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Old 04-03-2006, 06:43 PM   #181
Firefoot
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Join Date: Dec 2003
Posts: 7,646
Firefoot has been trapped in the Barrow!
As soon as Wultheof and Leocsley had left, Léof hobbled as quickly as he could into his little room, hoping that he would have at least a few minutes to himself. He would need at least that long to have a look at his foot. After closing the door almost all the way (so that he would still be able to hear out), he sat down and gingerly removed the boot, then the sock beneath it.

He sighed at what he saw. Unsurprisingly, most of the front half of his foot was already starting to turn color and would undoubtedly be a mess of black and blue before too long. He tentatively prodded at it with his finger and felt spasms of pain with every touch. The toes were the worst. He could tell that his third and fourth toe had broken; he did not know about the other three (or the rest of his foot, for that matter). He did not have enough experience with injuries to tell how much was broken. Legs, fingers – those were easy to tell, Léof knew from experience. As were sprained ankles. But feet?

Convinced that he could do nothing more than hope it healed itself up, he padded his foot with some bits of cloth he found from his pack and forced himself to shove the boot back on his foot. He had no intention of taking the boot back off any time soon, not until the foot didn’t hurt as much.

But now he had other business to attend to. He recalled now the bang he had heard before Æthel and Herefola had been pushed completely over the edge and guessed that one of the horses had kicked a wall or something of the sort. If so, it would not be unlikely that the horse would now need some sort of care – perhaps a new shoeing. Léof limped off to find which horse it had been, determined to carry on with his normal duties. He had been forced to work with worse before, after all, and what was a few broken toes compared to that?

The horse he was looking for was the fifth horse he had checked on, a flighty grey gelding. Léof did not feel comfortable alone in the stall with this one, and so led him out into the aisle with some difficulty. Tying him securely outside the stall, he was moving around to check the horse’s feet when he heard people entering the stable. He looked up to find Gárwine and Thornden walking straight towards him. Léof suppressed a groan. He could easily guess what they were here for. He pretended to ignore them at first, inspecting first one back leg of the horse, finding nothing, and moving on to the other.

“My answer is ‘no’,” said Léof without even looking up. He picked up the horse’s other back leg, and, sure enough, the shoe had come lose. He would be taking this horse to the blacksmith later – and he could even ride Æthel there, avoiding the need to be on his feet.

“Léof, you can’t be walking around on a broken foot,” said Gárwine. “I saw how much pain you were in before.”

“I can and will,” answered Léof evenly. “I’ve had worse, and there’s work for me to do. Besides, it’s already feeling better.” He found the blatant disbelief in both of their faces rather annoying. Why couldn’t everyone just leave him alone? He’d be fine. “I’m not coming with you.”
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