Fear lodged securely in Arran’s gut. With each step closer, his fear grew. “Something isna right, Kip. I fear someone’s been in the stables.” He turned to see the old man slowing his pace, his face still and pale.
“Aye, I believe ye are right, son. I smell blood, lots of it. I doona know if I can make meself see. Would ye mind going on yer own? I’ll stay right here.”
Kip’s words did nothing to soothe Arran’s fear. He’d never known the old man to back away from anything, but as he saw the distraught expression on his old friend’s face, he knew that whatever he was about to see was terrible. Kip loved nothing in the world more than his horses, except perhaps Mary, and Arran could feel it in his bones that it would be best to spare Kip from whatever awaited him beyond the stable doors. He reached out and placed both hands on Kip’s shoulders.
“Aye. O’ course. I’m sure tis fine, but I’ll go and see by meself. Ye stay here and keep an eye on the others.” He nudged his head toward the top of the hill where Sheila, Griffin, and Angus, along with the other four horses they’d acquired, stayed tied to the trunk of a tree.
He turned and made his way to the side entrance of the stable. With each step the smell of blood became stronger, causing his stomach to churn uncomfortably.
Arran stepped inside the dark center walkway of the stables, grabbing the lighted flame from outside the entrance to set light to the first lantern in a long row that hung outside each stall door. An awful squishing sound echoed as his feet made contact with the cold, wet liquid that covered the ground. Hesitantly he walked from lantern to lantern, slowly illuminating the horror that filled each stall.
Every horse was dead. He knew it even before he gathered the courage to peek over into one of the stalls. It was too quiet, and there was too much blood for that not to be the case. Once he did look, he had to grab onto the blood-soaked post to his right just to keep himself steady. The sight of the decapitated horse, its head lying separate but close to the rest of its body, sent the contents of his stomach retching out onto the wooden floor.
He didn’t need to see the others right now. He knew it was all the same, and he would be forced to view the massacre later when he cleaned up the remains. He would do it himself to ensure that Kip didn’t make his way into the stable. It would be hard enough for the old stable master to deal with the death of his horses. There was no reason that he should ever have to see what had become of his beloved animals.
Somberly he made his way back to Kip, his face showing what he could hardly bring his voice to say. “I’m so verra sorry, Kip.”
“Ye canna mean it. What happened to them? I need to see, Arran. Perhaps ye are wrong.” The old man staggered forward, trying to force himself to make his way toward the stables.
“Nay, I’m no wrong. They were slaughtered, Kip. All of them. Now, we must clean up the mess and then find who did it. But, I willna be letting ye lay yer eyes upon a bit of it.”
Kip sobbed as he took another step toward the stables. “I doona want to see it, Arran, but I must. I’ve cared for all of those horses since they were born, and I willna disrespect them by leaving someone else to care for the mess of their death.” Tears rolled down the old man’s cheeks as he dragged his feet toward the side entrance of the stables.
Arran quickly moved to block Kip from taking another step, and doing the only thing he could think of to stop him, punched him square in the face. “Aye, Kip, ye can let someone else care for them. I’ll be the one to do it now.” Swinging the unconscious stable master over his shoulders, he turned to make his way up to the castle.
*
I had no idea how long we’d been screaming at one another. Half of the words he was screeching in my direction I had no meaning for, and I was equally sure the same could be said for the things I was saying to him.
I was holding nothing back now, screaming in my normal accent, using modern words for which I knew he had no context. I did everything I could just to talk and talk, hoping that he would eventually stop screaming long enough to listen to what I had to say.
It didn’t work.
And as we continued to yell at each other, he continued to try and forcibly remove me from the room. We played an odd sort of cat-and-mouse game: me dancing out of the path of his reaching hands, him bobbing out of the way so that whatever object I hurled in his direction didn’t bludgeon him in the eye.