Legends of Chaos Anthology: The Witches Tower

Part 12: Aftermath

Eight out of the fifteen they had started with were dead—most from the waggoners and alchemists, who were not trained for combat. Ruth, who had managed to dig out some medical supplies from one of her wagons, did her best to tend to the wounded with the help of Jack and her surviving assistants.

Orin staggered over to where Meara had dropped her cloak and gathered it up. Though it was clear that she didn't bother to remove her clothing, which was now shredded along the road, she did manage to remove her hood. Looking it over, Orin was glad to see that there were no new tears he would have to fix. But it was a small constellation to everything else that had occurred.

As he cleaned it off the best he could and wrapped it up, Andre came up behind Orin, stating with a bombastic tone, "See, Sir Wolfbane! You're not the only one who can take on werewolves! They will sing songs of my men and me just like they have of you." He slapped Orin on the back with a friendly smile before noticing the torn clothes and the cloak. His flashy smile and pretentious demeanor withered as he said with sincerity, "Oh! Is that not your companion's cloak? Don't tell me they got that poor girl too?"

"Not exactly," Sir Orin said, "She'll be back later. Hopefully before nightfall," he said as he looked upward at the overcast sky.

"What is that supposed to mean?" Andre asked.

But before he could answer, The Inquisitor rammed on his hours, fuming, "Master Wolfbane! I hope you are pleased with yourself; because of your ineptitude, we have lost most of our company." The inquisitor glowered, red in the face.

"We did," Orin said calmly, "there were no others after we cleared the tower. This band must have been elsewhere during our raid."

"Excuses!" the inquisitor snapped, "If you actually had done your job, these tainted would not have ambushed us!"

Andre scratched his bloodied hair as he kicked one of the dead corpses of the wolves, "I have never run across beasts such as these."

"Then clearly, you've never fought many beasts that magic wells have tainted," Phillipe said with measured disdain.

"Inquisitor Philippe," Ruth spat, trying to save the life of the man with his arm loped off, "Either get off your high horse and make yourself useful or stop running your mouth."

"Well, I never!" the inquisitor snorted but did little more than sit indignity as his hours pawed the ground impatiently.

Instead, Andre quickly shuffled over, asking, "How can I help?"

But Ruth only stiffened, checking the man's neck, before the tension in her shoulders slackened, "Thank you, Andre, but it is too late for him...." She took one of the rags she had been trying to stem the bleeding with and covered his face before glancing about at the other fresh corpses with a hollow and distant look.

"Good," The Inquisitor said, "saved us the indignation of having to put him down."

"What?" Orin asked, only just noticing what the ecclesiastical man was suggesting.

"We should put them out of their misery." Phillippe said, indicating Andray's and Ruth's men who had been wounded by the tainted mutants, "better to end them now and save their soles than to let them linger and to become a tool of our adversaries."

"No," Ruth said sternly. "They are not cursed."

"Are you sure?" the inquisitor asked Ruth, "Can you say so with certainty?"

"Even if they are, we have ways to help them."

"Insolent wench," Philippe sneered, "Be it on your head if they turn and kill the rest of us," he rode away down the row of wagons.