The voice irritated his ears, buzzing around like gnats in a summer breeze while he walked the great many snow-ridden steps towards the place of healing, yet also of sickness, of suffering, of death, which looked surprisingly glorious as the sun crept through the line of great many trees to the east. Was it fortune that had smiled on him, that he hadn't ended up in the this place like so many others? What had Myrken given him? A great scar on his forehead. A blessing, the man in the dreams called it. With each passing moment, the voice was becoming more familiar... more...closer to home. As were other thoughts and voices, while his riding boots went crunch, crunch, crunch through the layers and layers of white.
Wolves do not do well alone.
I, I've seen you b-before, ser Wolf. But you, you were s-someone else, I think.
I will hang your fucking head from the gates in town.
I knew another Wolf. His skull is upon the Gate.
Crunch, crunch, crunch.
The snow was upon the stairs that led through the great door, where the smells of laudanum, vinegar and blood stung the nose, where the voices of hushed women and men whispered among the halls and rooms. There were no screams or wails this night, no sounds of misery or suffering. For that at least, ale swimming about his head and belly, he was grateful for. He entered quietly, unheard with the staff tending to patients, and his boots creaked upon the wooden floorboards, where candles flickered their amber lights. Down past doors he went, another, amber light flickering from the unsheathed sword that never left his side. A woman went past, right to left, carrying a bundle of blood-stained sheets and bandages. He followed from whence she came, fingerless gloves pushing the door aslight to creak open, a trickle of candlelight seeping into the darkness. From there he saw the horsewoman among another occupied cot, and his dark eye was a slit in the door frame, watching one of the two.
Finish it, he'd told her. You've had your fuckin' farce, now bloody finish it. Still and silent, a thought occurred to him, seing all the piles of red bandages, though it was dismissed the moment he saw the movement of her chest beaneath the sheets... breathing. He pushed the door open further, it creaking a slight, glancing down the hall. A male healer turned out of a room towards the hallway, and he shifted his boots to slip inside the room, back against the wall aside the entrace, waiting, but the footsteps rose to crescendo then receded. He exhaled slowly, closing the door with a silent click.
Tips of sunlight were just streaking through glass windows as he moved towards the three cots. The horsewoman was not moving, and one might wonder if she would wake. She'll bleed out, he'd told Gloria. Candles flickered from where the wind whistled down the flue, where coals and embers glowed from where wood had once burned, and he turned slowly, seeing the Jernoan woman. Her breathing was heavier, her small movements sign of awareness. Asleep. The floorboards creaked with each click of his boots, and he was by the woolspun bed cover before he knew it, to see where wind and frost, to see if it had been fortunate enough for him to see some fingers bitten by frostbite, or a swollen ear from all the farce that had happened two nights fore. It was still mostly dark in the room, the soft amber forming a silhouette over the top walls and ornaments, and standing, one hand on the pommel of his kriegsmesser, Serrus Belcaw clicked his tongue to the roof of his mouth.
"You're a stupid cunt, Gloria Wynsee," is the man's good morrow.