Will spotted Sergeant Nash and stepped toward him. “Sir, I have experience with wounds.”
A few minutes later, he found himself with two or three other men, trying to treat those who had been hit by crossbow quarrels. Six men had been wounded: three had in and out wounds in their lower legs, which were fairly simple, but two of the others had bolts buried in their chests. The sixth was dying, and Will knew at a glance there was little hope for that soldier, for the head of the bolt had gone through just beneath his neck.
The leg wounds were already under control, with pressure being applied, so Will went to one of the men with a bolt in his chest. Someone had already cut the shaft down so only a few inches of wood protruded. Taking out his knife, Will carefully cut the soldier’s padded gambeson away so he could see the wound itself.
The head had gone through the padding and sunk a full two inches into the unfortunate fellow’s chest, just below the collarbone on his left side. Ignoring the man’s screams, Will probed the wound, noting that only a trickle of blood emerged. It missed the artery, he thought with relief. If the head was barbed like the one that had gone through his shield, though, he couldn’t safely draw it out. Removing it might hit the artery at worst, and at best would cause a lot more damage.
“I need some feathers,” said Will, glancing up.
Sergeant Brummett was looking over his shoulder. “What?”
“Feathers,” repeated Will. “Preferably large ones, like the sort you’d make a quill pen from.” The sergeant went to see what he could find, and Will went to examine the other man with a chest wound.
The second chest wound was less serious, as it had only gone in far enough to bury the head of the bolt, and it was below the ribs. Will judged it could be removed safely, but he decided to wait on the feathers to minimize the damage it would do.
The company began marching again, while Will and the two other men who were experienced with wounds, Tims and Granthon, stayed with the wounded. Lieutenant Latimer rode up to them a minute later.
The lieutenant offered Will two quill pens he had scavenged from his writing kit. “This is the best I could find. The company will continue marching for another hour. After the chirurgeon gets here, follow the rest of the column and meet up with your squads. Doctor Guerin will have these men sent back to Branscombe.”
The officer started to mount up again, but Will called out to him. “We need a pot to boil some water, sir.”
Granthon spoke up. “I’ve got one in my pack.”
The lieutenant left, and Tims watched as Will trimmed the points from the quills, leaving a blunt end with a large hole. “What are you doing?” asked the soldier.
“We’re going to take the point out of him, but I don’t want the barbs to tear him up,” said Will. Using his knife, he cut the entry hole in the wounded soldier’s chest a little wider. Then he inserted first one and then the other quill into the wound, slipping them over the barbed points.
“Start pulling on the shaft,” said Will. “Slowly.” Tims began pulling, while Will made sure each quill remained firmly over the tips of the barbs. Half a minute later, the head of the bolt was out, followed by a slightly stronger flow of blood. “Put pressure on it until we can clean it. I’ll start on the other one.”
Moving to the other man, he repeated the process with Granthon’s help. Then he instructed them to start a fire while he started searching for herbs. “Bring it to a boil and put some of the linen we cut into the water while I’m looking,” he told them.
He didn’t have much hope of finding anything useful, such as yarrow. It was the wrong time of the year and the terrain didn’t favor that plant, but he studied the grasses around them anyway. Eventually he settled on a coarse bush that grew in clumps not far from the road. In that strange way he had previously discovered, he could tell that the bush wasn’t edible, but neither was it poisonous, and he got the sense that it might keep the wound from festering.
Will gathered several large handfuls of the leaves and then returned. Once the linen had been boiled, he removed two large squares and used them to make two small pouches, which he filled with leaves. Returning to the pot, he dipped them in the still-boiling water for a minute and then removed them.
He was hoping that the heat had softened the leaves sufficiently, and he used the pommel of his knife to crush them against the side of the pot to help bruise them further. That done, he waited for them to cool and then dressed the men’s wounds with them before repeating the process all over again for the soldiers with leg wounds.
The sixth man had already passed away.
Together, the three of them waited with the injured soldiers until Doctor Guerin rode up an hour later. The chirurgeon examined the wounds carefully before addressing them, “Who did this?”
Tims and Granthon said nothing, so finally Will answered, “I guess you mean me, sir.”
“Who told you to draw the bolts? These men could have died!” said the doctor angrily. “And what’s in these poultices?”
Will explained what he had done, and after a few minutes the doctor was somewhat mollified. “You’ve had some training. Who told you about the trick with the feathers?”
“My mother, sir, she’s a midwife in Barrowden,” he answered.
“Hmmph!” said Doctor Guerin. “Well, I guess she knew what she was about, though I wouldn’t expect a midwife to have known how to extract a barbed head. How about the plant you used?”
“I don’t know the name of it, but I’ve seen her use it on wounds before,” Will lied.
“I guess we’ll leave it for now,” said the doctor, “but I’ll change it once the baggage carts get here. You men should return to your squads.”
***
That evening all the talk was about their brief engagement. As Will and his squad mates sat on their bedrolls, Dave asked him, “How did you see those soldiers?”
“The sun reflected off of one of their helms, I think,” said Will. “After that I just kept looking until I saw one of them pop his head up.”
“You got lucky,” said Corporal Taylor. “It was pretty cloudy today.”
Sven piped up, “I’m more surprised one of them was foolish enough to stick his head up. They were good enough to fool the scouts.”
“You must feel pretty stupid,” groused Dave. “All it got us was five men wounded and one dead. We didn’t kill a single one of them.”
Sven glared at the ex-cutpurse. “Shut up. People wouldn’t know what a damned idiot you were if you didn’t talk.”
“It’s the truth!” protested Dave. “Actually, now that I look back, I wish I’d been wounded. Those guys get to take it easy back in Branscombe.”
Corporal Taylor spoke up, “You should be glad he spotted them. Otherwise we might be going hungry soon. They weren’t waiting for us. They were waiting for the supply wagons.”
Will stood up. “How long do we have before lights out?”
“What lights?” asked Dave sarcastically. “All we have is a campfire.”
“We stopped early today, so we still have an hour,” said Corporal Taylor.
“I’m going to stretch my legs,” said Will.