Snippet - Wolf Pack Removal

Harlea ignored Fiona’s angry muttering about tempting fate and not stepping foot in the creepy house. He returned to the hole in the fence and looked for more sympathetic ears.

Elayne’s head and shoulders poked out of the gap in the fence as she wriggled through and joined them.

“You two did a number on this place, didn’t you?” she said as she stood up and ran her fingers through her short cropped hair, “How many wolves were inside?”

Harlea kept an eye on Fiona as she walked back to the wolves she’d downed. Harlea hadn’t seen how she’d ended up killing the second one but judging by the large tree branch sticking out of the ground like a spear, he had a theory. Harlea picked up his axe from the ground, “Three. Big ones too.”

Harlea let Elayne pass and motioned over the way to the body of the smaller wolf, “The one from the road as well.”

“Damn.”

Harlea grumbled half a response as he stomped through the compound, his eyes scanning the chase equipment that poked up through the thick blanket of long grass. The wind delicately brushed through the grass with nothing moving that Harlea could see.

Elayne stayed close to the wall and waited for Areli to move through the gap, putting her shield back on and absent-mindedly tapping the sword at her belt, “So, what’s the plan now?”

“Areli and I will go check out the house while you two have a look around the yard and the stables.” Harlea suggested as he moved towards the unkempt house in front of them, “Then we get this fire started?”

“Fine by me.” Areli said as he caught up to him and brandished his two knives. Areli looked like he was doing ok, with a cut on the back of his arm but it was too minor for him to bandage it. He scowled as he walked forward, looking more angry than nervous about their predicament.

Harlea cleared his throat and waited for Fiona to look up from what she was doing. She took a moment to process what he’d said and then decide how she felt about the idea, “Sounds good. El, stay close, yeah?”

Elayne nodded and raised her shield back into guard as she strode over to join Fiona with a quick look up at the cliff side, “Good idea. Shout out if you need us.”

“But make sure you're loud or we won’t hear you.” Fiona added with a lilting sing-song voice.

Harlea rolled his eyes but said nothing as Fiona coiled her wire whip back up in her hand and went on her way to circle the compound.

The electric whip was such a cool weapon in Fiona’s extensive toolkit. The device was basically just a metal coil attached to a handle with an electricity bijou that she activated once the wire wrapped around her target. The electric runes were the real trick from what Fiona had told him, with their creation being famously difficult to do. Expensive as the runes might be, seeing a giant wolf brought down from nothing but the electricity made it worth every coin in Harlea’s eyes. It almost offended Harlea how much of a non-event her fight had been in comparison to his little wolf.

Harlea checked that his axes were in their holsters as he moved out through the backyard. The immediate quiet after battle always put him on edge. There was something about the adrenaline slipping away and leaving him in the hellish aftermath of the violence. The flow of time felt off for him and he moved out of place in a world he inhabited but others he knew did not. Bird calls pierced the tense veil around them and Harlea focussed on any sounds that could hint at any danger around them.

Next was his forearm begging for his attention. It had begun to sting and the cut complained about the tightness of his bandage and he pushed both thoughts to the back of his mind. There was nothing more for him to do, it was decidedly a future him problem.

Harlea joined Areli by the backdoor of the house. His cantankerous oruk companion squatted next to the side of the house with a bandana around his snout and fiddled with his twin khopesh knives.

Harlea didn’t need to ask why he’d stopped. He could see the pair of bloody legs stuck halfway out of the house’s back door and knew the stench of death all too well. Harlea pulled out his right axe in preparation and crept up to the side of the door.

“He’s dead. For a while too.” Areli commented quietly, “Judging by the scent.”

“That’s what I was thinking.” Harlea tried not to breathe as he worked his napkin out of his pocket and squeezed his nose with the cherry-coloured piece of rough linen fabric, “Think there’s anything in there?”

“I doubt it. My guess is that if there were other wolves around, they’d have fled by now.”

Harlea liked Areli’s theory but didn’t drop his guard as he approached to enter first.

The door swung inwards, with it jamming with a thirty centimetre gap as it wedged onto the man’s arm. The poor bastard had died on his stomach with huge chunks of his back and legs missing. His left foot was gone and Harlea could see the remaining stump peeking out from his ruined trousers. With any luck, the wolves had torn him apart only after he’d died.

Harlea placed his hand on the mid section of the door and pushed gently. The hinges creaked in complaint and Harlea stopped as soon as he made enough space to sneak inside.

The corpse was ghastly, being well on its way to rotting and the clothes being soaked through with the man’s blood. Before he moved past, Harlea nudged the corpse with his foot and watched for any corpseflayer larvae flying away, “Shitty way to die, I’d wager.”

“Looks like it. Probably ripped out his jugular at least, given how much of the blood's pooled on the inside of the house.” Areli noted as he rounded the other side of the door. His dagger poked into the man’s trouser pocket and flicked out a dirty cigarette, “I’ll check him while you head in?”

“Sounds like a plan.” Harlea stepped around the body and wrapped his handkerchief around his face. He breathed through his mouth as much as he could and focussed on stepping only once in the shallow muck that had become of the man’s congealed blood.

The hallway was a few metres wide and several metres long. The width was taken up by a flight of stairs that led up into the roof and, despite being quite bare, Harlea felt cramped at the idea of fighting something like a wolf inside. There was no sign of anything living inside but there were two doors that he could see closed ahead and an open archway leading to an open living room and kitchen.

He moved to the archway and found three more human bodies and one dead wolf in the large room. When they’d died, there had been a considerable struggle, with broken chairs, shattered crockery, and several rotting body parts littering the floor around Harlea’s feet.

Harlea stepped inside, moving cautiously towards the three bodies that lay in the wreckage of the living room. One of the women, the man, and the wolf took up most of the floor space of the living space that made up the centre of the room. There was no dining table and instead a kitchen island and a set of reading lounges. The kitchen island had small drawers at their top but was an empty space beneath; perfect for large pots and pans but currently housing most of the man’s body. He had been stuffed inside the wooden beams that crossed over the face of the kitchen island and he was missing a lot of his body parts, with many being dispersed on the floor around Harlea. The woman was strewn between the reading lounges with her arms hugging a small coffee table. The reading lounges were surprisingly bougie and they matched the large bookcase built into the wall behind them.

Harlea checked that the wolf wasn’t pretending to be dead and noted the blood that had bled into the fur at its throat. Of the three bodies, it was only the man that had been dismantled so enthusiastically. The woman looked almost peaceful in the way she lay on the floor with her head resting on her arms.

Harlea carefully stepped back around to the side of the kitchen island, a quick check on the wolf, and then the archway just in case. And as a rule, he actively tried not to look at the medley of organs that dotted the room around him.

The second woman was dead near the door that led into the kitchen from the hallway. She had been mauled a bit as well with her stomach being ripped open and a lot of her insides eaten or sitting on the floor nearby. Her face was frozen in her final scream and little of her throat remained intact after her death. Her left arm had been broken open and most of her forearm was missing and nowhere to be seen.

Aside from all of the death and the smell of rotting death and a faint hint of faeces, Harlea liked a lot of the style of the kitchen and the living room. He had a similar set up in his main room and had always wondered what a kitchen island would have been like if he’d built one. Granted, the stench of shit really made it hard to concentrate on the home decor and he had an itching feeling that he was still being watched from somewhere. He leant down to get a closer look at the woman and, with his fears confirmed, he recoiled back slightly.

He couldn’t judge her. When death came, there was often so little dignity for those that passed.

He moved around the benches that circled the kitchen and put some distance between himself and the poor lady. With a good stove and some cupboards and a little garden sitting out in the yard, the place was very well set up. A variety of vegetables still hung from the trellises outside and spoke of quite the fancy menu for the secretive folk they’d stumbled upon.

Harlea leant onto the bench in front of the window and watched as Fiona silently skulked along the compound wall. She looked past the garden and checked out the front gate of the compound before making her way to the stables.

Harlea reached over to tap on the window glass but pulled back before he committed to it. Elayne was somewhere nearby and if there was any trouble, they’d surely be able to hear it.

The hairs on the back of Harlea’s neck shivered and he spun around to find Areli standing in the doorway. He had only one of his daggers out and he leant against the side of the archway, giving Harlea an amused look.

“He had a couple coins and this.” Areli said as he held out a metal figurine in his hand, “Might be worth a little something.”

Harlea nodded as he made his way around the kitchen, sweeping up a handful of coins on his way to the middle of the room again. He bent down next to the hollowed-out remains of the man and pinched his nostrils shut with his left hand, “The figurine might sell for something.”

Areli grunted in response as he pocketed the figurine. Harlea made space for him to get a look at the torso of the dead man.

Harlea placed his axe on what remained of the man’s right thigh and used the tip of the axe’s beard to hook a clump of trouser fabric. With a yank, the man dislodged from under the kitchen table and slid into view.

The wolves had ripped the limbs from his body and chunks from any part they could bite into. Part of the upper part of his left arm was still somehow connected but most of the muscle had been stripped off to leave the bone showing.

The wolves had gone for his face as well, ripping his nose off and snapping his cheek bones to leave his face smushed in and utterly unrecognisable.

Areli huffed and he moved back to the archway, “I’m going to check the attic.”

“It might be worse up there!” Harlea yelled at Areli as he quickly disappeared around the corner.

The house settled into quiet once more as his words drifted away from him and the stillness of death clung to the air that crowded around him.

Areli would be fine to check the other parts of the house. Harlea predicted that there was the attic to check and the second door in the hallway, with the first door being the other side of the kitchen’s door. It would be better if Harlea did a proper check of this room and then sorted out the bodies than step on Areli’s toes.

He left the husk of a man next to the wolf corpse and gave the kitchen another once over with his eyes. The large benchtop with several mouldy plates and bowls with an assortment of kitchenware sitting out and the island had nothing overly interesting now he’d taken the coins. There was a small pantry but Harlea had no desire to look through a collection of rotten food that would be lurking within and the only other valuable items he could see were the kitchen utensils. They could sell for a bit in a pinch, he supposed, but there had to be better stuff than just a few dirty knives.

The idea of other loot led him back to the living room, stepping towards the bookcase with a bubbling feeling of excitement inside. He stepped carefully back towards the lounges and rested his hand on the first lounge’s back. They were made from a slick black leather that was soft to the touch. Whatever feathers were inside were plush with a lot of bounce in the back cushion. The coffee table was made from pine and all of the furniture sat on a fine rug. Sadly, the rug was ruined with the woman’s blood drenching a significant portion of its centre. Blood wasn’t that hard to clean but if he did wash it, the rug would be wet while he carried it for at least the next few days. Which was way too much of a hassle if he was going to be putting it on the straps of his backpack.

His eyes moved to the bookcases and he scanned the collection of books and trinkets. Whoever the dead folk were, Harlea would have a safe bet that they weren’t locals in the Nohlan borderlands, no way rich folk would be so far out just for the serenity.

They were decently old so they could be some unlucky commune or pacifist Old Soul cultists. Harlea guffawed at the idea of peaceful cultists, it was very wishful thinking. Their travelling clothes were well-made, with fine buttons on what was left of them and the house looked far too well-made for them to be part of some mad cult. The woman at his feet was maybe a decade older than Harlea was and she looked like she had been kind-folk. She had a dagger but it sat in its sheath, not even unlatched despite her death.

Wolves that big versus a tiny little dagger, Harlea didn’t blame her for not even bothering; none of them had stood a chance.

Harlea checked her dress pockets before undoing the clasp on her belt to collect the dagger, scabbard and a little pouch from around her waist. He flicked open the scabbard’s latch and slid out the dagger.

Its blade was a decent make with no House initial or brand to identify where it had come from. Its anonymity was a fascinating detail and one that only added to the mystery of the whole situation. No brand also meant Harlea could fence the dagger with no fear of it being linked back to any House or important person and he knew which point was more important to him.

He stood back up and looked back at the wolf’s body lying on the ground and sighed. He had a good feeling he knew where the other daggers could be.

The wolf had a beautiful grey coat with its back and side having not a speck of dirt or blood on it. Laying silently on the floor, with a blanket partially covering its hindlegs, it was a beautiful animal and a damned pity. Just below its jaw, there was a puncture wound that had created a river of blood that mat the wolf’s chest fur and stained the wooden floorboards beneath the wolf.

Harlea lifted the wolf’s head up with both his hands and found a dagger hidden beneath. The wound had been clinical, leaving the wolf to die quickly with no chance to move around. He refused to find it interesting.

There was little else underneath the wolf, chunks of a broken kitchen stool and clean wooden boards. To the side of where he stood was a destroyed cupboard but Harlea was certain that it had been destroyed afterwards. That and any of the china that could have been worth taking was now shattered into a thousand pieces on the floor around him.

Harlea stopped where he stood and took a minute to process. The wolves had come in and killed the humans, and then left them to rot. The room was a mess of valuables and debri but, for some reason, there was a blanket laying over the back half of the wolf.

It was all very weird. The sort of business that he had no business thinking about.

Harlea pocketed several more coins from the floor near the dead man and picked up a candle holder from near the cupboard. The base of the candle holder had some nice detail and it looked like it was made from silver. He lobbed it onto the kitchen island and made his way to the large bookshelf, fully focussed on the task at hand.

Only two shelves had any books on them and their spines all looked disappointingly ordinary looking to him. He brushed his hand along the books and noted the layer of dust that many of the books had on them. They were cookbooks with some of the most boring names he had ever heard of.

There were Breisachian stock recipes, Sarik Fertility Recipes, more Breisachian recipes but this time for winter, a book called Furlonese cooking: Boiling the Wilded out of it!. Harlea pulled out the Sarik Fertility Recipes and flicked his thumb through the pages but found nothing of interest. The other shelves of the left side of the bookcase were a mess with most of them being more of a random assortment of crap than anything interesting. Several more silver figures were set in a wooden stand that looked ok but not worth the bag space, and there was a haggard woven basket that was filled with scruffy creepy-looking dolls made out of coarse hair. Harlea ignored them all and picked up a small linen bag from a collection of bags that spilled out onto the floor from the bottom shelf.

He placed the coins and candle holder inside the bag and moved on to the right side of the shelf. The middle shelf had notebooks at its far side with a solid copper bookend holding them in place. Harlea took the bookend and several of the empty notebooks. Fiona always had notebooks like them with her for scribbling and writing. She might be able to use them, Harlea supposed.

Underneath the right shelves were several other pieces of mage-ry equipment that Harlea had no idea about and therefore couldn’t be bothered trying to work through. It had the look of highly specialised equipment but he wasn’t one of knowing about all the mage-ry stuff. If they had more time, Fiona might be interested in looking through it, Harlea considered but quickly rejected. The issue was they weren’t even meant to be in there and he wanted to be moving on fast for Garrond Cross. Besides, she rarely cared for any of the maging bits and bobs he found on their travels.

Harlea shrugged to himself and left the shelves to turn back to the lounges. The coffee table had wooden coasters and a mug that had miraculously managed to stay on the table. There were several pencils scattered on the floor and a piece of mushy organ squished into the rug. At a guess, it was a kidney but Harlea preferred not to investigate the matter.

The lounges had cushions that looked soft but nothing else on their seats. He resisted the urge to place the cushions in his new bag and flicked them onto the floor instead. He had a pillow for his bedroll and he didn’t like the idea of sleeping with his head on a deadfolk cushion at night, no matter how fluffy they looked.

The gap between the lounge back and its seat was deep enough to get his hand in and Harlea happily sunk his left hand inside to see what he could find. He moved his hand from the back to the front of the lounge and was rewarded with several coins from the insides of the first lounge chair.

“Oh, you absolute loot goblin!” Fiona chastised him from the living room entrance, “Urgh, the smell is horrid in here.”

“Yeah, it is proper grim. But I found some stuff and a bunch of coins. Figured we gather and split it outside?” Harlea smiled as he moved to the second chair and dove his hand into the crack for more loot. He felt the prongs of a fork and carefully pulled it out.

“Sounds like a plan to me.” Fiona agreed and went to move back out of the archway.

“Wait wait, where’s Elayne?” Harlea checked the fork before dropping it on the ruined carpet and wiping his hand on the seat of the lounge.

“Outside with the dead wolves. We checked the stables and there wasn’t much to it. Just a bunch of hay.” Fiona said as she disappeared around the corner, “Don’t worry, she has her whistle.”

“Ten minutes and then we have to get moving on lighting this place up. Just a quick look!”

Harlea let out a murmur of displeasure at the idea, “And check the room in the front. Areli is upstairs.”

The little voice in the back of his head taunted him about splitting the crew up. He trusted that Elayne and Fiona knew what they were doing but the fact he couldn’t see any of his friends put him on edge. After one more scan of the room, he moved to the back window.

He reached the window with some pace and fussed with a small latch that held the outer shutters in place. They were made from the same wood as the furniture and fittings of the house and, when the latch didn’t adhere to his attempts, he forced the shutters open with the sound of splintering wood.

The backyard came into view, with Elayne not far from the window and standing over the three wolves’ bodies in a patch of squashed dry grass. She looked across to him and gave him a weary wave, “Hello stranger.”

“Afternoon.” Harlea nodded back at her, “You coming inside?”

Elayne looked back down at the wolves and wiped the sweat off her forehead, “Yeah, are we going to skin these before we go?”

“You know how to skin animals?” Harlea asked, genuinely surprised by yet another one of  Elayne’s mysterious set of skills from her life as a bodyguard.

Elayne scrunched her nose, “Mmm, no. I assumed Areli would know.”

Harlea laughed, “I’ll leave you to ask him.”

“Perhaps not.” she wisely conceded as she walked over to join him by the window, “What’s it like in there?”

“A bloodbath. The wolves found people in here and poor bastards didn’t stand a chance.” Harlea shuffled across on the windowsill to give her space to look inside.

Elayne’s face changed from curious to revolted as soon as she moved past him to look inside. She recoiled slightly but didn’t look away, “Nine Hells, how many are dead in there?”

“Three here, one more by the door, and not sure for the rest of the house. One wolf as well.” Harlea looked up to the ceiling, suspicious he’d heard a creak as he had talked about the rest of the house, “And have you got a handkerchief or something, the smell is awful in here.”

“Always.” Elayne pulled a mask out of one of the pockets inside the inner lining of her shirt, “Just in case.”

“Of course you do.” Harlea replied flatly. Elayne was always prepared.

Elayne looped the mask around her face and went to pull away from the window before stopping to look back at Harlea, “We got to bury them.”

“I was thinking we burn them.” Harlea countered before quickly following up, “On a pyre outside somewhere, not with the wolves in the house.”

“Are pyres standard in the south?” Elayne asked, her eyes suddenly intense despite how casual her words sounded, “I’d not realised.”

“Kind of. Not so much.” Harlea admitted, “But we probably shouldn’t hang about too long.”

“Huh.” Elayne pushed back off the ledge and walked to the back door while she kept talking, “And so move this gentleman here and then we move the others?”

“Yep, I’ll meet you at the door.” Harlea said and pushed off the windowsill and took the moment to collect himself. She had this intensity about her that put Harlea off-centre at times.

Harlea carefully navigated his way to the backdoor to watch Elayne skirt past the dead man. He stopped at the archway, leaning on it as he waited for her to join him, “That’s the plan, we move that guy and then the others and then any extras from the other rooms.”

Elayne murmured back her agreement and stopped in the hallway to place her hand on top of the small entryway table. He’d not had the chance to look at it yet or a coat rack that was next to it. He could see several coats that still looked like they were in good condition and Harlea felt a small surge of excitement run through his body.

“Right, come on. Let’s carry this man outside and then we’ll go grab the others.” Harlea pushed himself back off the wall and closed the distance to Elayne, “I’ll grab the head if you want, perks of being captain.”

“Very gracious.” Elayne stepped back outside and bent down to find a place to grab on what was left of the man’s legs. Harlea dropped down and grabbed him by the top of his arms.

Harlea’s hands dug into the soft parts of the man’s armpits and he lifted at the same time as Elayne.

The man slumped as Harlea lifted him into the air. Elayne juggled his feet to bring him up to chest height and Harlea heaved him up to match her as they staggered outside. Five steps out from the door seemed like enough and Elayne dropped his legs into the grass with Harlea quickly following.

Harlea hopped back to avoid getting splashed with any of the man’s rotten liquids. The man hit the floor hard and rolled onto his side again. Harlea stepped to the side and ran his hands through the tall grass, “Perfect. One down, three to go.”

“Three more downstairs.” Elayne corrected him, “Were the ones in the living room this bad?”

She gestured to the man’s half-eaten right thigh and Harlea contemplated whether he should lie to give her a few moments of false happiness, “They’re not good. One of them is much worse.”

“Awesome.” Elayne made a face and looked back into the house, “Adventuring is just awesome.”

“We’ll grab them and then break up some firewood. It’ll be over soon at least.” Harlea offered as a condolence. Elayne still hadn’t become used to the amount of death they saw on their contracts but she was strong and hadn’t complained that much.

Elayne frowned at her hands before she stepped past Harlea to head back to the house.

Harlea moved to catch up with her and entered the house only a few steps behind. He paused at the doorway and pulled the door away from the coat rack to let him have a cursory look.

There were two coats that looked like they were northern styles and made from good quality linen. He took them off and grabbed a smaller cotton jumper when it appeared on the hook underneath one of the hooks. He turned the jumper over in his hand and decided it looked more like Fiona’s style than Elayne’s.

Harlea stepped across to the entryway drawer that sat next to him. It had two drawers and a wooden ledge sitting underneath about halfway up the drawer’s ledge. On the ledge, there was a box of large collars mixed in with several other objects that Harlea didn’t recognise. Sadly, none of them were of any particular interest to him.

Harlea grabbed the first drawer’s button handle and pulled it open. To his disappointment, there was a collection of scrunched up papers, a few pencils, and a frilly pocket square inside. He tried the second drawer but found it locked in place.

Harlea wrapped his hand around the little button handle and pulled hard. He yanked the drawer back and the whole piece of furniture scraped forward several centimetres, making more noise than he’d planned.

“Hmm, very well.” Harlea said quietly to himself as let go of the handle. A small key hole in the top right corner of the drawer gave him an enticing reason to return before they lit the house on fire. If he needed to, he could always drag the drawer out of the house and smash it open.

As he turned back to the living room, he heard a collection of colourful swearing mixed with ominous clattering from the larger room. He joined Elayne in the middle of the room to see Areli hunched behind the kitchen island.

Harlea couldn’t see much of Areli besides his tail flicking errantly out from the left side of the island. Using his excellent detective skills, and the way the pots and pans flew out towards the kitchen door and smacked into the wall, Harlea deduced Areli had decided to wiggle his way into the kitchen cabinets for some bizarre reason.

“What in the everdeep are you doing over there, Areli?” Harlea asked, doing little to hide how amusing it was to find Areli rummaging with his butt in the air.

The kitchen counter jolted slightly before the room went silent. Then, bedlam broke out as Areli kicked his feet back out from the cabinets and dragged himself up to look at Harlea and Elayne, “I found a key in the man’s pocket but no chest anywhere upstairs. I can’t figure out where it might go.”

“Oh, good! Did you check the drawer in the hallway?’ Harlea asked, thrilled that he might soon get an answer to what lay in the locked drawer.

“Why would they lock a drawer in the hallway?” Areli scowled and forced himself back up onto his feet.

“Why did you start with the kitchen cabinets?” Elayne responded while she watched him stalk past them towards the hall.

Harlea looked across at Elayne, shrugged, and then commented loudly to Areli, “Ask Fi maybe?”

“Fiona!”

“Well, that is exciting.” Harlea grinned as he moved back to the woman dead at the reading chairs. Elayne gave him a half-hearted murmur in response as she walked around to the lady’s feet in the kitchen and waited for Harlea.

Harlea went the long way around the kitchen island to grab both of the lady’s arms to pick her up. He held her by the ends of her arms, hoping that he could get as much distance from her as possible while they escorted her out of the house.

As they lifted the woman up, Harlea wrapped his hands around her armpits and watched as a fetid pool of liquids sit inside the cavity where her intestines once were. He repositioned his feet and got eye contact with Elayne, “Nice and easy, hey?”

“Yep. You want to go first?” Elayne offered half-heartedly as she placed her hands under the woman’s knees and tested her grip.

“I’d rather not have to turn around in here.” Harlea admitted, “You can do it, just a hard right as you back out of here.”

Elayne said nothing back as she heaved the woman’s body upwards. Harlea raced to match her and keep the body as stable as he could.

They quickly worked the woman back out of the room and past Areli, who was now in the hallway. He had taken to kneeling next to the drawer and was fiddling with the key in the drawer’s lock while muttering profanities under his breath. The temptation to ask Elayne to stop called to Harlea but he thought better of it.

They waddled through the back door and hurried the lady’s body over to the grassy spot where they’d placed the first man and Harlea waited for her signal to throw the corpse on top.

“One, two, three!”

Harlea lobbed the top half of the lady across to his left while Elayne simply dropped her legs at their feet. Her corpse twisted and hit the ground hard with her body twisting and flicking all of the foul liquid out around their feet.

Harlea looked up at Elayne and paused when he caught sight of her clear displeasure.

Elayne sighed, picked up the woman’s feet and delicately placed them closer to the man’s body without another word.

“We can bury them after we’ve started the fire.” Harlea relented as he shifted the woman down to lay next to the man.

Elayne’s face lit up with a lukewarm smile, “That’d be good. We can dig up the garden so the ground won’t be so hard and I’ll run through the rites for the first grave while you work on the other ones.”

“Mmmmmm,” Harlea murmured and chose to bite his tongue. He had imagined digging a big hole for them all to go in but decided to let the whole situation just happen, “That’ll be great but let’s get all the bodies out here first.”

“Agreed.” Elayne went back to the door with her first few steps slow but quickly gaining speed with her renewed vigour. She half-jogged inside and Harlea followed behind, happy to see her happy.

They’d need to make sure the fire caught inside the house and the stables so it wasn’t too much of an inconvenience on their time really. And, who knew, burying them might be some desperately needed good karma for the lot of them.

In the house, Harlea passed Areli again to find he had worked his way around to the side of the drawer and inspecting the edges with his knife.

Harlea sidestepped past to go back to the living room but couldn’t help but comment as he went, “No luck with the key?”

“What do you think? Damn key must be for something else.” Areli responded cantankerously.

“Mmm, well, I am setting a fire in the loungeroom in a few minutes so if you want to find that chest, got to go look for it now.” Harlea warned and shuffled away to join Elayne again.

Elayne stood above the second woman who lay near the lounge chairs, and waited for Harlea, “Shall we get this lady out next?”

“Fine by me.” Harlea stepped through the wreckage to join her. He moved around the far side of the island towards the woman’s head and took stock of where he could secure two decent handholds to pick her up.

His options weren’t particularly appealing. A lot of the woman’s neck had been ripped apart when the wolves had killed her, tearing at her clavicles and leaving her shoulder joint visible.  Her nose and part of her jaw were missing with the rest of her head only attached by the small fraction of her neck muscles that was left. Harlea ran his hand down the side of the woman’s left shoulder and placed his hand behind her head. He grabbed her by the right shoulder and watched as the head swivelled to rest on his left forearm.

Harlea grimaced and nodded to Elayne. Her hands were wrapped under both of the woman’s knees and waited for him to start moving. As Harlea lifted from his back, he felt the woman’s head shift again, hanging in the balance and threatening to twist and fall when he wasn’t paying attention.  He shifted his hip up to hold her head in place and shifted her body further up his arm as he limped her body up.

“Wait.” Harlea said and stopped again. It took only two steps before he decided he wanted to readjust again. Her head was going to fall and he really didn’t want to ruin his shirt. His new plan focussed on bending both of her arms back behind her head to create a little pillow for it. Then he could press on both shoulders and keep her up forcing her arms up and out. He forced the shoulder joints to rotate and pinned her arms under the head with little remorse. If she was alive, it would have been a painful position for her to be held in. Harlea doubted she much minded now.

Elayne lifted the woman further up  with him and Harlea focussed on squeezing the arms together to keep the woman steady.

Pop!

Harlea prepared himself to watch the woman’s shoulders come loose. He’d tried not to force her arms too far but he could feel the joint’s giving. He prepared himself to try and catch the arms as they dislocated and hoped the head didn’t end up spraying his shirts and pants in blood.

Harlea waited but nothing happened. The arms and the head stayed in place and Elayne mirrored his look of shock and confusion.

“Areli?” Harlea called out cautiously, “You dead?”

“It’s fine.” Areli called back, “The drawer just had a trap in it.”

“Ah.” Harlea felt himself relax, “I thought we’d be digging another grave.”

“Graves?” Areli appeared at the doorway again, this time with a slightly sooty face, “Do we have time for that?”