This time he wasn’t running. With his head down, ears back and fur bristling, he stalked toward her. She grasped her club in both mittened hands and waited, the sweat from her run cooling and making her shiver with more than just fear. He wasn’t gray; he was dark, black maybe, and bigger than any canine she had ever seen except for the mastiffs used for hunting boar and bear.
He gave out a low, rumbling growl that she answered with a strangled whimper.
She saw him tense, and knew he was going to leap again. Just as he did, she hunched down and thrust her improvised club blindly forward and up. She wasn’t strong enough to knock him down, and didn’t try. She felt the end of the club hit — something — and she shoved with all her might as he sailed over the top of her again, assisted by her blow.
This time she wasn’t lucky enough for him to have another accident; he didn’t go headfirst into the boulder. Instead, he reacted to what she had done instantly. She heard claws scrabbling against the stone above her head, and then he was gone. But a moment later he leapt down from the top of the boulders to land in front of her again in a cloud of loose snow.
He eyed her, breath steaming in the moonlight. She shrank as far back into the rock as she could. All I can do is make it too hard for him to drag me out, she thought, through the fog of panic. If I make him work too hard for his meal, maybe he’ll give up. Why doesn’t he just give up and go after a nice fat sheep?
He growled, and paced nearer. No leaping this time; his muscles were tensing in a different pattern. Then he moved; fast and agile. He lunged at her and snapped.
She thrust the splintery end of the branch at his nose, not his jaws. If he managed to get hold of the stick, she would never be able to hold on to it. She had to fend him off without losing this slender defense, because there was nothing between her and him but her cloak if she did.
He jerked away, but it was hardly more than an irritated wince as he went back on the attack and continued to lunge and snap. She alternated poking with frantic beating of the end back and forth between the walls of her nook — not trying to hit him, just trying to make it harder for him to reach her. His growling rose in volume and pitch, filling her ears.
Her arms and legs burned with fatigue; her feet felt like blocks of ice. She tried to shout at the beast, hoping to startle it, but she couldn’t even manage a squeak from her tight throat.
How long had he been trying to get at her? It felt like hours. Clearly he was not giving up.
His eyes glittered blackly in the moonlight. They should have been red, a hellish, infernal red.
Suddenly he backed up, studying her. She held her breath. Was this it? Had he finally decided she was more trouble than she was worth? Or was he figuring out some way to get past her stick?
A moment later, the question was answered as he lunged again, his jaws closing on her stick.
He backed up, digging all four feet into the ground, hauling and tugging. She held on for dear life, breath caught in her throat, violently jerking the stick from side to side, trying to shake him off, bashing his muzzle against the boulders. As she felt her feet slipping, felt herself being pulled out of the crevice, in desperation she kicked at his face.
Moving too fast for her to react, he let go of the stick and his teeth fastened on her foot, penetrating the sheepskin as if it was thinner than paper.
A scream burst from her throat as the teeth hit the flesh of her ankle.
That somehow startled him, as nothing else had.
He let go as if her foot was red-hot, and backed away. She scrabbled back into the safety of the crevice, sobbing. Now, at last, she found her voice.
“Go away!” she cried out, her voice breaking. “Leave me alone!” Stupid, of course; the beast couldn’t understand her. And even if it did, why should it leave such a tasty meal, when with a little more work, it would have her?
But the wolf backed up another pace, head down, tail down, ears flat, staring at her as if it hadn’t until that moment understood it was attacking a human.
Now, rather than growling, it was eerily silent.
“Please,” she sobbed, “please just leave me alone!”
It stared at her. What was it thinking? She scrabbled to her feet again, stick at the ready, still weeping. Her ankle hurt, and she didn’t dare look down at it to see how badly it had been mauled. Surely there was blood-scent on the air now. Surely that would goad the beast into a final, fatal attack.
It backed up another pace, still staring. As she sobbed again, it finally made a sound, an odd interrogative sound deep in its throat.
And then, inexplicably, it ducked its head, abruptly turned away and plunged off, running into the woods. It bounded through the snow, a swiftly moving black streak on the white, weaving among the shadows. A moment later, it was gone. Except for the burning pain of her ankle, the entire incident might have been a nightmare.
She waited, sure that this was nothing more than an incredibly clever ruse on the beast’s part. But — nothing disturbed the serenity of the clearing. And after a moment, she pried herself out of the cleft in the rock, testing her ankle. It held under her weight, even though it hurt as badly as anything she had ever suffered, and only a little blood spotted the leather of the boot.
She broke into a limping run, moving as fast as she could for the safe haven of the city walls.
Behind her, a long, mournful howl drifted over the trees.
There was a great press of people getting into the gate, so no one noticed her state as she crowded in among them. The streets on the way to the Beauchampses’ home, however, were quiet.
On the one hand, as she limped homeward, she wished desperately that she would encounter someone she knew, someone who could help. On the other — she knew what would happen the moment her father discovered what had happened. She’d never be allowed outside the city gates again.
