Two Kainhite warriors came striding
toward him across the field. From the whispering of their movements, Loerd knew
that both retained their wings. For this moment, he gave that fact no thought. In
the reflected glow of their scarlet eyes, he studied instead the wheeled cart
they dragged behind them on a length of chain. Upon the cart sat a cage, and
within the cage stirred a violent thing.
The
warriors stopped a few feet from Loerd, dropped the chain, bowed, and backed
away. Loerd approached the cart. The thing penned upon it began to smash back
and forth against the bars of its prison as it voiced a throbbing snarl of warning
and threat.
“Shhh,”
Loerd murmured. “Shhh.”
The
creature’s snarl grew instead, reached a crescendo of bestial rage. A
dark-furred limb thrust suddenly through the bars and slashed at Loerd with
claws as sharp and long as pitchfork tines. They did not quite reach to where
Loerd stood, and the master of the Kainhites smiled. Then he vented his own
snarl, a very soft one, and he opened the pores on his body so that his scent
poured out and over the thing in the cage.
The
thing huffed, then backed quickly away as far as its bars allowed. Loerd
stepped closer. He drew the soul-black blade that hung at his hip and the
dimmest flickers of light played along its edge. The thing in the cage crouched
low; a whimper escaped its throat.
“Release
it!” Loerd ordered.
One
of the warriors who had brought the cart tugged on a rope that it
held. The side of the cage furthest from Loerd fell away. The thing within
recognized its sudden freedom and leaped out onto the field. But, where moments
before it would have been happy to rend and tear every living thing around it,
now it fled on swift feet for the woods.
Loerd
gave the thing a head start before he followed.
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