wait

he been a panther

and catch him when he was not quite so prepared for slaughter. The observer knew how to trap predators in their lairs. He had done it before, times beyond counting, and would do it again.
The observer faded away, vanished into the forest without a sound. Had the panther turned at that very moment, he might have caught a sign of his stalker. Not of the stalker himself, for that one was a master of hidden movement. Just an odd, quick, flash of white, gleaming in the darkness of the foliage like a beacon. Just for an instant.
But the panther did not turn. He twitched, slightly. Some buried part of his brain tried to transmit a signal. But it was a dim, confused, uncertain signal, and the conscious part of the panther's mind suppressed it.
For two days, now, he had been getting those subconscious signals. Something is watching. The first day, he had taken them very seriously. But he had been able to detect nothing. Nothing—and he was a man who rarely failed to detect danger. By the second day, he shrugged off the signals. Nervous tension, no more. It was not logical, after all, that an enemy would stalk him for so long in those woods without making his presence known.
Why would Malwa waste time apprehending a foe? Here? In the very heart of their power? With a small army of soldiers at hand?
The panther o