ort, and
the horn caught him in midair, ripping across his ribs and breaking
them, shattering the bone of his left arm and tearing the flesh. He was
hurled fifteen feet and he struck the ground with a stunning impact,
pain washing over him in a blinding wave.

Through it, dimly, he saw the unicorn fall and heard its dying trumpet
blast as it called to another. He heard an answering call somewhere in
the distance and then the faraway drumming of hooves.

He fought back the blindness and used his good arm to lift himself up.
His bow was useless, his spear lay broken under the unicorn, and his
knife was gone. His left arm swung helplessly and he could not climb the
limbless lower trunk of a lance tree with only one arm.

He went forward, limping, trying to hurry to find his knife while the
drumming of hooves raced toward him. It would be a battle already lost
that he would make with the short knife but he would have blood for his
going....

The grass grew tall and thick, hiding the knife until he could hear the
unicorn crashing through the trees. He saw it ten feet ahead of him as
the unicorn tore out from the edge of the woods thirty feet away.

It squealed, shrill with triumph, and the horn swept up to impale him.
There was no time left to reach the knife, no time left for anything but
the last fleeting sight of sunshine and glade and arching blue sky----

Something from behind him shot past and up at the unicorn's throat, a
thing that was snarling black savagery with yellow eyes blazing and
white fangs slashing--the prowler!

It ripped at the unicorn's throat, swerving its charge, and the unicorn
plunged past him. The unicorn swung back, all the triumph gone from its
squeal, and the prowler struck again. They became a swirling blur, the
horn of the unicorn swinging and stabbing and the attacks of the prowler
like the swift, relentless thrusting of a rapier.

He went to his knife and when he turned back with it in his hand the
battle was already over.

The unicorn fell and the prowler turned away from it. One foreleg was
bathed in blood and its chest was heaving with a panting so fast that it
could not have been caused by the fight with the unicorn.

_It must have been watching me_, he thought, with a strange feeling of
wonder. _It was watching from the ridge and it ran all the way._

Its yellow eyes flickered to the knife in his hand. He dropped the knife
in the grass and walked forward, unarmed, wanting the