|
As the wolves began to leap the stone wall into the Green Man’s back courtyard, White Paw and his two brothers closed in behind them from the right. The brown bear, on silent paws for one so large, swung in from the left. The four defenders loped along silently behind the nine wolves.
The last two wolves in line were keeping watch as their fellows leapt in ones and twos to the top of the wall and over. They were just turning, themselves, to follow after the pack when they were hit hard from behind.
With a might swipe of his big, sharp-clawed paw, the bear hurled the wolf nearest him against the wall. The wolf was not killed, but he was stunned and he struggled to find his footing as he shook his head, trying to clear it from the impact. With a roar the bear’s massive, muscular body was upon him. With a loud crunch he snapped the wolf’s neck in his powerful jaws. And for good measure he shook the now limp body with a fury and flung it over the wall.
The other wolf had launched himself against the bear hoping to drive it from his packmate. White Paw hurtled himself toward the attacking wolf’s hind legs, knocking him down for a moment. The hound’s snapping jaws hamstringed the wolf on one side and the beast turned, biting savagely at White Paw.
White Paw’s two brother’s barreled into the side of the wolf and brought him fully down. As the wolf turned to lunge and lifted his head to bite at them, White Paw scrambled forward to seize the wolf by the neck. It was a bloody struggle, the three hounds against the big wolf. But at the last, the lupine body lay still and bleeding onto the blood-muddied snow.
‘Well done!’ the bear growled turning toward the gate in the wall. ‘Now come, wolf-banes! There are more inside to be killed. With a roar he rushed to the gate and opened it with a swipe of his paw. Behind him the hounds ran, bloodied, howling loud at the promise of another kill.
|