[Nogrod]

As the night was drawing closer, Novgorod started to feel safe enough to have a break. He heard no sounds of a chase from behind him and sat down under a smaller hill and decided to check the Easterling's backpack he had picked from the camp. Novgorod had lost all his gear but his sword, and swords are rarely nutritios themselves. And he was too exhausted and bruised to go on and try to hunt down anything, if there was anything to hunt in this empty country in the first place. His fingers trembling from pain, tiredness and hunger, he opened the cords of the sack and took a look inside it.

First he came up with an Easterling robe, a pair of cotton trousers and an embroidered scarf. Nice looking or not, it will have to do, he thought to himself. He took a firm hold of the arrow that was still sticking in his left arm and cracked it in two - cursing silently from pain. He pulled also the second half from his arm and took off his dirty and bloody shirt, bandaging the arm with the Easterling scarf. Then he went to search for more. I could see these ones first, I just can't take the pain of adjusting the shoulder just after this one, he thought and grinned as he grasped the next items from the sack.

To his great relief, there was a skin of water, some dried bread and a smallish piece of meat that stenched pretty foul. At the bottom of the sack there was a rough rope, not so firm-looking as his own had been, but it would have to do. And then there was the knife! Under all the other stuff, as if someone would have wanted to hide it there, was a beautiful longknife of Easterling handcraft in a decorated sheath. It was a real beauty and the blade was both sharp and clean. It kind of didn't fit with the other things in the package. This one has tried to get something free, something he hadn't a right into... Robbing from a thief that robs other thieves... Novgorod smiled even though the pain was still as present as ever.

Let's get to it then, he sighed half aloud and laid the stuff to the ground. He turned and leaned to the boulder he had been sitting in and yanked forcefully his left arm with his right. The bone slipped into its place, but this time he howled out aloud from the pain.

He pulled the Easterling robe on and ate a scarce and late meal. Soon enough the tiredness overpowered him. He was still hungry and the pain in his left hand - both shoulder and elbow - and his right side were tormenting him, but still he fell asleep. I will have to see for some herbs tomorrow, tomorrow... he promised himself as his last conscious thought.