Mal listened seriously to the haggard man. No way to tell his age, but Mal would pin it at something over thirty, but maybe not by much, or younger but with some legitimate life experiences. It didn't really matter, one way or another; what mattered was that the man was holding them together, and not doing a bad job about it.
He ran a hand through his hair, tucking it back behind one ear and fishing out his glasses to put them on. He was glad he had; a damn bird probably would have knocked them off if he hadn't. Damn things.
"Okay. I'm going to see what I can find to help reinforce what you've done. I'll be back." Mal knew that confidence was the best thing to show here. If he walked like he knew what he was doing and he talked like he knew what he was doing, they would assume that he did -- and more than that, a certain kind of person would, in a crisis, take heart from the people who did seem to know what they were doing. In this case, false confidence wasn't really false. It was more like deliberate morale boosting.
Twenty minutes later he considered the pile that was the results of his scavenging work bleakly. He was not doing well today, it seemed like. A couple of smashed chairs, a mattress with at least half of the stuffing pecked or otherwise torn out, a silver platter (complete with plates and silverware, and he admitted that his ex would have loved the pattern on the china, at least), and eight mens' ties. The ties, at least, were probably silk.
He looped the ties over his arm, and broke the chairs up further, using his sword when he had to. A brutal work for a fine weapon, not that it was doing him much good, but that wasn't the tool's fault. That was the fault of the wielder, and Mal admitted it easily.
"Here," was what he told someone who was working on hammering boards into place; he brought them the pieces of the chair, broken into flat pieces from the seat and the back, and straight boards from where he'd taken the four legs off. "Use these. Like this."
He couldn't help but think that the eagles might be the first wave. If something else came, they'd want some kind of early warning system. He smashed the plates and dishes and scattered the broken pieces behind doors that had been pulled shut and locked. That would at least give them a couple of minutes of warning if something headed toward them from there, and anyone here at least had boots on, if not ski boots.
Mal got the mattress set up to block a window, even if it was only half a window. It wasn't so great, but any blockade was better than none. The ties, though-- not that useful unless they caught something, or if they needed to use them as bandages. Mal thought for a minute and handed them to whomever was helping people who were wounded. "For bandages. They'll be clean, at least." No one who had ties that were that fancy didn't keep them clean.
He wished that there was more that he could do. His scavenging wasn't great, and he wished like heck he'd managed to find more than he had. What he got was barely enough to be helpful, although he supposed to was good that he'd found something to stop bleeding. There had to be people injured.
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