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Old 06-13-2008, 07:13 PM   #139
littlemanpoet
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Join Date: Jan 2002
Location: The Edge of Faerie
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littlemanpoet is battling Black Riders on Weathertop.littlemanpoet is battling Black Riders on Weathertop.
Eodwine - late morning, same day

Léof had given his assent to rummaging through the ruins for makeshift fenceposts, and so the three of them, including Thornden, were busy at it. It was hard, sweaty work, for most of the time such wood was found beneath and behind other more ruinous items such as downed walls, ruined furniture, and the like.

The stables, which had been situated on the western side of the old hall, were worthless, a heap of burnt wood good for nothing but kindling for bonfires. They had greatest success on the east end where there was an upstairs crashed down upon the lower level; it was this lower level that offered the least ruinous scraps of fencepost. After more than an hour of hard, sweaty work, they decided that they had found enough of what they were looking for, and hauled their findings back toward the paddock.

They were met by an urgent and pale Rowenna. "Lord, I have something to tell you that cannot wait."

Eodwine's brow rose. "Is someone in danger?"

"Nay, no longer, though someone was indeed but had the worst of it. I found a dead body of a man in one of the sheds."

"Is every man among us accounted for?" asked Eodwine, looking around.

"This man has been there since before we arrived, I am sure, lord," Rowenna answered.

"Léof, Thornden, I think we have earned ourselves a break. Let us see this."

The three men dropped their wood in a pile and followed Rowenna back to the shed, and Rowenna opened the door wide. They peered in and found it just as she had said. After observing, with nose plugged and eyes watering, Eodwine shook his head and ruminated that they had spent an entire day and more in the place with a half eaten dead body of a man waiting in a meat curing shed. It was unthinkable except that it was so. He wished mightily that it was not.

"Well, what do you think we should do about it?" Eodwine looked around the small group. "Bury it? Burn the thing and its innard to ashes? Or," he grimaced, "I have heard tall tales that the Haradrim have been known to 'examine' such bodies for signs of how and why they died." Eodwine had smirked at his use of the foreign word.

Last edited by littlemanpoet; 06-14-2008 at 06:58 AM.
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