The younger elk lifted his upper body, a hoof was flung through the air, making a dark line across the pinewoods, stopped and fell.
“Crack!” The sound was at once soft and firm. Rauten felt a fierce burning sensation under one ear, a slight mist shadowed his brain for a moment, then all was clear again.
In that brief second the other hoof from the youngster struck his neck. Hair and skin was flayed off, a fire licked Rauten where the hoof struck, and then....
There he stood, half rampant, a thunder-cloud, a storm. He turned his eyes, turned them slowly, threateningly. They were no longer brown, but white. It was as if all madness raging in that huge body had concentrated in the eyes, turning them white. Rauten towered as tall as the young pine beside him, his jaws opened, breath steamed out and his tongue protruded, long, wet, slavering. Then Rauten struck back. His forelegs were no longer skin and bones and muscles belonging to a body. They were shadows, spirits, ghosts, sinister forebodings of blood and destruction. Lightning gleamed and thunder crashed. The storm had broken loose and the three-year-old was there to meet it. The God of the wilds have mercy on his body!
The sun had not yet risen, but was still resting somewhere behind the hills. But when Rauten struck, the three-year-old saw the sun all the same, not only one, but a number of suns, a swarm of them. They danced in his head like round sparkling disks of wonderful colours. They gleamed green like fireflies, metallic like a bluebottle, copper-red like the harvest moon.
Another blow fell on the heels of the first one. It struck above one eye. And once more the tapestry of the firmament was rolled up before the sight of the youngster. There were no suns that time, but stars—what a host of stars, as numerous as dewdrops on the grass, sparkling like snow in spring! They leapt and danced inside his head, whirling madly together.
They went out suddenly, all of them, disappeared like a mist, and then he saw the old sun peeping red-eyed from behind the eastern mountains.
The three-year-old went backwards and retreated, for this was so sudden. He had attacked a rocky wall and found it hard. But Rauten did not let go; he followed, followed, and up from hot gorges and reeking inner bodies came the war-cry again: “Yah! Yah!”
Their antlers met writhing into each other. Snouts touched the earth, the bulls groaning as if to rid themselves of something. The sinews of their hind-quarters shivered, trembled, rage gave life to every hair in their manes, their stumpy tails were raised angrily. Two sharp backs stood out against the sky like monsters. Every fibre of their bodies was taut, muscles writhed like worms and red-hot blood boiled rhythmically through their veins.