SBMS010
The forward base bulged like a stuffed sack, suddenly over-filled by an over-eager miller's apprentice flailing under a roaring screw-conveyor spewing forth more grain than expected. A compound that felt vast and cathedral-like while under construction was suddenly a cramped rabbits'-warren with the bulk of the Company crammed within its walls. Details were already digging out an extension into the woodlot to our rear.
Moans marked the work of my assistants and I as we unloaded the ambulances into my infirmary-space. They were more full than I had hoped for in this first engagement, too many of the recruits had gotten themselves hurt in the fighting, and far more veterans wounded than was strictly speaking, encouraging of the course of this campaign. I had expected more of the experienced ponies. Night-fighting was always a chancy thing, and the battle had been far too close to a stand-up fight than was really worthy of the Company. I would have to find a proper reading for the next assembly, on the virtues of not fighting fair fights, and why it was preferable to slit throats from behind than trade blows in a parade-ground, of all things!
We had only lost the one veteran to blood loss on the withdrawal, but some of the others had left me scrambling with tourniquets and bandages in the ambulances as they rolled between the rear of the supply column and the fighting mass of the Company. Most of the problem cases were just a matter of stabilization until I could stitch them up, and they were laid on cots, some of them just seconds after the carters had unloaded those cots from the supply wagons. It was a mad-house, and I was kept busy doping those I wouldn't be getting to until after the amputations.
Two recruits had mangled limbs, and would have to have them off. I knew how to stave off gangrene, and my supplies were full of distilled alcohol not because I was a terminal drunkard, but because I knew what sterilization was, and why sanitary conditions saved brothers' lives. But I didn't know how to mend a shattered hoof before the rot got in however much booze I poured over my instruments and the open wounds. All I could do was break out the bonesaws and cut the mess cleanly off, tie the blood vessels properly off with clean ligatures, put drainage and then proper bandaging and after-treatment. Thank the alicorns for ether and restraints. Later when I was satisfied that I had kept it clean, I'd suture up the stump with the remaining flaps of hide, and eventually, remove the drains. If we were lucky. If we weren't, I'd remove another bit of pony, repeat, and hope we caught the rot before the rot killed the pony. Or donkey, in these cases.
All I can say is that the smiths have a griffin who's good at making prostheses. And we have at least a dozen brothers clomping along on pegs on one limb or the other. At least there weren't any lost wings in this batch; they can't make a wooden wing, not yet.
That miserable task completed, I went on to the fun stuff, waking up the doped and low-priority to stitch together the slashes and cuts and minor wounds that they'd be laughing about later on. And everybody was willing to laugh at the groggy Octavius, who lay semi-insensate in the middle of the infirmary, surrounded by honest war-wounds waiting their dopy turn to get cleaned out and sewn up.
"Hey, Octavius, who told you you were unicorn enough to conduct a chorus? You have a filly hidden in the baggage somewhere somepony got jealous of? I've known yearlings with a deeper well than yours!" Hyssop, despite her name, was an enormous unicorn mare, I think she came from the same town they'd recruited Octavius from. She was a swords-mare from another section than the one the addled Octavius commanded, and the two of them never ceased to get on each other's cases. She was also waiting for me, holding a bloodied bandage over a nasty slash across the poll and below her left ear, which had nearly detached that organ.
"I thought the whole point of choruses was to spread the magical strain around, do things any single screwhead would burn their horn trying?" I asked as I tied off a suture on a jenny's exposed croup, sewing closed a shallow, wide slice that had nearly scalped her rear all the way to the dock.
"Well, yes, but the low-sparks are supposed to be in the chorus, not the focus. Octavius here tried to play Clover the Clever while we held the rear of that burning building, and dropped like a sack of donkeyshit after fifteen minutes. He's lucky that nopony tried to get out while we rearranged ourselves to cover the crashed shield," she explained.
"He looks like he'll recover, the horn isn't even scorched; not like what happened to you on Horse Head Island, and you've mostly recovered from that," I offered, snipping off the last suture, and nodding for the ox to lift the unconscious jenny off my impromptu surgery table.
"Only mostly. I could have been something before I overstrained, I could have been an apprentice under one of the witches. All I'm good for now is swinging big pieces of steel and playing third alto in the occasional shield chorus. This imbecile would never have made anything of himself. Might as well have been born a mudpony." Two or three half-conscious "mudponies" in earshot gave her the collective stinkeye. I just laughed and waved at her poll.
"You're next, and you don't get any ether for that one from your friendly neighborhood mudpony surgeon. Better to have you awake while I'm putting needles through your hide so close to your horn, anyways. I seem to remember Octavius got a pretty nasty wound protecting your mana-exhausted carcass from those slavers. This is the second time you've both made the infirmary together. Should we be planning a wedding?" I examined the cut on her poll once again to see if I'd have to reattach any cartilage, cleaning out the wound with a hoofed flask of dilute, clear rotgut.
"Ah. Ah! AAHAHAHAHA! Damnit, ‘Bones, don't make me laugh when you do something like that. Damn, that hurts like Tartarus."
"Be happy it's no deeper, I've had to amputate ears before," I said, scraping a bit of tissue from inside of the cut, and rinsing again, "Believe me, you don't want wound-rot two inches from your brain." Only stitches, it would reattach without serious surgery, good.
"Oh, look, Octavius is watching us," said Hyssop looking out through tears cut liberally with clotted blood and distilled alcohol. I glanced over, and saw that the horn-burned corporal was looking at the surgery in progress.
"Welcome back to the land of the living, should we call you Septimus? You've successfully burned your first and second lives. Assuming you have just the nine... and that should do it," I finished, tying off and snipping the last of Hyssop's sutures. She got up and returned to her cot on her own power.
"Now, how about you two see if you can't be an example for the recruits, and show them how you don't find your way into my surgery after every little skirmish, hmmm?" I hummed as my ox assistant shifted my next patient onto the table and I rinsed my needles and scalpels in an alcohol bath. I hoped they found another source for my medicinal alcohol, the locals seemed to prefer their beer and brown liquors, I just wasn't hearing about much clear distillate from the scouts so far, and somepony kept breaking into my supply to drink my sanitizing moonshine… At least I was in no danger of running out of suture-thread.