“I’m going to start now,” she told the dragon and her companions. She forced herself to turn to the Bingtowners and add, “Be ready. He’s not really responding to anything I say. I don’t feel like he’s any more intelligent than an ordinary animal. So when I try to look at his tail, there’s no telling what he’ll do. He may try to attack me. Or all of us.”
Sedric looked properly daunted, but Alise actually bared her teeth in determination. “We must do something for him,” she said.
Thymara dipped the rag into the water and wrung it out over the gash. Water trickled from the rag into the gash and ran away in a dirty rivulet down the dragon’s tail. It carried off a few maggots and disturbed a cloud of insects, large and small, that rose, buzzed, and tried to resettle immediately. It did little more than wash away surface dirt, but at least the dragon had not turned and snapped at her. She mustered her courage and gently pressed the rag to the injury. The dragon rippled his flesh around the area but did not growl. She wiped gently around it, taking off a layer of filth and insects and baring a raw stripe down the center. She plunged the rag into the bucket, rinsed and wrung it out, and applied it more firmly. Crusty scab came away and there was a sudden trickle of stinking liquid from the wound.
The dragon gave a sudden snort and whipped his head around to see what they were doing to him. When he darted his head toward Thymara, she thought she was going to die. She couldn’t find breath to shriek.
Instead the dragon nosed at the oozing injury. He pressed his nose flat to the swelling, forcing the pus from it. For a moment he worked at it, starting at the top of the gash and pushing his snout along it. The smell was terrible. Flies buzzed excitedly. She closed her nostrils as much as she could and lifted her hand, pressing the back of her wrist against her nose. “At least he’s trying to help us clean it,” she said through clenched teeth.
Abruptly, the dragon lost interest and turned back to his feeding. Thymara seized the opportunity to wet the rag again and wipe the pus away from the injury. Three times she rinsed out the rag and cleansed it, until she feared the water in the bucket was as foul as the stuff she was trying to wipe away.
“Here. Use this.”
She turned to find a grim-faced Sedric offering her a thinbladed knife. She stared at it; she’d been expecting him to hold out salve or bandaging. “For what?” she demanded.
“You need to cut away the proud flesh. Then we need to bind it closed. Perhaps even stitch it closed. Otherwise, it’s not going to heal well.”