Deerskin - Robin McKinley

She tried to comfort herself by thinking that she did not know how fierce the winter was in the farmlands; that it had begun easily meant nothing. Vaguely she remembered stories of being snowed in, mending harness, stitching elaborate pillows or wedding-dresses, whittling new pegs or pins or toys for children or grandchildren, going outdoors only long enough to feed the beasts. Were those stories of ordinary winter, or of extraordinary storms? She did not know. Nor, if she did climb down the mountains again, did she know where she might go; she could not spend all winter in anyone's barn. She could not think of returning to the yellow city ... and there her brain stalled, and threw her back once again to thinking of how to feed her own beasts on this mountaintop.

Some days the wind howled and the snow blew so that it was a struggle to go outdoors even long enough for necessary purposes. Lissar did not remember that there had been many days like that the winter before; nor had the snow against the wall of the hut facing the prevailing wind reached the eaves, as it had this year, and drifted over the roof till it melted in the warm circle the chimney made.

One afternoon when they had returned from a long, cold, fruitless hunt, and were all shoving at each other to get nearest the fire (there was a slight odor of singed hair), Ash suddenly left the rest of them and went to stand by the door. Several of the others turned to watch her, as they automatically watched their leader. Ob and Harefoot caught it, whatever it was; and then the rest of them did, and quickly there were seven dogs standing tensely facing the door.

There was no window in that wall, and neither Lissar's hearing nor smell was sensitive enough to pick up what the dogs were responding to. Ash rose to her hind legs and placed her forepaws, in perfect silence, against the door. The long slow exhalation of her breath carried with it the tiniest of whines; so faint was it that Lissar only knew it was there because she knew Ash. She made her way through the throng and set her hand on the latch. Ash composedly lifted her paws away from the door, balancing a moment on her hind feet as if going on two legs were as natural for her as it was for Lissar; and then she dropped to all fours again.

Lissar would have closed the door again if she could, but Ash was off at once, streaking through the gap before the door was fully open. "No!" Lissar cried; but Ash, always obedient, this time did not listen to her; silent but for the crisp sharp sound of her paws breaking through the snow between her great bounds, she ran for the enormous beast standing on the far side of the clearing the hut stood at the opposite edge of.

The puppies, alarmed and confused by Lissar's cry and Ash's extraordinary disobedience, and perhaps by the size of their would-be prey, hesitated, while Lissar, hardly knowing what she did, groped for the bag of throwing-stones that hung just inside the threshold, and then laid her hand as well on a long ash cudgel.

Then she started across the clearing herself, gracelessly crashing through the snow, listening to her own sobbing breath.

The old buck toro that paused at the edge of the trees and turned to face the dog that charged him, ears back and teeth exposed in a snarl, was as tall at the shoulder as Lissar stood; his antlers spread farther than the branches of a well-grown tree. He had not attained his considerable age by accident, and he did not turn and run when he saw Ash, nor even when he saw Lissar and six more tall dogs break after her. He turned instead toward the most immediate threat, lowered his head a little, and waited.

But Ash was no fool either, and had all the respect possible for the points of the great toro's horns. She sheered off at the last moment, dashing in for a glancing nip at the shoulder, and darting away again. Lissar gave some terrified recognition to the dangerous beauty of her fleethound even in snow to her shoulders.

It may yet be all right, she thought, floundering through the same snow. He will lumber off among the trees where we cannot possibly come at him: "Ash, it is not worth it!" she said aloud, but she had not enough breath to shout; we will all be very hungry by spring, but we are not starving yet, I will spend all my days on my snow-shoes after this, there will be enough rabbits- "Ash!" she said again.

But Ash merely ran round the toro, keeping him occupied, giving him no chance to retreat among the trees. She swept in once more, bit him on the flank; the hoof lashed out, but missed; a thin trickle of blood made its way through the thick hair.

This was not a proper hunt. A pack of fleethounds ran down their prey; at speed they made their killing leaps, and the prey's speed was used against it. A cornered beast was always dangerous, and in such situations the hunting-party or -master was expected to put an arrow or a spear where it would do the most good-and save the dogs.

Ash made her third leap, flashing past the antlers' guard and seizing the toro's nose. It was beautifully done; but the toro was standing still, braced, his feet spread against just such an eventuality; and he was very strong.

He roared with the pain in his nose, but he also snapped his neck up and back, barely staggering under the weight of the big dog. Ash hung on; but while she managed to twist aside as he tried to fling her up and over onto his sharp horns, as the force of his swing and her writhe aside brought her through the arc and back toward the earth again, he shifted his weight and struck out with one front foot.

It raked her down one side and across her belly; and the bright blood flowed.

This was no mere trickle, as on the taro's flank, but a great hot gush.

"Ash!" Lissar said again, but this time it was a groan. It had still been bare moments since Lissar had opened the door of the hut and Ash had bolted out; Lissar had not quite crossed the clearing, though she could smell the heavy rank odor of the toro-and now the sharp tang of fresh blood. Ash's blood.

"Help her, damn you!" Lissar screamed, and Ob charged by her, made his leap, and tore a ragged chunk out of the creature's neck; its blood now stained the snow as well, from its nose and flank and now running down its shoulder, and Ash's weight made the deadly antlers less of a threat; but Ash's blood ran the faster. The toro bellowed again and made to throw its head a second time; and Ash was built for running, not for gripping with her jaws, and her hold was slackening as her heart's blood pumped out through the gash in her belly. . . .

Lissar, scarcely thinking what she did, ducked under the highflung head, and the body of her dog; and as one foreleg lifted free of the snow as the creature swung its weight to its other side, Lissar took the ashwood cudgel in her hands and gave as violent a blow as she could, just below the knee of the weight-bearing leg. Vaguely she was aware that the thing had stumbled as the other dogs made their leaps; the toro kicked violently with a rear leg, and there was a yelp; Ash, silent, still hung on.

The leg Lissar struck broke with a loud crack, and the creature fell, full-length, in the snow. In a moment it was up again on three legs, bellowing now with rage as well as pain; but Ash lay in the snow. The toro turned on her as nearest, and would have savaged her with its antlers, but Lissar got there first, in spite of the snow, in spite of having to flee being crushed when the toro fell, in spite of how the snow held her as one's limbs are held in a nightmare; weeping, she brought her cudgel down across the creature's wounded nose, careless of the antlers, shielding her dog; and the toro shrieked, and fell to its knees as its broken leg failed to hold it. At that moment Ferntongue and then Harefoot, with two slashing strokes, hamstrung it, and it rolled, groaning, across the bloody snow, the knife-sharp hoofs still dangerous; Lissar leaped over, and buried her small hunting knife in the soft spot at the base of the jaw, where the head joins the neck; heedless, she grasped the base of one antler, to give herself purchase, and ripped; and the toro's blood fountained out, and it died.