As he looked, Sholto saw his father, a gigantic figure standing black
and militant against the brightest of it. His hand grasped a huge wolf
by the heels, and he swung the beast about his head as easily as he
was wont to handle the forehammer at home. With his living weapon
Malise had swept a space about him clear, and the beasts seemed to
have fallen back in terror before such a strange enemy.
But what of the Lord James? Overleaping the pile of dead and dying
wolves which his sword and dagger had made, and from which savage
heads still bit and snarled up at him as he went, Sholto ran round to
seek the young Lord of Avondale. At the first flash after leaving the
tree trunk he was nowhere to be seen, but a second revealed him lying
on the ground, with four shaggy beasts bending over him and tearing
fiercely at his gorget and breast-armour. With a loud shout Sholto was
among them. He passed his sword through and through the largest, and
in its fall the wounded monster turned and bit savagely at the fore
leg of a companion. The bone cracked as a rotten branch snaps
underfoot, and in another moment the two animals were rolling over and
over, locked together in the death grapple.
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