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Sleep did not visit Ethan Pyle during the night.
The wind intensified with darkness, seeping through his chamber’s windows no matter how many towels Ethan crammed into the trim. He slept in one of the tower’s lowest chambers, and still he felt the tower sway for the influence of each outer gust. What short pockets of sleep visited Ethan failed to offer any solace for visions that infiltrated his dreams of the tower crashing upon his pillow.
The howling came to Ethan’s window in the darkest moments of morning.
Ethan gazed from his window upon a pack of shadows whimpering below. A dog cried, and Ethan recognized that none other than Erebus, the most terrible of Mr. Pence’s canines, pleaded towards the window for entry into the tower. The pack moaned in the cold and scratched at the tower’s door.
Ethan hurried to his closet to bury himself beneath layers of clothing before rushing down the winding staircase into the tower’s foyer. He found the lights to that bottom chamber already burning, and he was surprised to find Cedrick locking the front door and bolting all of its latches.
“Do you not hear the dogs, grandfather? The dogs are crying because of the cold. They’re begging for us to let them inside for a little shelter.”
“Strange dreams must have visited you tonight, boy, for you to care at all about any of Mr. Pence’s dogs.”
“You just can’t leave them in the cold! They will die!”
Cedrick’s eyes again glowed with that man’s rage. “They will not sleep in this tower! Any dog wanting shelter here must pay the door fee with a piece of Clavius Turner!”
“They will freeze!”
Credrick looked momentarily stunned in the face of Ethan’s boldness. A breath passed, and the old man smiled.
“There’s some conviction, there’s some spirit, in you yet, boy. Something good might still come out of this night. Those dogs don’t need to die. Have you forgotten that there are plenty of warehouses that would shelter that pack from that wind and cold?”
Ethan stared into his grandfather’s eyes and felt a shifting in his thinking. The dogs had only to decide for themselves to shelter in a warehouse. The dogs did not need to whimper in the cold at the base of the tower. They were dogs bred for a purpose. They composed a pack employed to carry out a job. Erebus and his brothers were to hunt Clavius Turner. Should they open the tower door to them, Ethan realized as he peered into Cedrick’s eys, they would only give those dogs an excuse so as not to achieve their grand potential. Cedrick’s eyes burned the truth into Ethan’s heart.
“Follow me to a higher chamber,” Cedrick placed a reassuring hand on Ethan’s shoulder. “Have something warm to drink. Conversation may be needed more tonight than sleep. We will start a new game at the chessboard. We’ll let the night play out however it must.”
Ethan followed his grandfather high into the tower while the dogs continued to bark and whine outside of the door. No matter how high he climbed that night into the tower, no matter how the wind howled, Ethan could not hide from the crying of that pack, not until the last dog silenced sometime shortly before dawn.
Brandy warmed his stomach. Cedrick’s keen mind taxed Ethan’s attention as they engaged in the stratagem of positioning pawns.
But Ethan heard the howling wind all the same. He heard boards pop and crack, and he felt the tower continue to sway.
* * * * *