Hard Day's Knight (16 page)

“Oh, surely not over such a small injury. It’s not very deep—it just needs to be drained and cleaned. If it’s done today, I doubt if Marley will even notice it tomorrow. Barring infection, he should be fine to ride then.”

“You sound terribly sure of that.”

I did a half nod, half shrug. “I was going to follow in my mother’s footsteps and be a vet, but I quit veterinary college after a few years. I did, however, do enough interning to know that this isn’t a serious injury . . . if it’s taken care of now.”

Her eyes met mine. The anguish in them wrung my heart. “They’ll DQ Marley. They have a rule—no horses suffering any sort of injury can joust.”

“Yeah, well, that’s a bit of an overreaction in this instance, but that fits with what CJ was saying about the horses’ safety coming first.”

Her fingers bit into my arm as I started to move around Marley, intending to put away the equipment I’d used to brush him down. “If they take Marley, we’ll be a horse short.”

“Don’t they have to replace him?”

She looked over my shoulder, her eyes huge and dark with pain. “Butcher, Marley’s injured.”

The big Englishman swore colorfully as he and CJ approached, her eyes still red. Butcher frowned at Fenice. “What’s wrong with him?”

Fenice pointed at me. “She’s a vet. She says it’s a hematoma and it needs to be drained.”

“Whoa, wait a minute,” I said, holding up my hands to deny Fenice’s statement. “I’m
not
a vet—I said I thought about being one, but quit.”

“Yes, but you went to vet college for three years before you quit,” CJ said quickly. “And you worked for your mother all those summers, so you have loads of experience.”

“What is the big deal with my having experience?” I asked as Butcher ran his hand down Marley’s leg. His eyes were thoughtful as he glanced over to me. “I’m sure the Faire vet is very competent to deal with something so simple as a minor little hematoma. All it needs is to be drained, cleaned, and stitched back up. That and a shot of antibiotic, and Marley will be as good as ever.”

“They’ll remove him from competition if the vet finds out he’s had an injury, no matter how slight,” Butcher said slowly.

“Yeah, so Fenice says, but even if they did—and really, the injury isn’t that bad; he won’t notice it after tomorrow—surely the Faire people will give you another horse to use.”

CJ clutched Butcher’s arm. He put one gigantic hand over her tiny one, his brown eyes worried. “All of the trained horses have been claimed. There are none left that aren’t being used by one of the jousting teams. If they take Marley away, it’ll mean someone in our team doesn’t joust.”

“And if someone doesn’t joust, it means the competition is over for us all,” Fenice said, watching me carefully.

“That’s what CJ said about Bos being injured. I’m really sorry about that. It’s a damned shame that you guys don’t have an alternate who can joust in Bos’s place, but since that’s so, what does it matter if Marley is yanked from competition or not?”

Fenice and CJ were shaking their heads even before I stopped speaking. “We do have an alternate,” Fenice said.

All three of them looked at me as if I were the answer to their prayers. My eyes widened as I realized what they were implying. “Like hell you do! I am
not
a jouster!”

CJ rolled her eyes. “No, stupid, we don’t mean you—Walker is the alternate. Each team has to have one alternate named, and he’s the alternate for the Three Dog Knights.”

Well, that was a load off my mind! “Thank God for Walker, say I! Well, so all’s well that ends well—aside from Bos being hurt, of course. Walker will joust in his place.”

Butcher slid a glance toward Fenice, who was still watching me with an avidity that made me nervous. “It’s not going to be quite as easy as that, but that point aside, Walker won’t be able to joust if Marley is DQ’d.”

I looked at the huge black horse now blowing sadly into an empty grain bucket. “He’s not hurt that badly. Maybe if you tell the vet that there are no other horses—”

“There
are
other horses, but they aren’t trained, and there’s not enough time to train one,” Butcher interrupted. “Walker’s horse has to be ready to joust tomorrow in order to qualify for the remaining two jousts.”

Three sets of eyes pleaded with me. I shook my head, knowing what they wanted without their even having to say it aloud. “Nope. Huh-uh. Not going to happen. What you’re asking is illegal. It’s against the law to practice veterinary medicine without a license.”

“No, it isn’t,” CJ said quickly. “Lots of farmers do minor vet work themselves. Your mom said that the time you guys came up for the Calgary Stampede and she went out to help Grandpa with his sheep.”

“Yeah, but there’s a difference between docking sheep’s tails and doing surgery,” I protested, starting to feel very trapped.

“Please, we need you to help us,” Fenice said, clasping her hands together.

“You said it was a minor injury.” Butcher’s broad face was both tired and strained. “If it’s such a little thing, and if Marley won’t be injured further by running a course tomorrow—which is also what you said—then you could do it for us and no one would be the wiser.”

“I’d be the wiser,” I said, a wee bit desperately. “What if something went wrong? What if I made it worse?”

“You’ve done this before?” Fenice asked.

I struggled with the urge to claim an easy out, but I knew CJ would know if I lied. “As a matter of a fact, I have, but—”

“Then you won’t mess it up,” CJ said triumphantly.

“And if the worst happened, we’d call the Faire vet,” Butcher added. “No blame would be attached to you.”

“You’re not this horse’s owner,” I pointed out, grasping at the last straw I could find. “Even if I wanted to help you, I couldn’t without the owner’s permission.”

Fenice and Butcher exchanged quick glances. “If we get it, will you do it?” she asked.

“Well—”

“I’ll go find the papers that have the horses’ information,” Fenice told Butcher, running off before I could object.

He nodded. “And I’ll fetch Walker’s medical kit. He has a little veterinary experience as well, but not nearly as much as you. Love, you go find Bliss and Vandal, and have them get Walker’s name on the list as Bos’s replacement. What do you need to do the job, Pepper?”

I raised my hands, then let them fall, too swept up in the current to fight my way out of it. “Whatever instruments Walker has, antibiotics, local anesthesia, antitetanus serum, suturing material, and someone to call the nuthouse, because this is an absolutely insane plan.”

I refused to do so much as look at Marley’s leg again without the owner’s permission. Since Fenice couldn’t get ahold of him until late afternoon, it wasn’t until early evening that I was hunkered down in Marley’s stall, adjusting one of the big camp lights Bliss had brought for the surgery. Geoff and Walker were still at the hospital, although Walker had sent back word that Bos wasn’t seriously injured, but wouldn’t be jousting for a couple of months.

“Would you angle the light a little more toward—Thanks, Bliss. Butcher, can you turn that one a little more to the left?”

“You’re not going to hurt him, are you?” CJ asked, her face pale and drawn in the shadows of the stable.

“Nope, that’s what the local is for.” I looked down at the plastic box of Walker’s tools, impressed not only with the scope of what it held, but also by the quality of the instruments. I pulled a new syringe from its package, holding the bottle of Procaine, a common local anesthetic, up to the light while I inserted the needle, setting it aside on a bit of sterile gauze. “Vandal, could you hold his head? Thanks. All right, Marley, just stand still for a few minutes and we’ll get this taken care of.”

I carefully clipped around the area, swabbing it down with antiseptic before picking up the syringe. Vandal was at Marley’s head, stroking the horse’s long face and mumbling reassurances in his ear. Butcher squatted down next to me, watching me closely, holding a flashlight on Marley’s leg. CJ and Bliss and Fenice were on Marley’s off side, their expressions grim. The only people missing were Geoff and Walker. Geoff was spending the night at the hospital with Bos; presumably Walker was on his way back to the Faire. I hoped he’d stay away until after I was finished with my bit of illicit surgery. The last thing I needed was him yelling at me.

“Can someone act as a nurse and hand me things as I need them?” I asked. “It’s not complicated, but if I don’t have to go rooting around in the clean instruments, it’s much easier.”

“I’ll do it,” Butcher said, his voice hoarse.

“Thanks. The tools in that bowl are the sterilized ones. Do you have gloves? Oh, good. Okay, well, it’s showtime, folks!” Five unmoving faces stared at me. “Right. It’s kind of a hard crowd tonight, Marley, but I think we can bring them around. For those of you playing the home game, I’m administering the local now. It’s called infiltrating a wound, and after the first prick of the needle, he won’t feel a thing.” I slid the needle under the skin near the slight swelling. “There, see? He didn’t even notice it. Now I’ll do the other three sides of the injury . . . just sliding it along at the end of the anesthetized part . . . and voilà! Give it a few minutes and that whole area will be numb.”

The light on Marley’s leg wiggled. “Scalpel, please. You okay, Butcher?”

“I’m fine,” he said, but I noticed there was a faint sheen of sweat beaded up on his forehead. “It’s a bit warm in here, though, isn’t it?”

I smiled as he carefully placed the scalpel in my hand. “Don’t worry; it’ll be over with quickly. Marley probably is dozing off, he’s so bored with what we’re doing.”

He made an inarticulate choking noise as I probed the anesthetized area with my fingers, watching closely to see if Marley felt anything. When I judged it safe to incise the wound, I made a cut about an inch long, watching with satisfaction as the infected matter dribbled out of the incision, followed by a slow trail of blood.

The light on Marley’s leg wavered, then dropped as Butcher, with a soft sighing noise, keeled over in a dead faint.

“Poor lamb,” CJ said rather dispassionately as she grabbed the light, readjusting it to shine on the surgery area. “He’s absolutely great when it comes to people’s injuries, but animals . . . he’d never make it on Grandpa’s farm.”

“Mmm. Can someone else play nurse?” One of the two women rustled behind me. I paid no attention to them as I watched the blood seeping down Marley’s leg, judging whether or not I’d need the artery forceps to clamp down on the bleeding. “Doesn’t look too bad. . . . Forceps.”

A familiar weight of cold stainless steel was placed across my palm. By the time I cleaned the small clot out of the wound, the bleeding had stopped, reaffirming my assessment that the wound was a minor one. Cleaning it was accomplished quickly—each time I held my hand out for more cotton wool, it was there waiting for me. I finished picking out the ugly bits, applied a dash of antibiotic powder, and used the suturing needle that was in my hands before I asked for it to place two tiny stitches.

“There you go, all right and tight, a nice clean closing. I think you’ll survive to joust another day, Marley.” I accepted the bandage that was handed to me, placing it over the wound so it wouldn’t get dirty in the next twenty-four hours. “Ladies and gentlemen, Elvis has left the building! Did someone round up an antitetanus shot?”

I stretched my tight shoulder muscles and stood up, patting Marley’s side, genuinely impressed with his ability to not stomp on me while I was working around his leg.

A capped syringe was shoved toward me. I narrowed my eyes at the large hand holding it, following the hand up to an arm, and over to a broad chest housed in a familiar red-and-black tunic. Silver eyes glittered at me from the face above the tunic.

“Oh. Walker. I didn’t know you were back. Um. That’s okay; you probably know how to give a tetanus shot.”

“You’re the expert,” he said, his voice low and intimate in the close surroundings of the stall.

I said nothing to that, but gave Marley the shot in the heavy muscles of his neck, patting him again as I stepped over Butcher’s prone form to collect the instruments. “I’ll just go clean these things. . . .”

CJ and the others on Walker’s team closed around him as I went out to wash off the tools, all of them questioning him about Bos. I wondered briefly where Moth was, but found him quite happily settled in a small wooden crate lined with a soft blanket. “Talk about spoiled,” I told the cat as I washed the tools at the outdoor spigot. “Don’t try to look pathetic to me; I see those two empty bowls next to you, and I recognize that sated, well-fed look on your face.”

“Fenice took care of him.” Walker’s voice emerged before him from the doorway of the stable. He leaned against the door frame, an indescribable parade of emotions passing over his face. “You’re not afraid of horses.”

“Seems to me I’ve told you that.”

“You acted like you were.” He had such a disgruntled look on his face I had to squish my lips together to keep from snickering. “You made me believe you were afraid of them.”

“Well, I’m not. I just don’t like them stepping on me or biting me or eating my hair, all of which horses usually do to me.”

He was silent for a moment as he watched me clean the instruments. When he did speak, his voice held an undertone that I could have sworn was something warm and fuzzy, like admiration. “That was good work you did. You didn’t tell me you were a vet.”

“That’s because I’m not.” Despite the familiar frown that settled on his brow, a little kernel of pleasure glowed deep within me at his praise. “You . . . uh . . . didn’t just show up at the end?”

“No, I arrived in time to see Butcher pass out.”

So it was he who had done such an efficient job of handing me instruments. “What I did was probably illegal,” I pointed out, glancing around to make sure no one overheard me. It was getting on to the dinner hour, so most of the Faire folk were either drifting back toward their camps or were enjoying themselves at the various eateries to be found at the Faire proper.