Down on the gravel shore, Edris saw Pip’s right antler fork split open along the old Suth-cloak binding and run with dark, metallic sap that hardened even as it fell.
“Stop the chant!” Edris shouted, wrenching his right shoulder out of the corporal’s grip and throwing himself sideways across the mud despite the blinding stab in his splinted left hip. He sprawled across the butt of the nearest grounding pike, knocking the iron point off the copper net and soaking his grey beard in cold silt. “You’re forcing the war-form without a damper! You’ll tear its chest open!”
“Bind him to the root column,” Veyt ordered without taking her eyes off the cage. “Keep the measure steady! Look at the brow—the horn is setting!”
Two soldiers hauled Edris back by his armpits, dragging his wooden splint over the wet pebbles until his teeth clicked together, and lashed his leather belt to the petrified trunk with a spare rope end.
Under the copper net, the right side of Pip’s lattice antlers fused together with a sound like a blacksmith quenching hot iron in brine. The delicate, relationship-sensitive branches on that side vanished, hardening into half a crown of blades—five curving, razor-edged tines of black mineral horn rising above its right eye, while its left side remained pale, branched lattice with the forkwing gap still open.
