An hour after supper, when the green spring clay had hardened enough across Pip’s back that it no longer dented under a finger-touch, the creature stood up, shook a few dry crumbs of chalk off its tail fold, and walked out through the rush curtain into the camp lane.
Ysabet followed two paces behind, leaving her pack inside so her sore left ribs could rest, and leaned her shoulder against the cedar lantern post to watch.
In the warm gravel yard between the cookhouse and the soaking pools, a dozen of the Unbound’s bonded beasts were settling down for the night. Nobody was preaching a sermon, nobody was fleeing an avalanche, and nobody was dying.
Ten feet from the shelter door, an enormous old feather-boar lay on its side under a frayed wool horse-rug, its curved grey tusks resting in the warm ash beside a roast-potato pit and the stiff, quill-like plumes along its spine rising and falling in a slow wheeze.
Pip walked over on six careful feet. Its green-and-white patched shell gleamed dull moss in the lantern light, and the faint green glow inside its chest pulsed politely. Stopping a yard from the boar’s snout, Pip gave two neat, practiced taps with its right forefoot on the gravel—the same gentle invitation it had used with the frightened mouse, the stone-swifts, and the starving moths.
