The Heartwood Take the oxygen straight out of my own chest.

Immediately his pristine coat was stained red, again. The rush of battle filling his veins, but this time, this was different. It was for survival as opposed to that fleeting joy that the rush of adrenaline had brought him. One of them could die here and now thanks to the famine. One wrong move, one punctured artery that bled a little too much. This was not a fight between soldiers, but one to see another day, while the other a madman trying to steal that from him. 

There was a mad look in the boy's eyes and only one solution came to the paladin's mind as an act for survival. Keep a calm mind, focus, be tactful and it would make his chances for victory a little higher than to fight the boy on his own mad grounds. 

Defensively he exposed his shoulder to the boy's frantic biting, flattening his ears against his skull and lowering his center of gravity along by bending his knees and elbows, he took the brunt of the boy's attack and once they collided, aimed to grab hold of his elbow and pull.

Current wounds: a gash along the right side of his neck, the left shoulder has deep bite wounds