Ordeal
He heard the screams. People out on the plain, under attack And he saw the beasts which circled them. Huge and fearsome, unlike any he'd ever seen And he knew he should be afraid. After all, he was alone and unarmed, in a land he knew nothing about. He knew he should hide. But he didn't.
Instead, in defiance of all logic, he stood next to the cairn he'd built, in the open in plain sight, and began to yell as loudly as his dry, cracked voice would permit:
"Hey Hey Yeah you Get away from those people Get away from them now "
The beasts paused their attack to find and identify this new sound. And when they did, their bloody snouts turned toward one another in some confusion. After a moment they began massing, as if to charge. Could he outrun them? He wondered. Lose them in the ravines? Doubtful. Maybe he could draw them off, letting the others escape. A poor plan, he knew, and he decided on a different one in that instant. He began walking toward the site of the attack.
"Hey you I told you to leave those people alone Now get away from them "
The beasts, about to charge, were frozen in a paroxysm of doubt. They'd never been challenged like this What they saw was one man, a newcomer like these others, walking towards them instead of fleeing. And they felt uncertainty, and then fear, as this man came on and on, inexorably, toward them.
From "Ordeal"
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