Outwardly Ryan remained very calm, determined not to allow the flummery of superstitions and ritual to shake his nerve.
“I am half-blind,” he said to Pizi, indicating his eye patch. “Hardly an equal contest unless you put out one of Blood-sniffer’s eyes.”
“Blood-sniffer is lame in one leg,” Pizi retorted. “Due to you, I am told. It is as equal a contest as you deserve. Follow.”
Pizi marched out of the tepee, Ryan in step behind him. Sisoka and Blood-sniffer dogged his heels. The sun was fairly high, and Ryan estimated it was close to midmorning. He had at least had a rest, of sorts.
Only a few people were about in the encampment, men mostly, and he could feel the hostility of their stares as he passed by.
Pizi led the way through the ring of tepees and down a gently rolling incline to where the bases of four bluffs formed a natural bowl, like an amphitheateror, as Ryan reminded himself, an arena.
Obeying Pizi’s imperious gesture, Ryan went down into the bowl, Blood-sniffer following. Taking position in the center, he made a 360-degree visual circuit. Men, women and many wolves lined the base of the bluffs. All were staring at him unemotionally.
Anger grew within Ryan. No matter what ancient tradition lay behind this trial by ordeal, it was still bread and circuses for the masses, nothing but entertainment of the type he and his friends had been forced to participate in when they were captives of Baron Mandeville. He had survived those gladiatorial games, and he would survive this one.
Pizi raised his lance over his head, and Ryan prepared himself for a long ceremonial speech. But the chief of the Wolf Soldiers said nothing at all. He jerked down the head of the lance, and Blood-sniffer sprang in a beautiful, arching leap, straight for Ryan’s throat.
The wolfs great forepaws struck his breast with a jarring shock, bowling him over. Even as he fell, Ryan seized Blood-sniffer by the throat and kicked him up and over. The wolf landed on its feet, though its balance was off due to its injured leg.
It spun and jumped. Ryan rolled facedown to keep his exposed torso and genitals away from the slashing teeth and rending claws. Blood-sniffer’s weight landed on his shoulders, and its huge jaws closed on the back of Ryan’s fur-covered neck. The wolf shook him as a terrier would shake a rat.
The animal’s strength was enormous, and for what seemed like an eternity, Ryan felt as if his head were being torn from his neck. The world tipped and tilted around him, and the ground rushed up to smash his face.
With a final contemptuous shake, Blood-sniffer flung Ryan to one side, rolling him over and over to the very edge of the arena. Dizzy, spitting out grit, Ryan fought his way to his hands and knees. Peering from beneath the wolf snout canted over his forehead, he saw Blood-sniffer strutting in a lordly fashion a few feet away. The wolf was playing to the crowd, red tongue run out between open, laughing jaws.
Around him Ryan heard human laughter and yipping noises of wolf appreciation. He realized the beast was toying with him, intending to humiliate him before ripping out his heart. The anger that had been growing within Ryan suddenly burst in a wild flame of rage.
But this rage was unlike the red fury that sometimes possessed him. He was dimly aware of a strange linking of his familiar human anger to an emotion far darker, more deep and primal. It was a man-rage coalescing with beast-rage, an atavistic fury fountaining up from the buried wells of savagery lurking within all human hearts.
Ryan’s muscles coiled tightly as he crouched and faced his enemy. He bared his fangs and snarled. He sprang at Blood-sniffer, his powerful leg muscles catapulting him in graceful bounds.
The wolf leaped to met him, and the pair of shaggy bodies collided in midair. They clinched and rolled together across the rough floor of the arena, snarling, clawing and biting.
Ryan closed a leg-scissors lock around Blood-sniffer’s lean body and gripped a handful of ruff. He kept his own throat covered and sank his teeth into the side of his enemy’s neck. He felt hair and hide tear under his teeth, tasted sharp, salty wolf blood on his tongue.