The pain in his back was a distant memory compared to what came next. As he pivoted, his sword sliding off the flank of one Warg, another beast, faster and quieter than the rest, lunged at him from the left. Dylan caught a movement at the edge of his vision, a flash of muscle and scale. He tried to evade, but he was off-balance from his own strike.
The Warg's gaping maw clamped down on his left arm, just above the elbow.
There was no sound of sinking fangs. It was a dry, horrible *crack*, the sound of a piece of green wood snapping. A white, absolute pain exploded in his brain, sweeping away all coherent thought. He saw, incredulous, his own arm, still gripping the hilt of his sword, being torn from his body in a spray of warm blood and tossed like a rag into the undergrowth.
A moment of sheer void. The world seemed to stop. A primitive, all-consuming panic rose in his throat, ready to transform into a scream. He was going to die. Here. Now. Dismembered.