Born a Monster

Chapter 13

Centaurs are Psychopaths

To understand the attack on the centaur camp, perhaps it will be helpful to understand a normal night with centaurs.

From before sunup until just after sundown, I was expected to work. There was breakfast and an after-dusk meal. Although centaurs are omnivores, they live in balance with their environment. Hunting, and thus meat, were rationed.

Shortly after dusk, everyone gathered around campfires for stew, salad, and stories. Once the stonework ovens were completed, baked goods also made an appearance.

The stories were often educational, and were told in the language of the people who first told the story to the centaur people. I rapidly learned the average centaur knew four or five civilized languages, in addition to their own.

.....

Their own language was Achaean, the earlier form of the Grot language. Like most languages, it had been brought to Athal (the world) by summoned heroes. Those heroes had taught the centaur the art of trade, of vineyards, and most importantly, the arts militant.

The core of this military was the Sagitarius, a lightly armored and barded soldier, skilled with bow and spear, in that order. Imagine what horse archers are capable of when the riders and the mounts are one.

Then, add in nature magic that one of the Ael-van, the elves, would appreciate. Oh, there was an occasional elementalist, but four of five centaurs are more used to hurling magical thorns than gouts of fire. But mostly, centaurs eschewed the flashy magic for that which aided their mundane efforts.

Perhaps once a lunar cycle, there would be a trader from a nearby clan. I say trader, but most centaur tribes had and wanted the same things. Clan Cloverhoof could provide lumber and furs and different herbs, and coveted metal goods, like heads of arrows and spears.

Mostly, traders were a social convention, passing news and gossip, serving as conduits for betrothals and messengers between distant family members.

But after the stories, the children and slaves would be put to bed, while the adults talked about the business of the clan late into the night. I say business, but most of it was family talk, that the centaurs seemed to always be engaged in.

While most of the clan slept, a rotating family would stand watch over camp, and others would patrol at a distance. But that night, the patrols missed about thirty goblins. Don’t ask me how, you normally don’t get together thirty of anyone and manage stealth.

I was tied to the central post of a lean-to that served as the slaves tent. It collapsed on me when I had nightmares, and it leaked in the cold no matter how I patched the roof or sides. My wake-up call in the morning was anyone flipping the blanket upward onto the roof.

Or my normal wake-up call, I should say.

That night, it was screaming and shouting and the stomping of hooves, an occasional twang of a bowstring.

I was normally punished for leaving my tent before being summoned, but this definitely did not sound normal.

#

The first sight was little Theodara, standing in the open, stomping her hooves in frustration. Then, she repeated her incantation, and hurled a ball of sunlight high into the night sky. It immediately began to fade, but it provided illumination enough.

Goblins.

Goblins in the food stores, goblins being chased by foals in wedges of threes with sharpened sticks. Goblins with their heads staved in, or limping away with broken limbs. About thirty of them, almost one per two adults in the tribe.

And, in the distance, betrayed only by the predator reflection of its eyes high in a tree, a kobold.

I should say the air was thick with arrows, but in truth they were a light scattering; centaurs take pride with their shots, and that night they also took care not to hit each other.

The goblins had brought warped little bows and bent spears and sharp knives, but it was quickly over save for the screaming of the wounded aggressors being put to quick deaths.

I helped load up the goblin bodies onto frames, where their foul meat would be taken far from camp, and left for such animals as would eat them.

The lamentations were over a favorite dress bloodied or tears along the side of a tent rather than tears shed for the fallen, and the adults stroked the manes of children, telling them they had done well. The exception was Demesnethe, who had been relieving herself in the woods. She needed medical attention, for no less than three arrowheads had to be removed from her rump.

Palomae, her sister by marriage, mocked me for not having a spell to boil water. Both she and Demesnethe snapped friendly insults at each other during the surgery, which was over soon enough. She put two long thin pieces of wood into each wound, and then used tiny metal tongs to remove each arrowhead.

Both patrols had returned to the camp by then, alerted by the noise and light. Children were assured that all was well, and bundled back up in their blankets.

The need for calm thus put out of sight and out of mind, hard angry faces dominated the expressions of the adults.

“We cannot let this stand.” Said Hermetocrita, one of the clan’s better archers.

“None is arguing that.” Agreed Palomer. “But a lair built to house tiny goblins is not a place for we mighty centaur to wage combat.”

“If we lay siege to starve them out,” suggested Chalcopiye, “perhaps we will force them to fight us in more open terrain?”

Demesnethe stomped the ground. “If they have allies, we need to learn who they are. When they come to break the siege, they will tip that hand.”

A few words were demanded of me, specifically what I knew of their allies. I spoke of kobolds, and of the men that I had seen.

Then, with an assurance that the kobold I had spotted during the attack was a figment of my imagination, and that surely someone else would have spotted it if it were real, I was led off to my tent, and told to sleep.

“Sleep well, little slave. Tomorrow we’re off to war.”

#

Slaves among the centaur tribes are not permitted to carry weapons. This is a goodness, because they loaded me down with dang near everything else.

When they were done with laughing about how slow I moved, one of them pulled a wheelbarrow out of their inventory and let me push a portion of that load around. It was still a workout.

The war party went on ahead, and I got to lug supplies. I foraged into my inventory; I may not have had the infinite inventory of Hashim the Magnificent, but I had found the System controls for expanding it. You guessed it, improving your system requires Development Points.

Honestly, I was just glad to reach the war camp before nightfall.

“Ah, good.” Said Zinzelle. “Put those in that tent over there and then help move bodies.”

I saw about sixty or so of them, spread across the field between the war camp and the hillside.

“How did you lure them out during the day?” I asked.

“It was easy, we just started shoveling dirt into their fireplace.”

So I would load up two bodies, walk partway to where they were being disposed of, where the centaurs would pick them up. Then I turned around and picked up two more, and so on.

By the time that was done, there were noises coming from the hill. There was a small fire illuminating the entrance, but nothing moved there.

Dinner was a bowl of oatmeal with some wild berries to add tartness. Combined with breakfast, I would have been missing a few biomass points. Not because the food had been lacking, but because of the physical labor.

I collapsed as near the fire as the bedrolls let me, on the side toward the hill.

“Thinking of escaping?” asked Myraenac.

“Nope. I figure if goblins come from that way, someone will see them long before they get to me.”

“Ah, but if there’s only the one way out, how would they get behind us?”

“If I were building something like that, I’d have at least two escape tunnels, opening up far from here. If I can think of it with just two Insight, I’m pretty sure they can think of it also.”

I rolled over to get some sleep.

Myraenac rolled over and kicked Yneridd.

“What?” she demanded.

“Did someone check for escape tunnels?” he asked.

“Yes, Myraenac, and they didn’t find any. Goblins are just dumb.”

I slept even through the warning horn. It turns out goblins just aren’t THAT dumb.

#

There were near two hundred of them, so we prioritized our escape.

Tents were pulled up, but stakes left behind. All of the critical supplies were already in saddlebags.

I think we killed another dozen or so getting out between two groups, but since they didn’t grant XP, there was no way to verify that estimate.

Turns out goblins have their own sprint power; I ended up spending a few DP for another daily usage of Fleet of Foot. A charge would have been cheaper, but I was certain that if I needed a second use now, I’d need uses on other days, too.

I wasn’t wrong.

But we got away, and the centaurs managed a fighting retreat that punished the goblins most eager on following us.

“So what do you figure, Yneridd?” one of the females asked. “About five hundred, minus the ones we killed?”

“If that many. I’d say closer to four, with leaders from another species motivating them.”

“Ugh. What a pain.”

The goblins gave up the chase well before midnight. Based on the location of the moon, it was well after midnight when we stopped moving just across a narrow stream.

A cold campsite was put up; my System said we were north-northwest of the lair. Deep in the plains, and further from the clan than when we started.

Scouting the next day revealed a troop of about two dozen goblins following us; those were eliminated shortly after breakfast. Those bodies were left where they had fallen.

Hermetocrita, Zinzelle, and Yneridd conferred.

Hermetocrita stomped for attention. “Sagittarii, listen up! We’ve killed about a hundred of those little monsters, but we’re not done yet. See, each goblin female pops out a whelp about every ninety days. Figure about four hundred females, and we’ve only done a month’s damage to them.”

Zinzelle spoke up. “Yneridd is our best goblin tracker. We’re going to map out where these escape tunnels open up, and kill every goblin we see on the surface. Slave, Ptholometa, you two are here to set up camp for us. Find something resembling tent stakes, and something other than grass that will burn.”

“Arrow inventories, everyone! Let’s get rambling.” Concluded Hermetocrita. They did a quick gear check, and then thundered off.

“Well, slave, let’s find something other than plains-cat dung that burns.”

We ended up finding a patch of sage. Its smoke had certain attributes that could be empowered by Shaman rituals, but that wasn’t important. It burned, and smelled better than dung.

.....

Ptholometa also managed to spear two rabbits. She butchered them, and threw me the bones.

“No,” she rebuked, “those aren’t for eating. Make tent stakes.” She tossed a knife near me, but I fumbled the catch. Might have cut myself, if not for my scales.

Don’t bother checking your System. If you haven’t done it before, you probably don’t have a recipe for automating that. It’s part of Agility/Crafts/Sculpture/Bone Carving.

It gave me an idea for another class type, but it turns out that all manner of artwork professions were under Crafting, at least for my System.

It wasn’t perfect, but I managed enough stakes to replace the missing wooden ones, and got three of the four tents up before Ptholometa saw the clouds rolling towards us from the mountains.

“Looks like rain.” She said.

#