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Blood still dripped steadily from the bench onto the decapitated body. A dark cloaked figure surveyed the corpse. After some silent moments, it moved rapidly to a pile of sacking, and threw some over the corpse, with a splashing of its feet in the pool of blood on the floor, and a swishing as this covering landed on its target. The figure moved to the door, and looked around in the grey light of the courtyard. Grasping the ankles of the dead man, it pulled the corpse outside, and manœuvred it onto a cart, adjusting the sacking to conceal the burden. The pulley creaked as each bucket of water was drawn from the well in the yard, and the streams of water gradually lost their reddish tincture as the blood was sluiced away. In the end, the dark figure mounted the cart, and the beast of burden steadily pulled the cortège away into the obscure distance, indifferent to its grim cargo.
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