Capture and more.

Struggling to get up, the orc by your side plants a hand firmly in the centre of your chest and pushes you back down - almost gently, and keeps staring at you with those piercing black eyes. Behind him you can see the one with the shield tramping off towards where Ramos was fighting the last one, but no clues as to your friend's condition.

Your captor frisks you, efficiently searching every fold of clothing and nook of your body. Your joints burn with pain as he rolls you over to pat down your back, your shoulder most of all as the arm flops uselessly, trailing behind each movement he forces you to make. Removing every blade that you've kept hidden about you - even the cunningly concealed one at the small of your back which Tully threatened you with - the orc then looks at your leg wound intently. He wanders off to the fire, apparently unconcerned that you will try to escape, and bends down to rummage through a pack of some kind.

Clearly he has assessed your condition correctly, as you strain every available fibre to get on your feet again, but have barely managed to raise yourself onto your one working elbow by the time he returns. He is holding a water skin, a thick bunch of spongy moss, and some remarkably clean-looking bandages. Taking one of the captured knives, he cuts deftly at the woolen stocking above your knee, removing the material and revealing your pale thigh, marred and filthy with blood and grime. You can't even see the injury under it all. He strips off the rest of the material down to your ankle and whips it and the shoe off in one swift movement, jerking the leg slightly and causing a sudden dull throbbing to flare in your thigh.

Unstopping the skin, he pours a little water onto the injury, using the knife blade to scrape the compacted dirt from the skin and peeling the foul mixture of rotten leaves, moss, and coagulating blood away. Slightly crusted already at the edges, it feels like it is tearing away great chunks of flesh and the dull ache becomes a sharp, ragged pain that draws a scream from your tender throat. Your hand reaches towards where he is working, trying to stop him, but it is too far and he ignores you completely.

With the mud and bloody leaves cleared away, the pulsing, oozing flow of bright blood begins anew. Almost immediately your vision starts to spin and your grasping movements slow down. The orc continues to wash the wound, sending the occasional spark of pain up your thigh as he probes for flecks of dirt, and it takes only a few seconds for your resolve and consciousness to slip away into blackness.

Starting awake, you realise there is a gloomy grey light filtering down through the thick forest canopy. It is early dawn, which means you must have been out for hours. The generalised all-body pain of last night has faded, leaving two loci of **** agony: your wounded thigh, which throbs uncontrollably, and your left shoulder which continues to remain unresponsive to your commands while screaming at you with every slight movement of your body. Looking down at your leg you can see a tight bandage around the thigh, surrounded by luminously clean skin that extends a couple of inches above and below it. Compared to the freshly washed, the rest of your leg that looked so unearthly pale last night seems almost black in comparison. Glancing over to the other leg, you see a heavy iron manacle around the ankle, connected to a thick chain that snakes up your right side and around the tree you are slightly propped up on, kept at height on the trunk by a handful of deeply-driven nails. It loops back on itself and is secured with a heavy, double-keyhole lock. Eyes following the trail of chain, you notice another stretch of it descending, a little further round the trunk, and at the end of it you see Ramos, similarly chained, looking battered and bruised but thankfully not dead. He is sleeping awkwardly, hugging one naked forearm to himself that is bandaged just like your leg. Beneath his matted beard you can see a nasty bruise on his jaw that spreads across to his ear and up to his cheek. A blow like that must have knocked him senseless, and you hazard a guess that an unlucky strike is what put an end to his tricksy tumbling around.

Ahead, back at the campfire, the orcs all lie sleeping. With a bitter realisation, you know that it must have been you they sought and now that you're in their clutches, they have no further need for vigilance. Three of them remain living, with the bodies of the other two now somewhere out of sight. They must have rebuilt the fire, as it is only now beginning to die down, and your sleeping captors stretch out close to it, crude features illuminated by the flickering light. One of them - the one that went after Ramos first - has two deep gashes on his face, one starting above the brow, blinding the eye, and ending just before the jaw line, and the other crossing it at the diagonal from beneath the nose up to the ear. Your friend will have left some kind of mark for the rest of this brute's life, and at this thought you take comfort in the small victory. The two that you fought are more or less unscathed: the one whose ribs you broke is evidently favouring his other side for sleeping, but that is the extent of it.

Looking back to Ramos, you feel a profound sadness at your defeat. Not only have you failed in your quest to deliver the sword to the abbey, but you have drawn this noble man away from his family, likely to his imminent ****. You reach out to him - it is not far - and gently brush his unbruised cheek with outstretched fingertips as your eyes fill with tears.