Gull gawped. The beast came on faster than a horse, almost flying in great body-length bounds.
The woodcutter could never outrun him, or even duck behind a tree.
Dropping his bow, he snatched up his heavy axe, looped it back.
Just in time.
The golden lion filled his vision. Timing, cursing, Gull swung with all his might and prayed not to miss.
Or perhaps he should.
With a sickening crunch, the axe smacked the bony skull. Like rapping a rock. Gull got a glimpse of the long blade edge biting into the lion's brow, forehead, and eye, shearing skin and hair, then bouncing free. The shock of the blow rippled through Gull's arms, numbing them to the pits.
It didn't even slow the beast.
The lion hit like an avalanche-so many blows so fast Gull couldn't begin to count them, and all knocked him spinning.
A paw big as a dinner plate slammed him half around, raking his shoulder with a trio of razor-sharp claws. Only his full quiver of thick rawhide kept him from losing meat, and the bundle was ripped clean off his back. The huge bleeding head banged into his. Whiskery jaws rasped skin from his forehead. A chest big as a barrel bowled him over. Reek of cat sweat and ammonia gagged him.
Clutching his axe, his only hope, Gull curled into a ball as he bounced on turf five feet away. A back leg clipped his rump as as the lion sailed over him. Winded by twin blows, Gull gasped for air. Rubbing his chest, he found it sticky-slick.
Why the beast hadn't dug in claws and clamped down Gull couldn't guess, unless it was dazed by the head blow. He only knew he still lived.
For a few seconds, anyway.
Wheezing, he spun for the next attack.
Even on velvet paws, the lion shook the ground when it landed. Snarling, it wheeled. Gull got his bloodied axe up. Blood poured from the beast's brow, and a flap of skin hung over the split eye. Still, Gull knew, head wounds bled like mad but rarely killed anyone. So it must be with a lion.
Hobbling on his bad knee, which he'd wracked somehow, Gull sidled to the lion's blind side. The beast coughed as if spitting a hairball. Probably drawing wind for another lunge.
"Why not-forget it…" Gull panted.
The cat squatted. Gull knew what came next. He felt like a mouse trapped in a barn.
Springing from its back legs, the lion leaped, paws up to pin him.
Heaving so hard his gut felt to burst, Gull slashed upward to catch the lion under the chin, or in the throat. But a thick forepaw deflected the blow. Off-balance, the swipe and his own momentum pitched Gull to the ground.
Pain seared as he smacked on his lacerated shoulder. Dirt blew into his nose, stinging, itching. Loam and ash stuck to sweat and blood. Hot blood trickled into his eyes from his forehead scrape. His head rang.
Never mind! he thought wildly. Where was the damned lion?
A dozen feet away, limping, was where. Gull had broken or sprained its forepaw with his swing.
"Now we're even!" he growled. Both crippled and half-blind.
The wounded paw matched the blind side, so the cat stumbled at every step. Fighting for breath, it circled, as did the man.
Then, growling in menace, the lion hopped three-legged back to its pride.
Lions are smarter than people, Gull thought. They don't fight to the death.
Yet the shrill of horses and bray of mules whipped his head up.
The lionesses had ripped into the herd, raking, biting, batting the hobbled animals with sheer talons.
The battle wasn't over yet. It had barely begun.
Exhausted, outnumbered, and overwhelmed, Gull knew he couldn't fight them all.
Yet he had to drive the lions from the herd.
Maybe a bluff would work. Animals hated loud noises.
Hefting his axe in one hand, his longbow in the other, he waved both as he charged, shouting. He hoped he wasn't attacked by a half dozen hungry carnivores.
"Yaaah! Hya-yaah! Git! Git! Git a move on! Hya-yaah!"
It worked, at least for the moment.
Lions, male and female, shied as the crazy human rushed amongst them. Horses, front legs tethered by leather hobbles, hopped and reared frantically. Lions growled, butted heads, scuttled backward. Gull pushed his luck by swatting a slow cat on the rump. Then he shoved past a gray mule, ducked under a dappled mare's head, and hid amidst panicked horseflesh.
Instinctively, Gull consoled the stock, patted noses. The horses mashed together, noses in, nudging and banging his ribs. The lions milled just outside the herd. Knothead, the mule, brushed them back by kicking a lioness. Clopped in the jaw, she recoiled.
There was a moment of deadly calm. Lions growled like distant thunder. Horses shivered and stamped like trees in a high wind.
For a few moments, Gull hoped the lions would retreat, be content to eat the brown cob: the young males already licked blood from its twitching flanks. He could use a rest: he bled in three places: forehead, shoulder, and tail. Yet the lions circled like vultures, tightening the noose. Startled horses banged one another and generated more panic.
The calm couldn't last.
If the lions did charge, they'd cripple or kill a dozen. Better to sacrifice a few. He guessed.
Cursing, Gull grasped his axe at the head. He hadn't room to stoop and untie the braided leather hobbles, and amidst skittish horses he'd only get brained by a hoof.
Knothead could fend for himself. He deserved to be eaten anyway, for as Gull bent, the ingrate nipped off a hank of hair.
The axe head dropped between the knobby knees and deadly hooves, cut through the hobble. Gull chopped more tethers. He'd be forever making new tack, he thought grimly, if he survived the night and had any stock left.
The axe thumped, horses and mules jumped, lions prowled, testing the herd's courage. Gull sweated and chopped and ate dirt and horse sweat as he fumbled in blackness amidst stamping feet. Somehow he managed not to cut his own feet, and skinned only a couple of fetlocks.
One by one, the animals discovered they were free. Snorting, they fought twin urges: to stay with the herd or to run.
Knothead decided them by suddenly wheeling and loping off, ungainly as a cow. Flossy followed, then one horse, then another. Soon all were running free, and Gull had to clutch bridles to cut the last four hobbles. The stock thrummed south, the shortest distance to unburned forest, and Gull swatted the last gelding to fire it along.
Sweating, he mopped his face with a bloody hand.
And realized he was alone with hungry lions and no cover.
But the lions dispersed. Four lionesses bounded after the horses, seeing which would fall behind and die. The young males had ripped open the brown cob's side, strewn liver and lights and guts that glistened in the moonlight. They squabbled over chunks of the poor beast like piglets at the teat. The big lion Gull had shot and axed had collapsed, flat on its side like a rug.
Gull hunted his bow, found the string broken. He'd lost his quiver anyway, so tossed the bow. Wasting no time, he slipped around a ravaged birch copse, then dashed for the wagons.
Where the noise had increased. Screams, shouts, curses, the clash of steel on steel.
A troop of black-clad cavalry attacked the wagons.
Horses, tack, cloaks, visored helmets-all were black. The visors were raised to reveal the invaders' black-bearded faces. Only their shields sported color, half-silver with a laughing demon's face at the center.
There were, Gull puffed and counted, ten or twelve, ahorse, armored, and armed. Towser's four fighters were children by comparison. Curved sabers rattled at the black riders' sides. Yet what they wielded were ropes tipped with steel grapnels.
The knights thundered in a tight circle around the train-Gull was reminded of the lions' attack-black phantoms against a black sky, hooting orders or taunts or encouragement to fellows. They spun the lines overhead. The grapnels rattled and hissed, proving the last three feet to be chain, impervious to sword cuts.