Now all was silent. He’d lost track of the thing in the shadows – assuming the noise he’d heard had been the beast. He listened, arms tensed, waiting for it.

Claws scoured stone, rear and left. Temper risked a glance but saw nothing.

Then he caught the sharp snick of talons and hurled himself to the side, swinging his blade only to dash sparks from the cobbles. As he fell he saw a hound bigger than a Fenn mountain lion snapping shut jaws where he’d stood but a moment before. The brute loped on, its nails furrowing stones. Temper caught one glimpse of a shaggy brown pelt and a scarred rear limb before it leapt again, dissolving into shadow.

Crawling to his feet, he gazed into the patch of darkness where the hound had disappeared. Not fair. Not bloody fair, my friend. He swore then to hurt the thing before it tore him limb from limb, never mind the hopelessness of ever achieving that.

From all around now came the sound of bestial claws. A cold wind brushed the square of clinging mist, but he still couldn’t spy it. Then, across the way, he caught a deeper shadow in the gloom. Eyes the colour of heated amber flashed open, and a growl that the shook windows in their frames rolled over him. It raised the hairs on his neck, but now at least he knew: the full frontal assault.

It surged towards him, astounding speed in the stretch of its stride. It was on him before he could decide whether it was real or an illusion.

He managed to ram his hand and weapon, hilt-first, into the beast’s maw but its onrush snatched him from his feet and dragged him clattering and bouncing beneath its massive chest. The iron scales of his armour gouged through his shoulder. The monster’s fangs closed on his forearm, grating against the bones. Temper roared at the searing pain.

The beast hauled him to a wall and shook him as a terrier might a rat. It would rip his arm off in a moment. Channelling all his pain into one ferocious effort, he swung his free hand up and smashed the iron pommel of his weapon down on the fiend’s skull. It rang like a bell, and the beast jerked and snorted as if it would release its grip. But then it merely coughed, sending a blast of hot fetid air into Temper’s face. It heaved forward, dragging him over the cobbles, smashing him into walls and battering his body against timbers as it loped through the labyrinth of alleys. Stone steps gouged his back and cracked against his knees. He threw up a gout of froth and blood. Screams followed him and as his mouth filled with his own bloodied vomit, Temper knew the cries weren’t just his.

Eventually the beast wearied of the game and let him roll away. Crippled, his arm broken and mangled, he was past pain and long past fear. He was in a place he hadn’t known since his last battle nearly a year ago, and it was like a strange reunion. He was floating, euphoric. It was the place he retreated to during the worst of his engagements. Where all his strength and resilience flowed unbound. Where his body moved like some remote automaton of flesh and bone; where no injury could reach. Lying broken and dirt-smeared, he bared his teeth at the hound.