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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.
    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.
    â€œGo away!” she cried out, her