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. Covered with rough red fur, the
man-beast had the head of a bull, horns as long as my
forearm, hair like a mane growing down between his
shoulder blades. He foamed from the corners of his mouth
like an animal.
I'd taken the minotaur two days before in an
unexpected end to a fruitless search for heretics. He'd come
at me like a storm, rising up out of the tall savannah grass,
a knife in each fist; charged me roaring, dark eyes afire
with battle-joy. Minotaurs don't much like humans or
anyone else, and they do love to fight. But this one, it
seemed, hadn't reckoned on my horse. The gray reared
high, hooves flailing, and the minotaur went down before
he knew what had hit him. He stayed senseless long enough
for me to get the manacles, hobbles, and chains on. They
have a strength beyond believing, those horned man-beasts.
Bound and hobbled is the only way you can take 'em
prisoner.
I never liked bringing live heretics to Istar, but sometimes
- like in the heat of summer, when you don't really want to
be traveling with the dead - you have to. That's the way of
things and seasons, and that's the way I was working in that
long, hot summer of my thirtyfifth year. By then I'd been
fifteen years in the bounty trade
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