“I’m going to start now,” she told the dragon and her companions. She forced herself to turn to the Bingtowners and add, “Be ready. He’s not really responding to anything I say. I don’t feel like he’s any more intelligent than an ordinary animal. So when I try to look at his tail, there’s no telling what he’ll do. He may try to attack me. Or all of us.”

Sedric looked properly daunted, but Alise actually bared her teeth in determination. “We must do something for him,” she said.

Thymara dipped the rag into the water and wrung it out over the gash. Water trickled from the rag into the gash and ran away in a dirty rivulet down the dragon’s tail. It carried off a few maggots and disturbed a cloud of insects, large and small, that rose, buzzed, and tried to resettle immediately. It did little more than wash away surface dirt, but at least the dragon had not turned and snapped at her. She mustered her courage and gently pressed the rag to the injury. The dragon rippled his flesh around the area but did not growl. She wiped gently around it, taking off a layer of filth and insects and baring a raw stripe down the center. She plunged the rag into the bucket, rinsed and wrung it out, and applied it more firmly. Crusty scab came away and there was a sudden trickle of stinking liquid from the wound.

The dragon gave a sudden snort and whipped his head around to see what they were doing to him. When he darted his head toward Thymara, she thought she was going to die. She couldn’t find breath to shriek.

Instead the dragon nosed at the oozing injury. He pressed his nose flat to the swelling, forcing the pus from it. For a moment he worked at it, starting at the top of the gash and pushing his snout along it. The smell was terrible. Flies buzzed excitedly. She closed her nostrils as much as she could and lifted her hand, pressing the back of her wrist against her nose. “At least he’s trying to help us clean it,” she said through clenched teeth.

Abruptly, the dragon lost interest and turned back to his feeding. Thymara seized the opportunity to wet the rag again and wipe the pus away from the injury. Three times she rinsed out the rag and cleansed it, until she feared the water in the bucket was as foul as the stuff she was trying to wipe away.

“Here. Use this.”

She turned to find a grim-faced Sedric offering her a thinbladed knife. She stared at it; she’d been expecting him to hold out salve or bandaging. “For what?” she demanded.

“You need to cut away the proud flesh. Then we need to bind it closed. Perhaps even stitch it closed. Otherwise, it’s not going to heal well.”

“Proud flesh?”

“That swollen, tough-looking stuff at the edges of the wound. You need to cut it away so that you can bandage it, fresh cut to fresh cut. So the flesh can heal together.”

“Cut away the dragon’s flesh?”

“You have to. Look at it. It’s all dried out and thick. It’s already dead, really. It can’t heal that way.”

She looked at it and swallowed sickly. He was right. From the palm of his hand, on a flat fold of clean cloth, he offered her the shining knife.

“I don’t know how to do this,” she admitted.

“I doubt that any of us do. But we know it has to be done.”

She took the proffered knife and tried to grip it firmly. She set her free hand flat on the dragon’s tail. “Here I go,” she warned them, and she gingerly set the blade to the ridged flesh at the edge of the wound. The knife was very sharp. Almost without effort, it slid into the flesh. She watched her own hand move, carving away the stiffened skin at the edge of the injury. It came away like shriveled rind from a dried-up fruit. It was caked with dirt and scales; the moving knife bared dark red flesh. It oozed blood in slow, bright droplets, but the dragon went on snorting through his food, as if he didn’t feel it.

“That’s it,” Sedric said in a low, excited voice. “That’s right. Cut that piece free and I’ll get it out of your way.”

She did as he bade her, scarcely noticing how he deftly caught it in a gloved hand. Alise had gone silent, either raptly watching or intently not watching. Thymara could not afford to look at her to find out which. She had cleared one edge of the wound of proud flesh. She took a breath, steeled herself again, and set the blade to the other side.

A trembling ran through the dragon. She froze, the razor-sharp blade set in the rubbery edge of his injury. He didn’t turn his head toward her. He hissed low. “Fight.” The word barely reached her ears; it was spoken with a childish inflection, without force.

Dread edged the word. She wondered if she had imagined it.