enough of the fancy-dressed travelers on the post road to feel it rather keenly. The 
nobles in the capital called us country lords "harecatchers." Of course we could sneer at 
them and call them lackeys to the king and queen. Our castle had stood for a thousand 
years, and not even the great Cardinal Richelieu in his war on our kind had managed to 
pull down our ancient towers. But as I said before, I didn't pay much attention to 
history.
  
  I was unhappy and ferocious as I rode up the mountain.
  
  I wanted a good battle with the wolves. There were five in the pack according to the 
villagers, and I had my guns and two dogs with jaws so strong they could snap a wolf's 
spine in an instant.
  
  Well, I rode for an hour up the slopes. Then I came into a small valley I knew well 
enough that no snowfall could disguise it. And as I started across the broad empty field 
towards the barren wood, I heard the first howling.
  
  Within seconds there had come another howling and then another, and now the chorus was 
in such harmony that I couldn't tell the number of the pack, only that they had seen me 
and were signaling to each other to come together, which was just what I had hoped they 
would do.
  
  I don't think I felt the slightest fear then. But I felt something, and it caused the 
hair to rise on the backs of my arms. The countryside for all its vastness seemed empty. 
I readied my guns. I ordered my dogs to stop their growling and follow me, and some vague 
thought came to me that I had better get out of the open field and into the woods and 
hurry.
  
  My dogs gave their deep baying alarm. I glanced over my shoulder and saw the wolves 
hundreds of yards behind me and streaking straight towards me over the snow. Three giant 
gray wolves they were, coming on in a line.
  
  I broke into a run for the forest.
  
  It seemed I would make it easily before the three reached me, but wolves are extremely 
clever animals, and as I rode hard for the trees I saw the rest of the pack, some five 
full-grown animals, coming out ahead of me to my left. It was an ambush, and I could 
never make the forest in time. And the pack was eight wolves, not five as the villagers 
had told me.
  
  Even then I didn't have sense enough to be afraid. I didn't ponder the obvious fact 
that these animals were starving or they'd never come near the village. Their natural 
reticence with men was completely gone.
  
  I got ready for battle. I stuck the flail in my belt, and with the rifle I took aim. I 
brought down a big male yards away from me and had time to reload as my dogs and the pack 
attacked each other.
  
  They couldn't get my dogs by the neck on account of the spiked collars. And in this 
first skirmish my dogs brought down one of the wolves in their powerful jaws immediately. 
I fired and brought down a second.
  
  But the pack had surrounded the dogs. As I fired again and again, reloading as quickly 
as I could and trying to aim clear of the dogs, I saw the smaller dog go down with its 
hind legs broken. Blood streamed over the snow; the second dog stood off the pack as it 
tried to devour the dying animal, but within two minutes, the pack had torn open the 
second dog's belly and killed it.
  
  Now these were powerful beasts, as I said, these mastiffs. I'd bred them and trained 
them myself. And each weighed upwards of two hundred pounds. I always hunted with them, 
and though I speak of them as dogs now, they were known only by their names to me then, 
and when I saw them die, I knew for the first time what I had taken on and what might 
happen.
  
  But all this had occurred in minutes.
  
  Four wolves lay dead. Another was crippled fatally. But that left three, one of whom 
had stopped in the savage feasting upon the dogs to fix its slanted eyes on me.
  
  I fired the rifle, missed, fired the musket, and my horse reared as the wolf shot 
towards me.
  
  As if pulled on strings, the other wolves turned, leaving the fresh kill. And jerking 
the reins hard, I let my horse run as she wanted, straight for the cover of the forest.
  
  I didn't look back even when I heard the growling and snapping. But then I felt the 
teeth graze my ankle. I drew the other musket, turned to the left, and fired. It seemed 
the wolf went up on his hind legs, but it was too quickly out of sight and my mare reared 
again. I almost fell. I felt her back legs give out under me.
  
  We were almost to the forest and I was off her before she went down. I had one more 
loaded gun. Turning and steadying it with both hands, I took dead aim at the wolf who 
bore down on me and blasted away the top of his skull.
  
  It was now two animals. The horse was giving off a deep rattling whinny that rose to a 
trumpeting shriek, the worst sound I have ever heard from any living thing. The two 
wolves had her.
  
  I bolted over the snow, feeling the hardness of the rocky land under me, and made it to 
the tree. If I could reload I could shoot them down from there. But there was not a 
single tree with limbs low enough for me to catch hold of.
  
  I leapt up trying to catch hold, my feet slipping on the icy bark, and fell back down 
as the wolves closed in. There was no time to load the one gun I had left to me. It was 
the flail and the sword because the mace I had lost a long way back.
  
  I think as I scrambled to my feet, I knew I was probably going to die. But it never 
even occurred to me to give up. I was maddened, wild. Almost snarling, I faced the 
animals and looked the closest of the two wolves straight in the eye.