She lurched into a trot, just as the wolf howled again —
Nearer.
She had to fight herself not to run. Right now, running wouldn’t do anything but get her exhausted and make her easier prey. Instead, she dropped the useless basket and scanned the snow on both sides of the road for a fallen branch of manageable size. What she needed was something like a weapon.
The wolf howled again, nearer still. Clearly he had her scent. She couldn’t tell if that was a hunting howl or not, but it probably was.
Fear overcame sense for a moment and she ran a few steps before she got control of herself again. She had to look strong. A weakened wolf might hesitate to try to take down something that looked able to defend itself.
She spotted a club-size branch sticking out of the snow and made for it, pulling at the exposed end. It proved to be attached to a bigger branch, but a sharp tug fueled by fear made it yield a bit, and a second, two-handed wrench brought a satisfying crack of wood, and she found herself with a decent, sturdy cudgel.
She trotted onward, but then movement out of the corner of her eye made her freeze.
She looked up at the top of the ridge.
There, black against the moon, was the wolf, looking down at her.
He didn’t look old, or ill. He looked huge, and in good health.
That was not good.
A big, healthy, single wolf had probably been driven out of his pack for aggression. Maybe cub-killing. Granny had told her about one such beast that had eventually required a Champion to come kill it, since Prince Florian’s father, King Edmund, had been too young and his father too old to hunt it themselves. Granny wouldn’t tell her why, which was curious, but she claimed such beasts attracted a malignant magic toward themselves that made them bigger, faster and, above all, much smarter than ordinary creatures.
She could feel its baleful stare, and she had no doubt that Granny was right.
Stand and threaten? she wondered, more chills creeping down her spine. Or try to run?
At that moment, the wolf gathered itself and leapt, and her body decided for her. It ran.
The wolf had miscalculated. It landed in snow deeper than it was tall; as she glanced back over her shoulder, she saw it was floundering.
This made no difference to her terror, of course.
She thrashed her way down the road, heart pounding and mouth dry, expecting at any moment to be leapt on from behind. One hand still clutched the stick, while the other flailed at the air as she fought to keep her balance. She was running as fast as she could, and getting nowhere, and she could almost feel the wolf’s hot breath on the back of her neck.
A glimmering of sense fought its way through the fog of fear. There! Up ahead was a huge old tree, something of a landmark for her on the road to Granny’s. If she could just get her back against it, she might be able to fend the beast off!
She put on a burst of speed she hadn’t known was in her, and reached the tree just as she heard panting and growling practically on her heels.
Instinct, not reason, made her duck, and the wolf soared over her head to crash into the trunk of the tree. A shower of snow shook down on them both as the tree limbs above them rattled with the impact.
She paused for a moment. He rolled onto his feet, but slowly, shaking his head and staggering. She realized that he must have been stunned. She had a moment of relief, but the tree was no shelter now, for he was between her and it. She shook off her indecision and ran on, trying to think of another place where she might make some kind of a stand.
Then she remembered. Not that far past the tree was a cluster of boulders. There was a nook there that she might be able to wedge herself into. The wolf would only be able to come at her from the front, if she could manage that.
She peered frantically up the road, searching for it among the shadows as she ran, and her breath burned in her throat and lungs. She sobbed a little from the fear and the pain of her side, then shook her head to clear it of sudden tears, and when she could see again, finally spotted the boulders. The sight of that shelter gave her another burst of strength out of nowhere. She flung herself at them, floundering through deeper snow to reach them. Then the drift gave way to no snow at all, and she felt blindly along the surface until her hands hit nothing at all and she fell into the gap.
The next thing she knew she was wedged into the nook, staring out into the moonlit snow patterned with the shadows of branches and gasping in huge, burning breaths. And that was when the wolf appeared again.
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.