by Logan Jacobs
“Well, sometimes it may not be possible to pin down the exact truth,” Florena said sternly. “You can only dance around it. And Willobee, I see, is quite the dancer. But. There is still such a thing as telling a blatant falsehood. And the philosophical vagaries of the concept of truth do not excuse that.”
A thought occurred to me. “Willobee, tell me this,” I said. “When you pledged ten years of service to me, was that a half-blind, half-deaf, poetic, fanciful, and tangled sort of truth?”
“That wasn’t any kind of truth at all. That was an oath,” Willobee said. He sounded shocked by the question. “Don’t your people have oaths? Truth is tricksome, but oaths are simple. An oath is what it is.”
“Oh. Well, thank you,” I said.
“Where exactly are we headed now, anyway?” Lizzy asked.
“To the village of Ferndale,” I replied. “Straight into the middle of whatever kind of trouble they are in right now. Florenia, I hope you will not end up regretting coming with us.”
“Oh, no. I would much rather be heading for trouble than for the temple of Drusilla with the other vestals,” the beautiful vestal shivered at the thought.
“Drusilla? What’s she the goddess of?” Lizzy asked curiously.
“Chastity and textiles,” Florenia said disdainfully.
“Well, then, I can’t imagine they will be much safer from Thorvinius there than they were in your old temple… if they even make it there before the bandits get them,” Lizzy remarked. “I’d nab a gaggle of geese like that for sure, if I were still in my banditing days.”
“Drusilla’s temple is very well fortified, in fact,” Florenia informed her. “The mayor of the neighboring town levies a tax to build their walls up and to employ a guard there. You see, the town economy is quite reliant on the textiles that the vestals produce.”
Then Florenia turned her heart-stoppingly beautiful olive-skinned face to me and inquired, “And you? What is Qaar’endoth the god of?”
“Er, Qaar’endoth is not a specialized god like that,” I answered. Petty gods, we had called them at the temple. “Our order had a sort of specialty, I guess, the doubling that only we can do. But Qaar’endoth is the god of… everything, really. Defender of the righteous and destroyer of the malevolent. The Unvanquished. So you really didn’t know much about him… me… when you decided to join us, did you?”
“I knew everything I needed to know,” Florenia replied calmly. She was sitting right beside me, with the she-wolf and the gnome across from us. But unlike the way Lizzy would have nuzzled and slyly stroked and snuggled against me if their positions were switched, Florenia maintained a perfectly prim posture and merely raked my entire body with her burning hazel eyes. Her blatant attention was stirring nearly as much of a reaction as if she had physically grabbed my crotch.
“I think your god specialties are war and sex,” Lizzy interjected. She glanced meaningfully down at the carriage seat I was sitting on. The fresh memories from that locale that filled my head were not helping stem the urgent flow of blood that was stiffening my shaft.
“That is not all I’m good for,” I reproached her, pretty sure by this point that both of the women must have noticed the bulge in my pants. But I could not look down to check how visible it was because that telltale gesture would eliminate any remaining possibility that either woman was still unaware of my condition. My only real hope was that Willobee would not notice because I did not think I could endure one of the gnome’s long-winded and unpredictable speeches if the topic was my erection.
Outside on the driver’s bench, my skin was tingling in a different way.
“Ilandere,” I began to ask, “did you… hear hoofbeats just now?”
The centaur looked over at me in bewilderment. “You mean besides mine?”
“Yes. Besides yours and Damask and Diamond’s. I mean Luna and Chrysanthemum’s. Besides yours and theirs, did you hear any other hoofbeats?” I asked urgently.
“Hmm. Nooo,” she said slowly as she listened. I could see her focus and make an effort to sync her light hoofbeats with the ponies’ clomping rhythm.
“Never mind,” I said after a minute. I could see that I had worried her. “I think I was just imagining things, Ilandere.”
“Oh,” she said in a tone of relief. “Well, I do appreciate you always looking out for me and all the rest of us, Vander. I feel safe now that I’m with you. Even with my herd, I didn’t always feel safe.”
“You didn’t?” I asked with concern. “Did other centaurs in your herd mistreat you?”
She laughed. “No, not at all! Well… they didn’t think of it like that, anyway. And they never asked me to do anything they wouldn’t have been willing to do themselves. In fact, they usually tried to spare me the brunt of any burden. But, the herd’s ways are… difficult.”
“Difficult how?” I asked. I had been wondering how she ended up in Osric’s grasp, but the silvery little centaur seemed so sensitive that I had not wanted to ask her about it and force her to relive what must have been such a terrible experience.
“To begin with, there’s a lot of running. We covered vast distances every single day. Even when we found nice meadows with pretty flowers where I would have liked to stay. And no one else ever seemed to care when it was cold, or wet, or we all got dirty. And a lot of times in the winter especially, there wasn’t very much to eat. Once there was a farmer with an apple orchard, and I stole an apple because I didn’t know it belonged to him, and I was hungry. And then when he caught me, instead of getting angry, he offered to adopt me and feed me all the apples I wanted and brush my coat every day,” Ilandere said wistfully. “But the herd wouldn’t l-let me. They said it was pathetic that I c-could even think of becoming a human’s pet, and th-that I should prefer death over surrender, like any good warrior.” She sniffled a bit and then continued. “But Vander, I n-never w-wanted to be a warrior at all.”
“You don’t have to fight anymore,” I told her, although it didn’t particularly sound to me like she had been doing all that much fighting while she was still with the herd, anyway. “That’s what Lizzy and I are here for.”
Ilandere sighed. “That makes me happy, but… my herd always told me that I shouldn’t rely on a man for anything. Except for breeding purposes when I wanted a foal that is. They told me that I had to be strong to survive. And that our freedom was its own reward. It never felt like a reward. It just felt like that meant we could never have a home. Or even a rest from running.”
“I’m really sorry I’ve made you run so much since we met, Ilandere,” I said guiltily. “I wish I could give you the rest you deserve. Maybe we could build some kind of extension to the carriage--”
“What, this?” she interrupted with a laugh. “This isn’t running at all, Vander. This is very pleasant and relaxing. You have no idea how fast my herd forced me to go. And they would threaten to leave me behind if I didn’t keep up.”
“Did your herd have a lot of enemies?” I asked. “Is that why they adapted such a harsh mindset?”
“Well, bears, wolves and mountain lions would always kill a few of us every year. Usually young ones that weren’t paying attention, or ones that were old or injured. But it was usually easy for our guards to shoot them if we did everything right. Grazed in outward-facing formations and posted sentries, swam rivers to break our scent trails, things like that,” Ilandere explained. “But what my herd really feared most of all was subjugation by humans.”
“Did humans ever try to conquer your herd?” I asked.
She nodded her silvery head. “Lots of times. Fur trappers would run into us and get obsessed and start tracking us. Or princes out on hunts would think we were human maidens under a curse or something and try to cut our bodies in half thinking we could just shed the horse part and grow human legs. They didn’t care when we told them it would kill us, they just kept promising that if we stayed still like good girls for the operation, they would take us home and marry us afterward.” Her big dark b
rown eyes filled with tears. “One of my best friends died that way when I was fifteen. The other girl that was with her escaped to tell us. And then later our scouts found her, and the prince had just left her there, he didn’t even b-bury her…”
I was horrified by the idea that someone would do something like that. “Ilandere, I know you are a centaur, and I would never try to change that. Or let anyone else try. You’re perfect exactly the way you are.”
“Thank you,” she whispered. “And then, the other kind of human threat was slavers. They knew what we were and at least they didn’t try to chop us into pieces. But they would have done that too without blinking if they thought they could sell us for more money in parts than whole. That was Osric’s type.”
“I’m sorry that happened to you, Ilandere,” I said. “I wish there was some way I could have prevented it. Or been there sooner to save you. And I wish you would have let me kill him so he could never do that again to any other centaur.”
“I wasn’t with him for that long before you saved me,” Ilandere said. “Only for two days, although they were the longest two days of my life. But one of my herdmates was kept as a slave for three years before she managed to escape and rejoin us. And she had the most awful scars and didn’t want to talk about any of it. So I was terrified about what would happen once Osric got me to market and sold me.”
“You don’t have to worry about anything like that ever again, Ilandere. I promise,” I said.
She leaned her head toward me, so I hesitantly reached out to wipe the tear from her cheek and stroke her long blonde tresses. Although the hairs of her pelt had the same stiff texture as any ordinary horse’s, the hair on her head was abnormally silky soft.
“I’m not worried, because I’m not going to leave you, and I know you’ll protect me,” she replied. “What happened with Osric before was all my fault. I was stupid and I left the herd. And he captured me right away, just like they always warned me someone would if I ever went off by myself. I just c-couldn’t bear life with them anymore, and I had to try.”
“Of course it wasn’t your fault, Ilandere,” I said. “Osric is the only one to blame for his actions. You were just seeking a better life, one that suited you more, and that was a brave thing to do.”
“No one’s ever called me brave,” she whispered. “My herd thought that I was a coward. No one ever said it to my face, because for us, that was the very worst thing you could call someone. But I know that’s what they thought.”
“I’m sure they didn’t think that,” I lied.
Looking at the delicate centaur, with her pale little face and tiny waist and doe eyes, I just couldn’t understand what kind of monster could ever bring themselves to harm her. I would never allow anyone to hurt any one of my companions, of course. But I could at least understand why the gamblers had come for Willobee after he cheated them out of their life savings, and why some rival bandit gangs, or the travelers that she victimized for that matter, might bear a grudge against Lizzy. I could even imagine that Florenia’s sharp tongue and haughty ways might rub some folks the wrong way, notwithstanding her flawless face. But the sweet, vulnerable way Ilandere looked and acted made me feel instinctively protective toward her.
That was when I heard the snap of a twig in the trees by the side of the road. It might have been some harmless animal, of course. A fox or a raccoon. But I just had a nervous feeling about it, and I preferred to overreact than to ignore my concerns and regret it later.
So I hissed, “Ilandere, stay close to me. But get ready to run if I tell you to. Understand?”
Inside the carriage, I rose to my feet and grabbed a few extra weapons from the back, including a newly acquired bow and quiver, to add to the arsenal that I wore on my person. At the same time I stowed away some of my best blades and my pouch of gems.
“What are you doing?” Lizzy asked.
“Putting away everything that I want to keep so that I can re-assimilate this self without losing anything valuable,” I answered.
“When you reas… when you smush yourselves back together, you lose all the objects that one of the bodies was carrying, right?” Lizzy asked.
“Yes. Whichever one I withdraw,” I said.
“And when you send the second body back out again, you don’t get them back?” she continued.
“Unfortunately not,” I replied.
“So then all those weapons and armor are gone?” she asked as she scrunched her nose. “Where do they go?”
“We’ve often theorized that they are lost in the magical void when we--”
“Then how come all your new selves always still have those same clothes on?” she interrupted me.
“Those are my novice clothes that I wore in the temp--”
“So you lose your weapons and armor, but then you get your old clothes back? Why though?”
I blinked. “Er. I… guess I don’t really know. It’s just always been that way? Whatever clothes my source self was wearing that’s exactly what my new self gets too. Down to the last stitch. But… I guess I don’t know why. I really wish it worked that way with weapons too.”
“I wish it didn’t work that way with clothes,” Lizzy muttered, and Florenia hummed in agreement.
“Maybe it will work with weapons and armor once he grows more powerful,” Willobee said. “That would make sense.”
“How would that make sense?” Lizzy groaned.
“Well, he is a god…” the gnome said unhelpfully as he ran his fingers through his lavender beard. “But why would you have to re-assimilate anyway, Master?”
“I heard a couple strange noises outside, so I’m going to investigate,” I said. “I’m worried we might have company.”
“I’m coming with you,” Lizzy said immediately.
“No, you’re not,” I said firmly.
“Vander, I can fight, how many times do I have to prove that to you?” She demanded with exasperation.
“I know you can fight. That’s not the problem. The problem is that you can’t double and re-assimilate. So we can leave me behind, but not you,” I explained.
“I don’t know if I like this plan,” Lizzy growled.
“It will be fine,” I assured her. “I’ll stay here with you, right outside in the driver’s seat where I can keep an eye on Ilandere too. And, like you said, you can fight. So if it comes down to it, you can help protect Florenia and Willobee while I’m gone. Can I trust you with that?”
“Of course you can. I just don’t want to lose even one of you,” Lizzy said. “And, you can’t track the way I can. If there really is someone following us, I’d have a better chance of finding them than you would.”
“That’s true, but… well, you’re not very fast in your human form,” I pointed out. The sky was verging into evening, but it was not yet dark enough for the moon to show. “If it were nighttime I’d bring you along for sure, and then we could both run to catch up. But that won’t work now. So what I’m going to do is quietly get out of the carriage and slip into the woods on that side, opposite of where I think our company may be so that they won’t see me getting out. Then I’m going to spur the ponies on to their top speed to try to shed our tail. If someone else in the woods speeds up a lot to try to catch the carriage, then they’ll probably make enough noise that I’ll be able to detect them.”
“Who exactly do you think is following us?” Florenia inquired. She looked more intrigued than worried. I had a feeling there hadn’t been much excitement in her life back at Nillibet’s temple.
“Most likely, no one at all,” I said for the benefit of the entire carriage.
Willobee, who had just been enthusiastically comparing the relative merits of two gnomish songs to determine which one we wanted to hear first before this interruption, looked especially glum. “It was probably just a woodland critter. But, it’s possible that we’re being pursued by more bandits. And it’s even less likely, but also possible, that the Thorvinians found out somehow that you’re still a
live and that they’re hunting you now.”
“All right. You can go ahead and sing them a song, Willobee,” I told him. “Be as loud as you want. If there’s anyone out there they already know where the carriage is, so I want all their attention to stay focused on it. No matter what happens, I’ll be back soon, and you’ll have two of me again.”
I grinned at Lizzy, winked at Florenia, nodded to Willobee, then cracked the door and sprang out of the moving carriage. I kept abreast of the carriage as I sprinted diagonally off the road into the woods so that it would screen me from view as much as possible from the other side of the road.
I ran alongside the carriage for as long as I could before the ponies outpaced me at my urging and Ilandere’s encouragement. At a narrow point in the road, I quickly crossed over to the other side, where I thought I had heard a suspicious twig snap, but I saw no one.
Nor had I noticed any disturbance from the driver’s seat of the carriage when we picked up the pace.
On foot in the woods, as Willobee’s resonant voice faded from hearing, I looked for any flash of movement and listened for any sound that was not native to the forest. I hunted for any tracks or strands of hair or shreds of clothing. I did wish that I had the she-wolf’s keen sense of smell to aid my search, but I also suspected that it might not have made any difference. Although I followed the carriage for several miles, crossing back and forth between both sides of the road, sometimes moving stealthily and at other times deliberately crashing through the woods to attract attention to myself and draw out any potential attackers, there was absolutely no sign of the recent presence of any creature that did not belong there.
Eventually I had to conclude that I had simply imagined the worst. It was probably due to my consciousness of the added burden of responsibility of protecting all of my companions, numbering four now with Florenia, even though I still only had two selves to do it with and the way that lay ahead of us was unpredictable and bloody.
I would feel a lot safer with another self around to look after them while I kept pursuing Thorvinius’ followers. Part of me had to wonder if I was doing the right thing by following the oracle’s prophecy to Ferndale, instead of heading for a temple first where I could establish another altar to Qaar’endoth and confirm that my theory about how to multiply myself was even correct at all. But in all the religious parables and even secular legends that I had grown up hearing, disregarding an oracle’s advice always brought down a shitstorm of nasty consequences, no matter how silly or arbitrary it might seem at first. So I figured I should give Meline a chance. Besides, Ferndale was just some random village in the middle of nowhere, so how significant could its mysterious source of trouble really be, anyway?