Chapter 3.

Stiff and uncomfortable from sleeping on the cold, hard ground, curled up in his armour all night with no space to stretch his limbs, or even move much at all, Seifer kicked away the bracken barricade from the doorway to their nest. He groaned. Last night had been horrible. When all he wanted was to fall down in the grass and sleep like a log for a week, he had found himself inspecting the roots of any large trees they came across, searching for one with some space underneath it for them to crawl into. A squat little oak tree with a sprawling network of roots seemed and an abandoned badger den was the conclusion of his search. Abandoning the woman on the ground, he set about widening the opening and digging at the walls of the den, making it big enough for two people to crush into for the night.

It was pitch black by the time he gave up digging and just hoped it was big enough. Searching about in the undergrowth, he came up with a dead chunk of hedge to disguise the entrance with and then set about stuffing the woman in, feet first. Thankfully his labour had paid off and with a little rearranging of her limbs, there was enough room for him to cram himself in after her and drag the bracken into place.

He had slept like a baby through the night and most of the day. When he pulled himself from the hole it was evening again. On all fours, he sniffed the air. It had an odd fragrance of decay about it, sweet, but with that musty, mouldy sort of scent. He needed a piss.

Standing on wobbly legs, he supported himself with the tree trunk and wondered about which direction to go in. He wasn't going to take his axe – he'd already decided – so he wasn't going to go far, but he didn't want that woman to find out where he was and sneak up on him either. Knowing she wasn't an elf might have raised his trust in her, but then knowing that she wasn't what he thought she appeared to be was certainly no better.

Picking a direction at random, he disappeared into the forest.

Now with the room to do so, she squirmed in discomfort. The familiar and hated feeling of a full bladder was drawing dangerously close to the point where she wouldn't be able to control it anymore. Desperately not wanting to make a mess of herself or their sleeping arrangements, she made a valiant effort to reach the exit. The very moment she put any weight on her right leg however, she nearly wet herself anyway. Excruciating pain tore up her right side and turned her left leg to jelly. Crying out in pain, she slapped a hand over her mouth, rolling hurriedly off the leg. Forcing herself to breathe through her nose, she felt a few tears slip out. Dear Hyne that was painful.

Gingerly, she peered down at her legs. The way they were stuffed up to her chest made it very difficult to see anything, but even like this she could see her greaves were crusty with blood, some still glistening wetly. Leg wounds. Big problem. She was never going to be able to fight like this. Her objective had been to topple Highbridge, a feat she could only assume as having been a success as they were no longer on top of the mountain and both fairly live, but she needed to return to the General to report that she had been successful. She doubted the Nord would be so kind as to carry her there.

As though summoned by her thought, a pair of steel clawed boots appeared in the opening, followed by a rough-shod beard and a dirt-covered face as he bent to peer inside. She glared out at him like a wounded animal cornered in her den. Ignoring the hostility, he extended a hand inside, evidently offering to pull her out. Her injured leg momentarily forgotten, she took it.

Seifer's heart leapt up into his throat at the sound of her cry of pain. What the hell was that? He shushed her as she clutched at her right leg, face pressed into the mud. Did she want to attract the whole forest? Casting a quick look around the now silent surroundings, he crouched down beside her and tried again to lift her, only to be swatted away with what was probably as much strength as she could muster at that moment. Gritting his teeth, he grabbed a hold of her wrist and dragged her further, ignoring her sounds of pain and muttering at her under his breath to 'shut up'.

Once she was fully out of the hole, he backed away, watching her. She was breathing hard and had her right hand hovering over her leg, but hardly daring to touch it. The mud he had dragged her through was now sporting a few blood streaks and as he watched she began to whimper.

Her leg, he surmised, was probably broken. Crushed under falling debris on Highbridge's top. There was nothing they could do about it right now. Casting another look around, he crouched down beside her. It wouldn't hurt – no pun intended – to take a look at it, assess the damage.

Her greaves were held in place by delicate looking little silver buckles on the backs of her thighs and he began to unbuckle them slowly, trying not to jog her legs or even touch her, she was probably much too tender for any physical contact and she would most likely blame him for the damage anyway. The elves and Nords had never gotten along, not since Tiber Septim and although he wasn't convinced she was actually an elf, she doubtless had a reason for pretending that she was one.

The leather straps had crusted in blood and it cracked and flaked away as he peeled them away from her leg. She had gone very still and had even quieted her whimpering, evidently focusing on what he was doing. He tried his best not to jostle her as he slid a thin dagger under the material of her kecks, splitting it like butter and peeled their remains out of her flesh. The muscle of her thigh had been very well mashed by the falling rubble and was a deep purple, covered in a think, globby paste of mingled dust and congealed blood. A few fibres from her ruined kecks were also in amongst the mix, sticking up. In short, it looked a mess, but was impossible to decide if that was actually the case.

Seifer straightened up and looked about for a third time. It had been very dark last night, but he was fairly certain that the river from the day before ran nearby. He fished his helmet out of the shrubbery – where it had escaped to, and from whence he had failed to retrieve it, last night – and went off to fetch some fresh water. When he returned, water in helmet, he found her exactly as he had left her, flat on her belly in the mud, head in hands, legs stretched out and trembling behind her.

Setting himself down in the mud as well, he cast about for a suitable looking bit of material to begin cleaning her wounds with. In the end the only available pieces – suitable or not – were her kecks or his cloak and the kecks were already bloody and mud smeared. His cloak on the other hand was looking remarkably clean, considering what had befallen it over the last week, so he tore it off and searched it for the cleanest patch.

When he began to try and clean her leg, however, the good plan stopped there and she began yowling in elven and trying to beat him off, twisting around in the mud and slapping at him. Her legs, unsurprisingly, didn't move much and he dug his thumb into her wound in anger. She let out a cry of pain which he thought resembled the bark of a fox, before he silenced her with a bark of his own:

"Shut up, woman!"

He slapped the wet cloak down on her thigh and began a rough scouring routine, wiping downwards along the grain of the muscle. Every couple of swipes he wrung the cloak out before dunking it back in the helmet for a quick rinse. She squirmed under his less than tender ministrations and clawed at the ground occasionally, clearly in pain but she no longer bothered trying to hit him, which he considered an improvement.

Fully cleaned up, he wrung the cloak out one last time before pouring what remained of the water, red and gritty, out onto the grass. The woman was breathing hard, panting almost, now that he had ceased his torture of her, and he could inspect the wound at his relative leisure.

If he had any way of communicating with her she would be pleased to know that the back of her leg at least looked as though it had largely survived. She would have one hell of a scar – he knew a few weak healing spells, but nothing for broken legs – but it didn't look like she would lose the limb at least.

He slid the greave out from under her leg and tossed it aside, it was basically useless to her now anyway. She grumbled a little when he did that, but he shushed her. Women held onto the oddest things, she wanted her greaves, but she was perfectly happy to let her leg rot and fall off…

After further inspection, it appeared that the bone was offset by a few inches. He knew because the muscle was an odd shape, a lot thicker and bulkier around the middle than the other leg, which was dwarfed beside it, and her legs weren't the same length. He hoped that wouldn't be permanent, but even if it was there was nothing he would be able to do about it.

Before they could go any further on the journey, however, he needed to set her leg, which meant he needed to manhandle it into the correct place. Which would hurt. A lot.

He stretched out on his side so that he was propped up on his elbow at her head and said, "Do you speak the common tongue?"

She shook her head, then held up two fingers very close together. A little.

"Ok," he said, casting another glance down at her leg, "Your leg is broken, so we need to set it if we're going to keep travelling, but it's going to hurt so you're going to have to be quiet and not scream."

"Where?"

"Your femur. In the middle."

"No. Travel where?"

"Oh." He scratched his head, observing her length, trembling with the effort of staying extremely still. She was quite good-looking he noticed, much to his chagrin. "There is an alliance encampment a few leagues from here, we can rest there."

"No. Find elves." She was struggling with the effort of speaking and her voice cracked on the last word. He wrinkled his nose. He'd never had a broken leg before but it certainly looked painful and if the broken wrist he'd received a few years ago in a dragon fight was anything to go by, they were painful. He considered casting one of his pathetic healing spells on her to help quell the pain.

"I don't like elves."

"I do not like you."

Well that much was apparent, so much for the healing spell. "I wouldn't know where to find them, even if I did like them. And it isn't as if they would help me anyway."

"I know where they are."

He raised an eyebrow doubtfully. "Really? Where are we now?"

She looked around, craning her neck to see anything of informational value; the position of the sun; direction of cloud travel; the variation of the vegetation; anything. But there was nothing to see, the trees were a mixture, propagated long ago by local inhabitants and supported by a mild and accommodating climate. They were so tall from her position on the ground that they blocked the position of the sun and the clouds? There were none. She had no idea where they were.

He raised an amused brow when she craned her neck to meet his eye. She huffed – fine.

He chuckled. "So, the alliance encampment then." Her only response was to roll her eyes and tut. He chuckled again, "I'm about to set your leg, this is going to hurt."

Sitting back up, he considered the task. Never having set a leg before, he was going to be playing this by ear. Given that he had no real idea what it was he was doing, he was now extremely glad that he had warned the woman of his impending ineptitude. How embarrassing would it be to have her discover it purely by accident…

Straining to reach his hand-axe at the entrance to the den, he considered what he was going to strap it to her with. His cloak, hand-axe and dagger were very swiftly becoming his first aid kit. Who'd have thunk? Maybe he ought to consider being a healer after all…

A/N: Well, I've had this on here for a while now but completely forgot about it. I hope you enjoyed that, we're beginning to see their characters come out a little more and I hope - given the foreign context I've thrown them into - that I've kept them at least semi true to form...

Leave a review and tell me what you thought,

Thanks,

-Lapin