Before the five riders turned their mounts on the submerged causeway, Pip stepped out from beneath the edge of Ysabet’s wet cloak.
The creature was cold, empty-bellied, and curious about the warm smell of reed oil and deer tallow drifting down from the horn-glass lanterns. Moving with the quick, anxious hustle it had fallen into whenever new bodies appeared in the dark, Pip trotted straight down the gravel rib on all six legs toward the forelegs of Iskren’s tall marsh stag, stretching its snout up to sniff the deer’s damp hock while the pale lights inside its chest flared twice.
Iskren did not tighten his knees or reach for his stag’s neck wool. He left his hands resting loose on his thighs and watched.
The marsh stag looked down its long, Roman-nosed muzzle at the six-legged stranger crowding its footing on the narrow stone rib. Its split ears flicked back once—not in panic, only in clear irritation at bad manners. Then the deer lowered its wide, palmate head and delivered a single, firm tap with the flat of its lowest brow-tine straight against the bridge of Pip’s snout.
The wood-hard bone clicked sharply against Pip’s nose plates, just hard enough to stop the creature in its tracks without breaking skin.
