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Old 05-26-2006, 03:12 PM   #30
Anguirel
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Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: The 1590s
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Gurth and Grendel usually slept together in a vast hut, like a kennel made for some great and terrible Warg. Here they laid themselves down upon pallets of straw, and Gurth laid his cudgel as a bar across the door so that nothing would disturb their sleep.

This was their usual custom. But on the night after Linduial's arrival, Gurth had, as was occasionally his wont, exhausted himself by his drinking and unwitting jests before Sorn. His massive form had collapsed in stupor before the lord of the dilapidated farmstead, who had watched with some fondness as well as diversion the subsequent events. Grendel's hackles had risen as he prepared himself for a trial of strength, and he had firmly, yet gently, dragged his enormous master from Sorn's hall 'till he reached the stone corridor. Then, with a whine, the wolf-mastiff had settled himself on Gurth's prone form and also settled to sleep.

Gurth thus woke up with his physical sensations-that was, his main paths of commerce with the puzzling life dominated by those smaller than him-in some disarray. His neck ached from sleeping in his involuntarily odd position. His head did not so much ache, as coruscate, not that Gurth bothered trying to articulate the pain. He picked himself up with some initial difficulty, but soon regained surprising balance and grace, avoiding smashing his head against the disagreeably low ceiling.

"Grendel," he uttered hazily, and heard the answering bark. Some half-entrenched form of communication prompted him to nod slightly in reply. Then he looked around for his oaken weapon, and when he had found it, man and dog hurried, without another thought, outside. Outside no restriction was upon them, and they gambolled, ran, barked, grunted in total innocence. True, others stayed out of their way and wisely so; but when Gurth killed on his meanderings over the grounds, as he often did, it was never out of malice.

And so they wandered, and Gurth let out strange sounds that sounded almost akin to song, and were echoed in the uncontrolled barking of his companion.
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