Chapter 40 Covering Up His Tracks From The Bedroom Floor

• The town bells had already silenced. People were asleep. Afraid, but safe. The guards were coming down from the walls at last, all arrows accounted for back in their quivers. The torches laid dead in their ashes, the thin grey smoke trailing to the breeze of dawn. The proud flags of Erbe and of the House of Veritas still flew, unscathed by the war of an armyless lover. A war against the beast he carried inside. A war against nothing but his name.
• Soon the merchants would open their shops and the stalls, a little later than usual, from not having had enough sleep. Sharing an uneasy smile with their peers and customers, they'd speculate on the night: ‘What a fright, huh?’, ‘They are saying the soldiers came back empty-handed.’, ‘Ahg, they let the werewolf get away’, ‘Perhaps it was just a false alarm.’
• Dragged out of bed with sleep weighing their senses, the children would be sent to school to teachers who had barely recovered from the panic and cusped large cups of coffee.