In that movement
they were upon him. Quicker than he to
recover, swifter than he to realize his escape, drawing more easily on the
Powers they knew, they came at him while he still drew the first deep breath of
release. The woman slid in one involved
movement from the chair in which she had sat half-coiled, and from where she
lay on the floor at his feet her arms went up, her hands clutching at his legs,
and twisted themselves round his waist. At
the same time the man sprang forward and upward, hands seizing Anthony's
shoulders, head thrust forward as if in design upon his throat. Anthony was aware of their attack just before
it caught him, hardly in time, yet just in time, to throw himself forward to
meet it. His rising forearm struck the man's
jaw with sufficient force to divert the head whose mouth champed viciously at
him, but the woman's fast hold on his body prevented him from shaking himself
free of the fingers that drove into his shoulders like claws. He heaved mightily forward, and drove upward
again with his forearm, but their bodies were too close for him to get any
force into the blow. His foot struck, stumbled,
and as he freed and lifted it, trod on a rounded shape that writhed beneath it. All round him in the room were noises of
hissing and snarling, and as he staggered aside in the effort to regain his
footing the hot breath of one adversary panted into his face, so that it seemed
to him as if he struggled in the bottom of some loathly pit where foul creatures
fought for their prey. And he was their
prey, unless...
He felt himself
falling, and cried out; the tightening pressure round his body choked the cry
in mid-utterance, and something slid yet higher round his chest. In a tumultuous conflict he crashed to the
ground, but sideways, so that as he lay he was able to twist himself face
downwards and save his throat. He felt
his collar wrenched off and nails tearing at his neck; a twisting weight
writhed over him from his shoulders downwards.
For a second he lay defeated, then all his spirit within him cried out "No,"
and thrust itself in that single syllable from his mouth. His arms at least had been freed in his fall;
he pressed his hands against the floor and with a terrific effort half raised
himself. The man creature, at this
abandoning its tearing at his neck, came at him again from one side. Anthony put all the energy he had left into
one tremendous outward sweep of his arm, rather as if he flung a great wing
sideways. He felt his enemy give before
it and heard the crash that marked the collapse of an unstable balance. His own balance was barely maintained, but
his hand in its swift return touched the hair of the woman's head, and caught
it and fiercely pulled and wrenched till the clasping arms released their hold
and for a moment his body was free. In
that moment he came to his feet, and lightly as some wheeling bird turned and
poised for any new attack. But his
enemies lay still, their shining eyes fixed upon him, their hands scrabbling on
the floor. The hissing and snarling
which all this while had been in his ears ceased gradually; he became aware, as
he stepped watchfully backward, of the sedate room in which that horrible struggle
had gone on. He took another cautious
step away, and bumped into the chair on which he had been sitting, and the jerk
restored him to his ordinary self. He
looked, and saw Miss Wilmot sitting, half-coiled up, on a rug, and Mr. Foster, her visitor, on one knee near to her,
as if he were about to pick up a book that lay not far off. With alert eyes on them Anthony suddenly
swooped and lifted it. He remembered what
it was without looking.
"I was
wrong," he said aloud, and smiling, "it's perfectly up-to-date. So
sorry to be a nuisance, but I still stick to my own hypothesis. You might think it over. Goodnight, Miss Wilmot, I'll see myself out. Goodnight, Foster, give my love to the
lion."
Charles
Williams
The Place of the Lion (1931)
Chapter Seven : Investigations Into A Religion
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