by Logan Jacobs
“Yes, I’m right here,” I whispered back. “What is it?”
After a long moment of hesitation, Ilandere said softly, “Well, I was kind of just wondering if you think that I’ve… grown, you know, as a centaur. Since we met. Since this whole adventure started.”
“Uh,” I said. “Of course you have. We’ve all grown, I think. I know I’ve experienced stuff in the last couple weeks that I never dreamed I would experience in my entire life. And you’ve been a huge part of that, Ilandere. None of it would have been as wonderful without you there.”
Ilandere hummed thoughtfully. She seemed pleased by my answer, but not completely satisfied. “Well, I don’t know,” she said. “I mean, I know I’ve been around the whole time, but I can never really do as much to help you as the others can.”
“What do you mean?” I asked. “Ilandere, the rest of these guys? They’re crazy. I love them, but they’re always causing us more problems than we already have in one way or another. You’re the only one who’s never given me a single problem. Never. You’re always trying to help out, and you’re always so sweet to everyone, no matter what kind of hell we might be going through at the time.”
“I try,” she said with a tiny little sigh, “but I’m just not very useful. Elodette’s so strong, and she’s not afraid of anything. Lizzy is… well, not very nice all the time, but she’s really brave too, and she can fight, and being able to turn into a wolf means she can do all kinds of things the rest of us can’t. And Willobee has his slime, and he can talk his way into or out of anything, if he’s in the right mood. Well, sometimes he makes things worse, but usually a lot better. Like just now, by explaining everything to the drummers in their own language. And he always has a song to warm everyone’s hearts. And Florenia is so extremely clever, and she’s so beautiful too, she’s like a queen. But I’m just… me.”
I kind of wished Willobee were awake right then, actually, because I knew that he’d know exactly the right way to phrase things to lift Ilandere’s spirits and make her understand how important and special she was. I cared so much about the little centaur, but I just wasn’t very good at that kind of thing. But I was just going to have to try my best.
“Ilandere, you’re one of the most special… beings I’ve ever met,” I told her. “I know you’re not a warrior, but I don’t expect you to be. That’s not the only way that my friends can be helpful to me, as you know. Sometimes violence is the solution. Sometimes it’s not. And when it’s not? You’re the kindest, sweetest, and most caring of us all, and the one that strangers trust and love the most. You sort of keep our worst impulses in check and make us want to be better people. And as for beauty? Are you kidding me? Ilandere, you’re absolutely dazzling.”
It was dark, but there was enough light for me to tell that the little centaur was blushing, and she was trying to keep a smile off her rosebud lips.
“You’re so nice to me, Vander,” she said.
“You’re an angel,” I said. “I just try to be decent.”
“I just want… ” she sighed.
“What is it?” I asked.
“I just want to be worthy of you,” she whispered. She said it so quietly that at first I didn’t even realize what she had said.
Then it registered. But not until the second after I glanced around at the rest of our companions and realized with a start that one was missing. Lizzy. Of course. I bit back a curse.
Chapter Five
“Where are you--” the little centaur tried to ask worriedly when I moved toward the flap of our tent.
“I have to get Lizzy.” I smiled at her and motioned for her to stay where she was. Then I slipped out into the night in pursuit of the she-wolf. I couldn’t believe she had gotten away without my even noticing. Stealth was certainly not among Lizzy’s many talents, but I had been distracted by Ilandere.
Among my merry band of companions, I worried about the princess’ behavior the least, but I worried about her well-being the most. The rest could mostly take care of themselves pretty well. Ilandere was a pure and delicate soul, and as much as I loved having her with me, I knew that the road and the battlefield weren’t really the kinds of places she was made to go. She belonged in a cozy home with a lovely soft featherbed and lots of apple trees around. I hoped that someday, after I’d dealt with Thorvinius, I would be able to give that to her.
For now, I just needed to stop Lizzy from slaughtering our poor under-evolved hosts. I was confident that that wasn’t necessary in order to make them stop slaughtering the Sanctimians’ sheep and stop poisoning the wolves whose pelts they liked to wear so much, especially now that Willobee had figured out how to get through to them verbally.
After I stepped outside our hut and closed the door behind me so that my companions could continue sleeping in peace, I was relieved to find that no scene of carnage greeted me. The camp was quiet. The drummers, I assumed, were mostly sleeping peacefully in their own huts. A few lay out in the open under furs and snored.
So where was Lizzy?
Just as I started to wonder if maybe I had overreacted, and she had simply slipped off to relieve herself in the woods or something, my ears were pierced by a long, drawn-out, eerily beautiful and absolutely bloodcurdling howl. I recognized it immediately and knew that it did not belong to any ordinary wolf. It belonged to a beautiful, tawny, four-hundred-pound giant wolf who definitely had other intentions than just singing to the moon.
All around me, the camp started coming alive. The drummers who were sleeping outdoors sprawled out ungracefully were the first ones to get all twitchy and jump to their feet as they stared around for the source of the howling. I pressed myself back up against the hut that I had just emerged from to conceal myself in the shadows and watch to see what they would do next.
What they did next was dart in and out of buildings and start arming themselves with spears, slingshots, and rocks. They also apparently took the time to wake some reinforcements. The drummers scurrying about the settlement rapidly multiplied in number. A chorus of excited grunting filled the air.
The gnome’s cautionary words about the wrath of the Wolf Goddess had, apparently, been forgotten. Or were about to be wilfully disregarded. I guess Lizzy was right that talk alone wasn’t going to cut it, and she had just set a Plan B into action.
Inside the hut, my companions were awoken by the commotion and started getting worried, but my two selves who were still inside with them reassured them, told them to go back to sleep, and prevented any of them from going outside. This was between me, Lizzy, and the drummers. I didn’t need or want the others getting mixed up in it.
The howling continued. It was maybe the most beautiful sound I had ever heard, a lot more raw and primal and unearthly than any human singing, and among the most terrifying. It clearly filled the drummers with a sense of urgency. They probably had no idea that wolf-eared, wolf-tailed Lizzy could actually morph into a full-fledged wolf, but they definitely could tell that whatever creature was making that sound had to be some kind of extraordinary beast.
About five minutes after the howling had first started, a horde of about twenty drummers, composed of their biggest and strongest warriors, the ones who had been most disgruntled by Willobee’s nonviolent attempt to interfere with their lifestyle, burst out through the gate of their fence. Polliver at my belt and some other daggers strapped on elsewhere, I followed as close behind as I could without being spotted.
The drummers ran toward the sounds of the howling while Lizzy continued to broadcast her location.
About a quarter mile away, we reached her. She had positioned herself on top of a sparsely vegetated hill where she was outlined clearly against the light of the moon. Lizzy as a human woman was extremely fuckable. Lizzy as a giant wolf was a completely different kind of magnificent. I stared at her in awe just like all the drummers were doing, although I hoped my jaws weren’t hanging open and my eyeballs weren’t bulging quite the same way theirs were.
Another critica
l difference is that I definitely wasn’t raising a spear, slingshot, or rock like they all were. The drummers pounded their chests with their meaty fists and started up some kind of rhythmic ape-like war grunt. Then they very unstrategically charged uphill en masse.
When her attackers had gotten halfway up the hill, Lizzy charged. In a four-hundred-pound explosion of muscle, teeth, and bloodlust, she barreled right through the center of the stupidly clumped-up band of drummers and tore and trampled probably half of them to shreds in thirty seconds or less.
As her momentum carried Lizzy the rest of the way to the bottom of the hill, the drummers scattered as they screamed in panic. They threw a few more rocks at Lizzy, who was completely unscathed by their weapons, and then they fled into the woods.
Most of them ran in the same general direction, probably trying to get back to their settlement, as if they imagined that the poorly designed fence would have a chance in hell of keeping the she-wolf out. The drummers proved not only physically stronger than most humans, but faster runners, despite their crude ungainly physiques. However, I still could have caught up with any one of them if I were really trying. Wolf-Lizzy was a different story altogether. I tried to pursue her, but she was so far ahead of me that I couldn’t even keep in sight of her, I could only keep track of her whereabouts from the sounds of bushes and trees being cracked to smithereens, bones being chomped and gnashed, and dying drummers screaming in agony.
I might have felt bad for them, since they really didn’t stand a chance, except for the fact that they had been the ones stupid and stubborn enough to ignore Willobee and attack Lizzy in the first place. If they hadn’t tried to kill yet another wolf for its pelt, they wouldn’t be in so much trouble now.
As we all sprinted through the woods, I recognized the clearing from the day before where Lizzy and I had watched the drummers set out their poisoned lamb steaks for unsuspecting wolves.
Then a minute later, I heard a roar of primal fury, followed by the utterly unexpected sound of a celebratory, elated chant of, “Uggauggaugga! Uggauggaugga!”
My heart nearly stopped. I kicked up my speed to its maximum and a few seconds later burst into the other clearing where all the sounds were coming from, terrified of what I might find there.
What I found was a four-hundred-pound ball of frantically thrashing fur dangling twenty feet above the ground in some kind of fiber-woven rope net rigged from a tree, while nine surviving drummers danced happily in a circle below.
I couldn’t help it.
I had to laugh.
One pair of slanted green canine eyes, and nine pairs of dull humanoid ones, turned in my direction.
I stepped forward and said, “All right, you got her good. Now, let her down. Gently.”
The very largest of all the drummers, who wore a cloak that had a wolf’s shriveled head as the hood and to whom the others conspicuously deferred, grunted emphatically, “Uggaugga!” and pointed to Lizzy.
“Yes,” I said. “I know. She’s a really fucking big wolf. The largest you’ve ever seen in your lives. The largest I’ve ever seen in mine, too. But now you need to let her down, okay? She won’t hurt you. Will you, Lizzy?”
Lizzy hesitated for a very long moment. Then she let out a disgruntled growl that I figured meant no. Lizzy couldn’t talk any more so than the drummers could when she was in her wolf form, but at least unlike them, she could always understand human speech perfectly.
“She promises,” I said. “Fight’s over. She made her point, and you made yours. Actually, I’m really impressed by this net trap you’ve got rigged here. More sophisticated engineering than I would have thought you were capable of to be honest. Kinda wish I’d seen it in action. Lizzy, you’ll have to explain to me later how you managed to step into this thing.”
Lizzy snarled at me. We had both clearly underestimated the drummers’ technological capabilities, and now Lizzy was paying for it with her dignity. But at least the trap hadn’t been one that actually injured her.
What concerned me more was that I had been very confident the drummers would release her on my command, considering the worshipful way they had bowed and scraped before me and my companions and attempted to serve our slightest wish throughout the previous day, and they didn’t seem particularly eager to do that.
Instead, some of them grunted at me, not exactly in a hostile manner, but in a frustrated manner, as if they were trying to explain to me why they needed to keep Lizzy captive, or worse, and I just wasn’t getting the point. Others just stared at me stubbornly. This was an inconvenient turn of events. It looked like Willobee’s diplomacy hadn’t been as effective as we all thought. Maybe the drummers’ wolf obsession was so deeply ingrained in their culture that we had just never had a chance of convincing all of them. Or, maybe this group just didn’t believe that Lizzy truly wasn’t going to rip them to shreds the way she had done to their companions the instant they let her down. Which would be a real problem since that would mean they wouldn’t have any intention of letting her down alive.
Just as I considered that, one of the slingshot-wielding drummers launched a rock at Lizzy. Since she was bundled up in the net and couldn’t dodge, it struck her square in the rump. She went berserk and started trying to gnaw through the rope with her teeth.
Meanwhile, I ran up, wrenched the slingshot out of the perpetrator’s hand before he even knew what was happening, and cracked him in the head with it so that he dropped unconscious.
I pointed up at Lizzy, then placed my hand over my heart, as I yelled, “She is my friend! You will not hurt her. This is the only warning you’re going to get about that.”
Evidently, a wolf-protecting god was not a god that the drummers were willing to worship. They grunted in distress when their friend went down. Then they exchanged nervous glances with each other.
Then they turned their primitive weapons on me.
Two drummers ran at me from opposite sides raising rocks over their heads. I dodged, grabbed the backs of their necks, and smashed their skulls together. The resulting impact suggested to me that they were in fact thicker and denser skulls than those of the human variety. It also left fractures in both skulls that rendered them non-functional for the brief remainder of their lives.
After that I whipped out Polliver, hoping that the flash of a steel sword would intimidate the drummers into a more cooperative mood, but the sight of the unfamiliar weapon seemed to just make them even more desperate to get rid of me, the newfound god they no longer wanted. The next drummer to charge me took Polliver straight through the belly almost all the way up to the hilt. I don’t think he, or any of the others, quite understood the functionality of a steel sword, which looked different from the various blades of iron and sharpened rock that they used, until I pulled Polliver back out, and the drummer fell down dead with a hole through his body and blood dribbling out of his mouth.
The remaining five drummers grunted frantically and all converged on me with their bats and spears. I dove through an unguarded gap and ended up on the outside of their huddle as they all swung and stabbed at the spot where I had been. One of the bats connected hard with another drummer’s skull, while I sent another drummer’s head rolling with Polliver. I picked up a fallen spear and rammed it through two drummer bodies. The wooden shaft cracked in half from the strain of their weight being thrown in different directions as the two corpses fell.
The very last drummer stared at me in drooling terror, stared back up at the airborne Lizzy with just as much fear and bewilderment, and sprinted away as fast as his muscular bowlegged legs would carry him. I let him go. I hoped that he would return to the camp and explain to the rest of his people what had happened on the latest of their wolf hunts so that they would finally understand that Willobee meant what he said about the wrath of the gods.
Of course, if the drummers were really worried about me unleashing Lizzy upon their people, then the smart thing to do would have been for a couple of them to run off to their camp earlier
to get reinforcements while the others continued to try to prevent me. But doing the smart thing wasn’t the drummers’ distinguishing trait as a species.
As I stood over the pile of mangled drummer bodies, I called up to Lizzy, “Look what you’ve done. Are you pleased with yourself?”
The she-wolf whined, but I don’t think that was an expression of remorse, I think it meant that she wanted to get down from the dangling net. I couldn’t really blame her on that.
“To be fair,” I said, “Willobee did give them a chance to change their ways, and most of them seemed okay with that. These were the incorrigible ones. So now that they’ve been removed from the population, the rest will probably keep their heads down in the future, and we can get the hell out of here.”
Lizzy made a rumble of eager agreement.
I found where the other end of the rope was tethered, grabbed onto it, and wrapped it around my hand.
Then I called up, “Change back so it’s easier to lower you!”
Lizzy obliged. As a wolf, she had been practically bursting out of the drummers’ net. As a significantly smaller, naked human woman, she made being trapped in the net look kind of sexy, but her expression remained just as murderous as the raging wild animal’s had been a second ago, so I didn’t comment on that. I just used Polliver to cut the rope loose, and very carefully lowered my friend back to the forest floor.
As soon as she was on solid ground again, she tore the net off herself.
“You okay?” I asked her.
“Of course I am,” she spat. I knew she wasn’t annoyed at me, she was annoyed at herself for having let herself get captured like that. “But since the drummers still ain’t obeying you even after Willobee explained it all in their moron language, can we just speed up nature’s selection process a little, smash up the rest of ‘em, and hightail it outta here?”
Honestly, I had been pushed to the point of frustration where I might have been ready to agree to her plan. Except that my other two selves were witnessing a turn of events back at camp that looked a lot more promising than the mess Lizzy and I had just gone through.