles and Dafydd had already reached Brian and picked him up. A second later they were being helped by the men from the stables who had been coming to take care of the horses. With four of them together supporting him, they carried Brian into the castle. Jim paused to turn to Liseth.

  "Forgive me," he said, "but in this case I can make sure of healing him, more so than anyone else."

  "Of course, with your magic!" she said. "But, m'Lord—hurry! I'm afraid his wound has been made worse by climbing that cliff and the ride back here!"

  "That's what I'm afraid of, too!" said Jim grimly, and followed the others into the castle.

  Up in the room that had been assigned to them, with Brian on the bed, they began to strip him of his armor and found that underneath it, his doublet was soaked heavy with blood.

  "Lift him!" barked Jim. He had not intended to sound so autocratic; but his fear for Brian urged him on and, happily, all those around him took without question the fact that he should be giving commands.

  Giles and Dafydd, with the help of a couple of the stablemen, lifted Brian clear of the bed, one man even supporting his head. Jim jerked the covers off the bed and literally threw them into the arms of Liseth.

  "Take these to the kitchen and boil them; then dry them as soon as possible."

  "At once, m'Lord!" said Liseth; and, with the bed clothes in her arms, literally ran out of the room.

  Meanwhile, Jim was getting off his own armor to give himself freedom of movement. He turned to the bundle he had carried upstairs with him, unwrapped its outer cover of rough, canvaslike cloth, stiffened with wax, to reveal his own rain cloak. He spread this on the boards of the bed.

  "Now, put him down on the cloak," Jim said. "That's right. Fine. Now we get the rest of his clothes off, and I want them taken to the kitchen too, to be boiled—no, wait!" he said, as Dafydd began to gather up the clothes that were being stripped from Brian's body. Brian would not thank him if some of his garments had shrunk to half size or looked as if they would never lose their wrinkles again. Cloth in the here and now was not the same thing as the wash-and-wear fabrics of his own world. "On second thought, hang them on something spread out in front of the kitchen fireplace, instead. Make sure all the fleas and lice are driven out of them."

  He looked at Dafydd and Giles.

  "Will one of you see to that?" he said.

  "I will!" said Giles quickly. "I know which of the people in the kitchen can be trusted to watch the clothes as they hang, so that they don't scorch."

  He picked up the last of Brian's clothes and followed his sister out of the room, also at a run. Jim found himself for once blessing the fact that errands to which you were ordered by anyone of superior rank, even if you were an Earl but the one who gave the order was a King, meant that you ran and did it, not merely walked to get it done. It was something that had grated on him when he at first had become acquainted with it in this world. But at the moment he appreciated its advantages.

  Brian was now laid out naked upon the cloak. The cloak, Jim knew, had neither lice nor fleas in it and had been perfectly clean when it had been prepared for the journey under Angie's direction back at Castle Malencontri. Jim had kept it that way.

  But lying on the cloak did not make the boards much softer. However, Brian was still unconscious and should not feel them.

  There was no telling how much blood he had lost—except that it was a lot. Jim turned with an order for Dafydd; and then saw that by this time both Herrac and his two oldest sons were in the chamber.

  "There is another thing yet to be done," he said to them. "If you, m'Lord Herrac, or someone at your direction can do it, I will appreciate it. I want someone to go to the kitchen and find me at least a dozen slices of moldy bread. It must not be rye, but any other kind of bread will be fine, provided it has on it a bluish-gray mold that looks rather fuzzy. It's the mold I want, not the bread, but bring the slices up to me in the cleanest cloth that the kitchen can give you. And I do mean cleanest!"

/>   "Alan!" said Herrac, without even looking at his oldest son. Alan vanished through the door with the same speed that the other members of the family had shown.

  Meanwhile, Jim had found and was examining the wound. Happily, in spite of Brian's heavy loss of blood, it did not look serious, provided infection could be avoided. Some sharp weapon had penetrated his armor and clothing and slid slantwise up his side, opening a long shallow slash from the bottom of his ribs, almost to his armpit. The wound was still bleeding, and Jim turned back to the contents of his bundle to take out a thick rectangle that seemed to be made of wax.

  But the wax was only a covering. As he broke the bundle open, it showed a piece of cloth about two by three feet in diameter, thick and of soft, fleecy material. This Angie had given Jim to take along for his own use in case he should be wounded. Angie herself had seen it sterilized and dried under conditions that would not let it pick up infections and then sealed it herself in its wax covering, to keep it that way.

  Jim folded the cloth into one long, thick strip. Gently, he pressed this strip against the wound, which was still bleeding, and held it close to Brian's body with one hand. He turned to Dafydd.

  "Hold it there, firmly in place," he told the bowman; and Dafydd wordlessly obeyed.

  With both hands once more free, Jim turned to the bundle again and took out several more cloths—these in long strips. With these he bound the pad Dafydd was holding on the wound, in place around Brian's torso. He fastened them tightly; and, although the cloth was soon soaked through with blood from the seepage of the wound, the bleeding did not seem to penetrate enough to cause Brian to lose more blood beyond the bandage.

  Jim was not happy about using his only guaranteed clean piece of cloth before the wound had been washed out and the mold from the bread put on it. But the wound was still bleeding; and Jim's limited knowledge of first aid from his twentieth-century background did not suggest to him any pressure points on Brian's body that would stop bleeding on such a long, open slash.

  He woke suddenly to the fact that the room was far from warm and Brian was lying there naked, in danger from the wound, and likely to be in danger from the cold that might give rise to an infection, that could in turn become pneumonia.

  He felt up against a brick wall. He simply had no more clean cloths—and then his mind cleared and began to work properly.

  Of course he had more clean cloths. Or at least, cloths that were more clean than anything the castle was likely to produce. He began stripping off his own clothes and piling them over Brian's unconscious body.

  At last, down to his medieval drawers and shirt, he looked up from a Brian who was at last fairly well covered; to find that he was alone in the room with Herrac de Mer and Dafydd.

  "I was not certain, m'Lord," said Herrac, "but I assumed that you would rather work your healing magic with as few watching as possible. Is there anything more that I or any of my people or family can do for you?"

  "If there was some way of heating this room…" Jim found himself saying.

  "But of course," answered Herrac. "A fire-pot can be brought in. Also we can fill and light the cresset on the wall, which will give you not only light but heat as well. Shall I order it done?"

  "Yes," said Jim—and then suddenly thought of the problems of having smoke build up in the relatively small room. "Or perhaps, no. If we do that it'll soon be so smoky in here it will be difficult for me to work my—er—magic."

  Herrac, who had already half turned toward the doorway, turned back again.

  "It's true," he said, "that since this was our bridal chamber and bedroom, my dear wife and I—I had the windows glassed-in, hard and expensive as the glass was to come by. But because we had somewhat of the same problem, with the cresset burning and a fire-pot in the room on cold winter mornings, I had a vent made high in the wall to let the smoke out."

  He walked over to the outer wall of the room, the one with the windows, and reached up to what Jim now recognized as a sort of small, iron door with a chain depending from it. He pulled this downward and the small door, obviously hinged at the bottom, swung out at an angle from that hinge at about forty-five degrees, leaving an opening through the tower wall to the air outside.

  "But you won't want that opened until the fire-pot is here and the cresset alight, I would think," he said, looking at Jim.

  "That's right, m'Lord," said Jim with a great sense of relief. "It was very wise and thoughtful of you to so arrange. Nothing could be better for a wounded man's chamber. Could you then order in the fire-pot and the cresset material so that it too may be set alight?"

  Herrac nodded and, closing the little door, turned back to the room once more.

  "Alan!" he said, hardly raising his voice, but which because of the family's vocal penetration, seemed to be capable of going right through the stone wall itself.

  There was no answer. Herrac muttered something which was most likely a curse.

  "Ho!" he shouted, raising his voice to its full formidable volume. "Whosoever is within hearing, come!"

  He waited a moment, but there was no sound of an answer.

  "I'll go order the servants myself," he said grimly. "Wait me. I'll be right back."

  He disappeared through the doorway.

  "My Lord," said Dafydd almost formally, "it is not for me to make suggestions to a Mage at work. But Brian's eyelids have fluttered twice now. He will be waking from his swoon shortly; and I was taught by my grandmother that one with great loss of blood should drink as much liquid as possible. Should I get some wine for Brian?"

  "Not wine," said Jim hastily. "Water—no, not the local water, either. Small beer and plenty of it."

  "It is in my mind," said Dafydd diffidently, "that Brian would prefer wine."

  "He can prefer what the hell he likes!" Jim found himself snapping. "Small beer!"

  "Yes, m'Lord," said Dafydd; and went.

  Left alone with Brian, Jim saw his friend's eyelids flutter for what must be the third time. He hastily checked the tight-bound strip of cloth along the wound. It was still damp, but no more blood seemed to be coming through it. The next thing to do should probably be done as quickly as possible, even at the risk of starting up some of the bleeding again.

  There were no germicides available in this fourteenth century any more than there had been in that of his own world—except for one that had been common knowledge going back to time immemorial.

  This was that human urine both washed out a wound and seemed to have the effect of helping it heal without infection. Jim was just as glad to be alone for this process. Actually the ammonia and other elements in the urine were anti-bacterial.

  But it was a good thing Brian was unconscious, Jim told himself. The ferocious burning of the urine on the open wound would have been hard to take.

  He stripped off what lower body armor Brian still had on, and loosened the leather cord running through the points of his hose. Only then did he venture to go back and untie the knots holding the cloth strips binding the cloth on the wound tightly to Brian's chest. He lifted the cloth, loose at last, very gently, and was rewarded by seeing that while bleeding immediately started, it was not heavy bleeding at all. Once more, it was only a seepage of blood from all the surface of the wound.

  Hastily he urinated in the wound itself; as concerned with washing it out as he was with protecting it. This additional assault caused the wound to bleed more heavily; and he hastily, with his hose now down around his ankles, replaced the folded cloth in the wound itself, and tightly relied the binding strips of cloth around Brian's body to hold it firm. Then he mopped up the excess liquid from the floor, using some extra bedding that had been supplied to the room.

  Happily, once again the bandage stopped any flow of blood from beyond its own soaked fabric.

  He barely had his hose back on and his points retied when Alan, Herrac's oldest son, reappeared with a shallow pan heaped with chunks of moldy bread. For the most part, Jim thought as he sorted through them, they
seemed to be pieces off one or more loaves that people had started to eat and then left unfinished, for some reason or another. In spite of what he had said, there were some dark slices of rye bread among the other pieces. But most of it was apparently made from millet or something like that, because it was of a much lighter color.

  More importantly, the mold was there. The mold that—if this world went on to have a twentieth century as Jim's world had—would eventually have the effective components of the mold separated out and labeled penicillin.

  In this case, Jim had little choice but to use the mold just as it was. As he had described it to Herrac and Alan, it was a lightly tinged blue gray that sprouted rather fuzzily from the surface of the overage bread here and there in clumps.

  Jim carefully scraped all the mold off onto a single large chunk of the bread that was relatively flat—as if someone had actually made an effort to cut a slice from the loaf and almost managed it.

  Then, with the help of Alan this time, he once more loosened the straps, took the folded cloth from the wound and, with his fingers, spread the mold within the cut itself. Blood welled from the face of the wound at his touch, threatening to wash the mold back out. But he got most of it in, and the blood-soaked pad back in place, hastily enough so that he felt sure a fair amount of mold was still on the wound.

  "M'Lord?" said Alan, almost timidly, when they were finished, looking across Brian's recumbent body at Jim. "If you don't need me any more, may I go now, then? Father is in a rage at having no one close when he needed them. He has threatened to hang some of the servants as a lesson to the others."

  "He mustn't do that!" said Jim instinctively.

  "He will not," said Alan. "At least, I think not. But it will do no harm if the rest of the family is there to help to take his anger out on; since he will not hang us, of course; and so he may return to his usual temper and the servants be safe."

  "By all means," said Jim, "go—go as quickly as you can."

  Alan ran out of the room.

  There was a husky noise from Brian's throat, and Jim looked to see that the other had his eyes now wide open and was trying to say something, although this seemed a little difficult.