Blood spattered, hot and wet, across Balyn's face, making the hunter glad of the cloth mask covering his nose and mouth. He wiped his glove across his upper face, clearing his stinging eyes. The bestial huntsman lay crumpled at his feet, bent nearly double between the wall and a wooden crate, its wounds still steaming. Balyn grinned savagely behind the mask at his victory. That had been a close one!
He reached for the nearby ladder and started to climb. The rickety framework of cut tree limbs lashed together swayed under his weight, and he imagined it tearing away from the wall and sending him plummeting into the ravine far below. Like most of Yharnam's construction, though, it remained stable even when at its most shaky-looking, and he soon found himself on a narrow ledge. There seemed nowhere else to go but back into the windmill, so he made his way across the massive (and thankfully stationary) gears to another door leading into the open air on the far side.
The ledge over here was much larger, probably being the roof of an attached structure to the windmill proper, though Balyn still had to pick his way along carefully. At first he noticed nothing of interest, but in a corner off to his right he noticed several figures. At first, he thought they were just corpses, an all-too-common sight on the night of the hunt, but at a second glance Balyn realized one was actually moving.
"Hey, there!" the hunter called.
"What? Oh? Blimey! Don't scare me like that!" Obviously startled, the man whipped around, then relaxed and pushed himself to his feet. He wasn't in good shape, Balyn realized, wearing only ragged trousers and a bandage-like rag around his hair and eyes. A scrubby beard decorated his chin and blood spattered his hands and arms.
Obviously an innocent villager, who had survived a desperate struggle against the beasts that infested this place!
"Well met, friend," Balyn said as heartily as he could manage. "It's good to see another human face. You're the only one I've seen that hasn't yet caught the scourge since I entered this wood. Well, except the dead, of course." He glanced at the chewed bodies at the beggar's feet. Luckily, Balyn had come along in time to save the poor man from a similar fate!
"Yeah. I don't think I can keep on out here much longer. It's about time I made a move, if there's anywhere left to move to. Maybe you can help. I gather it was you who put down that awful beast?"
He must mean that giant huntsman with the plow. That beast had him cut off from getting safely back down.
Balyn grinned broadly, a gesture lost on his audience because of the mask. Realizing this, he raised his cleaver in a show of conviction.
"That's right," he said. "I came, I sawed, I conquered."
The beggar seemed to stare at him from beneath the bandages for a long moment.
"You know, I was going to ask if you knew of any safe havens to go to, but…I think I'll wait for someone a little more normal to come along."