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Old 07-30-2006, 11:28 AM   #122
Firefoot
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Join Date: Dec 2003
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Firefoot has been trapped in the Barrow!
Grask

Before the merest hint of gray light could shine from the eastern horizon, Grask had left the mannish camp. He had already spent far too much time there, even braving a second coming. None had seen him save the female man-child beneath the grate; the men’s searches had been far more concentrated on the other side of their camp where the horses were tied, and the tangled tussocks growing not far from the camp had proved an adequate hiding place until his curiosity had drawn him to the grate itself: a foolish move, perhaps, but the guard had not noticed.

It was while stationed at the grate that he had heard their voices: oddly clear and unpleasant, but nevertheless intelligible. They had seemed to be arguing, but over strange topics that Grask was sure he could not have understood correctly. In fact, some of their words were bandied about so casually - rescue and help, for example - that Grask was wondering if they had a different meaning among men, for they were scarce heard among Orcs.

But soon after, they had fallen asleep, and Grask, leery once more of the danger, had returned to the Orc camp, where he found the feasting on raw donkey meat in full swing. He did not know if it would be permitted for him to have some, but he took a small but meaty bone for his own enjoyment anyway. He doubted anyone would fight him for it – or, more likely, just take it - even if they did take note of him. But as he happily tore into the raw meat and felt drops of blood trickle down his chin, he realized that the two men-children were not even free to scavenge for their own food. Everything he knew said to let them fend for themselves, but nothing he knew involved the tying up of young ones. They might be beaten – Grask had been cuffed over the head a few times himself – or even killed if they caused the wrath of the older Orcs, but typically they were just ignored, and never locked up. Grask did not understand it.

Without knowing why he did it, he had quietly taken two more bones of meat and crept away back to the mannish camp. Remembering how all the stores he had found in their wagons had been wrapped, Grask had imitated this practice and wrapped the meat in leafy plants that smelled repulsively fresh. This stay in the man camp was considerably shorter; he had only dropped the packages through the grate and lingering only briefly to marvel again at the oddness of human appearance, particularly the uniformity of color and texture in their skin compared to his own thick mottled hide. But he had left quickly, knowing dawn was approaching and that he would not want to be caught here.
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