Midnight wyrm

Tomas woke to the goats screaming, and then to the silence that was worse.

He took the lantern out into the wet dark. The gate of the pen hung whole on its leather hinges. Inside, three goats stood trampled and shaking against the far rails. Two were gone. The mud was scored with deep drag-marks, broad as a man's arm, running clean through the gate and down toward the river meadow. No blood. No bones. No hair. The goats that were left would not stop shaking.

He found the cow gone from the byre an hour later. Same marks. Same silence. The door was unbroke. Whatever had come had not needed to break anything.

By the time the sun came up, Tomas was in the reeve's yard, shaking.

Reeve Haden wrote it down. That was what Haden did. He kept the tally of the village — births, deaths, the lord's dues, the count of stock against the count of mouths. He wrote down two goats and a cow, taken in the night, no blood, no body, drag-marks wide as a man. Then he went to look at the mud himself, and he wrote down that it was true.