Page 3 of Something Human

“Ah, but it is good to share something human with one of you people at last!” said the Luth.

“Isn’t it just?” He looked at the Luth. “You speak my language,” he observed with surprise.

The Luth nodded. “So it would seem. I didn’t know it was your language. At home we call it Firhat Kosoth—the language of Kos. Possibly Kos is near Pheme?”

“Not far off. We all speak the same language in that part of the world—Pheme, Kos, Ariata, Boukos, all the city-states of the Pseuchaian League have the same language.”

The Luth looked impressed. “I did not know. That is very different from the Karhan. Every tribe has its own language here, almost.” He shivered.

“Here,” said Adares. His cloak had come unpinned when he took off his breastplate, and he pulled it out from under him now and draped it around the Luth’s bare shoulders. Most of the mud on it had dried by this time, and it was a good, warm cloak. The Luth drew it about himself gratefully.

Adares laid a hand on his shoulder. “I’ll be right back,” he said. “You just wait here.”

CHAPTER II

HE GOT TO his feet and walked back out the way they had come, into the outer courtyard of the temple complex. He found he was thinking much more clearly now. This was not entirely a good thing. He had undertaken to save his rescuer’s life, but he was not at all sure that he really knew how to do that. He might know more about foreign poisons than a Luth warrior, but vague things that he had heard in a prosecutor’s speech were not exactly a sound basis for practical medicine. He stopped in the middle of the courtyard to draw a deep, slow breath, then he set about looking for the temple pharmacy.

When he returned to the fountain a short time later, a cup of wine in one hand and the clay bottle in the other, the Luth was sitting where he had left him, eyes shut, head leaning back against the fountain’s rim. His fair skin had turned an alarming greyish white, and he was breathing fast and shallowly.

He opened his eyes when Adares knelt beside him, and even smiled. “Only a minute ago you swore you would never drink wine again,” he said. His voice sounded hoarse and constricted.

“This is for you,” said Adares, holding out the cup. “Can you manage, or shall I help you drink it?”

“I can manage.” He pushed himself up a little and took the cup from Adares. He held it carefully in both pale hands and drank down half of its contents before he had to stop, coughing and gagging. “Do I—I suppose I—have to finish it?”

“Afraid so.”

“Ah. All right.” He took another resolute swallow. After he had sat with his teeth clamped shut for a moment, he asked, “What is it?”

“Physostigma, four grains, in some really terrible Pyrian wine. It’s the antidote for atropa poisoning.”

“You are very chakin—very … knowledgeable.”

“Not really. It was written down in the pharmacy. There was a scroll labelled Antidotes.”

“Well.” His lips twitched in a weak smile. “You know how to read.”

Adares laughed. “Yes. I did know physostigma was the antidote—it’s a bean from Gylphos, I think, but they had it ground up in a jar in there, also labelled, thankfully. I just wasn’t … quite sure about the dosage. Have you finished that? Do you want some more of this dreadful wine to wash it down with?”

The Luth held out his cup. “Yes, please. It cannot possibly taste any worse.”

Adares refilled the cup and waited for him to drain it again. He was still looking frighteningly ill. But, Adares reminded himself, it was too soon to expect the antidote to take effect. Probably.

“We had better get this out now,” he said, moving a fold of the cloak to expose the crossbow bolt.

“I don’t know,” said the Luth, rolling up the edge of his kilt with fingers that were visibly shaking. “I am getting used to it, vecha.”

Adares smiled. “Better to have it out, though, on the whole. Before we lose the light altogether.”

“Ah, all right, then.”

By now Adares found he had begun to feel quite confident. He was remembering things from the basic medical training he had got in his days as a student in the Phemian diplomatic corps that he thought he had forgotten altogether. He fetched a knife from the pharmacy and a curtain that he had seen flapping from the open window of a temple outbuilding, made his patient lie down, and tore the cloth into wide strips for bandages. He rinsed his hands in the vile Pyrian wine and began stripping the flights off of the crossbow bolt with the knife.

The Luth watched him with a sort of calm wariness. He lay still while Adares drew the length of the bolt—disgustingly slick with blood—out through the exit wound in his thigh. He made only one small noise of protest, a soft, sobbing moan, as the wound began to bleed in earnest. Adares thought he had fainted, but his blue eyes flickered open before he turned his face away.

Adares had folded-up wads of curtain ready to press over the two holes made by the bolt, and he had already arranged the patient with his knee bent to raise the wound above the level of his heart, which he felt quite proud of himself for remembering. When the flow of blood had slowed, he washed the whole area with wine and wrapped strips of curtain around to hold the dressing in place. He even remembered that one was supposed to wind the bandages from the bottom rather than the top—though he didn’t really remember why.

By the time Adares had finished with the bandages, a little colour had returned to the Luth’s cheeks, and he was breathing normally again. Adares was so relieved that he felt an impulse to lean over and kiss the young man’s pale, untattooed forehead, in much the same spirit as he had kissed the stone lion’s nose. He resisted, just, because he felt sure it would not be well received.