Looking for traces

Birds flew off kilometers away from the scream's epicentre. Rodents dug themselves further in their hole and large herbivorous ran away from the zone. The few villagers that heard the howl were worried. And their nervousness rose when more howls followed.

This time, more than one wolf howled, Oswald had an answer, he was stunned from both his performance and its consequences.

He still had to realise how loud he had shouted when he gave it a shot. He had a rush of adrenaline in his body, enough to let him feel as light as a feather, he used it to run away from the pack of wolves, somewhere south to his position.

'What is going on? I've never heard of human talking to wolves! I can use it to my advantage and not get any closer to them when they howl back, what a bunch of idiots!'

He didn't know at all what he told them, according to Reggy, wolves sent messages thanks to it, therefore he should've said something for them to answer.

What he couldn't have predicted though was the place they were at that time, the opposite side of the village. In the middle of the night, a pack of twelve wolves passed through Revel, attacking anyone that wandered outside, and anything barely edible.

He ran around the forest he started to knew by heart and went to see Ruth, the girl who had been sleeping for two hours already had no will to get up from her bed. His little voyage was in vain. He spent the rest of the night hunting rabbits, only animals big enough to eat and unable to fly away.

His knife still had the blue-ish glow on it, he cleaned it plenty of times, but the awful smell remained. It gave a cool effect only he could see while swinging it around.

While he was busy hunting, his mother had a great time with Stan, little by little she became accustomed to his sudden appearances. The time they spent together gave her a lot of pleasure, but she couldn't help but wonder when Oswald would come back. Looking by the window, she saw plenty of golden eyes, sitting still, the pack of wolves seemed to wait for something to happen in the house, yet they wouldn't approach it.

Few hours later, Oswald came back to his house, he saw blue paw prints all around the land his family owned. 'So they were looking for me!'

As he couldn't do a thing about it, he cleaned the rabbits, skinned them and salted their meat.

Next day, the three hunters came to the Bendis farm, they had grave faces because of their lack of sleep, Oswald was tired as well. They announced the attack that happened during the night.

"Any casualties?" Oswald asked, more and more anxious about the fact it might have happened because of him.

Tom answered. "Lady Emilia lost one of her legs. She's now with the doctor and the herbalists, I can't say much about her survival chances, it's a pretty rough wound. There's a young girl too, one of little virtue, Chloe was it?"

"Something like that." Confirmed Adelmo.

"Yeah, she's dead. It was quite hard to identify her." He was about to give more gory detail but Adelmo cut him short.

"You're working with Simon right? He lost material he had drying outside. That's his sole loss, he knew it'd be terrible for you to not have anything you gave him back, he told me to apology in advance."

'I'll bring more next time. I still have meat, I don't need money to survive. Still, I should pay Lady Emilia a visit.'

The woman was among the oldest persons in the village, she had a lot of knowledge about every inhabitants, she was more reliable than his mother, yet he had to be more sociable to untie her tongue.

Oswald wasn't mad at all, only guilty.

"There's one more thing we have to say before going for the daily hunt." Said Reggy with a serious tone.

He pointed out the many paw prints around rhe barn and ordered the group to change the starting point of their researches, Meryl was totally ignored. Her point of view on the matter had no importance whatsoever because she was a housewife.

"If you're hunting, make sure you can make money out of it, or at least a living." She said.

It took them fifty minutes to reach a tree with a thick dark bark. It was a really old pine. On one of its branches, with its tip broken, a half eaten wolf hanged. Its skull was wide open and flies had long set their coven in it.

"I want to quit hunting." Said Tom with a weak voice. "I want to stay home until spring, or maybe summer. This thing here is hanging three meters above my head! No bear, as ferocious as it can be is able to do that! Man! Have you seen how big this carcass is? It's risky for you to keep chasing them."

Oswald could only admire the web of blue strings attached to it. The spectacle was amplified tenfold to him, he was the only one to climb to the tree to examine the thing further.

With a strong grip of the bark, despite the lack of low branches, he managed to reach the carcass.

For him and Tom, it was a first seeing a wolf. From closer up, the poor animal had his muzzle broken along with fangs, wrenched fur in its neck and it was clear how far his guts stretched before stopping the body from impaling itself on the branch.

"Look for footprint !" Adelmo ordered.

'Green? Green? No green here!' Were Oswald's thoughts. He had spotted no human smell where they arrived, they 'polluted' the scene the moment they arrived. The blue glowing was everywhere around, marking how close was the pack's recent venue.

"I can't see any." Reggy said, and waited for Oswald to differ with his sight.

Reggy never admitted he aged. His sight was still very good, nearly perfect to be honest, but his encounter with Oswald made him doubt the contrary.