They Mostly Come Out At Night Read Online Free

like animals as they prowled through the village below, scratching at doors and sniffing for food, doing what they could to gain entry into the guarded homes.
    The villagers of the forest had long ago learnt how to protect themselves from the Wolves, locking themselves away beneath the earth when darkness fell. Further trickery had been added to their tactics across the years, and often some homes would be abandoned altogether, or offerings of fresh meat were left for the Wolves to sate their hunger. Alas, it was not mere hunger for food that led the Wolves to hunt. It was the hunt itself, and the thrill of the kill. A child's scream would be all that it would take to direct this band to an individual house, and then it would become a war between Wolf claws and the carpenter's door. Adahy was to defend these people. It was his calling to hunt the hunters, to be the thing that the beasts that stalked the darkness feared. This was Adahy's first time outside at night, and he was terrified.
    Down below, the shadows continued to roam the streets, but Adahy was beginning to see a pattern form in their movements. All dwellings were getting attention from the Wolves, but more and more of them paused to sniff and claw at the cottage beside the blacksmiths. Adahy tutted again at the fact that the smithy's chimney was still coughing forth smoke from the dying embers of its forge. Did they not know that such a signal would surely draw attention to their home? He would have to have an envoy sent to the village in the morning to chastise them for their slovenliness.
    "Where iz he? I see no one," came the frustrated call of Celso Dulio, an envoy from the Muridae people from the grasslands to the south of the forest.
    The two guardsmen who were assigned to him motioned for silence.
    "I want to know where 'e iz," the little man continued in his strong, buzzing accent. "Why elze would I be freezing my balls off out 'ere except to see thiz great god in action."
    This further outburst only awarded him with a thump from one of the guards' spear shafts, which he wisely did not respond to.
    "He's no god," Adahy muttered under his breath, turning again to look down at the ant-like shadows. "He's a king. And a hero."
    Celso's people worshipped the mouse, and as such, Celso was clothed in grey furs and a ceremonial hood that was shaped to look like his people's totem animal. Maedoc, Adahy's whipping boy and closest friend, joked that the diplomat must have had a thousand mice killed to make his clothing for this journey. Adahy suspected that moles were actually the unwilling donors. His own people, the Corvae, were fortunate their totem animal, the magpie, left plenty of feathers on the forest floor. Looking around him now, he felt proud at the sight of his Magpie Guard in their long black and white feathered cloaks, matching his own, and their dull black helms.
    Only Maedoc stood out, wrapped in a thin grey woollen cloak, with a basic tunic on underneath, as befitted his lower-born station. The scrawny, wild-eyed young man had grown up with Adahy at the Eyrie, yet Maedoc was not of noble blood. It would not have been fitting for a prince of the Eyrie to be beaten when he misbehaved, so instead Adahy had been allowed to befriend this young orphan, and it was Maedoc who had been punished when Adahy did something wrong. Many years had passed since Maedoc had last suffered because of Adahy’s actions - both because of their age, and Adahy’s fearful obedience to his father - yet Maedoc remained a constant presence at the young prince’s side.
    "Damned Mouse is going to get us all killed," Maedoc confided with Adahy, rubbing his arms in a vain attempt to generate heat inside his cloak.
    Adahy could not disagree with his childhood friend. Today was to be an important part of his own training, to witness what he would eventually be called upon to do. It was unfortunate that the visiting Muridae had caught wind of what was afoot in the Eyrie and had