You double left click on it.It is an adobe acrobat document.If you don't have adobe acrobat,download it.It's free and you will need it for something else sooner or later.
The manual answers the first question better than me.
Look in the scripts forum for information about allies.At this point you might be able to get allies to follow you around and heal you but NPC to NPC combat is not possible at this point.
You just walk over a weapon and you automatically pick it up.
FLa
Where you can find my demo:http://www.savefile.com/files/6970524