At the same moment Deyun’s chisel severed the winch cable, Chaska’s rigging knife sliced through the last strand of the hemp counterweight rope on the A-frame above.
The six-hundred-pound boulder at the bottom of the chute settled with a thud, and the sudden release of tension kicked back through the rotten spruce cross-beam that spanned the mouth of the trench. Iron spikes pulled screaming out of wet, frost-split wood.
Down in the pit, Ysabet had her left shoulder braced against the ash staff, prying the iron drop-grate up four inches from the gravel floor. Pip still stood planted over the smoking copper rod, its flanks heaving and a thin trickle of blood dripping from its jaw onto the mud. As the grate lifted, the trapped manticore cub yanked its bruised tail free of the bars, scrambling backward over Pip’s hind feet with a frantic clatter of beak and claws.
Oru shook the slackened steel noose from his scarred neck with one violent toss of his head. Dipping his massive jaws, he caught the terrified manticore cub gently by the loose fold of armored skin behind its neck-crest—careful even in haste to keep his lips clear of the lashing venom quills—and gathered his hindquarters beneath him.
