Free Corroboree by Graham Masterton

underneath the branch like an opossum.
    â€˜Yanluga!’ Eyre shouted, through swollen lips. ‘Yanluga, hold on!’
    â€˜Now then, Mr Walker, sir,’ called Lathrop, from the far side of the ha-ha. ‘Don’t give me any trouble.’
    Eyre turned around, staggering on his lacerated leg. Trouble?’ he yelled, almost screeching.
    Yanluga was grimly silent, struggling to edge his way further up the blistery bark of the tree, while the dogs sprang and hurtled just beneath him. He had almost reached an elbow in the branch, where he would be able to perch well out of the reach of the greyhounds’ jaws. Eyre had limped within ten yards now, and bent down painfully to pick up a dry fallen bough, to beat the dogs away. ‘Yanluga!’ he called again. ‘Hold tight, Yanluga!’
    The dogs spun around and around in a yapping frenzy; jumping up at Yanluga like vicious grey fish in a turbulent sea. One of them tore at the back of his shirt, and Yanluga beat at its snout with his hand. But that was all the other dogs needed. One of them sprang up and seized Yanluga’s wrist in its jaws; and even though Yanluga shouted and thrashed, the dog hung on to him, its body twirling and swinging in the air, its sharp teeth deeply embedded in his flesh. Another jumped up, and then another, ripping at Yanluga’s arm and shoulders. Yanluga held on for onemore agonising second, and then dropped heavily to the ground with a cry more of hopeless resignation than of fear.
    Eyre came limping forward, swishing his stick fiercely from side to side; but he was already too late. The dog which had first caught Yanluga was worrying and tearing at his wrist, and at last tore the boy’s hand right away from his arm, in a grisly web of tendons, and snarled and tossed it. Another dog ripped at Yanluga’s thighs, so that the flesh came away from the bone with a terrible noise like tearing linen; and it was then that Yanluga started to scream—a high, warbling scream.
    â€˜
Off! Jesus! Get off, you devils!
’ Eyre shouted at the greyhounds, and struck out at them with his stick. But they had caught the smell of fresh blood now,
koola
or Aborigine; and a few glancing blows on the back weren’t going to be enough to drive them away.
    â€˜
Off! Get off! Get off!
’ Eyre roared at them; and one of them turned for a moment, so that Eyre could catch it a smart blow at the side of the head, and knock it aside. Savagely, it went for Eyre’s arm; but Eyre struck it on the shoulder, and then the spine, and yelping it staggered and collapsed in front of him. Shuddering with anger, inflamed with pain, and with Yanluga’s agonised screams tearing inside his mind like a fast-growing thorn-bush, Eyre hoisted the bough vertically upright, hesitated, and then brought it down in a piledriving blow right on top of the dog’s skull. With a crack, the dog’s eyes were squirted out of their sockets, and its head was smashed into fur, bone, blood, and a grey cream of brains.
    The ferocity of the remaining five dogs was unabated. Eyre saw Yanluga lift the bloody stump of his wrist in a last attempt to beat them away; but they had already torn open his shirt, and tugged the muscles away from his ribs, and now one of them was stepping backwards, snarling and shaking its head, trying to free itself from a garland of yellow-purplish intestines. Another had torn off mostof his scalp, and half of his ear; while a third was chewing and tugging at the rags of his penis.
    â€˜
Ngura!
’ Captain Henry commanded, from a little way across the lawns. ‘
Hi, hi, hi! Ngura!
’
    The hounds were satisfied now. Bloody-snouted, trailing liver and muscles and intestines behind them, they bounded across to Captain Henry and laid their prizes at his feet. He patted each of them; and then commanded again, ‘
Ngura!
Back to your shelter!’
    Eyre stood still for a moment or two, and then let his stick