The Maze Ch. 04: Centaurs

A scream brought me running.

I had made it across the mountains and the path now wound between woods and hills, passing through newly built villages with walls and palisades and, mostly, pastures for woolly sheep. I passed through without difficulty, but kept to myself.

On a stretch of road far from the nearest settlement, wintry forest either side and craggy hills blocking the cold sunlight from penetrating the valley, the scream was faint but carried through the brittle air.

Bow at the ready, I diverted from the road and threaded between the trees, seeking the woman who screamed again, repeatedly, until I wondered whether I heard screams of fear, or of pleasure. Here and there, thick, silvery cords made nets between the trees as if to catch monsters such as I, and I took care to watch for snares and traps.

The screams issued from a crack in the cliff face, a black opening amidst deep shadow, and long before I poked my nose in, the foul stench of sex and sweat and something far worse had my nerves on edge.

A silence fell as I approached, almost more sinister than the screams. As if whatever abused the woman within was now watching me instead. "Help me," the woman cried in a tone bereft of hope.

I backed away slowly, watching constantly. A black leg appeared, long and jointed. Then a second, and a third. A monstrous black body attached, creeping out of the dark like a gargantuan spider until all eight legs could be seen clearly.

Almost more terrifying was that the spider's head and chest were those of a man, his arms those of a man, his thick, jutting cock that of a man. Long, unruly black hair cascaded down across his pale skin, and eyes like nothing I'd ever seen before were fixed on me as he approached.

"Release her," I said, arrow nocked and ready.

In answer, he sprang at me, so fast he nearly caught me before I could adjust my aim. He collapsed on top of me, crushing me against the ground, his foul breath suffocating me, his hard cock pulsing against my woollen skirt as if in the throes of ecstasy, his cum soaking into the material.

He lay there twitching and mewling as I squirmed free of him. My arrow had pierced his belly and blood poured from the wound.

Shaken and bruised, I limped away from him, towards the cave. My eyes adjusted slowly as I crept in, using my bow to search for unseen web and maybe other spiders too.

"Help me," the woman whimpered. She was bound and suspended, her legs held wide apart, cum dripping from her exposed pussy. I could smell her fear clearly, but also her arousal. She might have been taken against her will, but she had enjoyed it too.

I knew all too well the humiliation of being forced to enjoy such defeat.

The only blade I had was worn and easily blunted, and it was a struggle to cut the spider's silken cords. I succeeded at last, but when we emerged into the evening forest, there was no sign of our wounded enemy.

*

"This way," she said, and ran off through the trees.

I followed after, more cautious, watching for the spider, avoiding webs. When I caught up with her, she was perched by a stream, washing herself, but also touching herself as if reliving her recent experience. She blushed when she saw me watching her, but continued her act of self-pleasure until its end. Her left breast looked particularly red and swollen, painfully so, with what looked like a puncture wound beside the nipple.

Behind her was what was left of her camp. Clearly the spider had attacked while she slept, tearing her clothes off and stinging her before abducting her back to its dark cave and binding her in silk.

I built us a fire as I waited for her to finish her business. She reminded me a lot of Ana, the same age, the same blonde hair. Not quite as pretty, but still attractive and still smelling of spider and sex despite her attempt at cleaning herself.

"I'm Mia," I said when she joined me.

"Dala." She blushed again as she snatched up the shredded remnants of her clothing and extracted needle and thread from her pack. She had a metal pot too, which she passed to me. "This is the only thing of value I have to give you," she said. "I have salt and I have herbs, but I'm the most useless hunter this side of the mountains. I haven't eaten in two days."

I filled the pot with water and added a few last scraps of dried meat from my most recent hunt, placing it on the fire to make a stew. "Don't you have a home to go to, Dala?" I asked.

Dala shrugged. "Not any more." She laughed bitterly. "Not since they caught me in the hayloft with my Da. He called me a vile seducer and a witch. I grabbed what provisions I could and ran for it."

"Did you seduce him?"

She snorted her disgust of that. "He's been sniffing after me for years, ever since Ma died. It was okay for a while, after he got married again, but they must have had a fight or something. He cornered me in the barn, had his trousers down before I knew what was happening." She fell into silent thought.

"He raped you?"

Dala shook her head. "No. I let him have his way. I was curious, and I guess it was fun - until his wife walked in and started screaming the place down." She paused her stitching to massage her swollen breast for a minute. "That damned spinner stung me, and I've been wet ever since. Good thing too, in a way. I thought my Da was big, but that spider stretched me so wide I thought I would split in two."

She grinned suddenly, and I laughed in response. For someone who had just been captured and raped by a monstrously huge spider, she was in excellent spirits. "Does this happen a lot around here?"

Dala frowned. "No, it's mostly the centaurs we worry about. I did hear a rumour about spiders in the woods, but when they said 'big', I didn't think they meant this big." She laughed to herself.

She returned to her stitching and I stirred the pot, adding some of her salt and herbs for flavour. The water was bubbling merrily and I was glad to have company again, especially someone as sexy and apparently fearless as Dala. "Centaurs?" I asked eventually.

"They say we're on their land, although I never saw them near it. Ask me, though, and they can have it back, spiders and all... Mmm. That smells good." She bent forward to breathe in the steam from the stew.

By the time it was ready, Dala was dressed again and her long, blonde hair was even combed. I watched her while we ate, watched the way her blue eyes sparkled in the firelight, and it didn't surprise me at all that people might think she was a witch.

"I am a witch," she said, as if reading my mind, and laughed at my reaction. "Not a very good one, but I can read and write the ancient symbols of power, and I know Minarwe when I see her." She pointed at my medallion, startling me again. The medallion had a way of hiding itself from my attention and it disconcerted me that other people could see it plainly. "It's said that the goddess rewards gifts of value."

I was suddenly very uneasy about where this conversation was going. The old man had given me gifts and then had used me as he wished. Though I had enjoyed it at the time, the aftertaste was bitter. "I think you'll need more than a copper cooking pot and some herbs."

"I was thinking to offer myself," Dala said, utterly serious for once. "Body and soul. Just take me with you where you go." Sighing, she added, "I'm useless out here by myself, but I can wash and mend clothes and gather herbs and I will gladly walk into trouble if I know you will get me out again."

I smiled in relief. That was one deal I would be glad to make. I could survive out in the world by myself, but it was a lonely existence and I missed the company and friendship of Ana and Rosa. I missed wrapping my arms protectively about an attractive woman as I slept, sharing warmth, sharing dreams, sharing adventures.

"Very well," I said, "you can start with this." I removed my woollen skirt that was so torn and stained now that the original yellow was no more than a memory.

Dala stared at my legs as she took it, at the way my skin turned increasingly green the lower she looked. I removed my boots too, letting her see my mutated feet with toes that buried gratefully into the soft soil in quest for water and nutrients. "This stinks," she said, holding my skirt at arm's length. "If Ma had ever caught me wearing something this dirty, she'd have had me over her knees for a good spanking."

With a wink that left me in absolutely no doubt about how dirty and in need of spanking she considered me, she marched over to the stream and dropped my skirt into the water.

*

The following day, we set out together, and I had to focus on walking at a more normal pace. My magical boots sprung impatiently from the earth with each step, but I had a companion to think about. As if determined to prove her worth, Dala had not only washed months of dirt from my skirt, but she had mended multiple tears and patched the biggest holes. If, perhaps inevitably, the skirt was now a little shorter than it had been, it remained long enough to conceal my legs down to my boots.

We followed the road west, the sun rising behind us, the distant ocean ahead. Even as the forest gave way to grassland, we spotted the vultures, circling in the air above a bend in the nearby river, gathering on the rocks.

"It's probably just an escaped sheep," Dala muttered, but we approached cautiously.

It was no farm animal lying there on the edge of death. For a moment I thought horse and rider had fallen together, but no. It was a centaur, a woman from the waist up, bare and beautiful with wild, sandy-blonde hair; a gray-silver mare below. She lay on her side, unmoving, a black-shafted arrow projecting out from her thigh that was thickly crusted with blood.

The vultures were hopping ever closer. I killed five with my bow and my single arrow before the rest took the hint and retreated.

"She's alive," Dala said, kneeling by the centaur maid, inspecting the ugly wound with her fingertips. "I know nothing about the treatment of wounds beyond the application of honey and regular cleaning."

"She's really a centaur," I said, kneeling beside her. Even after everything I'd been through since leaving the Farm, the idea that centaurs existed amazed me.

"We can't leave it in," Dala said, pulling on the arrow gently to test it. "But likely we would do worse damage extracting it than leaving it in."

"What choice do we have?"

"Stop!" a voice called out, and the watching vultures fled in terror.

The strangest woman I had ever seen stood beside us. I had not seen her earlier, or heard her approach, and there was something insubstantial about her. Her violet dress was not only of some gossamer-thin material, but her body beneath it was also so translucent that it seemed I could see through her to the river beyond. "Stop," she repeated, more gently, as I stared in amazement at a fair face wreathed in blue flame. "If you would save her life, I will need honey and narcissus for healing, and a blade for cutting."

"I have honey," Dala said quickly, retrieving it from her pack.

"And I have a blade," I added, taking it from my belt. Whoever this ethereal woman was, I felt I could trust her to help the dying centaur.

"I think I saw narcissus not far from here," Dala said, and ran off back the way we'd come, returning a few minutes later. "I hope they're narcissus, anyway. Only the first shoots were above the earth." Indeed, it was still too early in the year for the pretty yellow-white flowers. She handed over the collected bulbs to me, her eyes regarding the flame-haired woman with awe.

"These will do," the woman said and took my hands.

She took my hands as if they were her own. My body moved without volition, crushing the bulbs and mixing with honey. My lips uttered words that meant nothing to me and the honey-narcissus blend glowed as if with a fierce heat. Still whispering arcane spells, she brushed my fingers along the blade of my knife, transforming the battered weapon into a precise tool, which she plunged deep into the centaur's flesh beside the buried shaft.

The centaur screamed and kicked, awake to pain if nothing else, but the arrow was plucked free and my fingers worked glowing honey into the greatly enlarged wound as blood streamed out - and then she was done, and my hands were my own again, if slick with blood and honey. The centaur maid twitched weakly, but the blood flow was stemmed and of the blue woman there was no sign at all save for the burning of my medallion against my skin.

While Dala cleaned the blood from around the wound, I washed my hands in the river, and the blade too. Though it still had the rough appearance of a cheap knife from a small-town forge, the blade itself was polished and the edge astonishingly sharp. My fingertips tingled with magic as they caressed it.

I understood abruptly who she was. The blue woman was Minarwe, the goddess whose medallion I wore. Before that moment, whenever I had thought of the medallion at all, I had considered it a curse, a cruel trick played on me by a dirty old man, but now I was confronted with a very real goddess, one who had helped me to save a life.

Touching my fingers to my medallion, I whispered, "Thank you, Goddess," and it vibrated gently in response. It was the first time I had been fully aware of the medallion without desiring to tear it off.

*

"I knew I was right to serve you," Dala said as we sat in the shade keeping watch on the sleeping centaur. We could not leave her or move her, but we could at least guard her till she awoke. "I have seen a goddess," Dala murmured, "and learned some powerful new spells. And I have only ever seen centaurs from a great distance before. I did not imagine they would look quite so human."

"In our stories," I said, "centaurs were always men, renowned for their wisdom and their prowess on the battlefield."

With a chuckle, Dala said, "Pity she's not a man. I have often wondered about a centaur's cock. Is it like a horse's, do you think?"

I found Dala's shifting affection confusing. She flirted openly with me, had even spent the night in my arms for warmth and comfort, but there was no emotional intensity to it. I would have thought her perhaps incapable of love, had I not seen the fire of passion in her expression when she saw my goddess.

"Are you sure you didn't seduce that spider just to taste his cock?" I asked.

Dala snorted with laughter. "I'd rather be the spider than the fly."

*

The centaur awoke with a scream of rage and pain, and struggled awkwardly but determinedly to her feet. She stood, quivering unsteadily, watching us warily while reaching back to examine the wound in her thigh.

Dala and I sat still at a distance, as unthreatening as possible.

"This was a deep wound," the centaur maid said, her accent so unfamiliar I had to guess the meaning of her words. "I was sure I would die. The vultures..." She peered around, but the vultures had not returned since their earlier fright.

"Minarwe healed you," Dala said.

The centaur's gaze focussed on my medallion, and she frowned. "You are a priestess?"

"I suppose."

"You are an archer too, I see. Was it your arrow that wounded me?"

I shook my head and picked up the black arrow. "This is not from my bow." I tossed it to her, and she sniffed it.

"No," she conceded. "You are not one of those accursed Alba men. You dress different, you smell different, you even talk different. You would not sit there so calmly if you were one of them. Were I armed and you not, I would have killed you already for trespassing on our land, and for the crimes of your people against mine in violation of our ancient treaty."

By the end of her speech her voice was so strident and her expression so ferocious that I had no difficulty believing her. The sombre mood was ruined abruptly by a great rumbling from her belly, and she blushed with embarrassment. "It seems I am healing well," she muttered, "for I am hungry and haven't eaten in days."

She walked over to the river and bent to collect water in her cupped hands. "My weapons and gear are lost," she said sadly, "else I would not ask. But if your bow has reach and your eyes are good, there are deer over there that would satisfy us all." She pointed into the distance where a herd of deer stood well camouflaged against the hills. "But do not miss, for they are skittish and swift, and you have no arrows to spare."

In truth, I had no need to worry over spare arrows, and my bow had served me well in the mountains. My arms were steady and my aim good, and the stag fell at the first attempt.

The rest of the herd had scattered by the time we reached our fallen prey. I had never killed such a large and beautiful animal before, and it hurt my heart to see it lying there trembling, in pain and terrified. The arrow was gone, of course, returned magically to my quiver, but the wound was fatal. "I'm sorry," I murmured, and aimed a second arrow for the heart.

"You are strange for a human," the centaur maid said.

"Yes," I agreed, and lifted my skirt to show her my green, monstrous legs.

Her eyes widened, and her expression softened. "Forgive me, I mistook you for one of them. I am Furien. Princess Furien of the Centaur-Ka."

It was my turn to stare in wide-eyed amazement. An actual princess. A proud and beautiful princess. That I had rescued, in a way. "I'm Mia."

Furien laughed. "Such a simple name for an adventuring priestess with a magical bow and a medallion sacred to Minarwe." Reflexively, I traced the symbol with my thumb, feeling an echo of her power. "I thought the medallions were all lost or destroyed," Furien continued. "The humans worship the gods but fear their power, and fear nothing more than a woman who communes with one. You would do better to keep that hidden."

"She won't allow it," I said. My efforts to conceal the medallion had proved as useless as my efforts to remove it.

"I'm Dala, by the way," Dala said, taking the knife from my belt. "And I may only be human, but at least I know not to stand around talking while there's meat to be cut."

*

We remained there for the rest of the day, Dala butchering the deer with deft skill using the same razor-sharp knife that had earlier cut into Furien. While Dala sliced the meat and cut and cleaned the hide, I brought water from the river and built us a fire. There was a fallen oak tree nearby that provided kindling and branches for the fire itself, and bark to construct a rudimentary tent around it to contain the heat and smoke.

Furien walked back and forth. Though she made a heroic attempt to hide it, I could see how much pain she was in still from the wound in her thigh, and I could tell also how impatient she was to be gone. "I found some rosemary," she said, brandishing a whole branch of the hardy herb.

We sat together well into the night, cooking a thick, welcome stew for us to eat there and then, and smoking the bulk of the meat to preserve it for later.

Clearly exhausted, Dala lay her head in my lap and was quickly asleep, and Furien and I regarded each other across the fire. The flickering light made her cascading tresses seem almost alive, and I could have drowned in her eyes that seemed to shift colour from moment to moment.

There was no monarchy in the Farm, only the Council of Elders who clung to tradition with an iron will. But our fireside tales spoke of powerful, warmongering kings and gallant princes and beautiful princesses. The princess invariably needed rescuing from some rascal or monster, and the prince would ride to the ends of the Earth to free her (and then marry her, as if princes and princesses were an entirely separate species of human).

I, of course, always identified with the prince. In my imagination, I was the one battling monsters and marrying the princess. I never imagined that one day I would be battling monsters for real, or that I would one day rescue a real princess.