I didn't dream; presumably the Pax spell warded off any nightmares I would have had, which, given the previous day, wouldn't have left much for me to dream about.
When I woke up, I made a mental note to use Pax no more than was necessary to keep me functioning and no more insane than I usually was - I didn't want to get hooked on the magical version of tranquilizers any more than the pharmacological sort.
Five minutes after that resolution, I was back in what passed for our surgical theater. Just because I'd finished dealing with the injured who needed immediate surgery just to survive, still left those who needed surgery soon to live much longer, and those who needed surgery fast to prevent permanent crippling. While I'd been out, Blanche and Micro had put together a list of who I should work on, in what order. I felt somewhat guilty about letting them take the responsibility for deciding whether it was a higher priority to try to save one fawn's eyes or another's foreleg, but if I tried overruling them, then no matter who I decided to work on, I would have felt even more guilty about putting the other patients behind them. So, even if I might have been able to come up with a better sorting method, even if using their order wasn't the most rational thing for me to do - I used it anyway.
They'd also written mandatory rest breaks into the schedule. I knew the reason, approved of it, but it still felt weird to just lie down and chew some cud while there were people waiting for me to help them.
During one such break, fairly early in the morning, the local unicorn chieftan I'd talked to the other day sought me out. 'We will be burning the dead, soon,' he said. I nodded numbly - I'd never been good with funerals in the best of times, and this was close to the opposite of that. 'Your ponies are not letting us put the wolves on the pyre.'
"They're still alive, just unconscious," I pointed out.
'I know,' he said. Now wasn't that just a tad more bloodthirsty than any pony in the cartoon had been. Not that I could blame him.
"They're my prisoners - at least until I hand them over," I said aloud, thinking as I talked. "However evil they are - I'm not going to hand them over to be burned alive, or tortured in any other way, no matter how much they deserve it. If they're to be killed, it's to be done as painlessly and quickly as possible - that's part of how we prove we're better than they are. Another part is, when there's time, to take the time to consider all the available options - and to pick the one that does the most good."
'Killing them will keep them from doing this anywhere else.'
"That's true. But will it keep others from being hired to do what they would do? And is there some other way to accomplish that?" I looked at the sand-glass, and saw my time was almost up. As I pulled myself back up, I said, "I've got a punctured lung with a temporary drain to make permanent repairs to. Have a wolf brought to me for my next break. I'll not condemn anyone to death without giving them a chance to speak for themselves."
I did the best I could for the next three-quarters of an hour, using all the scraps of info on anatomy I'd ever skimmed over to try to have an idea of what needed doing, and in the end, mostly trusting in the magic itself to do what was necessary. Still, even just knowing about basic sanitation gave me an edge up on the local medieval methods - and even if somedeer ended up with a permanent limp, it was at least a better outcome than an amputation that would likely lead to death by gangrene.
Faced with all the things about live bodies I didn't know, I'd never felt less deserving of the 'Doctor' title Princess Luna had arranged for me.
During my next break, when I washed my hooves of the blood, I saw Amethyst standing next to the pallet I'd woken up in; and lying in it was one of the wolves, stripped of everything but her fur, hog-tied, muzzled, and very much awake.
"You are my prisoner," I said as I sat down next to her, once again stalling for time as I tried to think of what to say while I was saying it. "That means I decide what happens to you. Do you understand?" She nodded, eyes wide. "One option is that I give you to the locals, and allow them to do what they wish to you. They already suggested throwing you on the funeral pyre. I can probably talk them down to as merciful a death as can be arranged. So far, this has been the only suggestion made. If I can't think of a better idea, that's what I'll do. Do you understand that, too?" Another nod. I sighed. "There are ways you might be left alive - but they are limited to ones where you will not pose a problem for us. One option I've heard of being used in the past, is to send you back home, but for every ten of you, nineteen eyes of twenty are put out, the last one left to let that one lead the others. I... am not in favor of this option; but it would keep you from causing further harm, and allow you to remain alive at least for some time longer. I don't know enough about the local conditions to be able to say if you would prefer being sent to your Lord in such a state, or if you would prefer a quick, humane death here. Other options may be possible, but I haven't thought of any that would be any better. Amethyst, let her talk, please?"
A quick swipe of the claws, and the rope around her snout was gone. She worked her jaw for a moment. 'Why haven't you just done what you want to do already?'
"I will kill in the heat of battle if I need to. Outside of that, I try to keep as many alive as possible."
'If you send us back, after failing our task - that will be a death sentence for us. The least painful fate will be becoming lunch - if we are lucky, we will be chewed and killed instantly, rather than swallowed whole.'
"If you wish to live, then give me another option."
'We could become your wolves rather than his.'
"Interesting. I don't have any particular need for more soldiers - you'd basically be more mouths to feed. And I'd have to worry about you making the same offer to whoever beat you next. But you're showing creativity, that's good."
'I'll be as creative as a prize-winning skald when my hide's on the line. If you have no use for us - what about the villagers here? Now that we've failed, we're in as much danger from the Lord's other wolves as they are.'
"If you can convince the locals to accept you for that - I'll gladly hand you over and be done with you. If you can't..." I shrugged. "About the only use I can think to make of you would be as experimental subjects for my research, to test spells whose results I don't know and thus wouldn't want to cast on someone I liked. But doing that... well, to put it simply, let's just say I once made an oath to avoid being involved in slavery, which is what that would amount to, and I am loathe to break that oath for anything short of saving many, many lives."
''Twould be better than the flames, or the teeth.'
"Which is the only reason I mention it." The break-timing sand-glass was running out. "Amethyst - I'd like her to talk with the chieftain, to see if they can work something out I'll accept. Don't let either one attack the other, sleep-zap 'em if you have to to stop 'em."
I went back to work - and while I was at it, the Mikoyan buzzed Micro on the radio, reporting that they were bringing casualties for treatment, quickly adding that none of them were our own.
The surgery area got very busy again for a while, as Blanche and Micro and I went to work on bears from the other village. And, yes, some of the wolves who'd attacked it, who hadn't fared quite so well against the armed ursines there as they had against the unarmed equines and cervines here. There was a bit of a kerfluffle and objection to that when the locals found out what I was doing, until, elbow-deep in somewolf's intestines, I shouted out, "Either let me do things my way, or we'll stop doing any surgery for anypony and leave you all here for the next attackers!" Some of the local ponies said we should do just that, but the chieftain shouted them down till they were just grumbling.
Red came down from the ship and watched as I carefully straightened out a shattered rib, and started picking pieces of it away from a stomach, so I could de-perforate it. "I don't know how you can do that," she said.
"I've learned a lot in a hurry. I'll let myself get sick later. Maybe I'll even see if letting myself get drunk for my first time helps."
"That's not what I meant." I was muttering my spells while she talked.
"I know. I'm a bit busy to deal with what you meant."
"I'm flying a ship under Equestrian flag. I can't let you hand the wolves over to the locals if they're just going to kill them."
"Then you'd better find a way to keep them from wanting to kill them, unless you plan on either executing them yourself, or expanding our brig to half the ship and taking them all with us."
"And what if I did?"
"Hm?"
"Kept them with us."
"Red - you're the captain. You know what I'm aiming for, and I trust you. Whatever decisions you make, as long as it doesn't obviously increase the risk to Equestria as a whole, I'll back you up. If I think you're putting the mission at risk for a short-term goal, I'll tell you. If you think I'm putting the mission at risk, I trust you to tell me."
"If you stopped working on those wolves, we could be out of here that much sooner."
"... I thought you didn't want them dead?"
"I... look, I just want us out of here as fast as we can, without breaking the law, okay?"
"Hold that thought." Stomach patched, I sanitized what had leaked out of it. Wouldn't do me much good to fix the tissues if sepsis ended up killing this wolf, after all. "Right. Red - there aren't any easy answers here. I have to take a rest after every patient to keep my strength up - even if I have to do it next to people who'll die if I don't get to them in time. If it weren't for the Pax spell... things would be worse. We'll save the lives we can, arrange what we can to keep them alive, then go back to our search. Even if getting what we're looking for means cozying up to the dragon who ordered this. In the meantime - liase with the chieftains. Figure out which way they want to go, if we can help any of them in that direction, figure out who to keep us fed until the next place we can get supplies. I'm short of sleep and am pretty sure I'm halfway to crazy, and I started out with the advantage of being used to all of this at least from stories. I'm frankly astonished you're not puking your guts out."
"Did my throwing up on the flight here."
"Good. Well, not really, but you know. Or maybe not. Um - look, you've got plenty to keep you busy for at least a couple of hours, so how about we check in with each other when I've got through the critical cases? I'll be a lot more tired, but won't be quite as distracted."
"Here you go, Missy." Somepony handed me a mug of coffee. I'd never liked coffee - not even the smell of supposedly nice, freshly-brewed stuff; and whatever was in this cup didn't smell anywhere near as good as that. I downed the whole thing anyway, burning my tongue and not caring. I had a decent set of spells for burns, now, and with a quick word, the pain was gone.
Bunched together were me, Red, the unicorn chieftan, and the bear barkeep, who seemed to be the senior bear available from the other village. Also present was the wolf I'd talked to earlier, once again muzzled.
"So," I said, "I've saved just about all the lives I can. I've worked on most of the crippling injuries. I'm afraid, though, that I'm close enough to my limit that if I tried to work on fixing lesser injuries, scars and simple broken bones and light burns and the like, I'd end up a casualty myself - so that's where I'll draw the line."
'I, for one, am not going to begrudge you for stopping now," said the chieftain. 'You've done far more than anyone could have asked of you, and not asked for any reward.'
Red said, with some black humor, "Well, even if we did ask, it's not like you've got much left to reward us with." We were actually punch-drunk enough to get a few brief chuckles from that.
"Still - I don't want all my hard work to go to waste by letting you get killed by the next group of wolves who come calling. Any progress on figuring that out?"
'Aye,' said the (ex-?)barkeep. 'Your red-haired friend has pointed out that things are a lot more peaceful to the west, across the ocean where most ponies live. A lot of our fishing boats are still afloat. So we'll put together as much food as we can, get what fish we can on the way, and hope it's enough to get us over there.'
"Sounds as good as anything I could think up. Um - did anyone mention Equestrian bears to you?"
'That they're no more able to speak than any cow here, other than you, can? Aye - we'll be careful. Maybe build ourselves a home just outside Fair Ponyland-o'er-the-waves proper.'
"Good, good. We can probably spare the time to take you to your boats - I'll let Red decide that and you can work out the details with her."
Red said, "Shouldn't delay us much more than we've already been."
"One piece of info that might help," I looked at the chieftain, "ponies are actually able to digest fish and gain sustenance from it - as long as you can keep it down."
'We already knew that, but it's kind of you to say.'
"Oh. Well, um, good. That does leave one big thing to figure out."
'The wolves.'
"Aye. I mean, yes. If you're going overseas - then you can leave them here, and they'll be no danger to you."
'We could,' said the barkeep, 'and if that's what you wish to ask of us, we'll give our wolves to you gladly.'
I grimaced. "Well - I'm not asking it of you yet. I want to ask your advice on something, first. I know a piece of magic which, for a time, will prevent its target from being able to lie - even lying by omission. Because it is a mind-affecting magic, I consider it to be assault, an act equivalent to punching someone in the snoot. But - sometimes snoot-punching is the best available option. I am thinking of asking this wolf, or maybe more of them, if they will agree to let me use this magic on them... and then letting you and you," nodding at the two locals, "to ask them whatever you wish. But there would be no point unless you acknowledged beforehand that, whatever they said, was the truth as best as they understood it."
The chieftain looked at me thoughtfully. 'If you say your magic can do something, then I would be a fool to say it cannot. But what would be the purpose in our asking anything of them?'
"To see if any are the sort of being who you would be willing to take with you when you go."
I braced for an explosion of outrage - but everyone was still looking calm and thoughtful. The barkeep said, 'I thought it might be something like that. You keep saying you want as many alive as you can get, and since your trying for that's what kept Sigurther alive, I won't say it's wrong of you to try. Not getting proper revenge is a heavy price - but if you give me a wolf who cannot lie, and he promises to do me and mine no harm, I will ferry him to Ponyland for you.'
I looked at the pony chieftain. He looked uncomfortable, then sighed. 'What can I say? The bears have the boats, and you have your skyship to bring us to them, and we do not even have enough grass here to feed ourselves for a fortnight.'
I looked at the wolf, who'd been listening with ears perked high. I reached over, slipped the loop of rope from behind her head over it, then tugged the bridle-like loop from around her jaws. 'I don't know anything about the Sunset Lands,' she said. 'Can you really do more than healing with your magic sticks?'
The corner of my mouth twitched - I was quite willing to give a demonstration. I didn't want to use too powerful a spell; I'd already been showing off far too much of what I could do amongst the locals. And none of the remainder seemed to give a decent impression. But like I'd said, I was always short of experimental subjects - for example, there were all sorts of words from the Lovecraftian canon which just might be based closely enough on Latin roots to be useful, such as rugose, squamous, and tenebrous - or, I decided, glabrous. I drew a wand I hadn't assigned a function to yet, pointed it at her, and declared, "Glabrere."
With a soft fwoomp, every last bit of her fur fell to the ground.
There were a few soft chuckles, and she rolled her eyes. 'Alright, alright - so you've got lots of tricks. If it'll give me a chance to live out the week, go ahead and do your thing and I'll answer the questions... and I'm pretty sure all of us wolves will agree.'
It turned out she was wrong - there were six wolves who, after seeing their compatriots unable to resist spilling the answers to whatever they were asked, refused to give their permission for Veritas to be cast on them. Interestingly, all the other wolves were quite willing to promise not to lay a paw on anyone if it would get them a ticket to somewhere the Lord couldn't reach them.
"Welp," I said to Red, "after hoofing all the others to the local authorities, such as they are, at least we've shrunk our problem down. I'm going to guess that these ones that are left are the ones we shouldn't send along for the boat-rides. But we still get to decide what to do with them. Or... I suppose if we brought them aboard, then technically, as Captain, you would have the authority to mete out summary justice."
"Are you passing the buck to me?"
"Not yet - just thinking about the options. We actually probably could stuff them all in the brig until we got back to Equestria, and handed them over to the local justice system."
"And have to feed them the whole while - better just to leave them here when we continue with the mission."
"I can agree with that. There's another thing to think about, though... now that I've got the time and energy to start thinking again."
"Is this going to lead to a plan I'll hate?"
"Possibly. The bear village had a big manticore wander in, one who spoke 'pony' - that is, what we're speaking now - and acting oddly, looking for 'evil' to smite. It went to the capital to try to kill the Lord, and the Lord sent these wolves here. How many manticores have you heard of that can speak at all?"
"... are you thinking there are gold-star individuals here in the Northern Wastes?"
"I haven't got a reason to think they're only in Equestria. Another item - I overheard one of the wolves tell about a clever fellow who had a magic amulet, which let him survive without needing to breathe. He got swallowed whole by the Lord, and, well, after a few days, the acid got him - or, at least, he stopped talking and played dead long enough to make it out and escape. Anyway, where there's one magic item, there might be more. This country isn't as poor as Firebough's, and the Lord isn't coming straight for us to kill us like Stortrut did - so it might be time to start looking around for our actual goals hereabout. And like at Firebough's, returning the Lord's wolves to him might be worth keeping available as a plan."
"You do remember that the Lord here is an enormous blue dragon who eats people and sets bands of wolves to destroy whole villages?"
"That just means I won't feel guilty if I get to steal from him."
The Mikoyan's top speed was a function of thrust and drag, not of weight; as long as the levi-wood and our side-thrusters could get us into the air, crowding the cargo bay full of passengers didn't slow us down at all. So it was a relatively short couple of trips to ferry everyone from the destroyed pony village to the half-destroyed bear village, where we made our preparations to go our separate ways.
I was asked, more than once, if I could send a 'Pax' wand along with the fishing fleet. I knew that if I didn't, all the injured would have to rely on the local analgesics and anesthetics, whose effective parts amounted, as far as I could tell, to willow-bark tea and tinctures whose value was likely more in the alcohol than in the herbs. I also knew that it would be the camel's nose, the first part of the wedge that would completely break down security around that whole aspect of magic. So I could either risk my whole mission to save the lives of everyone in Equestria - or I could force dozens of people to endure agonizing pain which I could prevent.
Every instinct I had told me to keep relieving their suffering.
One of the lessons of rationality I'd been taught was that, where possible, I should try solving ethical problems by 'shutting up and multiplying'. In this case, on one hoof, there was the certainty of a certain amount of pain for a certain amount of people. On the other, there was an uncertain risk, possibly low but with a very high margin of uncertainty, multiplied by the deaths of millions. Using the best guesses I had for the numbers - there was far more than a one-in-a-million chance of things going wrong with giving a Pax wand to the villagers, probably at least one-in-a-hundred even if I was being generous... so the balance was in favor of trying to save the millions of lives.
So I told the villagers who asked that the wand wouldn't work for them, and they nodded, accepting my word at its face, and they went on to deal with their lives without that remedy.
"I wonder if I really should get drunk."
Blanche shrugged. "You've earned it, if you've a mind to."
"Not like that - not exactly, anyway. Even besides the pups, besides me trying to be a teetotaler... there's a custom I once heard of, among a group called the Belters. When one dies, his friends go on a ceremonial drunk, celebrating and reminiscing - and then, that's that; after that, they move on with their lives. I've got no idea if it actually helps - but after the last couple of days, after losing patients I could have saved if I knew better, was better, was actually as good as I pretend to be... I could use some moving on."
"If you're asking me to be your wingman, you've got it."
"Thanks. Not sure I'm going to go through with it - but knowing you'd help, helps, too."
"Hail and farewell, O Missy Gambanteinn!" called out the chieftain from the last boat, in Equestrian - well, mostly - instead of the common local tongue. "Spell-crafter and life-saver, wolf-redeemer and truth-seeker!"
I gave a tight smile at the over-effusive praise, but raised a hoof in a farewell wave, and watched as they went out to sea.
Once we were on our own way, and they were over the horizon, I discreetly checked with Ursula what that one word had been. "Magic stick," she explained.
I thought about that for a while - better than some of the other things I could be thinking about. The whole idea for the wands was to hide the true nature of the magic I used, just on the off chance that at some future moment, an opponent would under-estimate what I could do. A secret I was willing to let others suffer for. A dishonesty made purely on a coldly calculated basis of the probabilities, no matter what my feelings said about the decision. A deceit made by someone who professed using the maximum possible honesty.
Looked like I'd just picked up a perfectly-suited surname.