The creature-knew it too. Its back to thecourse rails, it came to bay, its breath rasping. Tyl saw the dim glint of itseye, the vague outline of its body, shaggy and warped and menacing. Tyl laidinto it with both sticks, seeking a quick head-blow that would reduce it toimpotence.

      But the thing was as canny about weaponsas about traps. It dived, passing under his defense in the obscurity, andfastened its teeth on Tyl's knee. He clubbed it on the head once, twice,feeling the give of the tangled fur, and it let go. The wound was not serious,as the thing's snout was recessed and its teeth blunt, but his knees had beentricky since the Nameless One had smashed them a year before. And he was angryat his defensive negligence; nothing should have penetrated his guard likethat, by day or night. -

      It drew back, snarling, and Tyl waschilled by that sound. No wolf, no wildcat articulated like that. And now, asit tasted blood, its mewling became hungry as well as defiant.

      It pounced, not smoothly but with force.This time it went for his throat, as he had known it would. He rapped its headagain with the stick, but again it anticipated him, hunching so that the blowskidded glancingly off the skull. It struck Tyl's chest, bearing hint down, andits foreclaws raked his neck while its hindclaws dug for his groin.

      Tyl, dismayed by its ferocity, beat it offblindly, and it jumped away. Before he could recover it was up again,scrambling over the fence while he hobbled behind, too late.

      Now he cursed aloud in fury at itsescape-but the expletives were tinged with a certain brute respect. He hadchosen the locale of combat, and the marauder had bested him in this context.But there was a use he could make of this situation---perhaps a better one thanhe had had in mind before.

      The creature dropped outside the fence andloped off into the forest. It was bleeding from a wound reopened by the blowsof the attacker, and it was partially lame on flat ground because of malformedbones in its feet. But it made rapid progress, its armored toes finding goodpurchase in the wilder turf.