The swamp skimmer is speechless as you take and bind his hand; Morr's tithe unsettled for a little longer as you contain the bleeding. There is a chance he will lose the hand later anyway; but perhaps not his life.

Cesare rushes to cut Augusto's ropes, and the boy almost collapses if not for his friend holding him up.

Elda is coming up on you with her dagger out. For a moment you think she's taking her moment to strike, but she is angling to finish off the skimmer until she sees what you are doing. She splutters.

"What are you - stop that, he's a bloody skimmer! Let him die!" She barks, with utter conviction.

The skimmer flinches at the shout, cringing again. He looks to you as the one with whom he thinks he can reason, and holds a finger to his lips. He is urging quiet. But it comes too late.

"Shut up, Elda - quit whining and help me with Augusto, he can barely stand. We'll need to brace him." Bitterly, she prepares a rejoinder, but does not find time to say it. Just as you are finishing the bandage on your injured enemy's hand, the smell crashes into your senses again. Not the swamp smell; the smell you remember vividly from the cave on the road south of Bella Collina, into which you forayed starving and rag-garbed seeking shelter, and finding only filth, and a monster.

"Bahz nuuuuu? Nu kaaaah?"

A massive, gravelly throat slurs the words with soporific weight; roused recently it seems from around the blind bend of the cave's deeper innards. You can hear it shuffling now, almost at the bend after which it will spot you and the others. The fact that the smell reached you before the sound is an indictment that this is just a foul of a beast as the one you fought before.

That one, you fought with a team of archers, and dogs, and loyal brave horsemen running distraction. Beside you now are five kids, one too wounded to walk on his own, and a battered and crippled swamp dweller. The cave corner is maybe thirty yards deep from you; and its denizen is about to emerge. Cesare and Elda, with Augusto loosely upright with an arm over each of their shoulders, look to you in horror for a miracle.

Spoiler: OOC:
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No need to roll initiative.

You go. All the thieves and the skimmer goes. Then the troll goes. On his turn, the troll's about to round the corner.