Yesterday I was scouting when the others moved towards the woods. I was surprised to find them in a place where I did not expect – a mixed camp of rangers and rohirrim, and apparently a ranger woman had led them there. I rejoined the others there and fell asleep. In the morning I woke up with a wet touch of something when a horse was licking my face.
”Oh, he likes you”, I heard a rohir saying in westron from nearby. I ate some breakfast I that had carried with me. I looked around at the Men in the camp. I felt like I could trust the rangers because they were the descendants of Bëor as far I was aware and had the same nature, and the rohirrim seemed to work with them fluently.
”You need not to spend your foodstuff. Here, have some of these”, he said, and gave a pile of crackers. I went aside and tasted a small bit of the crackers – they seemed very dry and flavourless but that was all. When I worked as a guard yet, I had done so for a few times for my Lord's safety before I passed the gift to him. The Men kept saying the name "cram" while eating their rations, and with it they meant the crackers, or so I thought.
I went to Parnard and Laurelindo who also were awake. Parnard expressed his will to walk in the woods and see what is to be found there. I told him that I could come as well, since I had seem some strange trees which I wanted to see closer. Once in a while we were seized by an Orc, craban or a hound. When we went deeper, I noticed that I still had the crackers with me and gave some to Parnard.
I saw him immediately taking a bigger bite of the cracker and he was complaining about the cracker being like ”saw dust”. I offered him some water but he was complaining about the crackers so much that he lost his wits and stepped into an orcish trap. I saw that he was in terrible pain and I tried to open the trap with my spear, but it wouldn't budge. ”Please, go to the camp and tell Estarfin to get here!”, he begged. ”But I cannot leave you”, I told him. I knew that he would very likely get assaulted with scouting Orcs about and being unable to move. But he told that I must, and so I ran back to the camp.
I asked Laurelindo where Estafin was, but he did not know, and told to him about the emergency. I quickly asked the Men in the camp for tools, to break traps, and they gave me a hammer and an anvil. When Laurelindo and I arrived to Parnard he was already being shot with arrows by an Orc, but we made it just in time to kill the Orc. I broke the trap and Laurelindo looked at his bleeding wounds. Despite Parnard's protesting we carried him back to the camp instead of letting him walk.
Laurelindo took care of him while I assisted him, and hummed a song once in a while to keep him asleep when it was needed, as I felt sorry to see him in such a state. Parnard's leg bone was apparently not broken so the injuries were not as bad as they looked, but the arrows still needed removing and all his wounds needed cleaning, and they were also somewhat poisoned. I ran back and forth in the forest to look for remedies for Laurelindo to use: clean water, stark herbs and honey.
When I came back from getting the honey, Parnard was awake but he was probably seeing strange visions caused by the poison and fever, about a ”tavern keeper”, as he said. We tried to make him drink the medicinal tea by mixing some honey in it and calling it ”wine”, which Parnard really did not like. To Laurelindo this was amusing. ”If I was given as bad tasting wine as this tea, I would complain too”, he told me.
Then Parnard's vision seemed to change as being surrounded by brigands, and he was playing dangerously with his sword and knife, which I tried to confiscate. When he had no weapons left, he used his teeth on my leg, and I let out a cry for the pain. Laurelindo helped to release me, and I told him in Sindarin ”Enough! What kind of brigand speaks your language?” and he started to sit. Seemingly he was returning in the same light of the day as us, but did not remember our names yet.
We let him rest and Laurelindo gave me some cleaning salve for my leg, for the kind of injury I never thought I'd ever take. Meanwhile Nirhen had been standing nearby, but she had barely reacted to all the chaos at all.
While Parnard was sleeping I was going to do so as well, but first I returned to crackers to the rohir. ”I think you have more use for them than we do”, I told him. ”I am sorry for your friend”, the rohir said, and continued ”I trust your horses are well fed, then?”, he asked. ”Horses? We have no horses”, I said to him, confused. ”Ah, but those crackers were horse treats. I thought that while you have been this far, you would need horses”, he answered.
I was in a pique and felt embarrassed. ”Then why didn't you say so!”, I told him before I went to bed, with some horse treat in my stomach and elven bite marks on my leg.
