“Knock it off. You’re coming with me, I don’t believe my herd has seen a ‘human’ before,” the centaur said.
“I’m not going anywhere with you,” Lillian replied.
“Oh yes you are.” The centaur advanced on her, pulling a small coil of rope from a pack strapped around his waist. Lillian struggled but the beast overpowered her and bound her wrists. He left a long length of rope hanging off the knot that he could use as a leash to pull her along. Lillian walked in sullen silence. Perhaps she’d have been better off in the duchess’s dungeon after all. Or maybe even drowned at the bottom of a well.
The centaur grumbled as they trudged along. “Your monkey legs are too slow, come here,” he commanded. When Lillian didn’t obey he grabbed her and slung her across his dappled back. He took off running across the plain, much faster than before. Lillian held on as best she could, each bounce shoved the centaur’s lower shoulders into her stomach.
They ran this way for hours. Eventually the sky darkened and the centaur’s pace slowed. “You’re too heavy, two legs. We’re going to have to make camp for the night.” The centaur slung Lillian down to the ground. Her stomach ached from the ride. “I need to rest if I’m going to carry us to my herd. Look, I don’t know where you came from, two legs, but you’re not going to survive out here on your own. I’ll untie you, but remember you’ve got nowhere to run. You’re too slow. And there are lots of things out there that would eat you. If the fight you put up against me was all that you can muster, then you’re sorely outmatched by the wildlife here.” And then he untied her wrists.
He started a fire and laid down, his horse legs folded beneath him and his torso still standing straight up. Lillian watched as his human half slumped forward, eyes closed.
“Are you actually going to sleep like that?” she asked.
The centaur opened one eye and looked up at her. “How do you sleep, two legs?”
“My name is not two legs, you beast,” Lillian said.
“And I am not a beast, not two legs.”
Lillian glared. The centaur glared back.
“My name is Lillian,” she said eventually.
“I am Anchius,” the centaur replied.
Lillian laid down in the grass on the opposite side of the fire from Anchius.
The centaur snorted, “That’s how you sleep?” Lillian rolled over and ignored this remark. Her stomach shared none of her quiet dignity and proceeded to growl.
“Well, you may have strange legs, but you’ve got a proper stomach, I recognize that sound.” Lillian continued ignoring the centaur so he threw a small sack at her. It landed against her back. After enough time had passed to satisfy her dignity, she reached back and picked it up. It was filled with small trail cakes. They were hard, but filling. Her stomach sated, she gave into exhaustion and fell asleep.
Sometime after, she wasn’t sure when, she was woken up by the sound of howling. The howling was followed by threatening growls. She sat up with a start and looked around, but she could see nothing in the firelight.
“Get behind me!” Anchius commanded.
“Why, because of the wolves?” Lillian asked, still trying to gather her sleep-fogged thoughts.
“Yes because of the wolves, are you mad? Get behind me now!”
Lillian got to her feet and stood near the fire behind Anchius. A growl came from somewhere closer. A pair of eyes and a gleaming set of teeth appeared at the edge of the firelight, only they were bigger than those of any wolf or hound that Lillian had ever seen. When the wolf appeared it was nearly the size of Anchius’s horse half, and far more wickedly armed with fangs and claws.
The centaur pulled a sling from his leather pouch and whipped a stone at the beast. It growled and backed off a few paces but did not run away. Anchius placed another stone in the sling but the beast attacked before he could release it. He dropped the sling and reared up, striking out at the beast with powerful hooved legs. Lillian couldn’t see what happened next but she heard a loud whimper and the enormous wolf was thrown backward.
Still the wolf did not leave. It bounded back at Anchius and sank its teeth into his foreleg as he tried to rear up once again. He fell sideways in a tangle of fangs and fur. Lillian grabbed a flaming branch from the fire and slammed it against the wolf’s back as it wrestled with the centaur. It yelped and rolled away. Lillian stepped forward to try and menace the wolf off but lost her footing and dropped the flaming branch as she fell. The wolf bounded forward at her, it all seemed to be happening in slow motion. She could count each individual fang in the monster’s mouth as it sailed towards her. It certainly wasn’t the way she’d thought she’d die, she just hoped it would be quick.
And then a figure swept in front of her, one second she was watching her death come at her, the next it was trampled and twitching beneath the Anchius’s hooves. His attack had broken the creature’s spine and he finished it off with a stop to the neck. The centaur kicked at the wolf a couple more times to ensure it was dead before trotting back to Lillian.
“Are you okay… Lillian?” he asked. He looked frightful, he had a dozen cuts and gashes across both his human and horse halves. He was also covered in mud from the tussle.
“I-I’m fine, are you okay?”
“A single wolf? I could have killed twenty! I’m fine, little one,” Anchius said, though Lillian didn’t miss the way he winced as he moved.
“Oh I’m sure you could have, but we should probably get those cuts cleaned up anyway, you can’t fight infections by stomping on them,” Lillian replied. Anchius merely snorted, as if such concerns were beneath him. Despite this, he didn’t seem to resist when Lillian found a rag and poured water over it to clean his wounds. They didn’t talk as she worked. All cleaned up the cuts weren’t as bad as they’d looked at first. The last wound she cleaned was across his chest. She finished and looked up at him to find his intense eyes staring back down at her.
“Thank you… for saving me,” Lillian said quietly.
“I may have had to be the one thanking you if you hadn’t tripped, you were brave,” Anchius replied. “Look, I am sorry for tying you up, but I wasn’t lying about the wild life, as you saw. I still want to take you to my herd, but as a guest, you’ll be safe there.”
Lillian leaned forward and wrapped her arms around the centaur’s waist on an impulse. Maybe it was staring death in the face, maybe it was gratitude, but at that moment she simply wanted comfort. Anchius seemed at a loss for what to do with the strange creature hugging him at first, but eventually he put his arms around her as well and they stood that way for a long while. Finally she let go and looked up.
“Sorry… I… I’ll go back to sle—“ Anchius interrupted her with a kiss. Before she knew it her arms were back around him, this time with a greater and different kind of urgency than before. The kiss deepened and he pulled her up to her tip toes.
When they separated at last they stared at one another in a mixture of lust and confusion. Lillian’s eyes drifted down and went wide. The embrace had evidently had the same effect on Anchius as it’d had on her… though it was much more evident on the centaur. She hadn’t really thought much about it, but his man-parts were on the horse half… Her eyes followed a cock the length of her arm as it flexed involuntarily, almost bringing it up to the centaur’s chest.