The Warwolf hanging onto Rachel's train makes an extraordinary complaint: she's behaving badly by escaping. Mojo had a contract. He made her a star. As far as her pursuer is con…

The Warwolf hanging onto Rachel's train makes an extraordinary complaint: she's behaving badly by escaping. Mojo had a contract. He made her a star. As far as her pursuer is concerned, that should settle the matter. Rachel calls it slavery, because that is what it was. The exchange in The Sword Is Drawn tells us plenty about the creature chasing her without needing a long history. It can speak and reason, but it treats its employer's claim over another person as perfectly ordinary. Her refusal becomes the offense, while everything done to keep her captive is apparently acceptable. Putting that argument on a moving train gives the scene an awful urgency. Rachel is trying to leave, literally and otherwise, and the Warwolf won't even allow a closing door to separate them. It clings to the carriage and breaks in. There is no respect for the other passengers or any sense that the pursuit should stop now that innocent people are caught in it. Rachel fights back, and the creature ends up on the electrified rail. Its pack gathers around afterward. They can recognize the loss of one of their own while showing no comparable concern for the person they were ordered to retrieve. The passengers are frightened of Rachel too. They have just seen a violent confrontation involving powers they don't understand. She gets a little distance from her captors, but she hasn't suddenly found somewhere safe to belong. That combination matters to the beginning of Excalibur: being powerful enough to survive this encounter doesn't remove her need for friends, shelter, or the right to decide where she goes next.