Wind carried the smell of dragon blood south. The animals of the marsh would come for the meat as soon as they could reach it.
Pei Jing stopped twenty paces upwind from the carcass and put his medical kit on a flat boulder. His left collarbone was badly bruised. Two hairline fractures in the shoulder blade still needed to knit. The swelling held his arm about fifteen degrees short of a full lift. He’d scraped the skin off his right knuckles when he hit the horn.
He took a little fresh dragon fat from a horn container and worked it into a salve. The fat still carried a little water and earth qi. He dressed his knuckles and wrapped them in clean linen. Then he took off his tunic and worked the rest of the salve across his swollen shoulder and chest. He kept wood and water qi moving through the bruise. In ten minutes the ache had eased to a stiffness he could work with. He bound the shoulder snugly under his tunic to keep the fractures from shifting. His hand worked, but he’d keep his left elbow below shoulder height on the climb.
He put on a dry tunic and fastened the sharkskin belt. Then he crouched and laid his fingertips against the rock.
