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It was a hand. A mottled right hand. From its wrist a short tail grew. It swung deadweight and dripping.
“Dextrier,” the whispersmith said to Cutter. “Warrior caste.”
There was another commotion, like some big animal was shifting through trees. Cutter turned and tried to bring unloaded guns to bear.
The noise again, and something shifted in a grove a half mile off. Something came out into the sun. A giant, an immense grey man. They watched without knowing what to do or say as it walked toward them. Cutter cried out and began to run. He picked up speed as the clay man approached and he saw someone waving to him from its back: a man who leapt down and came toward him with his arms wide, shouting something no one could hear, every one of his steps, and Cutter’s, sending up pollen and sticky insects that stained them.
Cutter ran up; the man ran down. Cutter called out; he called the man by name. Cutter was crying. “We found you,” he said. “We found you.”