The Gryphon's Skull

Another pirate was already dead, his head smashed like a broken pot. The sailors threw his body out of the Aphrodite, too. Looking back toward the stern, Sostratos saw several men gathered around another body. One of them looked up and caught his eye. “It's Dorimakhos,” the fellow said, and tossed his head to add without words that the sailor wouldn't be getting up again. “Took a javelin through the throat, poor beggar.” Menedemos made his way forward. Blood splashed his tunic and his hide, but he seemed hale. Looking down at himself, Sostratos found his own tunic similarly stained. He also found he had a cut on his calf he hadn't even noticed. Now that he knew it was there, it began to hurt. “Hail,” Menedemos said. “You fought well.” “We all did,” Sostratos answered. “Otherwise, we wouldn't have driven them off. Are you all right?” His cousin shrugged. “Scratches, bruises. I'll be fine in a couple of days. This was the worst I got.” He held out his left hand, which bore a ragged, nasty wound. “Is that a bite?” Sostratos asked. Menedemos dipped his head. “Pour wine on it,” Sostratos told him. “That's the best thing I know to keep wounds from festering, and bites are liable to. I'm no Hippokrates, but I know that much.” “I wish we had Hippokrates aboard now, or any other physician we could get our hands on,” Menedemos said. “You probably know more than most of us—and the men will think you do even if you don't. Come help sew 'em up and bandage 'em. We've got plenty of wine to splash on our hurts, anyhow.” Along with Menedemos and Diokles, Sostratos did what he could, suturing and bandaging arms and legs and scalps. He splashed on wine with a liberal hand. The sailors howled at the sting. The needle and thread he used were coarse ones made for sewing sailcloth, but they went through flesh well enough. “Hold still,” he told Teleutas, who had a gash just below his knee. “You try holding still with somebody stabbing you,” Teleutas retorted. “Do you want to keep bleeding?” Sostratos asked. Teleutas tossed his head. “No, but I don't want to keep getting hurt, either.” Impatiently, Sostratos said, “You don't have that choice. You can bleed, or you can let me sew up this wound and then bandage it. I won't take long, and you'll stop getting hurt any more as soon as I'm done.” “All right. Go on,” Teleutas said, but he jerked and cursed every time Sostratos drove the needle through his flesh. And he complained more when Sostratos wrapped sailcloth around the wound and made it fast with a sloppy knot: “Call that a bandage? I've seen real physicians bind up wounds, by the gods. They make a bandage worth looking at, all nice and neat and fancy. This? Pheu!” He screwed up his face as he made the disgusted noise. “I'm so sorry,” Sostratos said with icy irony. “If you like, I'll take it off, tear out the stitches, and start over.” “You try and touch that leg again, and I'll make you sorry for it,” the sailor said. “I just want a proper job done.” “It's the best I can do,” Sostratos told him. He knew Teleutas had a point. Real physicians made their bandages as neat and elaborate as they could, some to the point of showing off. He went on, “Just because it isn't neat doesn't mean it won't do the job.”