Devil Take The Hindmost

Chronicle of Wulfrun I

Tamworth, Kingdom of Mercia, 943 A.D.

The maid drew the heavy woollen cloak about her heavy-set shoulders and shuddered.

It was a filthy night, with a harsh wind howling across the top of the wooden stockade and hissing through the thatched roofs of the buildings behind. She was tired and would much rather be drawing a thick blanket over herself and snuffing the candle in her chamber than trudging about in lashing rain and unnatural winds. But here she was with duties to perform in spite of the weather.

At the top of the maid's list was seeing her charge washed, brushed and put to bed like the noblewoman she was supposed to be growing into. First, the maid knew with an experienced sigh, she would have to find the brat.

The maid moved from building to building in the small palace compound, cursing under her breath as the cold and the damp crept into her bones and brought needle-like pain with each step.

"Runa!" the maid called. The sound carried away the second it passed her lips. There was only one place left to search for the troublesome child that she was burdened with. The stables.

Of course, the maid muttered, it stood to reason that the child would be hidden away in the least lady-like of the wooden palace's facilities. The stables were also the place that would make the young girl the filthiest, prolonging the maid's night by a good while as she wrestled the girl under a jug of water.

Having entered the stables, the maid re-lit her shrouded candle and held it high the better to tiptoe around the dark piles dotted here and there atop mud and straw. The very last thing she could countenance was to ruin a perfectly good pair of shoes by going ankle deep into horse shit.

As she moved between the stalls, the maid became aware of something being off; wrong somehow.

In the far corner of the stables, she could hear tremulous movement of hooves and soft whinnying. Although she was no horse master, the maid could clearly detect concern on the part of the beasts kept there. Perhaps it was the sound of the storm outside, but it didn't seem to be bothering the animals in the rest of the stables.

"Runa?" she called once more, softly now as if not quite sure whether she wanted to be heard at all.

"Here," came an answer barely above a whisper above the whipping of the wind outside.

"Come, child. What are you about? You'll get me flogged. You'll be the very death of me, I swear..." the maid pulled up short from her bustling towards the girl. As she rounded the wooden wall of the stall from which her charge had spoken, the old woman froze mid-step, horrified by the sight of the young noblewoman who sat sprawled stark naked in the straw in front of her.

"By all that is Holy!" the maid exclaimed. "What has become of you? Where are you wounded?"

The young child of some seven years that lay in the straw was spattered and smeared all over with blood; glistening, slick and red in the light of the maid's candle.

"Sweet old Mildritha. You have been so kind to me these years gone. I am unharmed," the girl looked up at the maid and smiled, her teeth and lips red from gore.

"I..." the maid started and stopped, staring at the scene in more detail. The girl wore not a single stitch of clothing and rather than having been splattered randomly, the maid could see that the child's body had in fact been daubed with blood in odd shapes, symbols, and runes. "Who has done such a thing to you, girl? Our lord will have their head!" the maid cried, fighting back tears.

"I did," the girl held up her hand to the light.

The girl held the limp and mangled brown form of a rat clutched between slender fingers, where it twitched, not quite dead. The creature's fur was matted with blood pouring from a gaping bite wound on its abdomen.