Lori frowned. “Um, I hate to bring this up, but you Dillians are herbivores, aren’t you? And Erdomese are basically herbivores, too.” He decided not to mention that another staple of the Erdomese diet was almost any form of insect. He realized that that might well put the others off.
“That, I think, was the point,” Mavra commented dryly, deciding not to remind them that she was the only true omnivore there. She looked around. “We could risk a fire, though, either to ward off our theoretical predators or even to cook something. I’m not going hunting out there, though.”
“Get me down first,” Lori asked. “I’m feeling a little better. Julian—help support me and I’ll see how the ankle is doing.”
She came over as Anne Marie lifted Lori off Tony’s back and gently to the ground, where Julian braced him.
He tried a few steps, and although he continued to put a hand on her shoulder, it was more as a stabilizer than as a full support. “Not too bad,” he said. “It’s still sore, but it feels a lot better. At least I know now that it’s not broken.” He took his hand away from Julian and tried an uncertain step, then reached out with his right hand and pushed on Tony’s side. ” Ow! Damn! I think the leg’s going to be fine, but my wrist feels terrible! Shit! And I’m right-handed!”
Julian looked first at his leg, then at his wrist. “There is very slight swelling in the leg, my husband, but as you say, it does not look like much. Perhaps one more day of riding and then you should be able to walk. The wrist, though, looks very bad. It should be in a splint and bandaged.”
Mavra came over to them. “Trouble?”
“His wrist,” Julian told her. “It is bad, and I do not know how bad.”
“Can’t you feel along it for a break?”
“No, she can’t,” Lori told her. “Because our females carry children to term on all fours, they need forelegs, and the way that’s done makes their hand basically a hard, fixed surface and a thick separate segment for grasping. But no fingers as such.”
It disturbed Mavra that she’d barely noticed. “Let me see. Give me your hand, Julian.” She took it and felt it. It was hard and resembled a hoof, but unlike a true hoof, the hand was segmented in two parts, one tapered and rounded and a bit softer inside so that it could be used as a giant thumb against the other, slightly flexible part. When closed, it made a nearly perfect hoof. “That’s awful!” she exclaimed, then immediately felt terrible because she’d said it.
“Oh, it’s not bad once you get used to it,” Julian replied sympathetically, remembering how she had felt when she’d first awakened and seen those strange hands. “You would be surprised what I can do with them. Not as much as true hands, but about as much as, say, mittens would allow. No, the real problem is, since I can use them as forelegs, I have no feeling in them. Having no sense of touch in my hands, I have to be looking at them whenever I am using them. That’s all right for many things, but there is no way I can feel Lori’s wrists.”
“You’d be surprised how much she can do with them,” Lori assured Mavra. “But not this.”
“Well, then, big man, grit those teeth, because I sure can,” the tiny woman replied. She took his right hand, noting how squared off and hard his hands were, even with three distinct and bendable fingers and a fairly prehensile thumb, then felt back to the wrist.
“Augh!” Lori grunted in obvious pain.
Mavra let go and shook her head. “I think you might well have some kind of a fracture there. I didn’t feel any protrusions, though, so it’s not a clean break we can set. Probably some hairline thing or chip. That swelling is pretty bad, though. It’s hard to say how it would heal—I don’t know enough about Erdomese, obviously, to make a guess—but Julian’s right. We’re gonna have to bind it in some kind of splint so it’s immobile and then bandage it. Bandages we got in the pack, and tape, so if we can find something to use as a splint, we’ll be okay. I don’t know what I can give you to treat the inflammation, though. The stuff that would help me might kill you or burn a hole through your stomach.”
“Believe it or not, aspirin,” Lori told her. “It seems aspirin is the number one miracle drug of Erdom. We don’t make it, but I ran into a drug trader on the ship to Itus. One of our biggest imports.”
Mavra sighed. “Well, I have a small tube of aspirin tablets in the pack for my own use. I wish I’d known—or thought to ask. It sure explains why I was able to buy it in the dockside shops! I doubt if there’s more than sixty tablets, though, and you, with your large size and particularly with that break, will need all of it and more. Lie down on the bedroll and I’ll get them.”
With Julian’s help, he managed to get over to the bedroll and sink down on top of it. Mavra came back with the small vial of aspirin and a canteen. “I’d take four of them now if I were you. Damn it! We should have started this as soon as we started out!”
They pried apart the plastic box Mavra had used as a medical kit and were able to form, with the aid of a large knife, a pretty rigid set of splints that were tightly taped to the wrist, lower arm, and hand, then wrapped with a green-colored plastic bandage. When it was done, Lori could not move the wrist at all, and after an initial, intense period of pain, it subsided and he felt some relief. Then it was a matter of waiting for the aspirin to kick in.
Anne Marie came over to them. “I do so hope that does it,” she said, concerned. “I know how it feels.”
Mavra nodded. “What do you want to do about something to eat?”
“Well, the grass smelled all right, so we tried some and it will do. We have to eat an awful lot, you know. While I’d much rather have it processed, baked in breads and cakes and pastries, or steamed with veggies and spices, that seems a teeny bit impractical here. We’ll just graze nearby until we’ve had our fill. As basic as it is, it is ever so much better than those horrid jungle leaves!”
“Okay, but don’t stray too far from camp,” Mavra warned. “You don’t know what’s out there.”
“We’ll be careful. We drank our fill in that stream back in Itus, so water is not a problem. Back as soon as we can. Ta!”
“Are they safe out there alone and unarmed?” Julian asked worriedly.
“Dillians are tougher than they seem, or at least they used to be,” Mavra assured her. “Those hooves can give a hell of a nasty kick, and while their arm strength isn’t close to a male Dillian’s, they’re pretty damned strong compared to us or most others, and I have a feeling that they can twist and move those bodies in ways we can only imagine. And they’re not unarmed, really. They both have the big knives we used on the jungle vines.”
“You have other weapons, I assume?” Lori asked.
“Some. The absolute best weapons for the Well World are knives for close in and crossbows for long shots.”
“Crossbows?”
“Sure. They’re accurate and powerful, and they work anywhere: nontech, semitech, or high-tech. I have some other items, too, but they’re for various special circumstances.”
“I have a saber and scabbard in my pack,” Lori told her. “I was pretty good with it, too, but I’m not sure how well I’d do left-handed.”