The beast snarled and darted forward, claws slashing the air as Dumarest jerked aside, feeling the grate of broken ribs, tasting again the saltiness of his own blood. A warning; to be too active was to rip a lung to shreds. Yet how to avoid the danger?

There was no safe way-the beast was too fast, too big and vicious. Backing, Dumarest studied it, searching for vulnerable points as he had before but now with more than casual interest. The throat, ridged and corded with muscle, would resist cuts and penetration. The genitals were buried deep between the massive thighs. The eyes were deep-set beneath prominent ridges of bone. The jaw was solid bone; the heart protected by the matted hair, the hide, the muscle and sinew beneath.

And the thing could kick forward as well as back, a thing Dumarest remembered as a foot ripped where he had been standing, talons naked, strong enough to disembowel. There was a moment in which the beast was off true balance and the knife rose, edge upwards, to catch the rear of the ankle, to bite, to cut as Dumarest dragged it free.

The beast roared, flailing the air, blood a ruby stream from the slashed joint. A small wound but one which hampered and made the thing a little less efficient.

It came forward again, snarling, relying on naked strength and size to crush and kill. Dumarest moved aside, dodged, moved again, conscious of the pain in his side, the blood in his mouth. Blood he spat in a carmine stream as, ducking, the beast lunged.

For a moment the great head was lowered, the horns like two spears thrusting, to impale, to gore and rip and lift the screaming prey, to toss it high to be gored again as it fell. A demonstration of its weakness-the mistake its creators had made.