Two stubby heads poked up through the gray hill-goose feathers at the same moment.
They were rock manticore cubs, no bigger than six-month terrier pups, covered in coarse brindled fur that graded into overlapping horn scales along their backs. Each had a broad, flat face with a hooked horn beak at the tip of the muzzle, oversized yellow eyes, and a thick, segmented tail tipped with a cluster of hollow bone quills the length of sewing needles. Even in cubs scarcely weaned off marrow, those tail quills carried enough nerve-numbing venom to stop an adult lion’s heart in ten minutes if a spine broke off in the gums or throat.
Neither cub raised its tail quills at Pip. Instead, they tumbled clumsily over the woven sedge rim of the nest, their oversized paws skidding on the smooth granite, and crowded up against Pip’s left flank.
Pip stood very still, drawing its head back a little so the damp moss strips on its antlers wouldn’t brush their faces. Inside Pip’s warm chest fold, the field mouse gave a single outraged squeak and ducked deeper out of sight. The larger cub stretched its neck, sniffed the rough Little Harbor seam on Pip’s partial shelter shell, and clicked its beak twice against the mineral plate, testing whether the newcomer was something that could be chewed. Pip answered with a low, careful click of its blunt tooth plates—not a warning, just a sound of equivalent weight. The smaller cub immediately sat down on Pip’s…
