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The three Halflings had sat quiet as mice at their table. Willem had recovered from his fright reasonably well; the Green Man’s ale having helped considerably. Though the entrance of Wenda clothed only in a hastily thrown on robe and the hearing of her story had begun to put the wind up him again. And even his two more stout willed brothers, Andwise and Madoc, were beginning to feel a bit squeamish.
‘I knew it! I knew it!’ Willem said, a slight edge of hysteria coming into his voice. ‘We should have listened to gaffer Tolly. He said his knees were telling him a bad storm was brewing and we shoulda stayed home.’
‘You great ninny,’ Madoc said, pouring his brother another mug of ale. ‘His knees tell him about rain and hail and snow and such. Not the kind of storm we’ve run into here.’ He drummed his fingers on the table in irritation. ‘We get home again and you’re never dragging me back this way. Altogether too strange the doings ‘round here in the winter.’
Andwise was only half listening to the banter between his brothers. His mind was elsewhere . . . on the story the woman by the fire, Wenda, had told.
Of the three brothers, he was the trapper. His snares and traps were the bane of those animals he hunted for meat or pelt, from bird to boar. His eyes flicked to where Wenda sat. Would she be the bait, he wondered. Would she have to at all? Could the creature be enticed by something else? And what would it take to kill such a creature? Ordinary iron?
He watched Goody as she fussed again with the Yule log. A shaft from the log, perhaps. Sharpened to a killing point. Yes . . . that might work. With a bow trap, the sort used to kill the big boars.
‘Of course, it would most likely have to have some bodily form. But then wouldn’t it have some sort of body in which it moved about. We could kill the body, I’m fairly certain of that. But should we be worried about what might escape?’
The room had grown quiet. Andwise looked up from the shallow puddle of ale on the table in which he’d been drawing his plans for a trap. He’d spoken aloud without thinking. His brow furrowed at the attention.
‘The wight,’ he said, as if the two words were all the explanation needed. ‘I’m sure we could trap and kill it. Just need to know a bit more about it.’
‘Are you daft!’ spluttered Madoc. Willem said nothing . . . he’d fainted again.
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