Who: Eomer various npcs OTA What: Returning a day early with kids. Where: Various places When: Present.
The day was warm and the horses were moving slowly, there was no real need for haste. Warm autumn days, of this magnitude tended to be rare on the open plains so they may as well make the most of them. With Eomer at the head, they looked much the same as they had for years, though there was no town they were rushing too, as words of an attack were floating in the air, no citizens to save from raiders. Just a need to show that simply because all believed that the days of war were now over, it did not mean that the riders would leave such things to chance. There were a lot of dis-homed people due to the orcs having constantly raided the outer boundaries, burned farms and merely took the time out to slay the adults, while leaving the children. Mostly because they would hunt them down later and eat them, but a good few had escaped. Now was a time to find the more lost, the ones that had seen such things that they remained hidden and clung to the darkness for they believed it was still safer than wandering out when the sun shone and they could be more easily spotted.
He hadn’t told Lothiriel what the Mark were actually doing, other than merely patrolling the boundaries, for he saw no point in doing such. She would have got her self distressed thinking of very young children being left alone to starve, damaged little children, who no longer believed or even remembered what it was like to truly be a child. She would have fretted and finally have demanded to be allowed to come along, something which whilst Eomer would have enjoyed he realized would have distracted himself far too much, for instead of having his mind on the matter at hand, he would have been looking too Lothiriel to get lost in her ever changing colourful eyes.
Into the third day of their term, they had found a trail, Eomer and Deorwine keeping the rest of the men back. It took them both some time, as the places the children had travelled were small and winding, narrow and hard for both of the bulky men to truly fit. In the end both had had to remove their armour and weapons, though neither would remove their swords. They got into a dark dingy place in the forest, and heard a small whimper from the right. Eomer was pulling himself to his feet, and Deorwine was about to follow when a child of around five fell out of a tree and began to hammer him with small tiny little fists.
At first they couldn’t tell if it were a boy or a girl, all hair and fists, but after Eomer had pulled the child from Deorwine they could see it was a little girl.
“Hold fast child, do you not recognize the Mark when you see them?” He said in a less than soft voice, as the child was wriggling around as if she were being bitten by trolls.
The little girl, so lost in the fear that had been haunting her shook her head, blinked and shouted, “you won’t hurt us, you won’t!” And then she just looked saw they were but men and began to cry. She cried and cried, she was the eldest out of four children, she’d been looking after the four others for the past three months, alone and terrified, believing the Mark had all been slaughtered.
It took both of the men sometime to get the children to trust them and then follow them, but when they had them out where the rest of the Mark could tend to them, so they began the journey home. Yes they may return a day or so early, but Eomer decided that these little ones needed to be cared for, by those best trained to do such and whilst he and those following him, were not exactly immune to knowing what a child’s needs were, they were but soldiers. The smallest of the children, had latched himself onto Eomer, he was merely eighteen months old, hardly old enough to walk, yet he had survived due to the older girls resilience. She too, would not sit with any of the others. So when a day early the mark returned to Edoras Eomer rode in with a five year old girl, sitting on Firefoot in front of him, and a child not much more than a babe, fastened onto his back in a make shift sling. Another three year old girl was doing likewise with Deorwine, and the other two who were twins aged three and half were sleeping holding on tightly to two other riders.
Eomer had finally worked out what the King’s chambers could be used for, as he saw no point in one person having so much space when these poor mites and others like them had no where safe to lay their heads.