Lucky dodged as another fox threw itself at him, then pounced on it, clamping its leg between his jaws.

“Out of the way, stink-dog!” one of the foxes shrieked. Lucky looked up and saw three foxes pouncing on Mulch. The black dog vanished under a pile of scratching, gnawing fury. Lucky saw Mulch kick helplessly at his attackers, blood drops scattering.

“Mulch! Hang on!” Fiery barked, a single swipe of his massive paw scattering the two foxes that were trying to take him down.

Panting, free of attackers just for a few moments, Lucky stood stiff-legged and barked, high and desperate.

“Alpha! Sweet! Bella! Help!”

At last, at last, his cries were heard. Across the clearing, dogs stumbled apart, shaking themselves, momentarily stunned. They all seemed to realize in the same moment what had happened. Alpha gave a high howl of fury, and plunged forward; behind him, like a single Pack, the rest of the dogs hurtled across toward Moon’s den.

Lucky was too busy tearing the three foxes from Mulch’s prone body to see the end of the struggle. He was only dimly aware of the onrush of the dogs, the yelps of the retreating foxes. One by one Mulch’s attackers fell away, scrambling off him and dashing to defend themselves, but Alpha and Sweet were moving among them now like Lightning, slashing and springing with deadly efficiency. Tails between their legs, the foxes fell over one another in their frantic bids to escape.

“Run time!” they called to one another. “Out, out, out!”

Silence, when it came, seemed very sudden. Lucky stood with his head hanging down, tongue lolling and flanks heaving. Three thin, gray fox-shapes were racing away into the undergrowth; the other three lay broken and battered on the churned, bloody earth.

The leader-fox’s voice cried shrilly into the eerily still air. “Be back! We come back, filthy dogs. For your other pup-prey!”

Then he was gone, and only the breeze stirred the bushes.

Grimly, Alpha lifted a limp fox-corpse into the air with his jaws and tossed it away from him. It thudded to the ground close to where Mulch lay.

As if their leader had broken some awful spell, Fiery let out a great baying howl of distress, and Moon lay down, whining with grief and shock. As two small bodies wriggled fearfully from the den behind her, she and Fiery curled protectively around their surviving pups, and Moon licked feverishly at their tiny heads.

Lucky couldn’t bear to watch them. “Daisy!” he barked gruffly. “Are you all right?”

The little dog shook herself, rubbing her muzzle against a patch of soft grass. “I’m fine, Lucky. It’s a scratch. Quick, it’s the black dog you should look after.” Daisy turned her nose unhappily toward Mulch. “He’s much worse.”

Together with the others of the Wild Pack, Lucky limped across to Mulch, who lay in a pool of thickening blood.

Pain jolted through his wounded leg, but that wasn’t what made him stop after a few paces. There was no need to go to Mulch. Flies were already settling on his wounded side, and the scent drifting from him was bitterly familiar.