318 Dislocation
". . . huff . . . huff . . . huff . . ."
The twenty minute long dance concluded not with a desperate final act of defiance from the Brist, but an exhausted and anemic collapse to the ground. Blood soaked the dirt in lay upon, hundreds of small openings beneath its drenched fur adding to the sogginess of the loam beneath.
"Is anyone injured?" Titanyana alone stood, the rest of the party taking a seat on the ground to catch their breath. Stronger than most of them to begin with, the benefits of Donovan's endurance training and months in an environment not actively attempting to kill her only exacerbated the gap. Even with this advantage, she still felt the need to support her weight with the spear.
"My shoulder hurts, but I can walk it off." One of their number had been unlucky enough to trip over a root whilst engaging the Brist, and had subsequently been tossed a few feet into the air. The weakened state of the Brist at that point was almost certainly the reason he wasn't crippled.
"Good. Have your injuries tended to once we return to camp."
"Yes ma'am." Despite trusting her men to be honest about their status, she still took the time to visually confirm the absence of obvious injuries. One moderate injury was a practically unheard of casualty rate in a Brist hunt regardless of party size. It wasn't uncommon for participants to end up bedridden for a few weeks after taking an antler or tusk to the chest and fatalities weren't unheard of in smaller groups. "It looks like everyone's here. Did we end up letting the other one go?"
There were a few people missing, however they were all part of the tracking party. There were enough present to clean this Brist, so the remainder had likely been dispatched to keep tabs on the other one in case she made the call to take the other one down as well. Such a decision would take into account the fatigue of her party, which probably meant the chase would wait until tomorrow.
"Doesn't look like it." Donovan, still posted by the massive tree, reported the situation on the other side of the ridge. The trail of blood showed the haphazard path the Brist had taken in it's efforts to break the encirclement, a lackadaisical line winding around trees and boulders. "They're taking care of it right now."
"What?!" A burst of energy surged into Titanyana, rushing to check the status of her comrades. There were six or seven remaining scouts at most, far from enough to handle a Brist without risking serious injury.
"Calm down, they aren't fighting it." Donovan caught her as she stumbled, dropping his bow to the side. "They're just cleaning it up."
Sure enough, a group of bodies were dragging the now headless corpse of the other Brist around onto a hastily constructed mound next to the brook.
"How did they kill it?"
"I don't know, my focus was on your confrontation. I can only assume it was heavily concussed, and so struggled to get up after my arrows hit it in the legs. It went down pretty hard, after all. Would it be difficult to sever the jugular or stab it's heart if it couldn't get up?"
"Um . . . maybe not?" Donovan's reasons were plausible, but they were only that. She couldn't recall stories of hunting Brists after a territorial clash, and they had a reputation for being incredibly tough, particularly their resilience to arrows. Donovan's heavier draw weight could probably mitigate some of the resistance their hides offered, but striking deep enough to render those legs inoperable with a single arrow?
Titanyana shook her head, leaning into Donovan to give her legs leeway to recover. Her men were safe, and they had claimed two incredible prizes. The last royal hunt on Nekh had been a resounding success.
"Do you mind if I take a look at his injury?"
"Only if he agrees."
"Got it."
- - - - -
"Can you take your shirt off?" Donovan didn't bother asking for permission. His patient was well within earshot of their conversation, he could refuse if he wanted.
"Yes sir." Donovan watched the area of interest while he wrestled with his tunic, noting the hesitation to move and how he favored the arm. The moderate deformation around the shoulder and slightly protruding clavicle tip indicated a dislocation. Not something bad enough to get worked up over, but the bruising and swelling closer to the center of the clavicle suggested some sort of minor fracture.
"Well, I've got some good news and some bad news. Which would you like to hear first?"
"Good news."
"You'll be able to use your arm again without complication."
"And the bad news?"
"It'll be a few days at the earliest before I let you do that."
"Huh?"
"The best case scenario is that you only have a dislocated shoulder. I can fix that now in a minute or tow if you can handle the pain, but you'll need to keep it immobile for a few days to stop it from dislocating again. The worst case scenario involves a clavicle on the verge of separation. I can't diagnose that visually, but once we get back to the Pegasus I can get a scan and know for sure. Depending on the severity of the injury, you might not be able to move it for a few weeks."
"Why? It feels fine."
Not wanting to argue with a man still high on adrenaline, Donovan adopted the direct approach. Placing a hand on the affected region, he gently squeezed.
"Hmph!!" His patient tensed up in response to the pain, wanting to maintain a tough, uninjured image. Nobody was buying it.
"It feels fine because you've got a battle high. It doesn't look that bad because it hasn't had the time to swell up. Trust me, in about fifteen minutes you'll start feeling it." Donovan let go, placing that arm against the side of his chest. "I'm going to fix the shoulder now, tell me when it hurts."
Once more adopting the direct approach, Donovan kneeled on the patient's thigh while grabbing the affected arm. This position allowed him to pin the lower body in place while pushing the upper body and pulling the arm. He did it gently so as not to damage the cartilage and ligaments surrounding the socket further, but forceful enough to create separation between the end of bone and socket. Ideally he would have calmed the subject down first, however a quick fix was preferable. The sooner this arm was re-set and immobilized the better.
"Ahh-" pop "AHH, ah, ho, haa~"
A stab of pain followed by relief. His shoulder was probably still hurting though, just a dull throb rather than a straining discomfort.
"Don't move it." Donovan gently lowered the arm into his patient's lap. He hadn't even let go of it for a second before the patient tried rolling it to relieve some of the tension. "What did I just say?"
Grabbing the elbow rather than the wrist, Donovan pulled slightly to make the pain flare up. He would have let him go without a proper restraining mechanism if he behaved, but that was off the table now.
"Don't move it." Donovan let go while maintaining eye contact, leaving in search of something he could use to tie arm to chest.
- - - - -
Titanyana made sure to cross upstream of the corpse, unwilling to step foot in the blood-tainted brook despite her shoes already being soaked with it. The trackers, having only just finished hoisting the decapitated beast onto the mound to drain its blood, struggled into a bow whilst huffing and puffing.
"Rise and rest." She had no desire to see their foreheads dirtied. They were still in the woods, and a pose of submission inherently limited their ability to react to sudden danger. " . . . how did you kill it?"
A quick inspection of the corpse revealed an almost pristine hide, devoid of slashes or trails of blood that would indicate punctured flesh. The other side would be dirty of course, they had dragged it a few yards through the muddy bank, but there was little reason to believe the killing blow was landed there. She knew of no vitals that could be easily struck from the sides or rear, and no significant damage to the underbelly, which meant the killing blow had to have been dealt from the front.
"You didn't face it head on, did you?" Her expression turned ugly. Even if they succeeded in this endeavor, the feat would have to be admonished. A risk such as that could not be rewarded, if only to prevent others from throwing their lives away in search of recognition. This was especially true if they had engaged with so few people, such an action would only serve to further endanger their companions.
"My lady." Exhausted, one of their party kneeled before her, likely the leader given his initiative. She almost wanted to hear his reasons for action, or if he had done as Donovan said and taken advantage of its stumble. It would still warrant criticism . . . but the associated risk was much lesser. At the very least he would avoid punishment. "I present this to thee."
Much to her surprise, the man instead produced an arrow. Well, half of an arrow. The latter half was absent, likely snapped off during cleaning or as the creature fell. What she wasn't sure about was where it hit. The complete lack of damage to the head off to the side indicated it hadn't struck the brain, but it couldn't have struck the heart or lungs either.
"The neck, my lady." Perhaps catching onto her confusion, he elaborated after catching his breath, pointing to a point just to the right of his trachea. "The arrow severed one of the Brist's jugulars and stopped at the spine. We only decided to prepare the corpse to prevent blood from settling, I dared not interrupt an ongoing hunt to seek your direction."
". . . I see." Titanyana accepted the arrow and signaled him to rest. "If the damage to the spine didn't paralyze it, the loss of blood to the head would have killed it shortly. Thank you for your prudent decision regarding its preparation. I take it you did not speak with Donovan."
"I considered it given his status as your superior and mate, however I thought him too immersed in the dance to ask his judgement. Was this a mistake?"
"No. I was only curious." Titanyana was not looking for Donovan's arrows when she closed in on the Brists, too focused on ensuring her spear was properly synchronized with Leno. She knew at least one of them had hit the Brist square in the forehead given the addition of feathers amongst the antlers they needed to avoid, so she found herself wondering how much damage had been done because of him. Even if they hadn't lodged themselves as deep as this one, arrows damaging the muscles and organs would have fatigued it that much faster. "Do you require assistance?"
"For now we are fine, the blood needs time to drain, however we will require a few hands once the flow drops. Please dispatch hands only when your trophy is in a similar state."
Titanyana nodded, leaving the men to guard the corpse. She wondered what impact this miracle shot of Donovan's would have on the overall perception of him. The trackers appeared to hold a somewhat positive opinion of him, though their absence at the convention meant they wouldn't have had the same negative experience the Grandmasters did.
- - - - -
"Why is he tied up like that?" While most of the team was busy removing the head of the Brist, a few of the older or more tired individuals were still seated off to the side. Among their number was a particularly uncomfortable individual with a strip of cloth wrapped around him, pinning his arm in place.
"He moved his arm after I told him not to, so I immobilized it." Donovan had been promptly shooed off when he made a move to help clean the Brist, however it was more a case of an unskilled participant posing more of a hindrance than belligerence against him. As big as the Brist was, there was limited space to work with. "I'm certain his collarbone is broken to some degree so it would have happened anyways, but I would have put it off until we were back at camp if I could trust him to keep his arm steady."
"Oh. Will he need further treatment?"
"We'll do a scan once we get back to the Pegasus, but I can't imagine there's a complete separation given the way it looked and his reactions to my prodding. Worst case scenario is that its chipped an will require some level of surgery to ensure proper healing, he probably just needs a few weeks to let it heal."
"Then he will come with us, along with any family he may have. If his bone is broken, living here will not be conducive to recovery." No point in keeping a strong young man in the hospital bed longer than necessary. If doing that meant accomplishing the secondary task of transporting people, all the better. "He won't have anything to do on the Pegasus, so he shouldn't have reason to move his arm either."
"Sounds good." Donovan stretched his arms, groaning a little with the tension. "So what's the verdict?"
"Here." Titanyana handed him the arrow, or at least what remained of it. "Excellent shot."
"What?"
"One of your arrows got it in the neck, severed its jugular." She gave a curtsy when relieved of it. "Wonderfully executed."
"Oh . . . just luck then." Donovan did not appear as pleased with himself as Titanyana would have expected.
"Hm?"
"Did any arrows hit the chest? Lower torso? That's what I was aiming for."
"I, um, I didn't ask. Do you want me to go check?"
"No, no, its fine. I guess I need a bit more practice."
". . . aren't you happy about killing it alone?"
"What is there to be happy about?" Donovan picked up his bow and drew an arrow from the quiver sat on the ground next to it, twirling it around awkwardly in his fingers. "A victory earned through luck isn't healthy. Celebrating one even less so. It encourages risk taking behavior that could threaten a loss where a disciplined and calculated approach would pose a much better chance. It's the same for how you all hunt Brists, right?"
"Um, I suppose that's correct, but doing so with an arrow does not impose risk."
"Let's do a little thought experiment, shall we? Suppose that, given the angle I had, three arrows to the belly and chest would ensure a kill before it could reach me while charging, two would have made it die within a reasonable time of stopping the charge, and a single hit there would have made it easier to kill without sustaining injuries. Then let us assume that a single arrow to the neck would kill it without presenting a threat whatsoever. Let's add on to this that an arrow to the chest and belly would hit, say, every other arrow, while an arrow aimed at the neck would only hit once out of ten times to be generous. Let's also assume you get three shots before it is facing you and the vitals are covered, just like I did. What are the chances of you killing the Brist in either scenario?"
Ambushed by math (the predator she least expected to face in a forest) Titanyana had to take a minute to do some calculations.
". . . three arrows to the chest are a kill, right?"
"Correct."
"Then you've got a one in eight chance of killing it with arrows to the chest, and . . . about a one in four chance of killing it when aiming at the neck?"
"Close enough to be accurate. So you'll have a better chance of outright killing the Brist when shooting at the neck, more than double in fact, but that is still only a one in four chance. What happens in the other three times though?"
"The Brist is uninjured."
"So you have a three in four chance of facing a completely uninjured and very angry Brist if you aim at the neck. Is that something you want to do?"
"I'll do it if I have to, but I don't think anyone wants to."
"Now what about the other scenario? Where you shoot at the chest?"
"Um, one in eight chance of not injuring it?"
"And a three in eight chance for one or two arrows landing each. Seven times out of eight you will at least have an easier time killing the Brist after stopping the charge, only have to stop the charge half the time, and not have to do anything one out of every eight times. Which one are you, someone interested in the safety of your hunting party, going to choose?"
". . . the torso shots." She understood his reasoning, agreed with it even, but she still wanted him to celebrate a bit. Nothing wrong with enjoying luck, right?
"Good girl." Donovan smiled at her, shaking his arms out and positioning his feet as he might when preparing to shoot. Already he was practicing his aim. "Of course, I have no idea how many arrows to the gut it actually takes to kill a Brist, nor do I have a good idea of the chances involved with hitting the regions I mentioned. As I said, just a thought experiment, so reality might present a different set of values and change the calculus."
Titanyana sighed. Of all things, why did she feel like math was something she needed to be a leader?
"Oh, by the way, what was the other animal you mentioned wanting to hunt? Tillers? Tillens?" He nocked his arrow, settling himself and preparing to draw. She wondered what his target was.
"A Tillet?"
"Yeah. You said they climb trees and have six appendages, right?" He drew it back, holding his position while his eyes focused on something in the distance. Following his line of focus didn't reveal an apparent target, so he was likely just shooting at some trunk or another.
"Mhm. They hide between branches and drop down on unsuspecting animals below, crushing them with their weight and digging their claws and teeth into their backs. Even once they drop their thick fur makes them difficult to kill though. Why do you ask?"
"Get your sword ready."
"Huh?" She wanted to ask why he developed the conversation that direction, but the shift in his expression stopped her at the pass. Her blade was drawn without hesitation as she once more directed her attention out towards the forest.
thwick
She caught sight of the arrow much easier this time around, the tan and black feathers making up the fletching contrasting much better against the yellow-green of leaves.
"SKRIIII!!!"
A squeal scream precluded the drop of a body from the canopy onto the floor mere feet from the party still hard at work cleaning the Brist. It hadn't even completed its first bounce by the time Titanyana's sword had run it through.