H'lee snorted when A'lo asked if there was anything else he could ask the cooks for.
"Well, some rolled grains, some lye, and some bread soda would would fantastic," he added, his voice fair dripping with sarcasm. He sighed.
"Sorry, A'lo, I didn't mean to be so harsh. Do ask them if they've encountered anything that will work for those items, though."
One week later . . .The young weyrlings needed food regularly. So did the human contingent. The dozen hides that had been brought in that first night were not in the best of condition as the dragons had, understandably, been more interested in eating than in preserving hide integrity. On subsequent hunting trips, the dragons were instructed to try to bring back kills with as little damage as possible. It wasn't perfect, but the humans certainly had no way at present for killing the thick-skinned massive beasts.
Each day, the pile of hides grew thicker as H'lee salted them. Finally, the ones from the first night were ready for the next stage of preparation. For this, H'lee got help from several of the older weyrling riders to carry a handful of the crates that had contained blankets several miles north up the beach, well away from the camp, as well as a couple of the smaller ones. Once they were there, H'lee suggested that his helpers should remain. Although they didn't have riding straps, all of them learned the theory behind leather production; it certainly couldn't hurt them to learn the practice.
"We moved up here because this part gets smelly," he explained.
"Smellier than the ones drying back at camp?" someone asked, incredulously.
"Much," H'lee responded dryly.
"Alright, fill the smaller crates with seawater and put two crate-fulls of sea water into four of these larger crates." He had them fill the fifth large crate with fresh water (which required a lot more walking upstream). He put the hides in the one with the fresh water while they prepared the other four crates.
In a crate that he had carried himself, he had boiled several packages of ration bars and strained out the breadlike substance, leaving a rather smelly and icky-colored liquid behind.
Once the four crates were filled with salt water, they started a fire and heated rocks, which were then dropped in the salt water to heat it until it was as close to boiling as they could get it. Then H'lee, having explained what the brown liquid was, added equal portions of it to all four crates. Then they stirred the water with long sticks for almost half an hour until the water cooled to lukewarm temperature.
At that point, he very carefully added lye, which was relatively easily produced by burning branches from the flowering trees (which someone suggested were likely fruit trees) and then soaking the ashes in water for several days. He stirred the mixture carefully and told the weyrlings to not let any of the water get on them because the lye would burn.
He then started pulling the hides out of the fresh water; they were no longer brittle-feeling, but were still somewhat stiff. H'lee showed them how to peel off the inner layer of skin that was curling up and set them all to doing that. As they were peeled clear, he himself added them to the crates, three hides per crate.
Once the first crate was empty, they dumped out the water, and then refilled it with fresh water. H'lee set his helpers in rotations to carefully stir the four with hides in them. Meanwhile, he and some of the older weyrlings walked over the ridge and cut some straight lengths of wood. They used the inner skin that had been peeled off the hides, cut into strips, to lash these poles together to form stout frames.
Someone had found chalk, the surrounding limestone of which was the closest thing to bread soda they had. H'lee added a large lump of the otherwise-useless stone to the crate that contained only water. He shooed the weyrlings away from the first crate that they'd filled with hides and used one of the stirring sticks to carefully lift one of the hides out of its soaking solution, which was smelling quite rank. Unfortunately, the hide was larger than he was accustomed to dealing with and he had to get one of the weyrlings to grab a stirring stick and help lift it out. They put it in the clean water and stirred it around for several minutes before pulling it out; then they had to dump that water and refill it again.
While some of the youngsters handled the legwork back and forth to the river to fill with fresh water, H'lee and his assistant draped the hide over a boulder to drain. The process was repeated for each of the eleven remaining hides. Once the hides were no longer dripping, H'lee gave each weyrling a cup containing some of the precious hide oil that was being used on the dragons' hides (something that had been found only a couple of days before). There had been considerable grumbling from the riders about using it on these hides until H'lee pointed out that no one would be flying a-dragonback without their riding straps, and they needed some of the oil to cure the hides to make said straps. Each weyrling had a bit of blanket and was to soak the blanket in the oil and then thoroughly cover the inside of the hide with it until it stopped absorbing the oil.
Having the experience at doing this sort of thing, of course, H'lee finished first. While his helpers continued working, he used strips of the inner skin and a knife to stretch his hide across one of the frames they'd lashed together. Then he checked on the progress of the other hides and helped get them finished and stretched across the frames as well.
With that done, he had yet to dispose of the acidic tanning solution. He instructed everyone to get upwind of the crates and tossed lumps of the limestone in. The solution frothed, though not as excessively as he'd hoped, and was shortly relatively safe for disposal. He wanted to dig a hole to pour the waste into, but digging wasn't particularly feasible with the tools they had - or rather, the lack thereof. So he had the crates tipped over where they were to drain and dry.
"Leave the crates where they are. We'll be back in about five days to do another dozen, and there's no sense lugging those things back and forth. They're practically useless for anything else now, anyway. DON'T--" he barked as one weyrling started to stick his hand inside,
"touch the insides. You'll burn yourself."Then he got everyone to help carry the stretched out racks of hides back to camp. They hung them in the trees using strips of blankets as sturdy ties.