((A/N: Major shout out to Painton who helped me overcome some writer's block. Also, I'll be rewriting this whole thing and reposting it under a different title. I find myself facepalming when I re-read most of the older chapters. I'll let y'all know when that happens. Thanks for reading and sorry about the massive delay!))
Mara has to half-drag the brothers back to their fire, now mostly burned down. Kili's leg can't support much of his weight, and all she can tell from looking at his arm is that it's bleeding and painful. Fili isn't much better off; he'd caught claws to the arm instead of fangs, but another warg had tried to take a chunk out of his side, ripping away a large portion of the armor there and from the way he carries himself, probably damaged some ribs. They both laugh and throw insults around, but it's half-hearted and she can see how the pain tightens the skin around their eyes and mouths. She sets them next to the fire, leaning Nightmare against a pack, throwing more fuel into it before setting about hauling a kettle full of water from the stream near the camp. She takes a minute to dunk her hair in the frigid water, rinsing out the worst of the gore, and another minute to soak her shoulder, the freezing water numbing the pain enough so she can think about something other than the fire eating it's way through her left shoulder.
After setting the kettle over the fire to boil she helps cut fabric away from wounds, her left arm hindering her movements even with the numbness from the water. She cleans Kili's arm first, the wound the one that worries her the most. She hisses at the sight of it, torn flesh and wicked looking punctures. She starts a mental list of herbs she'll need to find to keep infection at bay while they reach the nearest healer. Definitely some kingsfoil, willow bark if she can find any, maybe some marshuk for pain. She tries to remember where each plant grows as she cleans his leg next, a lesser wound than his arm with just four tidy punctures where the canine teeth had sunk into the meat of his calf. The thick material of his pants and his quick reaction to the attack had stopped a more serious injury.
"So how do you do that with the wargs?" Kili asks her when she pauses in her ministrations. Mara shrugs.
"I don't know. It just sort of happened one day. There was that warg back when I was a kid, and every so often I could feel when a pack came close to the village I lived in, but it's not something I asked questions about. It's not something I wanted to draw attention to." She ran her fingers over the bite; feeling for heat that might mean something important had been bitten.
Kili yelped as she poked at the bruised flesh surrounding the punctures, pleased to see the bleeding has already slowed. She takes another look at his arm, noting the bleeding doesn't look like anything major was hit. He flexes his fingers slightly when she asks it of him, which tells her that no tendons have been ruined. He's slightly pale, which makes her worry about the amount of blood he's lost; but he's arguing with his brother, looking pained, but not sluggish.
Fili's arm will need cleaning, without a doubt. Mara pokes around the tears, deciding that she may have to stitch them shut. She helps him remove his shirt, flicking his uninjured side in retaliation to his comment that if she wanted him naked, she didn't need to wait until he was injured. The dwarves laugh at her rapidly heating face and she, in a moment of pure maturity, sticks her tongue out at the pair of them before focusing on Fili's side. She slaps the fair-haired dwarf upside the head.
"Bit of bruising and a couple of cracked ribs you said!" She says, glaring at him. "This is not a bit of bruising!" To prove her point she grabs his beard and forces him to look. When the warg had torn away the armor, it had managed to take some of Fili with it. Bruising had already begun to form, black as thunderheads, around the long, swollen rents in his side. Two sets of parallel lines from when the warg's canines had scored a hit, the skin already swelling and still oozing blood; the blackened blood that had already dried making it hard to see the extent of the damage.
"It didn't feel like it was that bad," Fili muttered, "Kili's hurt worse than me."
"Bloody hells, save me from the stubbornness of dwarves!" Mara snarls, her hands gentle as she cleans the dried blood away. She rocks back on her heels, surveying the wounds, trying to decide what she can do. There isn't much skin to sew together, what had been there had been dragged off on the back of warg teeth. She sighed and rubbed her face, wincing as she jostled her shoulder. Open wounds were the hardest to deal with, the likelihood of infection skyrocketing without skin to stop dirt from getting into the wound.
"Mara, are you okay?" Fili's voice jolts her out of her thoughts and she looks up, startled.
"What?"
"Your shoulder doesn't look right."
Mara looks down at her shoulder and realizes that it's almost an inch below where it should be. When she runs her fingers along her collarbone she feels a slight protrusion that makes her vision go white for a second and forces a very dignified squeak from her throat.
"Yeah, I'm fine. It's just a bit sore from when that warg jumped on me."
"You're lying." The brothers say it in unison and she snorts.
"Yeah, well, there isn't much one can do about a broken collarbone until it heals."
She turns away to grab a roll of bandages out of Kili's pack, wincing again as the broken bone grinds in her chest. She moves the kettle off the fire and cleans the brothers' wound again with the hot water before wrapping the bandages around arms and legs. She waits until the brothers are asleep before she goes into the forest.
Of the three herbs, kingsfoil is the easiest to find and she grabs handfuls of the plant. There aren't any willows near them, the land is too dry, but Mara guesses that the kingsfoil will keep any fever at bay long enough to get them to an experienced healer. She's beginning to get discouraged at finding any marshuk when the singing starts. She freezes, barely breathing, as the warg-voice in her mind gets closer. Mara curses herself for leaving Nightmare by the fire. The voice whispers to her, encourages her to sing with it, join the pack-song. She feels her head tilt back, the moon is full and bright tonight, visible even through thick tree cover. Her mouth opens and the wordless song spills from her, loss and longing threading through the mournfully hopeful sound. Another voice joins hers and joy floods through her, entering the song. Mara has never sung like this before, singing warg-song with a warg. She almost sobs with loss when it ends.
Branches an underbrush crackle as something large comes toward her and she growls low in warning. Twin moons flare in the darkness and the growl freezes in her throat. The warg steps into a shaft of moonlight that makes it through the branches overhead, it's dark fur making it seem like a shadow that has lost its owner.
"Little wargling, you are far from home." The voice is soft, feminine. The warg sits down a few feet away, her moonlit eyes the only thing distinguishing her from the shadows.
"I have no home," Mara replies, cautious and alert for any threatening movement. "I have pack."
"Ah. A good answer, but untrue. There are no more wargs near this area, and the Little Ones live much farther away."
"I did not say my pack were wargs." She doesn't know how much to tell this warg, how little she should give away.
"I see. Why are you wandering alone so far in the darkness then, wargling? With no pack and away from the Moon's gaze?"
"What business of yours is it where I wander?"
"No business of mine, just curiosity. There I heard a warg-pack not so long ago, and suddenly songs were extinguished with dwarven steel. Were they your pack?"
Mara gets the feeling that the warg already knows the answer.
"No."
"Ah. Well in that case, perhaps you need assistance from my nose wargling? There was the scent of dwarven blood among the fallen warg, and you smell of both. You will need to heal your pack before sickness takes root."
"Why would you help me, knowing my pack are dwarves?"
"I bear dwarven kind no ill will. They have never attacked without good reason and I am too old and too tired to care about the hatred the orcs bear them. Now come along wargling, I'll lead you to more potent grasses."
"Why do you keep calling me wargling? My name is Mara," she says, stumbling after the warg in the darkness.
"You know warg-song, but you stand on two legs. In the old tales, you are a wargling."
The sudden need to know grips her, and she tugs at the warg's fur.
"What tales? There are more like me? Have you met them?"
"Grasses first, stories later. You are worse than any pup I bore." Mara makes a face, but lets the warg lead on in silence.
"You know, when someone tells you their name it's polite to give them yours."
"Is it? How very odd."
"You're going to make me ask, aren't you?"
"Ask what, wargling? Be careful, there's a log coming up."
Mara trips over the log and, unable to catch herself, lands face-first on the leafy ground. She pushes her face into the leafy forest floor to muffle her small scream as her collarbone grates again, groans when she hears the chuffing laughter of the warg above her. Teeth gently grasp the collar of her shirt, helping her to her feet.
"My kin once called me Silent-Like-Night, and for the sake of time you may call me Night and sit on my back. Warglings are always so clumsy." The teasing tone takes the bite out of the last statement. Silence reigns between them once more as the warg quietly pads through the forest.
"Silent-Like-Night, huh? Wargs are very poetic when they're not trying to rip out something's throat."
"Indeed we are. You should hear the epic poems constructed by Flowers-Dancing-In-Summer-Breeze."
Mara pauses at that, unable to tell if the warg is serious. Then she hears the chuffing laughter again. The warg is making fun of her.
"You know, you are a very strange warg." Mara informs her.
"Indeed." There is some rustling and Mara can hear the snapping of stems, can feel the blanket of what feels like kingsfoil brushing her bare foot. She pulls it over Night's shoulders. The marshuk is easy to find with Night's help and by the time they get back to camp Mara has almost gotten use to the warg's jerking gate. It takes them both a moment to adjust to the brightness of the fire, but when they do they see two dwarves torn between fight and flight.
"It's okay," Mara says as she slides from Night's back, "She's friendly. Well, friendly-ish. This is Silent-Like-Night, and she says to call her Night."
"I never said they could call me Night, just that you could. And only to save time."
"Silent-Like-Night is a bloody mouthful, we're not calling you that."
The warg huffs and flops down, the leaves of the herbs rustling as she does.
"Oh don't be grumpy. It's just a name." The warg just looks at her and huffs again.
"Bah, crochety old rug." The success of finding such a plethora of herbs has Mara in too good of a mood to let the grumpy warg get to her, and she grabs the blanket of kingsfoil and the bundle of leafy marshuk stalks.
"Okay then. While Night sulks, I make medicine. I would prefer these be a bit dryer, but this is what we have. Kili, toss me your pipe. Fili, you too." Mara dumps most of the still boiling water out of the kettle and tossing most of the kingsfoil in the remaining water to cook. When the brothers had her their pipes she carefully tears leaves off of the marshuk stalks, rips the leaves into small pieces and packs the pipes. Lighting one using a twig from the fire she takes a drag, filling her lungs with smoke. She hands the pipes back, exhaling the smoke as she does, feeling the pain in her shoulder recede as her head begins to feel like it's stuffed with cotton.
"Only one or two puffs, alright? Marshuk can be… bad sometimes."
Once she sees the brackets pain has made around their mouths and eyes ease she takes the pipes away, tapping the unburned leaves into the fire. Mara sets the pulpy paste the kingsfoil has become aside to cool before packing it into the wounds and rewrapping them. By the time she finishes both dwarves have fallen asleep, the combination of their wounds and the marshuk draining their remaining energy.