The Two-Tailed Shadow Panther didn’t roar.
It lowered its flat, three-sided head, sniffing the crimson patch where the rock goat had bled into the snow. In the moonlight, its pelt was a void of total black that swallowed the sheen of the frost. It was broken only by the cold amber soft glow of its irises. It ripped through the discarded goat ribs with a single wrench of its neck, the joint padding separating with a sound like tearing wet parchment.
Cheng Shan’s fingers tightened on the hemp bowstring, drawing the horn limbs three inches back.
Pei Jing extended two fingers, pressing down gently on the upper stave of the bow. “Hold.”
Cheng Shan didn’t release his grip, but his knuckles remained frozen. “Fifty paces downwind,” he whispered, his lips barely parting. “A broadhead through the ribs will puncture both lungs.”
“Crosswind speed is twenty-four miles per hour through the defile,” Pei Jing countered in an undertone. “The air is churning between these two stone walls. An arrow shaft will deflect six inches left over fifty paces. If you strike its flank instead of the chest center, a four-hundred-pound hunting beast retreats into the high fissures. We can’t track a wounded beast across black ice in the dark.”
