Arkady and Tapp’s partner between them shucked him out of his trousers, and Challa briskly rolled down his drawers to groin level, raised her white eyebrows, and pointed at a reddened bulge at the side of his abdomen.
“Yep,” said Arkady. “Come over here, Dag, and tell me what you sense.”
Tapp watched Dag uneasily. “Who the blight is he? ”
“Clean up your mouth, Tapp,” chided Challa.
“If a fellow can’t swear at a time like this, when can he? ” Tapp complained.
“Not in my tent,” said Challa firmly.
Tapp snorted, then winced. “Yes, ma’am, Maker-ma’am.” His wandering gaze returned to Dag. “Aren’t you a patroller? ” he asked querulously.
“Not one of ours. Courier? ”
“I was, once,” said Dag. “Now, um…”
Arkady waited with cool interest to see how Dag would explain himself.
“You know how we exchange young patrollers to other camps in the hope that someone else will have better luck knocking sense into them? ” said Dag.
“Yes? ” said Tapp.
“You can think of me as an exchange maker. On trial.” Dag cleared his throat and added, “It’s only my first day, see.”
“Arkady, Challa, no!” cried Tapp. “You always turn your hamhanded novices loose on me…!”
Arkady grinned. “Calm yourself, Tapp. Dag here’s just observing.”
He lifted a suddenly sharp coppery gaze to Dag. “And what do you observe?”
Dag cupped his right hand above the bulge and, reluctantly, opened himself. “His sudden move lifting his bags likely split open a weak place in his belly muscles, and a piece of his gut has worked through, and has got itself twisted around pretty bad. It’s all hot and swollen, which doesn’t help a thing. I’d guess he tried to tough it out too bli-”-Dag glanced at Challa, watching him as closely as Arkady-“too long-I don’t need a litter, I can ride-”
The partner barked a laugh. “The very words!” Tapp glared at him.
“And made it worse getting here,” Dag went on. “How far out was your patrol? ”
“A two-day ride,” the partner said. “We were up northwest almost to the banks of the Gray.”
“Sometime on the ride his gut got knotted back on itself like this, and the hole swelled tight, and now he’s in a bad way and no mistake. I’m thinking he’s lucky it wasn’t a three-day ride.”
Arkady tilted his head in reluctant respect. “Very good. And what would you do about it? ”
Dag said cautiously, “I knew a fellow up in… a place I once patrolled, had something like this. The makers stuffed his gut back inside somehow, persuaded the hole shut, and put him on camp rest till it finished healing. I don’t rightly know how the gut-stuffing part was done.”
“If there’s no torsion, and the rip in the muscle sheet is large enough, you can actually do it pressing with your fingers,” said Arkady.
“I did it that way five times on the way here,” Tapp complained, “but my gut kept falling out again, till it all swelled shut.”
Challa winced.
Arkady sighed. “And I suppose you insisted you could eat, too? ”
“Not after the first day,” Tapp said in a smaller voice.
Arkady rolled his eyes, and muttered, “Patrollers!” He drew breath and turned again to Dag. “Twisted and tight as this is now, it’s going to take some careful groundsetting to restore the gut without rupturing it and spilling blood and rotting food into the abdominal cavity, which is a recipe for infection.”
Dag nodded understanding. “Like a knife wound to the belly.”
“Correct. Challa, if I may trouble you to dump a dense ground reinforcement into the inflamed area, we’ll see if we can relieve the tightness a bit before attempting to manipulate anything.”
Challa nodded, laid her hands on the lump, and closed her eyes. Dag sensed the flow of her unshaped ground-gifting into Tapp’s unhappy flesh. The extra ground would support and speed the body’s own attempts to heal, and so ease the swelling and pain. The simplest of procedures; any number of patrollers learned at least that much groundwork, even the younger Dag. The focus of Challa’s groundwork was much finer, however, and its density impressive.
“While we’re waiting for that to take effect,” Arkady went on, “let me tell you more…”
Dag, willingly, and Tapp, much less willingly, were then treated to a detailed description of half a dozen other ways Dag would never have imagined that folks’ insides could end up in places where they did not belong, and what to do about it. Dag was especially impressed, or appalled, by the version that had the stomach squeezing through the little hole in the diaphragm where the gullet connected, and ending up half on one side and half on the other. About the time Tapp must have been wishing he’d never been born, Arkady wrapped up his talk and cupped his hands gently around the bulge. Dag extended his sensitivity to his utmost. Down and in. Arkady glanced up keenly at him, then returned his attention to his task, closing his eyes in concentration.
Arkady’s ground-fingers shaped themselves in unfingerlike ways to gently widen the hole, tease the gut knot apart, and slide the strained tissue back inside. In a sallow sweat, Tapp whimpered; his partner gripped his hand hard and watched him in concern, all patroller-humor extinguished.
The power, thought Dag. The power to so readily move matter through its ground was immense, yet Arkady’s ground projection danced as delicately as if he were laying out flower petals that he was trying not to crush. He persuaded the two sides of the ripped hole back together, then set a neatly shaped ground reinforcement to hold them that way. Tapp’s strained face and grip eased, and he lay back bonelessly on the table. It had all been done in less than ten minutes, without ever breaking the skin.
“I’ll send one of the ham-handed novices down to your tent tonight to give you another reinforcement,” Arkady told Tapp, and glanced up.
“Has anyone told his wife yet that he’s home early? ”
“I sent the boy,” said Challa.
Indeed, Tapp’s wife arrived in a few minutes more, irate with worry, and the Tapp, what did you do to yourself? and It wasn’t my fault! conversation was repeated, with variations. Arkady prudently gave most of his instructions to her-bed rest and no food till tomorrow, camp rest till Challa decreed otherwise. Dag helped carry Tapp back out to the horse litter and saw him trundled off, escorted by his partner and his wife.
Staring after them, Dag turned his hook this way and that, trying to imagine the groundwork that would persuade half of someone’s stomach back to its proper position through such a little hole without bursting it under the heart.
Arkady, stretching his back beside Dag, said, “He’ll recover well if he doesn’t overdo. It didn’t help that he was two days fooling around with the rupture and telling his patrol leader he’d be fine before he even started home, his partner says. Patrollers have no sense, sometimes.”
“Goes with the territory,” Dag said. “Sensible people don’t go looking for malices.”
“I suppose you would know.”
“Forty years at it, sir.”
“Huh. I guess it would be about that.” He frowned at Dag’s hook.
“Before and after the hand, then? Because it looks like that’s been off for about twenty years, there.”
“Aye,” said Dag. “Just about that.” But if Arkady was angling for an old patroller story, he was doomed to disappointment. A more important question occurred to Dag then. “Sir-why didn’t you get cold and shaky after doing that groundwork? ”
Arkady’s head turned. “What, do you? ”
“After all my healings, pretty much, and that glass-bowl episode knocked me on my tail. My flesh felt like clay, and my stomach heaved.”
“Well, then, you were doing something wrong.”
“What? ”
“We’ll have to figure that out.” Arkady rubbed his mouth with the back of his hand and stared curiously at Dag, but did not pursue the matter at once. Instead, he turned Dag over to Challa while he went off to, he said, check on a few folks.