Passage - Lois McMaster Bujold [28]
Whit and Tanner knelt by Hod, trying unsuccessfully to soothe and still him as he beat his fists on the ground and howled.
Dag unclenched his jaw and said to Mape, “I have some skills in field aid.”
“Let him through,” cried Fawn, at the same moment as Whit called, “Dag, help!” Reluctantly, Mape gave way.
“Fawn, get a fire going, for heat and light,” Dag instructed tersely.
“We’ll need both.”
She skittered off wordlessly. Dag knelt by Hod’s right knee, and let both hands, real and sputtering-ghostly, hover over it. Absent gods, I shouldn’t be attempting this. A quick ground match, to slow the internal bleeding—the joint was already swollen tight against the fabric of Hod’s trousers—to dull the blazing nerves…Dag’s right knee screamed in sympathy. He gritted his teeth and ignored the ground-echo. Hod stopped howling and just gasped, staring up wild-eyed at Dag.
In a few minutes that seemed much longer, the men had Hod laid out on a blanket and his trousers off, an operation he tried to resist and that made him cry some more, though whether from pain or shame Dag was not sure. He apparently owned no underdrawers; Tanner dropped a blanket over his nether parts. All four wagon-lanterns and the new fire, bless Fawn, laid golden light on the unpleasant sight of the ruined joint, bulging, mottled, and already dark with blood beneath the shiny skin. Shards of bone pressed against the skin from the inside, and each of Hod’s shudders threatened to push one through.
“Can you do anything, Lakewalker?” asked Tanner.
“’Course he can!” asserted Whit valiantly. “I’ve seen him mend broken glass!”
“This is bad,” said Dag. “The kneecap’s floating in about six pieces, and one tendon is nearly torn through. This needs a lot more than splinting and rest.” I shouldn’t even be thinking about this without another medicine maker to guard me from groundlock, or worse. There’s good reasons they work in pairs. Forty miles to the closest other Lakewalkers tonight, down the road to the ferry camp at Pearl Riffle. Eighty miles round-trip. Not even Copperhead could do it, even if a real medicine maker would come out for an injured farmer, an event so unlikely that it would make some kind of history.
“Is he gonna cut off my leg?” sobbed Hod. “Don’ let him go cuttin’ on me! Can’t work, nobody’ll give me money, can’t go back, Hopper’ll beat me again if I go back…”
Hopper? Oh, Hod’s tent-brother—brother-in-law, Dag corrected himself. Some tent-brother.
“Hurts,” wept Hod. No one doubted him.
“Dag…?” said Fawn in a small, uncertain voice. “Can you…do anything?” She made a little gesture toward his left arm. “Any groundwork?”
A simple ground reinforcement was not going to be enough here, and Dag had, absent gods knew, no prior affinity with this boy the way he did with Fawn to give him subtle routes into his body and ground. He looked into Fawn’s huge, dark, scared, trusting eyes. Swallowed. And said, “I can try.”
He settled down cross-legged by Hod’s right knee, stretched his back, which popped, and bent again. Tanner and Mape, kneeling on either side of the boy, looked at him fearfully. “How hard should we hold him down?” asked Tanner, and “Should he have a leather strap to bite?” asked Mape.
This isn’t some farmer bonesetter’s bloody amputation, blight it! Dag shook his head. “It doesn’t work like that.” If it was going to work at all, that is. He brought his right hand and left…the sight of his useless hook suddenly irritated him immensely, and he undid the straps of its harness and cast it aside. Try again. Right hand hovering over left…stump. Come on, come on you blighted ghost thing, come out, get in there. Hod was whimpering, staring up at him in overwhelming horror. His terror beat on Dag in hot waves. I have to open to this ungodly mess of a child. One breath, two, three—Hod’s breath slowed and Dag’s sped, until their chests rose and fell in synchrony. Right hand over left, stroking, coaxing…and then it was there, invisible ground projection, sinking down slowly past Hod’s skin into the broken flesh and its swirling, agitated