It was worse this time. He knew it was going to leave the creature half-alive. Hunting Wolf felt the Trickster leave the cub’s body and the animal ceased its frenzy of self-destruction. But it was still screaming. He opened his eyes and pulled himself up out of the snow. The cub was propped up on the edge of a crater of snow it had created with its own death throes, and it sat looking grotesquely comical, like an old man in a hammock. It had torn its stomach open and bitten off both its feet, the bone protruding in sharp spears of ivory from the seeping dark stumps. Its muzzle was ripped by those razor claws and one eye hung from its socket. Hunting Wolf could see the young animal’s exposed rib-cage, and the organs that had spilled out were steaming gently in the cold snow.

It bellowed and shrieked as Hunting Wolf fumbled in his belt for his long knife. He took it out with a shaking hand, held it by the blade and aimed. With one strong throw the knife spun through the air and pierced the cub’s remaining eye with a wet thud. It screamed again, twitched, and was released.

The man stood staring down at the pitiful remains of the once-beautiful animal, clenching and unclenching his fists. He turned and glanced down the track behind him. The bodies of the others lay in dark patches, all the way back to the point on the horizon where the two black lines of track met. Shapeless sacks in the snow. So much death. An obscene entertainment for his eyes alone. The cougar had been the worst. It had destroyed itself in seconds and the noise had been unearthly.

Hunting Wolf knew it would not take his demon long to find and command another innocent creature, and he ached with regret for his madness in running so far from the camp along the tracks. It was growing dark and he would soon be unable to see anything but the subtle difference between the snowy ribbon of his path and the dark wall of trees. He would not make it back to camp in daylight, even if he had a horse. But how to stop the slaughter? Running like a child would solve nothing. He walked forward, retrieved his knife from the cub’s skull, knelt beside its violated husk and offered up one last prayer for its soul.