[Laiudanama]

Trystan almost flinched at the voice, tense as he was, and his reflex was to spin around immediately, knife in hand - an impulse that he just barely resisted. Half-turning his body to face Thornden, he slipped the knife into the back of his belt, under his jerkin, and hoped that neither he nor Falco had seen it: it was a practised action, smoothly and discretely done, but he didn't know how much they had seen, and Thornden certainly did have a look of storm about him. To be found holding a knife to the son of one of Eodwine's men - how well Saeryn would take that take of events!

He smiled disarmingly, turning fully and pretending to breathe a slight sigh of relief. "Why, Thornden, you startled me, I didn't see you there - and what with apparent fugitives running around left, right and centre, I wasn't sure what to think."

Thornden's lips went through the motions of returning the smile, but Trystan fancied that it did not quite reach his eyes. Trys continued, "I came but a few moments ago - Garmund was just telling me of a man found here, a 'great, tall, shaggy man'?" Despite attempting to keep his voice neutral, mildly interested, he was afraid maybe a little more eagerness than was perhaps usual slipped through, but tried to relax; the ex-soldier would merely put it down to curiousity, or to 'boyish enthusiasm', he hoped, with more than a hint of irony. Boyish enthusiasm: not one of Trystan's usual traits, but he could pretend in an emergency...

The comment was recieved with narrowed eyes, then Thornden looking towards Garmund, who nodded sulkily in confirmation. Trystan resisted the urge to raise an eyebrow: his word was taken at the confirmation of a mere child of nine or ten years. Such respect had he evidently gained within the past month at the Mead Hall... But such thoughts were not the most pressing in his mind at the present: his head was still spinning with thoughts of this man, this 'huge, shaggy, man' with apparently some sort of foreign accent.

Stagram.

The name sounded through his mind like a death knell. The root of Trystan's problems, the reason he had spent more than a month before his stay at Mead Hall on the run from everyone and everything he had ever known - and a figure who could well fit such a description. Admittedly, running away had never really been Stagram's style, but he had always been a coward, and to be this far away from home, he would be looking for only one thing, or, well, one person: Trystan himself.

"Is there anything I could do to help? You say you have not yet found this man...?"

Thornden shook his head begrudgingly. "Nay. Falco lost him in the woods somewhere, and I was unable to catch up-"

He's still loose somewhere near the Mead Hall. A shiver ran down Trystan's back, and he responded a little too sharply, cutting off the end of Thornden's statement in his haste. "Then surely we should find him?"

"I reckon this big people is no more dangerous than any other of you log-footed folk, Trystan," said Falco, watching the other carefully. Trystan could feel his facade slipping by the second, but he was beginning to panic at the helplessness which was coming over him: panic and helplessness, two states with which he was rarely confronted, and which he was therefore unpractised. It was almost suffocating - and he couldn't tell anyone why! Forcing himself to maintain an outward calm, Trystan gave a quick smile and shrug, before responding. "Aye, of course, but maybe it would be unwise to take chances? To have a ruffian of such dimensions on the loose near the Mead Hall, with women and children present - and valuable horses too, of course," he added, with another brief grin, to which Falco allowed a reluctant half smile: after a month, Trystan had just about rid himself of the label of would-be horse thief, but it was nonetheless how he knew he had appeared when he first entered. Taking advantage of a moment of such good nature, he continued, "Maybe if I was to help you search? That way someone could stay with Garmund so as to avoid him coming to harm in the case of this man returning...That is, if you think it a wise idea?" he added with a perhaps not altogether convincing air of nonchalance - although he was inwardly desperate to get a glimpse at this man, to see whether it was indeed Stagram. To see whether his past had pursued him all the way to the Gap of Rohan...