by John Ringo
“And, Lord knows, we’ve got wood,” Herzer said, shaking his head ruefully.
“Augustus, this is Herzer Herrick and… Hsu Shilan. They’re in one of the apprenticeship programs. Herzer, Shilan, Augustus Scharpf. He’s one of the reenactors who’s started an industry since the Fall, in his case, tanning. You’ll probably be working with him sometime soon.”
“And you’ve been cutting wood, have you?” Augustus asked, peering at them dubiously. He seemed to like what he saw for after a moment he nodded at them approvingly. “It’s good that you’ve gotten experience in the woods, you’ll be needing it!”
“Why?” Shilan asked. “I mean, we don’t have any idea what we’re going to be doing. I might never go into the woods again. I understand most people who were in period didn’t.”
“Well, there’s period and period,” Augustus said. “We’re more early industrial pioneer than High Middle Ages. And I meant for the Great Hunt, lassie.”
“The Great Hunt?” Herzer asked.
“Gee, ye hadn’t heard,” Augustus replied with a wink. “It’ll be grand bonny fun.”
Herzer contemplated Augustus’ appearing and disappearing brogue for a moment the shrugged. “Anyone going to tell us what it is?”
“My father’s brilliant idea to give Mother and me more work,” Rachel replied.
“Ah, you know better than that, lassie,” Augustus corrected. “T’was not Edmund, t’was Myron that had the idea.”
“Point,” Rachel admitted. “Okay, Myron’s great idea to give us more work!”
“I said before that we had no leather,” the tanner said, ignoring the change. “The point is we’ve few enough slaughter animals as it is; the hunters have been bringing some in, but not enough. We need meat, bones, hooves, everything that you get from slaughter animals. And skin of course.
“Okay,” he said, splashing water on his face and grimacing. “I was a huckster before the Fall, one of the people who could make things to sell at the Faire. I made leather goods, custom order, all very nice, hand stitched and tooled. A hobby, really, but they were all hobbies, weren’t they, I pick up a few energy credits, who cares?” he added with a grimace. “But the point is, I can go from a raw skin to tooled leather. If I’ve got the skins! Do you know what the hunters brought in all of last week?”
“No,” Herzer said, fascinated by the diatribe.
“Two feral cattle, we’re eating them now, six boar, five deer, a mess of furs, three turkeys and an emu. That’s not enough meat for three thousand people and it’s definitely not enough leather.”
“Not to mention the other things,” Shilan added with a smile.
“Ack! Aye!” Augustus replied, winking at her. “The hooves for the glue! The bones for the tools and the fertilizer! And a fine mess of brawn for a pretty lady?”
“Brawn?” Shilan asked.
“Pig brains,” Herzer replied without thinking. “Usually served in gravy.”
“Yuck!”
“So we need more animals,” Herzer said. “The Great Hunt.”
“Yes, and…” Rachel replied. “There are people who are already lining up to be farmers. One thing that makes farming easier is if you’ve got animals as part of your farm. There are ferals in the woods so the idea is to gather some of those at the same time.”
“And as my former…” Herzer paused for a moment. “Lady-friend pointed out there are also tigers in the woods.”
“Aye!” Augustus said, winking madly. “Un thet’s were it sta’ts to get interestin’!”
“Ooo,” Shilan said. “Now I begin to understand the comment about work for the doctors.”
“Oh forget the tigers,” Rachel shrugged, sitting up so her breasts were just under the water. Herzer tried very hard not to notice the interesting ripple effect from the shrug. “They’re out there, but there are feral pigs all over the place.
“Pigs?” Shilan asked, wrinkling her brow. “What’s the problem with pigs?”
“Oh, sure,” Rachel said acidly. “Squeak, squeak, see the funny little pig, ah-hah-hah. Pretty and pink and fluffy. Wait ’til you see these things.”
“Oh, I haven’t seen them but I’ve heard of them,” Herzer laughed. “Four hundred kilos of bristle and tusk. This is gonna be so much fun. When are they planning this? I think I’m going to have a broken leg.”
“If you’ve got a broken leg, they put you on skinning duty,” Rachel said.
“Broken arm?”
“Carrying buckets of slop.”
“Agh! I’ve seen videos of a skinning out. No thank you. Yuck!”
“You should have run away with your lady friend,” Rachel said.
“Which one?” Shilan asked with a malicious grin.
“Begorum boy!” Augustus cried. “How many do you have?”
Herzer just groaned and slid down until his head was under the water.
* * *
Daneh looked up from the sweating young man on the cot and nodded at Edmund and the woman accompanying him. Daneh hadn’t seen this particular reenactor before but she knew the type of old. The woman was about twenty kilos overweight, which with the current conditions and medical conditions before the Fall had required conscious work, and was loaded down with silver jewelry. Most of it consisted of zodiac signs or other occult objects and the rest consisted of crystals.
“Daneh, this is Sharron, she’s a herbalist,” Edmund said.
“I don’t think this is the time, Edmund,” Daneh said sharply, lifting up a bandage from the young man’s arm and wincing at the condition of the wound underneath. The young man had run afoul of an axe-head and the wound had almost immediately started to fester; modern human immune systems were strong but the skin was one of the hardest areas for the systems to access. Now the infected area had gone green-brown with gangrene and if she didn’t figure out some way to stop the spread it was going to kill him. Quick.
“Gangrene,” the woman said, leaning forward and sniffing with a disgusted shake of her head. “There’s naught an herb on earth that can cure that, you need sulfanomide or one of the cillins.”
Daneh turned and looked at the woman sharply at which the herbalist gave a grin. “Didn’t expect me to be dredging up those terms, did you doctor? But penicillin’s naught but a mold and sulfanomide, well that’s just tar that’s been worked over, hey?”
“Do you have any?” Daneh asked.
“No, but I just got here,” the herbalist said with a nod. “And I don’t think either would work here. Have you tried debriding?”
“Yes, but it’s getting ahead of us,” she said, waving at a fly. The damned things got in no matter what you did and they had an unpleasant tendency to land on open wounds.
“Leave it,” Edmund said suddenly, as she waved at another that was trying to land on the mangled flesh.
“What?” both of the women asked, then looked at each other sheepishly.
“Let’s take this outside,” Edmund said, gesturing to the end of the infirmary.
It wasn’t much of an infirmary, just an open bay with some cots and a “surgery” on one end that mostly consisted of a well-scrubbed table and some tools that made her think more of the inquisition than medicine. But it was getting better. And if this “herbalist” knew what she was doing they might get better still. Daneh was well aware that her knowledge of medicines, how they were made or administered, was barely theoretical. But between them, if the woman really knew anything, they might make one decent preindustrial doctor. She waved the fly away against his protestations and laid a fresh bandage on the wound, then followed Edmund out.
“What about flies is good, Edmund?” she snapped as they got outside. “They carry every imaginable sort of filth!”
“Yes, they do,” he said. “And they lay eggs in rotting flesh which turn into maggots. And what do maggots eat?”
Daneh stopped and thought for a moment then shook her head. “You want me to let maggots eat his flesh?!”
“Dead flesh, yes,” E
dmund said uncomfortably. “Look, I know it sounds crazy. And, really, they’re supposed to be raised maggots, you raise them on clean dead flesh, meat. But we don’t have time for that, do we?”
“No,” Daneh said simply. “We’re going to lose him if we don’t stop it. The traditional response is high amputation to get ahead of the infection.”
“Can you make any of the stuff you were talking about, fast?” Edmund asked Sharron.
“No,” she replied. “I have to find penicillin mold, out of… millions of molds. I need dishes to make cultures. You can often find… tetracycline molds in old graves, but we don’t have any of those either.”
“Graveyard dirt?” Edmund said then shook his head. “The point is, maggots do work. We just have to worry about secondary infections.”
“What about…” Sharron said, creasing her brow. “What about finding a handful in… something and washing them?”
“Ugh!” Daneh replied. “I think I’d rather let the flies land.”
“Gangrene is an anaerobic infection anyway,” Edmund said. “Keeping the wound open would help more than hurt, I think.”
“Is there any way to… get more oxygen to it?” Sharron asked.
“Not short of a hyperbaric chamber,” Daneh replied. “Or some way to separate out oxygen, which is a high-pressure, supercold method. I’m not even sure it would get past the pressure protocols.”
“Sheida?” Edmund asked.
“She’s refused to give up any power so far,” Daneh said exasperatedly. “She has enough to go gallivanting all over, but none for medicine!”
Edmund shook his head at her in a meaningful way then sighed. “I think the maggots are the only choice.”
“That and some minor bacteriofacients I can come up with,” Sharron said. “There are some herbs. I can make up a wash pretty quickly. It won’t be as good as antibiotics but it will help some.”
“Do it,” Daneh said. “Please. And we need to get you a lab set up. Edmund?”
“I’ll see the glassier about getting the appropriate materials,” he grimaced. “He’s gonna love this on top of everything else.”
“Tell him that he might need it soon,” Daneh replied sharply. “That should center his thoughts nicely.”
“Sharron knows other herbs and medicines as well,” Talbot noted, carefully. “Including tansy.”
“Not something I recommend, short of absolute necessity,” the woman interjected. “It’s terribly dangerous from all I’ve heard. But there are others. I have some poppy seeds so as soon as we can get some poppies growing we’ll have opiates. Strong and addicting, but there’s few painkillers that equal it. And then there’s willow bark.”
“That one I know,” Daneh said with a chuckle. “But, really, that’s about as far as I can go. That and cherry bark.”
“I think you two will get on just fine,” Edmund said. “I’ve got…”
“Other things to do,” Daneh said dryly. “That’s okay. See you tonight?”
“Hopefully,” he answered, glumly. “You’re finally back and we never see each other.” With a nod he strode briskly away in the general direction of the town hall.
“Well, you at least get to sleep together,” Sharron said with a sly wink.
“No, we don’t,” Daneh replied.
“But… well…” Sharron stopped with a puzzled frown.
“Leave it,” Daneh said then shook her head. “Let me put it this way, I may be the first candidate to try tansy.”
Sharron looked at her for a moment until she realized the doctor was serious then blanched. “Oh, my Goddess.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The next morning there was quite a row between Cruz and Shilan. The reason Cruz had disappeared were some friendly gents running a dice game. He ended up losing every chit he had and hadn’t even had enough for breakfast. The burgeoning relationship between Cruz and Shilan was most definitely off, in her opinion. And Herzer had to wonder just what he had missed by playing the paladin.
He wasn’t able to find out, though, because Class A-5 was told off immediately to the sawmill. There was a short briefing in which they were solemnly informed that cutting and forming wood was the basis of industry in preindustrial civilization. They were so informed by John Miller, the sawmill manager, who was a somber and unsmiling man. When asked about the source of the wood, and whether it might be the basis of industry he had unsmilingly told them that any idiot could cut wood, but it took a true master to form it.
After a number of warnings about how hands and feet no longer could be regrown if you cut them off, the class was put to work sawing and forming the endless stream of logs that was coming from the surrounding forests. For the first few days all they did was move the logs, roll the logs, position the logs and eventually run them through the band saw. It was again backbreaking work using many muscles that had not been developed while cutting and there was very little time for interaction.
The class stayed in barracks a group of which had been set aside for members of the apprenticeship program who were in and around the town. The barracks were segregated by sex so Herzer was unable to determine if Shilan had actually been interested or if she had just been playing around with him. Or, as was just as likely, playing him off against Cruz. He invited her to the baths one night but she pled a rain check on the basis of extreme fatigue. Given how he was feeling, it could have been an honest answer.
The last two days they were introduced to woodworking tools, including lathing and drilling. There Miller proved that although he didn’t appear to like apprentices too much, he truly loved wood. He was a master at lathing and carving and didn’t laugh at their efforts. He simply commented that he’d been doing it for seventy-five years and couldn’t expect them to master it in one session.
At the end of the week they were paid off and only Mike got a bonus. He had shown a remarkable aptitude for woodworking and Miller had even smiled at one of his efforts. Herzer, on the other hand, could best be described as “inept.” He personally used the term “ham-handed.” When he wanted a deep chip he got small, when he wanted a small chip he got deep and when he tried to plane, he gouged. He and wood simply didn’t get along.
The first day they had been shown around the mill and seen the wooden turbine water wheel, the sprockets, the joins, and he had marveled that Miller and a few other similarly skilled craftsmen had been able to assemble it in a bare two weeks with nothing but hand tools. He didn’t have any particular envy for their mastery, but it was impressive.
As they were being paid off, he touched Shilan’s arm and raised an eyebrow. “Bath?”
“Oh, Herzer…” she said.
He held up a hand to forestall a reply. “It’s okay. I just wanted to know where we were at. Last week you seemed to imply that you wanted something more than just waving in passing.”
“Herzer, I’m kind of tired most evenings,” she said, frowning sadly. “And right now I’m just not ready for any kind of relationship.”
“Cool!” he replied with a nod. “Neither am I.”
“What?!”
“You don’t want just a casual roll in the hay and I don’t particularly want a long-term relationship,” he said with a shrug. “Cruz did, but I don’t. It’s not that I want to play the field, it’s just that I like you as a friend.”
“Oh,” Shilan said.
“I was trying to tell you without hurting your feelings. This makes it a lot easier.”
“Oh.”
“Friends?” he asked, sticking out his hand.
Shilan looked at it for a moment as if confused and then shook it absentmindedly. “Friends.”
“Hey, I plan on going to dinner with Mike and Courtney. Want to come along?”
“Uh, no,” Shilan said. “I’m going to… I’ve got to…”
“Okay,” Herzer said, waving. “See you when I see you. Bye.”
He walked over to where Mike and Courtney were waiting for him.
“So, you
gonna get lucky, again?” Mike asked.
“Nope,” Herzer replied. Now that his back was turned to Shilan he smiled evilly. “I told her I just wanted to be friends.”
Mike turned his own back and grimaced. “Ooo! Score one for guydom!”
Herzer kept walking, forcing Courtney, who had put the boiler on the fire and was busy screwing down the pressure relief valve, to catch up to him.
“You told her that you just want to be friends and you don’t want to be friends?” she asked, furiously.
“No, no, I told her that I want to be friends and I do want to be friends. But I also want to screw her brains out!”
“Yes, yes, YES!” Mike said. “The shoe is on the other toe!”
“Why didn’t you just tell her?” Courtney asked.
“What, and give her the opportunity to play me off against Cruz? That seemed to me to be where she was going. That or dangle me around like a little marionette. I don’t know if that was what she was like before or if it’s from what happened on her trip. But she was trying to play squeaky-toy with me already in the baths. No thank you.”
“Wow, that’s almost as bad as a woman,” Mike said, only to be punched in the shoulder.
“Ah! You strike me to the quick, sirrah!” Herzer replied, grasping at his chest. “Tis not as wide as church door, nor deep as a well. But t’will do, t’will do!”
“You’re both terrible,” Courtney said.
“That’s why you love us, right?” Herzer replied with a smile.
“HERRICK,” a voice called from behind them. Herzer turned around and practically came to attention.
“Ah, Sir… uh… Edm… Mayor Talbot!”
“Rachel tells me that you played games in enhanced reality, specifically the Quest for the Third Throne. True?” Edmund said without preamble. But he did grace Courtney and Mike, who were standing by open-mouthed, with a nod.
“Yes, Sir Edmund!”
“Just yes will do,” Talbot said with a chuckle. “You played it as a paladin. True?”