Beside the churning, mud-choked waters of Irrigation Chimney pipe 3, Arthur stood with his sleeves rolled to his elbows, his hands coated in a mixture of dark agricultural clay, sterile razor-sharp lubricant, and pale yellow chemical test chemical.
Before him on the dry concrete service deck lay the lead draft-ox, its massive eight-ton frame resting securely on its chest bone. Grimm lay curled three paces away. He maintained a relaxed, baseline one-and-a-half-gravity anchor across the animal’s pelvis to prevent sudden spasmodic thrashing while Arthur worked. The direhound’s breathing was slow, deep, and steady, his warm presence streaming an aura of unmoving security that kept the surrounding herd animals docile.
Dr. Morrigan Calder and Lukas Webb, the head beast-doctor of the agricultural cooperative, stood on either side of the animal’s massive skull. She held bone hooks and irrigation tubes under the bright glare of two battery-powered halogen floodlights.
“Hold the lateral bone hook, Lukas,” Arthur instructed, his voice steady, calm, and cold and exact. “Morrigan, sponge the clean cut field. Don’t allow the rotting ooze to drain back into the eye socket.”
Using a long-handled, blunt-tipped studying probe, Arthur carefully separated the thick, stringy stalk of cordyceps that had erupted through the ox’s left tear duct. The fungal tissue was tough, resembling wet leather, rooted deep down to the bone surface of the frontal bone and tracking along the path of the ophthalmic nerve toward the skull vault.
