Crooked Streets by R J Creaney

Author:R J Creaney [Creaney, R J]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-12-01T07:00:00+00:00

8 – Aftermath

After Cainen’s incident with the wolves, the guardsmen proceeded to search the dungeon and discovered a low, narrow breach in the dankest and darkest corner – the gap through which the wolves had entered and left the castle. An investigating team of guardsmen squeezed themselves through the opening in the stone, passing through a rough tunnel and emerging beneath the castle’s foundations, deep inside the hill. What they found below the castle defied their wildest expectations: a sizeable cavern, likely Harquen’s dwelling place for the past several years. A dark, bloody and squalid underground space, fitted with pens and cages to accommodate the keeping and breeding of wolves. Another roughly-hewn tunnel joined with the castle’s simple sewerage system, providing an opening to the world outside the castle. The Beast of Vaudain itself, the guardsmen surmised, had been an upstart male who had escaped from Harquen’s den – the place where, in darkness, it had been born and reared – in order, perhaps, to assert itself and found its own pack.

That evening, the people of the castle set about burning the corpse of Harquen de Vaudain and his two felled wolves, and consigned the ashes and remaining bone-fragments to the cesspit without delay. They agreed, after some debate, to inter the body of Hanre de Vaudain amongst his forefathers at Vaudain burial ground, with more-or-less all the proper rites.

In the hours and the days following Harquen’s attack, there was a storm of strong, conflicting feeling throughout Vaudain’s town and castle. The news of the events surrounding Harquen’s apparent return from death spread swiftly, and the people of the barony were not sure whether to react with sadness, joy or fear at all that they had heard. Kozef and Cainen could see as much themselves.

Four days after the night-attack made by Harquen and his pets, the mercenaries took their leave of Vaudain castle. There were fewer people about than when they had first arrived at Vaudain, and those that had dared to leave the safety of the walls seemed to be now more filled with fear and confusion than they had before.

A small knot of city-dwellers passed them on the road, and Cainen was able to meet their gaze. He saw a special dread in their eyes and their countenances, but there was a grim resolve there, also. And the slightest hint of hope, Cainen thought – that things could not possibly be as bad as they seemed at that moment, that perhaps the news was not as dire as it seemed.

That odd pair of foreign mercenaries, meanwhile, were themselves unsure of what to make of the unfortunate turn of events.

“What will happen now, do you think?” Kozef asked.

It was early afternoon. The spring sun was shining brightly, and the air was warm but the breeze was cool. The men had left castle Vaudain almost an hour hence, and were now tramping steadily northwards up the dusty road, continuing with their roving. Cainen’s forearm, having been cleaned and stitched, was now tightly bandaged with clean linen.

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