The rope we’d used was sodden and cold, but Serru had a second one in her satchel-of-everything-useful. Once our drowning victim was sort-of dressed, his ripped shirt shoved into my bag, Serru helped him straddle my horsey back while I was lying down. Between us, we used the rope to secure him in pce with loops around my human torso and horse torso both.

  Serru packed up my medical kits, picked up her scarf and fishing gear, and brought my bag with her satchel.

  Getting back up the slope with a mostly-limp passenger was not easy. Serru did what she could to help, but it came down to just agonizingly slow and careful progress. I made sure I never had more than one hoof off the ground, and that I was secure before moving the next. The ropes dug in uncomfortably. I was pretty sure my passenger passed out again on the way, or at the very least that he was sliding in and out of consciousness and too weak to be anything but dead weight.

  We didn’t even bother to cross the bridge in search of a better camping spot, just stopped as soon as the ground was ft enough.

  We lowered our exhausted patient to the ground carefully, with my bag under his head again, and stumbled wearily through hasty camp setup. I did have a spell that would let me start a fire, and it was a lower cost than messing about with even efficient and reliable mundane means. Serru had had the foresight to fill both her fsk and mine with water, so as soon as the fire was going, she set her metal teapot on the edge of it.

  “I’m not all that wet,” I said. “Upper body, at least, and my legs will dry. But we need you two both out of those wet clothes. Can you change to something else?”

  She nodded tiredly, and pulled a tent from her satchel. While it was setting itself up, she reached back inside the bag and handed me a dry bnket. “For our patient,” she said, and once I took it, she ducked inside.

  “Thanks!” I wasn’t relishing stripping him, but I didn’t have much choice: he was shivering and wet and the chill of his skin wasn’t a great sign. What Vitals had showed me didn’t have to persist if conditions didn’t improve, after all, and I hadn’t gone to all this effort just to lose him to shock or hypothermia or both.

  I winced as I seized his clothing; startled, I looked at my hands.

  My palms and the pads of my fingers were red and raw. I hadn’t even noticed, in the adrenaline flood and the hyperfocus of doing my job.

  “Serru?”

  “Yes?”

  “Can Bandages be cut in half and still used?” They were wide enough that they’d be difficult for this otherwise.

  “Yes, but unless it’s a very small injury, it will make them less effective. Why?”

  “I, ah, think I might need your help. The rope messed up my hands.”

  “Oh no!” She ducked out of her tent—with a bnket draped around her shoulders, but she adjusted it to wrap around her bare torso, under her arms, technically covering everything but... uh, I was gd I was a girl and a centaur right then, let’s just leave it at that. “Let me see!”

  With her help, my hands were duly cleaned, splitting a bottle of pale pink Cleanse between them in case of rope fragments or anything from the river, and coated with half of a small ft jar of red-and-yellow-swirled Ointment that would soothe and heal, and each wrapped in half a Bandage. We discussed whether to wrap all the way up to my fingertips, interfering with my fingers, or stop just above my palms, and went with the tter as a compromise since it would cover the worst damage. She talked me into drinking a Quickheal potion myself. I couldn’t really argue. I was sure the damage wasn’t deep but hands are sort of... useful.

  Then Serru briskly helped me strip our guest.

  Being strong, even if tired and a bit sore myself, helped. So did being big, surprisingly enough.

  I couldn’t do much about the soggy Bandages, but I could wrap him in the dry bnket and shift him as close to the fire as possible while Serru went back into her tent to find actual clothes.

  He wasn’t bad-looking, if you could overlook the abrasions and the bruising that was starting to show. He was a bit younger than Serru or me, I’d estimate, slender and I hadn’t noticed much muscle. His skin was a dark warm brown, his jaw-length curly hair a deep ocean blue. His ears barely hinted at anything resembling a point; there really was a lot of diversity in that trait.

  I didn’t see any obvious signs of further physical injury, and right now, that was going to have to be good enough.

  The clothes we’d removed looked more like urban-wear to me. The denim-blue trousers had been woven with a repeating geometric pattern in white and mauve, and the soles of his boots were intact but seemed soft. The deep purple jacket might actually offer some warmth, but I wasn’t sure that velvety surface would do well in the wilderness; his shirt, pulled out of my bag to dry, was badly damaged and at least part of that was my doing, but the paler-mauve fabric looked soft and finely-textured.

  Maybe in this wilderness, with its repeated trees and no underbrush, it would be fine. What did I know? Serru’s clothes wouldn’t have struck me as an ideal choice, but she lived most of her life between towns.

  “We should probably eat something,” I said. “And if we can get anything into our patient here, that would be good too. But I have doubts about him being able to chew.”

  “Not a problem,” Serru said, through the unsealed fp of her tent. I heard motion inside, and she paused at times before saying the next word. “If we boil more water, we can simmer travel bars in it. It makes a very basic instant soup, you had it your first night here. It tastes better with a few berries or a handful of herbs in it. It would probably do us all good, after the chill. We should have enough water left without having to go back down the slope. I don’t think any of us has the energy for that.”

  “No, definitely not.”

  “By the time we feed him, I hope he’ll be able to swallow a potion. We should probably consider Hardcure and Softcure. I’m sure I heard his ribs crack, correct?”

  “Oh, yeah. Definitely, even if they weren’t from the river, and that’s possible too.” From what it said in the much-thinner booklet with the advanced kit, Hardcure and Softcure would misfire and cause problematic growth if used on someone who did not have a significant degree of damage of the appropriate type.

  “Does he have serious damage to anything else, do you think?”

  “Yeah, there is absolutely no way he managed to avoid extensive soft-tissue injury after being flung around by a river, nearly drowned, and then everything I did. If nothing else, his lungs took a beating from the water in them. I would say that it’s a good idea, on the whole, to use both. He does have what I’d consider significant damage of both kinds.”

  “All right.”

  “I really wish these potions came in a different form. I can’t do Hardcure or Softcure by touch.”

  “What other form would you like?”

  “Injectable would be awesome. A fine metal needle and get it inside directly. Into a vein is more complicated but right under the skin would make life easier.”

  “Interesting idea. I’ve never heard of that. The grandfather of a very good friend, the one looking into diagnosis equipment for me, might find it an interesting idea as well, and he’s an alchemist who sometimes does research. I can see the advantage currently.” She emerged wearing sky-blue and white instead of her favourite green, and it was just a simple dress that fell halfway past her knees, narrowing somewhat at her waist but not close-fitting at all. It was even loose over her ample breasts and wide hips. Over it was a sort of open cardigan that was a soft creamy yellow; it looked warm. She had her wet clothes and her original, now sodden, bnket over one arm, and the first thing she did was spread them out on nearby bushes and rocks, then returned to collect our foundling’s clothes to do the same.

  “How wet are you?” she asked me.

  “I got spshed some, and some from contact, but not saturated like you two. I’ll dry off fast.”

  “We need to pick up at least one more set of clothing for you at the next town or merchant. I suppose that will need to be an extra set for each form, which could get complicated eventually. For the moment, you need to warm up too, and you can’t do that in damp clothing. I’ll be fine, I’m already feeling better, between the Recovery potion and being warmer. Here.” She shrugged off the loose yellow cardigan and set it next to me, then turned her attention to rummaging in her satchel for her soup pot.

  Trying to keep my mind focused more on practicality and safety than self-consciousness, I peeled off my damp tunic and hung it over a branch. It was some comfort that the bra underneath had rgely escaped and I could leave that on. The cardigan fit me unexpectedly well, despite the size difference between us. It was knitted of something thick and soft and it did feel pleasantly warm, even if it didn’t have a way to close it up the front. And the tea tasted even better than usual, and went a long way towards warming and refreshing us both.

  The travel bars dissolved surprisingly well and quickly in a pot of boiling water, with red berries and a couple of kinds of green stuff stirred into it; the taste wasn’t all that bad, at least no worse than the instant soup I was used to, and it was probably healthier. We had ours while the third serving cooled enough for safety, then turned our attention back to our patient. I tucked my feet under me and braced him against me so he was more vertical than horizontal, and Serru helped with the actual administration of two potions and of spooning food into his mouth. The potions were in identical bottles, with different symbols on the corks; both were deeper red than Quickheal, equally transparent, and one had swirls of yellowy-orange, the other of bluish-purple.

  He swallowed the potions but didn’t otherwise react; his eyes opened with the first bite of soup, though, and after that, he was an active participant. After several more bites, he reached for the cup, although Serru continued to steady it and limited him to small careful sips.

  “More?” he said hoarsely, when the cup was empty.

  “I think you’d better let that settle before adding more,” I said. “Throwing it all back up won’t help. All three of us are exhausted. I don’t see anything urgent suggesting that you have a severe concussion or internal bleeding, so any further assessment can frankly wait until we’ve all had a chance to rest. I don’t want you alone, though, so you’re sleeping in my tent with me.” Serru had mentioned, earlier in the day when I’d made a joking comment about always needing to be human overnight, that the tent would adjust itself to the requirements of the user, so it would be centaur-sized right now. If two people were both touching it when it was used, it would expand to accommodate both, although that was as far as it could go. Still potentially crowded considering my centaur bulk, but I wanted to be able to keep an eye on him.

  Not doing a proper exam was professionally bad, but not only was I sufficiently drained to make my skills in observation and response questionable, it looked very likely that my pain-easing spell was still in force, which would cloud any results. He was unlikely to die overnight and I could listen for him. That was as good as it was going to get right now.

  “I... if you insist,” he said meekly. He sounded a bit dazed, but then, he was almost certainly heading for shock fast.

  “I do. Do you have a name?”

  “Aryennos.”

  “I’m Nathan. This is Serru. If you need to take a leak before bed, I’ll help you stay vertical. Then we’re all sleeping.”

  “I, um...” He blushed. “I suppose I do need to.”

  An advantage of my mass: his didn’t feel like all that much.

  Rather than having him get up again, Serru kept one hand on the tent that I activated, and it finished its setup at a much rger size than it had previously.

  Aryennos, once helped inside, tucked himself politely near one edge of the interior; I made sure he had a pillow. He passed out again while I was still tucking a bnket over him.

  I wasn’t far behind.