The Harrowdale Horror: Part 5
Posted: Tue Feb 05, 2019 11:42 am
RAIN falls for over an hour but the dark clouds do not disperse at the storm’s end. Afternoon stretches toward evening.
Kat’s watch passes quietly.
Rested and looking well after little more than a couple of hours in one of the cells, Sir Clive next takes up sentinel duty in the lobby, his great headsman’s sword, Mercy, never far from his hands.
Without a fire in the fireplace and with some of the windows busted, the air within the building remains clammy and chill. Shifting winds rattle loose shutters and vibrate broken panes of glass.
A watcher with a western view will see the sun appear below the clouds only briefly before sinking out of sight behind the western woods.
Outside, in the thickening darkness, frantic tapping sounds rise and fall from both woodland and town. But soon these strange noises cease. Listeners hear other sounds, noises of nature: night birds crying in the trees to the west and the sea softly rolling in the east.
Sir Clive makes some noise as he walks from window to window, checking, but even his steady rounds become part of the rhythm of the night.
Sleep, troubled or not, comes to all who lie down and rest
...
Morning arrives with amber light, the breeze-borne smell of damp leaves, the drone of insects in the yard.
Sir Clive, his nocturnal watch ended, hardly appears fatigued.
Periele, the acolyte rescued by the party yesterday, goes through the storeroom and scrounges together what little unspoiled food remains, so that everyone can eat at least a cold breakfast. It’s not much: old cheese, mushy oats, some dried fruit. But it suffices. And there is enough liquor, certainly, to warm one’s guts in the absence of a hearth fire.
Kat has trail provisions and Alain never seems to lack for food and drink, at least of the basic sort and in limited supply. Sir Clive hardly eats at all, and drinks only good wine.
Seated below an eastern window Raen studies his spell book while nearby, Klokulf re-reads sections of the Gaunt Man’s grimoire.
A pail the acolyte recovered makes for a handy chamber-pot, and some soap and rags she found help anyone inclined to hygiene keep clean. She even finds a whetstone and some oil for blades.
Within two hours of sunrise the party stands prepared once more to face the dangers of Harrowdale.
Kat’s watch passes quietly.
Rested and looking well after little more than a couple of hours in one of the cells, Sir Clive next takes up sentinel duty in the lobby, his great headsman’s sword, Mercy, never far from his hands.
Without a fire in the fireplace and with some of the windows busted, the air within the building remains clammy and chill. Shifting winds rattle loose shutters and vibrate broken panes of glass.
A watcher with a western view will see the sun appear below the clouds only briefly before sinking out of sight behind the western woods.
Outside, in the thickening darkness, frantic tapping sounds rise and fall from both woodland and town. But soon these strange noises cease. Listeners hear other sounds, noises of nature: night birds crying in the trees to the west and the sea softly rolling in the east.
Sir Clive makes some noise as he walks from window to window, checking, but even his steady rounds become part of the rhythm of the night.
Sleep, troubled or not, comes to all who lie down and rest
...
Morning arrives with amber light, the breeze-borne smell of damp leaves, the drone of insects in the yard.
Sir Clive, his nocturnal watch ended, hardly appears fatigued.
Periele, the acolyte rescued by the party yesterday, goes through the storeroom and scrounges together what little unspoiled food remains, so that everyone can eat at least a cold breakfast. It’s not much: old cheese, mushy oats, some dried fruit. But it suffices. And there is enough liquor, certainly, to warm one’s guts in the absence of a hearth fire.
Kat has trail provisions and Alain never seems to lack for food and drink, at least of the basic sort and in limited supply. Sir Clive hardly eats at all, and drinks only good wine.
Seated below an eastern window Raen studies his spell book while nearby, Klokulf re-reads sections of the Gaunt Man’s grimoire.
A pail the acolyte recovered makes for a handy chamber-pot, and some soap and rags she found help anyone inclined to hygiene keep clean. She even finds a whetstone and some oil for blades.
Within two hours of sunrise the party stands prepared once more to face the dangers of Harrowdale.