To the sounds!

He bolts for the sounds, tree branches lashing at his face like his own conscience chiding him fro thinking otherwise. He erupts from the foliage into the middle of a fight where large gray man-like beings are assaulting smaller ones that resemble the girl. For a moment a few soldiers on either side stare at him, waiting for his move, then a gray creature charges him.

He swings the makeshift club with all his might and the gray man's jaw cracks as he falls to the ground. The battle erupts once more as several gray man abandon their targets for him. He blinks in shock as he realizes he has just killed a man. The elves they had been attacking, thankfully, take the moment to return any brutalities to their aggressors and soon the gray men fall, all but one.

The elves take count of their dead as he stands in shock. The one who seems to be in charge, barely meets his own height and walks over. Concern written on his face as he points to the gray man and speaks some odd words.

"What?" He asks.

"You speak common." The soldier looks relieved, "I was afraid you may simply have been raised by another of their rival tribes. Humans often makeup their **** forces."

"I killed him." He looks to the body.

"As he would have you if you had not." The elf says. "We are searching for one of our own, a young girl..."

"She's hiding in a tree hollow, I dressed her wounds the best I could..." He is still in shock.

"The Chieftain’s daughter!" The soldier shouts in glee as he hugs you. "Come with us, you will be a celebrated hero, well for a human at least, but celebrated no less."

"I deserve no celebration." He stares at the dead bodies.

The elf's eyes change as he recognizes the signs of a first kill. "Young man, **** surrounds us all out here."

"This way..." He slowly turns and leads the soldiers to the tree.

The men quickly pull her out and wrap in her in fine furs and cloth. He stands staring at the hole in the earth that so easily could have been the girl's grave and he sighs.

"I am no hero..." His voice barely carries to the lead soldier who would turn only to find the odd human walking off into the deep snow, to what all would assume to be his ****.

For now the story of this path remains clouded in the white of the snow...