"I will."
"I think that's it," Daneh said.
"In that case, get some rest," Edmund replied. "Get up to the house. I don't want you getting up in the middle of the night unless it's a clear emergency."
"I'll stay here," Rachel interjected. "That way if there's something minor, I can take care of it."
"Good idea," Talbot said with a nod. "Now, milady?"
"I'm coming," Daneh replied. "Good night, Rachel."
"Good night Mother, Dad." She waited until they were gone, then finished cleaning up the infirmary and looked around. The only place to lie down was the rough wooden surgical table but it would have to do. Putting a couple of blankets on it, she made herself as comfortable as she could and then rolled over on her side. She knew there was no way she could get to sleep but even as she thought it she found her mind wandering into dream.
In the morning, Herzer felt like a basket case.
He woke up to a hand shaking him awake and groaned. He was curled in a fetal ball on his side and every muscle in his body protested movement.
"Come on," Jody said, not unkindly. "Breakfast is on and there's only thirty minutes to eat. You'dbest get to it quick."
Herzer did not feel hungry in the slightest but his enforced starvation of the day before was vivid in his mind so he stumbled to his feet and made his way to the chowline.
The meal was cornmeal mush again with a side of some sort of herbal tea. But this time many of the people did not feel they could eat much. Many of them had only taken a half a bowl and some who had taken whole bowls, like Courtney, did not finish. There was enough left in the huge kettle that Herzer, Mike and a few others could have seconds and after the first bowl settled, Herzer felt drastically hungry.
Not only did he get an additional bowl but by waiting by the pail for the used bowls he was able to cadge leftovers from several of the people, most of whom passed them over with every sign of bemusement. The exception was Nergui who when she saw his intention dumped her nearly full bowl out on the ground. This drew a furious reprimand from Dorsett.
"You don't waste food," he snarled, striding up behind her. "We don't have enough as it is. Do something like that again and you can skip the next meal!"
Herzer, at that point, was starting to feel as bloated as a tick so he reluctantly dumped his empty bowl in the bucket and went over to pick up his axe.
He looked at his hands doubtfully. Skin was already starting to spread across the ruined flesh of most of his hand, but much of it was still exposed and dirt had mixed in with a yellow goo that had appeared on the surface. It was an unappetizing sight and his stomach briefly regretted the hearty meal.
Wielding an axe was going to be painful; even holding his bowl and using a spoon had been unpleasant- but there didn't seem to be much of a choice. He was contemplating a bleak day when he heard the clip-clop of horse hooves approaching.
"Hello, Herzer," Rachel said, dismounting and tying off the horse to a convenient branch. She took a set of saddlebags down and waved at Dorsett. "Jody, I'm here to see about any medical attention anyone needs and then I have to talk to the females you have here."
"How long is this going to take?" Jody asked. "We have a lot of ground to clear."
"That depends upon how much I have to do," she answered, snappily. "Do you have any major injuries?"
"No, but there's a few of them that have bad hands," Dorsett admitted, waving at Herzer. "Start with him and I'll get the others." Jody started gathering up the ones that he knew had blistered their hands the worst the day before.
"Hey!" Earnon yelled. "I can barely move and my back feels like it's on fire!"
"I'm not here to deal with sore muscles," Rachel said, looking at Herzer's hands. "Good God, Herzer, what were youthinking ?"
"I was thinking we had a lot of trees to clear," Herzer answered, wincing as she probed his abused hands.
"Come down to the stream," she said, hoisting the saddlebags. "Jody, send the rest down with us."
"Have you seen Bast?" Herzer asked as they walked to the stream. It was muddy with dirt from the clearing but moving up into the uncleared portion brought them to water that was as clear as gin.
"She's been around. She's working with the hunters to bring in game." She held his hands in the cool water and gently wiped at the accumulated grime. "You need to keep stuff like this clean, Herzer.
We're pretty resistant to disease but surface injuries like this can still get badly infected."
"I'll remember that," he said, grimacing in pain.
"The yellow stuff is suppuration, that's normal with a skin injury like this, or so Mom tells me.
You're lucky really," she added.
"How?" he asked as she took the hand out and smeared on an ugly green ointment. There were bits of leaf to be seen in it.
"Unimproved humans would have been days recovering from damage like this," she replied, smearing on the ointment. "This is supposed to help healing. It's not much but it's something and it has stuff in it to keep the bacteria under control.""Can I used my hands?" he asked, half hoping that the answer would be "no."
"I wish you wouldn't, but there's too much work to be done to have you idle." She took strips of cloth and leather out of the saddlebag and started wrapping his hands, first in the cosilk then with the leather. That she ended up tying off to hold the whole collection on.
"The leather will protect the base of your hands. Your fingers aren't bad, fortunately. Try to keep the damage to a minimum, okay?"
"Okay," he replied, flexing his hands. The bandages did reduce the pressure on the wounds.
"Your skin will probably regrow by tomorrow then start hardening. Like I said, in this at least we're lucky."
"Lucky, yeah," Herzer said grumpily then paused. "How's your mother?"
"She's doing okay," Rachel replied tartly. "She's keeping busy and I think that's good."
"Rachel, I . . ." he paused.
"I don't want to talk about it," she snapped, standing up. "You're good enough to get to work."
Herzer looked at her for a moment, then nodded and headed back to the encampment.
CHAPTER TWENTY.
Rachel sighed as she finished the last of the badly blistered group. Most of them weren't as bad as Herzer but a few were close. Gathering up her gear she walked back to the camp and looked around for Jody. Fixing the hands had been the easy part.
"Jody, I need to talk to all the females, now," she said to the supervisor.
"What's this about?" he asked. "They're all working."
"Edmund told me to come up here, Jody, and I know they're busy. You really want me to have this conversation, though. Trust me."
"Okay," he said warily. "Courtney, Nergui, Shilan, Karlyn, Deann! Over here!"
He waited until the women had gathered around and turned to look at Rachel, folding his arms.
"And nowyou are going to take a walk," Rachel said.
"Why?"
"Because I said so, Jody," Rachel sighed. "Just go. Trust me, you don't want to be in on this."
He glared at her balefully for a moment and then strode off.
"Ladies, take a seat," Rachel said, gesturing at a couple of the fallen trees. We have to have a little girl talk."
She told them about the visit to Bethan and then about what had returned to visit the entire female species, then waited for the outbursts.
"You'rejoking, " Nergui snapped. "That's just . . ."
"Disgusting," Rachel interjected. "Also true. And it's not going to go away."
"Ever?" Karlyn asked, eyes wide.
"When all the eggs are dumped it stops, say in fifty years. Maybe longer. But then, without the hormones, all sorts of other problems start. Or you can stay pregnant all the time."
"Fisk that!" Deann snapped.
"Been feeling a little testy lately?" Rachel said acidly.
"What about it?" Deann responded hotly. "All this . . ." she said, waving her arms around, "it's bound to make you a little angry."
"Angrier than normal?" Rachel replied taking a deep breath. "I can feel it coming onme and let me tell youthat doesn't make me feel very damned happy atall . I'mespecially looking forward to the cramps. Bethan said it's like a pulled muscle that just won't go away."
"Are we all going to be like that?" Shilan asked. "I'm not feeling . . . testy. Tired, yes, but not . . .
unusually angry.""I don't know," Rachel said. "Mom doesn't have any texts that cover it in detail. We'll just have to find out."
"This . . . this . . ." Courtney finally blurted out. "This justsucks ."
"Yep, it does that," Rachel replied. "We're coming up with ways to . . . catch the flow. Like bandages to go on your . . . on your parts. And, remember, you're allfertile now. Get a little too friendly with your boyfriend and you're going to be carrying five or ten kilos of fetus and support structure around formonths ."
"I can't believe I'm hearing this," Nergui snapped.
"Believe it," Rachel replied angrily. "Believe it. Or don't and end up bleeding all over the ground! Or pregnant, " she added with a tone of disgust.
"Hey, what's going on over here?" Jody said, walking over from the cutting.
"Jody, I don't want to say this again," Rachel snarled. "Butt the hell out!"
"Look, girl . . . !"
"No, you look!" she snapped right back. "This is afemale conversation. Males arenot invited. Now go away !"
"I don't care who your father is . . ."
"It's not who myfather is that you have to worry about," Rachel said, standing up. "We're done anyway." She turned back to the women who were still sitting in positions of alternate bemusement and anger. "We'll try to get the supplies up to you by the end of the day. But be aware that this could start at any time."
"Oh, great," Karlyn replied, shaking her head in resignation. "Just fisking great." She stood up and walked over to an axe, looking for a likely tree branch. As soon as she spotted one she started hewing at it like it was the devil trying to climb out of a pit.
Rachel nodded shortly at the supervisor then went back to her horse, threw the saddlebags on, untied it, mounted and rode away at a canter.
"Is anyone going to tell me what just went on?" Jody asked angrily.
"Noooo," Deann answered carefully, getting to her feet and wiping her hands. "No, I don't really think you need to know. Not yet. And when youneed to know you won'twant to know."
"Nope," Courtney said, getting up and heading over to pick up her water bag.
"Uh, uh," Shilan added, walking away.
"Not in your dreams," Nergui replied, finally getting up.
"Just what in the hell is going on?" Jody asked the clearing, shaking his head.
"Strange days," Herzer replied.
The next two days continued much the same. With decent food-the second day there had even been a mess of venison stew with potatoes-and constant work Herzer could feel his already considerable muscles strengthening. His hands healed rapidly but he kept the wrappings of leather on nonetheless. He and Mike between them had felled the giant tree, an oak Jody told them, that had defeated the other teams, and the group had cleared a large area by the third day when they started cutting the wood to make buildings.
The day after Rachel's visit first Nergui, then Shilan had started to complain to Jody of diverse and mysterious maladies. They were quickly sent to town and returned later with bundles of cloth and odd cloth straps. Jody, after a visit from first Rachel and then Daneh, who looked drawn and tired, had passed the word to the males not to ask questions. But when Courtney had doubled over in the middle of the afternoon Mike wasn't willing to take "it's a girl thing" for an answer and the whole subject was brought out into the open. The reactions among the males ranged from bemusement to anger, especially since they were getting the details secondhand from the women. That night when food was brought out, most of the cooks were men from Raven's Mill, hastily conscripted from various other jobs. Apparentlywhat was happening in the wood-cutting camp was also happening everywhere and from the muttered comments of the males Raven's Mill was in an uproar. The men, furthermore, were not well-trained cooks. The mush was half burnt and an attempt to cook cornbread in something called a "Dutch Oven"
was a disaster.
Deann and Karlyn were apparently suffering from the same maladies, but they had gone back to work almost immediately on doing whatever the women were doing to manage it. Deann mentioned that she was feeling cramps and a certain amount of weakness, but in Karlyn's case there seemed to be no effect other than the bleeding and not much of that. Courtney, as soon as her cramps passed, was back at work as if nothing had happened as was Shilan. Nergui continued to complain of intense pain and while Jody tended to be unsympathetic, without any way to judge the amount of pain involved there was no way for him to order her back to work.
At the end of the fourth day at the site Herzer came over with his food and sat down with Courtney and Mike. As he did Cruz and Emory wandered over as well.
Courtney looked at him and gave him a wan smile.
"How you doing?" Herzer asked, spooning up a bite of beans. The mixture this night was really good, some sort of meat had been minced fine and added to the beans along with a slightly hot spice.
"Better," Courtney answered. "The cramps are gone at least."
"So . . . this is going to go on for five days?" Herzer asked. "I'm sorry, we're all pretty curious. If you really don't want to talk about it . . ."
"No, it's okay. It just came as a shock at first. In a way I'm glad we're out here; I don't want to think what it was like down in the camps."
"Ugh," Mike said, spooning up another bite of the stew and taking a bite of cornbread.