‘Don’t fret,’ Will told him. ‘He’ll be all right.’
He tried to put as much conviction as he could into the words. He wished he could believe them himself.
Once the fire was lit and water boiled, Will set about the task of cleaning Halt’s wound. He soaked pads of linen in the boiling water, then, after letting it cool a little, he used them to wipe away the pus and crusted matter around the edge of the wound. As he gradually worked, swabbing as gently as he could, he was rewarded by the sight of clean blood again seeping from the lacerated flesh. He thought that might be a good thing. He remembered hearing somewhere that fresh blood tended to clean out a wound. At least there was no new pus or discolouration forming.
He dabbed the wound gently with clean linen until the faint flow of blood stopped. Then he applied some of the pain-killing salve that all Rangers carried in their wound kits. It was highly effective, he knew, but he was always a little uncomfortable using it. It was derived from the drug warmweed and the faintly pungent aroma it gave off brought back unpleasant memories for him.
At least, now that the wound was clean, the smell of corruption they had noticed before seemed to have abated. That too might be a good sign, he thought.
He decided not to re-bandage the wound. Keeping it bandaged may have contained the poison and magnified its effects, he thought. Instead, he soaked a pad of linen in boiling water, then, allowing it to cool a little, draped it over the wound to cover it. If need be, he would hold it lightly in place with a loose bandage.
He had soaked more cloth in cool water and now he draped this over the swollen flesh further up the arm that had been so hot to his touch earlier. He thought that the swelling seemed to have gone down a little. He arranged the cooling cloths on Halt’s arm and shrugged.
‘That’s all I can do for the present, I’m afraid,’ he said.
‘You seem to have done a lot,’ Halt replied. His voice was weak, but his eyes were open and there was a little colour back in his cheeks. Whether it was the effect of the cleaning, the warmweed salve or just coincidence, he had regained consciousness.

Halt's Peril, Chapter 25