where: the gallows when: night with: open!
With only the moon to light his way, Ned goes carefully and quietly about his task, his mouth set with grim determination as he eases his old rigging knife through the first taut line of the hangman’s noose. At this proximity, the smell coming off the corpses that swing from the gallows is absolutely putrid, left as they have been as a feast for the crows. By the time he’s finished, their stench will mark him too, lingering on his clothes and on his skin - but what’s the alternative? To leave these people strung up here until the crown sees fit to remove them? To let them serve, in death, as a threat against those yet living?
Hearing the sound of footsteps from behind him, Ned goes still, though he keeps one arm locked around the legs of the man he’s attempting to cut down, taking the majority of his bloated weight with little effort. If it’s a soldier come to arrest him for interfering with the King’s justice, it’s already too late - there’s no denying what he’s doing, so he doesn’t even try. “Ye havenae come to stop me, I hope,” he says, turning his head incrementally towards the source of the noise, “We cannae just leave these poor souls hanging here. They deserve what small measure of dignity we can afford them...” Though it will be of little comfort to them now, when they’re already dead and gone.