The town of Moonwater were used to the howling of wolves. Oh, they weren’t exactly commonplace, but when you lived out, away from the major cities, then it wasn’t exactly rare, either. You simply learned to watch yourself when you went out into the woods, and didn’t let the young ones go playing unsupervised outside of the wooden palisade designed to keep the beasts at bay. All in all, it was a simple fact of life, something you just accepted, with varying degrees of grace, like the weather.
At least, that was how it used to be.
Jakke pulled his cloak closer about his shoulders as he heard the wolves howling in the night. He didn’t mind the work as a night watchman. After all, it was only one night in three, normally. Left plenty of time for other pursuits, and the times he hunted in the forest meant that he’d already reached level 8, which put him higher up than most of those in the village. No, it was, all things considered, a pretty sweet gig. Most of the time.
Things had been different lately, the last couple months. It had started with that halfling priestess of Selune going missing on the night of the full moon. She usually went out on the full moon, to honor her goddess and dance in the night. Sometimes she wasn’t back until the next night, depending on how things went. When she’d been gone for three days, people began to worry. They had found her body five days after the full moon, because of the vultures. She’d been savaged by wolves.
Again, wolves weren’t really uncommon in their area. But the wounds on the little priestess’s body were too big for a normal wolf. The tracks around the priestess were too big, as well. And there was the fact that the priestess’s face was left untouched, making it easy to identify her.
And that wasn’t the only concern. Sure, the priestess wasn’t exactly a warrior, but she was far from helpless. She had that little mace of hers, and her spells from her goddess. The idea that any kind of common wolf could get the jump on her and kill her was out of the question. Even an (admittedly) very large wolf should have been well within her capabilities.
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Things had been quiet for a couple weeks after that. Then, the night before the next full moon, howls echoed in the moonlight, in larger numbers and closer to town than they had been before. The next day, Farmer Bevis was missing, and one of his sheep was dead, mauled by a very large wolf.
The next night, the villagers looked up at the full moon, and were fearful at the sight. Instead of the pleasant white or off-yellow that normally looked down upon them, the moon was tainted a bloody red. And the wolves howled all the louder.
After that night, the howls came almost every night. More people went missing from the outlying farms. More animals were killed, as well, always by wolves. A tenday ago, Farmer Gobert’s door was found broken open, blood painting the walls. He and his missus and their two kids were all missing, but no one expected to see them again, not with the bloody wolf prints on the floor.
Since that night, everyone abandoned the outlying farms for the safety of the village. It might not be much, but people breathed easier when they were behind the walls, with other people around them to help defend against the terrors howling in the night.
Well, not everyone had abandoned the farms. Old Lady Magdalin who lived out on the edge of the woods stubbornly refused to leave her home. He and a couple of the men had gone round to check on her, after that first night when she was the only one outside the walls, and were surprised to see her still breathing.
What surprised them more were the tracks around her home. Wolf tracks, larger than any of them had seen, before the current trouble. They were circling her hut, almost like they were being kept at bay. Jakk wondered if—
A-WOOOOOOOO!
Jakk’s blood froze as the howls came again, cutting off his thoughts. They were closer than he’d ever heard them. He shuddered, dreading their approach. Surely, they couldn’t get him here, nice and safe on the wall, right? They had fire, and they had bows and swords. They were safe, right?
But they’d thought the priestess was safe. And most of the new members of the watch were farmers who barely knew the proper way to hold a sword, and were rubbish with a bow. They didn’t even have armor for everyone! If the wolves got inside the palisade, could they really stop them?
No. No! The palisade and the gate would hold. Normal wolves couldn’t break it down. And, after they saw that Magdalin’s place was unaffected, they bought some oils that she swore would keep the new wolves at bay, and spread them on the gates and the wall. That had worked, for a few days, but the last couple nights, the wolves had been getting closer again.
The wolves stopped howling. Rather than relaxing, Jakk gripped the bow in his hands tighter, and drew an arrow from his quiver as he looked out into the darkness, to the edge of the light cast by the torches upon the walls. He could see movement. A large shape, on four feet. A wolf!
His eyes focused on the wolf. Slowly, he drew his bow, took a deep breath, and held it. The bow’s twang was strangely loud in the sudden silence of the night. He heard a yelp of pain, and then the howls began again, louder than before.