He wore a heavily pleated short doublet that marked him as a member of the nobility—or the rich merchant class, at least. But though the nearby poor were scandalized by his presence in their quarter, they were much more concerned by the scarlet blood soaking the pink fabric, the missing limbs, and the clearly canine tooth marks scoring the corpse.

“It’s not just the tramps anymore,” one constable muttered, knowing his superiors would suddenly start to care about all the deaths in the city and he’d be stuck with more work.

Once he had opened his mouth, the tramps and peasants around him took notice of his uniform and began jeering, demanding to know what he and his were going to do about the menace, the wolf-pack, and more particularly Bobtail, the monstrous beast that led the wolves through the cracks in the city walls with what frightened observers had characterized as nigh-human intelligence.

“Wolves ain’t my job!” he finally shouted before fleeing back to his barracks.