Oru was not going to wait for Ysabet, and the copper spike bolted into the trench wall was a heartbeat away from firing its stored charge into the wet gravel where both the cub and the lion stood.
Before Ysabet could rise from her knees, Pip moved.
First, Pip dipped its chest low to the grass behind a limestone boulder and nudged the original field mouse out of its warm pouch into Osha’s cupped hands so the small creature would not take the shock. Then Pip scrambled straight over the timbered lip of the trench, all six feet clawing for purchase in the splintered spruce boards, and dropped into the mud between the thrashing manticore cub and the humming copper spike.
The cub snapped blindly with its hooked beak and lashed its venomous tail quills against Pip’s side, scraping a white line across the hard mineral plate without piercing it. Pip did not snap back. It planted all six feet wide and deep in the wet mineral clay at the bottom of the pit, lowered its cloak-bound antlers, and angled the rough Little Harbor seam of its partial shelter shell directly against the tip of the copper rod.
With a sharp blue crack that smelled of scorched tallow and lightning-struck iron, the buried stun-jar discharged.
