Editing Chapter 2 (section)

==Wing set to his work.==

First he sent Zhuang and Toruna to every house in the village to make certain that there were no unreported cases, while he himself began preparing tea and incense that would relieve their symptoms.  The village had not moved on, but no one would leave their homes for fear of foul vapors in the air.  While treating one victim was child’s play for Wing, and treating a half dozen was possible, the final count (two dozen exhibiting symptoms) would strain his essence to the limit and keep him working night and day.  The gunzosha gauntlets did not ease this task either.

Swiftly he moved from patient to patient, first assessing which were in the most desperate need of help.  Then he began his work.  There was hardly enough time to perform a complete treatment, especially for a plague case.  He lacked the exotic remedies and potions that were necessary to provide effective mundane remedies as well, for though he asked in the village, the necessary herbs were exceedingly rare, and many did not grow anywhere within a hundred miles.  Instead, drawing on his vast knowledge of all efficacious techniques medicinal, he used cupping and fumigation to provide treatment for two patients at once!  While the pressure and fumes began their work on the first patient, the second would receive therapeutic massage and draught after draught of herbal purgatives and restoratives.

Toruna and Zhuang were also working to their utmost keeping up with the doctor’s many demands.  The loremaster hastily constructed a fire and began brewing the remedies using every pot he could find in the village.  Toruna herself shuttled bandages, compresses, cups, medicines, and all manner of esoteric items to the physician while he labored.

It was early in the morning of the next day that he had finished his preliminary treatment for the patients.  It was nearly midnight when he returned to the most difficult case: a girl, perhaps only a few years younger than Yao Ye, if at all, that had been one of the first to feel the symptoms.  Her situation was complicated by consumption.  He could tell that she had been a pretty young girl before; she had a wide brow and delicate hands, though now her face was covered in the black rash that would certainly leave her scarred for life, even if she did survive.

Her father hovered over Wing while he worked, applying cool compresses to help alleviate her fever and restore the balance of her poisoned essence.  “Don’t know what I’d do without her...”  the older man muttered while he fumbled with his cap.  “Her mother died five winters ago from a bad fall, and her little brother was the first to be taken away to the hill.  She has an older brother, but he’s in God Crossing training in the militia.”

Wing did his best to ignore the man.  “You really should stand back, sir.  She’s contagious, and as you haven’t felt the symptoms yet, it would be best if you avoided contact as much as possible.”

“But she’s my daughter, captain.  Besides, the sickness won’t let me die.  The ghost wants to see me suffer.”

The physician turned to face the man from where he crouched beside the filthy bed.  “So it was you who discovered the shrine.  Tell me, did you see the plague spirit?”

The man turned away and shook a little.  “Yes I did... a horrible thing it was.  Huge claws and a fanged maw that could swallow a man whole.  It was like the foulest devil in all of Malpheas had escaped to make sport of creation.”

Wing’s brow furrowed.  “Ferocious though it was, you appear to have been a match for it.”

The man sniffed.  “Even the yozis cannot outrun the horses of the Marukan.  More’s the pity; it couldn’t catch me, so it laid this curse on me.  I wish I had died then and there, and spared my Leaf this agony.”

“I don’t doubt there are a lot of people in this town thinking that right now.”  He wrung out the cloth once more and dipped it in cool water.  As he began folding it, his hands suddenly clenched.  “Wait, sir...”

“Chow Bai.”

“Whatever... were you serious just now?  Tell the truth!  Is there really a monster like that in the shrine?”

“Why would I lie about such a terrible thing!”  Chow Bai’s eyes were wide with genuine fear.  Wing looked down at his gauntleted hands.

“That hothead Ye is in real danger!  Without her armor, she’s just a horsegirl.”  He stood, dropping the cloth, and backed away from the bed.

“Wait, what about my daughter?”  The rider followed him to the door, sinking to his knees and grabbing his greaves with both hands.  “Please, help her!  Save her!”

Toruna, arriving behind him with clean linens, thundered, “Where are you going, Zhou Wing?”

“I have to warn...”

“You do not.”

“You don’t understand...” he tried to turn to speak to her, but Chow Bai wrapped his arms around his legs, hugging them to his chest.

“Selara and Yao Ye are tiger warriors.  You are a doctor.”  She pushed him with one hand back into the room.  “We all have a place under heaven, and right now yours is by her side.”  She pointed down at Willow Leaf’s sweating forehead.  The girl was breathing in ragged rasps, coughing violently in shakes that wracked her entire body.

Wing looked at the dying girl, almost a woman, then looked down at his gauntlets.  He could see the faint scratches from where Ye had fallen down the slope, and remembered feeling them slam into him on more than one occasion.  He stepped up to the bed and knelt in a single motion, bowing his head and muttering, “Fine.  Perhaps this will be a lesson to her.”

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