Then Christian saw and heard what shot him through with fear.
Where a fringe of trees hung round a slope he saw something dark
moving, and heard a yelp, followed by a full horrid cry, and the
dark spread out upon the snow, a pack of wolves in pursuit.
Of the beasts alone he had little cause for fear; at the pace he
held he could distance them, four-footed though they were. But of
White Fell's wiles he had infinite apprehension, for how might she
not avail herself of the savage jaws of these wolves, akin as they
were to half her nature. She vouchsafed to them nor look nor sign;
but Christian, on an impulse to assure himself that she should not
escape him, caught and held the back-flung edge of her furs,
running still.
She turned like a flash with a beastly snarl, teeth and eyes
gleaming again. Her axe shone, on the upstroke, on the downstroke,
as she hacked at his hand. She had lopped it off at the wrist, but
that he parried with the bear-spear. Even then, she shore through
the shaft and shattered the bones of the hand at the same blow, so
that he loosed perforce.
Then again they raced on as before, Christian not losing a pace,
though his left hand swung useless, bleeding and broken.
The snarl, indubitable, though modified from a woman's organs, the
vicious fury revealed in teeth and eyes, the sharp arrogant pain
of her maiming blow, caught away Christian's heed of the beasts
behind, by striking into him close vivid realisation of the
infinitely greater danger that ran before him in that deadly
Thing.
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