Read Online Double Cross by Stuart Gibbs - Free Book Online

selected a large pair of tweezers—they’d actually come from the army’s blacksmith, as they were designed for pulling horseshoe nails out of a horse’s hoof—and a pair of thin, sharp scissors that were designed, horrifyingly, for snipping infected tonsils out of the back of a man’s throat.
    â€œAll right,” he warned everyone. “I think this is going to be the rough part.”
    Aramis cinched the restraints down as tight as they would go. Porthos simply laid his entire bulk across Athos’s shins to hold his legs still. Catherine took Greg’s watch and held it as close to the wound as she dared to reflect light inside.
    Greg poked the tweezers into the wound and tried to pull out the arrowhead.
    Now Athos screamed. He roared, despite the bit, and flailed wildly, far more than anyone had expected. Even with his arms and legs lashed, he bucked and writhed.
    To make matters worse, the arrowhead didn’t come out easily. The only time Greg had ever done something like this before was pulling out thorns and splinters, which came out easily once you got a good grip on them. But the arrowhead had been designed, rather diabolically, to stay where it was. Greg had seen plenty during his time in France. They had little barbs along the edges, like fishhooks, so they would dig into flesh and remain there. There was no choice but to poke the scissors into the wound and snip away around the barbs. Greg was sweating from stress and the heat of the lantern, but he finally managed to clear enough away that he could feel the arrowhead wiggle beneath the scissors.
    He stuck the tweezers back in and gave it another try. The arrowhead caught for a moment, then popped free. It was a nasty-looking thing, still sharp after all this time. Thankfully, it was all in one piece, which meant there wasn’t anything else back in the wound.
    Athos now lay still again, which freed Aramis to come inspect the arrowhead. “Good work,” he told Greg. “What do we do now?”
    â€œWe need some alcohol,” Greg replied.
    â€œFor drinking?” Porthos asked.
    â€œIt’s to sterilize the wound,” Greg told him. “This is actually the most important part. We need to kill the infection—or it will kill Athos.”
    â€œI’ll see what I can do,” Porthos said, and then hurried off into camp.
    â€œI think I know something else that may help,” Aramis said, and then he ducked away as well.
    Greg returned to Athos’s side. His friend was unconscious again. The pain of surgery had most likely drained him. He’d bitten almost entirely through the leather bit. “I think we might need another of these,” Greg said.
    While Catherine dutifully made a second bit, Greg heated the water in the fire again, bringing the temperature back up. Aramis was soon back, his hands full of herbs.
    â€œWhat’s that?” Greg asked.
    â€œChickweed, plus a few other herbs I saw growing around camp,” Aramis replied. “They have healing powers.” When Greg frowned skeptically, Aramis said, “They do . The church has long documented the effects of these herbs. We’re not entirely barbaric in these times.”
    It occurred to Greg that Aramis probably knew what he was doing far more than the physician had. And his mother was always going on about the healing powers of herbs herself—although she generally took them for headaches, rather than flesh wounds. “All right,” Greg said. “Do whatever it takes to make him better.”
    Aramis quickly prepared a poultice for the wound. He’d just finished when Porthos arrived, clutching a bottle filled with clear alcohol. “Sorry it took so long,” he said. “This wasn’t easy to get. Apparently, alcohol’s worth more than gold to a soldier.”
    Greg took the bottle. The fumes alone were strong enough to make him dizzy. Whatever this stuff was, it certainly had