The clearing up ahead appears to be the one that contains their destination as they ride closer.
Reolus grimaces at the pagan carving, but doesn't suggest any defacement...yet. Maybe on their way back.
Once they arrive, Reolus cautions restraint and diplomacy. "Pagans serve the devil, but it doesn't mean they are automatically evil. Remember the Good Samaritan technically did not serve God. We are here for the acolyte, not to wage a holy war. If they ask about our faith, then we can answer, but the acolyte's life is our concern right now."
Once they are in view, Reolus raises his hands, clearly away from his weapons, and guides his horse slowly forward.
Gunthar cautiously follows Reolus off to his right looking for any movement.
The knights come into view of a handful of squat timber and thatch buildings. On their left there is a small house*, connected to a larger house in an L shape by a semi-outdoor kitchen. There is also a fairly large barn with an empty half-frozen pig stye beside it. Across from the houses is a small latrine, and a smokehouse. There are no signs of life anywhere. The doors to all the buildings are closed. The skeletal trees are thick in around the houses, and the light of the sun is fading fast. It's then that the knights notice something unnerving. The trees surrounding the barn are full of ravens. An unnaturally large amount of ravens. The clomping of their horses' hooves on the path is enough to upset the birds, which break into a bout of loud, raucous cawing. They scatter from the trees around the barn, filling the air like dark spirits as they flap to the other trees around the Hof, cawing to each other agitatedly and hoping about in the branches.
"Hail, the Hof! Uwe!" Gunthar yells toward the house.
"I fear your hail will meet with no reply save the calls of carrion birds," Reolus says grimly, moving forward and little faster, with his arms a little lower.
Indeed there is no answer from the Hof.
Gunthar follows Reolus circling the Hof toward the bodies.
Lo reins back slightly, letting his companions take the lead. He slips off his horse and puts an arrow on the drawstring of his bow, ready to let fly should his fellow knights find anything menacing and still drawing breath.
Lo is uncertain, but he may have heard a noise from the barn. It's hard to say over the wind in the branches, and the loud cawing of all the ravens.
"The barn," Lo urges his companions, judging to trust his instincts. As Gunthar and Reolus move towards the buildings, he sidesteps to ensure they don't block his line of fire towards the barn door.
Gunthar continues to cautiously move around the Hof until he can put eyes on the collection of ravens. He's convinced that he will see bodies. He reaches out and tries to extend his senses.
Reolus nods to Lo, grips his spear in one hand and the cross hanging around his neck with the other. He advances towards the barn.
The barn has two stout wooden doors. As Reolus gets close he can see the door’s wooden bar has been nailed in place, holding the doors shut.
"Let me take a look around back," Gunthar says while he circles around the barn looking for another door or window and continuing to look for bodies.
The only other door is the one leading into the empty pen next to the barn. It also appears to be nailed shut.
Nailed shut from the outside or inside? (I'm assuming outside, but just in case).
Reolus will dismount and start looking for recent tracks.
Survival:
The space between the buildins is full of tracks both old and ancient. So many trails overlap in fact that it's impossible to learn anything from them. Circling the edge of the living area, Reolus does find a set of wagon tracks and footprints of several people leaving the farm as recently as a few days ago. They head down the road the knights rode in on.
Realising nothing is about to burst out of the barn, Lo stows his bow () and instead draws his father's scimitar. With shield clutched firmly in his left hand, he catches up with Gunthar.
"A firm kick from one of the warhorses might be strong enough to break open one of the barn doors?" he hazards.
Reolus reports his findings.
"The roof looks like an adventure. Let's work on those nails." Gunthar says dismounting and throwing the reins over the fense. He starts to take his dagger to the nails trying to dig the wood away from the head, in order to pry them out. If attacking the hinges would be easier, he'll attack those.
It takes several minutes of effort to pry the thick nails free, but Gunthar gets the job done. As he works to pound the nails loose, the sound of him pounding sets off a chorus of loud growls and barks from within the barn.
"Has someone sealed a pack of wolves with whatever poor wretches might be in there?" he muses. "Or is it just the dogs?"
Feeling more than a little perturbed, he hefts his shield in front of him and raises his scimitar.
"Open the door Gunthar," he advises "But be prepared. Whatever beasts are trapped within, I doubt they'll emerge with anything but a very bad mood."
Before finishing to remove the nails, Gunthar stops and asks, "If there are growls and barks, they probably are four-legged. Maybe we should try the adventure of the roof to take a look what's in there. I don't want to endanger the horses. What do you think?
"A wise move," answers Lo. "Fancy a leg up?"
Gunthar asks Lo to hold Sigi's bridle. Then, he takes his time to climb the roof from the Sigi's saddle to the roof.
Reolus climbs back up on his horse as Gunthar climbs up. He practices guiding his horse, urging it to stomp the ground a few times in practice.
Horsemanship is clearly not his forte, but no doubt the horse is a better warrior than he.
Gunthar asks Lo to hold Sigi's bridle.
Gunthar balances in a crouch on the cold, damp thatch of the roof. The barking continues from within the barn. It sounds like four distinct canine voices.
Gunthar starts to carefully make a hole in the thatch to create a view inside lit with exterior light.
With a minute of hacking and digging Gunthar is able to cut enough thatch free to make a hole in the roof. The barking becomes much louder, and the foul smell of death reaches his nostrils. It's too dark in the failing light of the setting sun for him to see inside the barn, but there are definitely dogs (or wolves?) and something dead inside.
The front door is still barred, but no longer nailed.
"Ehh. Something's dead in here." He continues to clear thatch, so that he could enter this way if he wanted. He also tries to estimate if there is a way to save these dogs, or if they must be killed.
Lo guides his horse and Gunthar's over to Reolus, and instructs him to hold the reins. He then returns to the barn, and looks up at Gunthar atop the roof.
"Don't open the door until we know what's inside. If it's too dark to see, perhaps we should wait until dawn. The dead are already in the Lord's hands, and the hounds might weaken, and prove easier to deal with," he advises.
"If I can get this thatch open enough, I can drop a torch inside to take a look, but I don't want to burn the barn down. Maybe I can throw some meat away from the door, and you can throw a torch inside from the door. Either way, get a torch going."
As ever, the ‘Incautious’ element of Lo’s name proves a misnomer. He feels decidedly ill-at-ease in these surroundings, and whilst he pities the trapped beasts within the barn, he fears they’ll vent their frustrations on the knights should they escape.
Gunthar seems more confident than he, perhaps emboldened by the attentions of Ulger’s daughter, and now even somewhat high-handed in his manner. Still, the lad is atop the barn’s roof. Such a perch is bound to foster lofty presumptions.
”Light a torch. Hold the horses,” Lo grumbles quietly to himself, but nonetheless does Gunthar’s bidding, striding over to where Reolus guards the mounts and fishing a torch out of Sigi’s saddlebags.
Once the flame has caught, he returns to the barn.
”Let’s not open the door until we know what lies within. The thatch looks sodden enough, thanks to this miserable northern winter. I doubt fire will take hold. Drop the torch within. Are you sure you can catch it?” Lo cries up to Gunthar.
Without waiting for an answer, Lo throws the torch up as carefully as he can muster.
"Whew. Nice throw." Gunthar catches the lit torch and uses it to see down into the barn. Then, we can identify a patch of dirt lacking flammable materials, he drops the torch inside the barn.
The torchlight casts flickering shadows across the interior of the barn. Gunthar recoils at the sight below, nearly falling off the roof. His mind immediately flashes to the paintings of hell he'd seen once in a church back home. The center of the barn is dominated by a two and a half meter tall wooden pillar. The pillar is carved with the images of ravens and a one eyed man with a spear. Tied face first to the pillar by the wrists with thick ropes is a naked teenage boy (about the same age as Gunthar) with tonsured hair. His back has been cut open along the spine, and his ribs detached there. His ribs are broken and spread out towards his upraised arms like a pair of bloody wings. Cruel fishhooks rammed through the boy's triceps hold the "wings" in place. His lungs have been ripped out of his back, and hang over his lower back and rear like two bloody, deflated, meaty, wineskins. The boy's legs are mostly gone, chewed and eaten down to the bones, which are shattered on both sides just below the knees. Neither one of his feet is immediately apparent. Eight glowing yellow eyes whip up towards the sudden light of the torch flooding the barn. There are four huge black wolf dogs snarling, growling and barking up at him from below. The fur around their muzzles is coated in dried blood, and the floor of the barn is littered with dog shit and scraps of rotting meat and bone splinters. The dogs leap and scramble against the walls and stalls trying to reach Gunthar unsuccessfully.
Gunthar grimaces and then steels himself pretending to be a knight. "Found the boy. He's dead. There are four nasty wolf dogs in here. They look well fed and pissed off. I'd just as soon as take them with my bow from here."