He left the campsite to the flies and their feast. They crawled across his skin, and he swatted them off, but when he looked down at himself, there were no bugs. Everything he felt was under his skin. His brow furrowed as his discomfort built.
He came upon the first of the lights, its mass ghostly and floating in the air around his head. A dim orb of light had been gathered and caught in a gaseous shell. He waved his hand through it, but the light neither gave off heat or a chill. It was just there.
Prayer’s hag knows I’m here.
He sensed her presence nearby.
Astegur flexed his hand on the handle of his weapon as he growled in warning. An uncomfortable feeling coursed through his body, and as he took a step deeper into the heavy mist surrounding Prayer, it intensified. He reached up to scratch his skin. The smell of his brother’s blood clung to the interior of his nose.
“You!” a voice roared behind him.
He swiveled back, cursing his discomfort for distracting him, and unsheathed his battleaxe. Hooves splashed through the swamp water, heading in his direction. He bared his teeth and braced for battle.
“You killed our leader!” Two centaur studs stomped their front hooves in the mud a short distance away. Each one held fast to a spear that glinted filtered sunlight from above. One had bandages wrapped around his middle and across his left eye, while the other one only had shallow cuts.
Astegur cocked his head. Their wounds were not done by monsters with sharp teeth and claws. He spied a gash on the bandaged one just under his wrappings that looked like it was from a barghest claw, but the rest of the wounds were made by weapons… By gouges and stabs from a minotaur’s horns.
Vedikus.
Astegur glowered when he finished studying his opponents. “You mean the centaur carcass burned to a crisp lying in the pyre behind you? Your leader smells even worse dead than he did alive.” The need to engage in battle was strong in his skull. Anything to distract him from the annoying, torturous itch under his skin. The bugs that danced underneath. These centaurs thought he was someone else, thought he was his brother. It was an easy mistake, he and his brothers were the only bulls in these lands.
If my brother killed their leader then he must have had a reason.
Which meant, Astegur had a reason to kill them without question.
One of the centaurs raised its front legs again and cried out wildly.
“Heretical bull! You’ll be nothing but a head on our stakes when we’re done with you! Our warchief demands retribution and devastation for the loss of his brother and cousin. Elscalian and Telner will be avenged.”
Astegur reached behind his back and grabbed his second axe as the two centaurs spread out to attack him on either side.
A tricky situation. He could not get near the centaurs hooves, nor their weapons. But he had the mud and the marshes on his side. His eyes glazed over with further torment, spiking his frustration as they began to encircle him, swiping their spears outward.
Crazed eyes and screams filled his senses right before their weapons clashed. He loosened his grip on his axes at the last possible second before they struck in perfect unison with the centaur’s spears to either side of his gut. He rolled forward and dodged, spinning his weapons backwards into his hands before ramming them forward into the back of the man-horse’s front leg. He ducked forward and evaded many of the frenzied kicks and slashes that followed. Several hit home and struck at the muscles of his back and shoulders.
Astegur swiveled around and turned to the centaur on his left, dodging a back kick as the beast stabbed with its spear. He dropped one of his axes into the mud and snatched the centaurs leg, wrenching it outward. The centaur fell to the mud with a yelp. Astegur climbed over his back and away from the beast’s thrashing legs as the other stud circled around the struggling pair to attack Astegur’s back, the centaur’s weapons thrusting forward in quick succession.
He knocked the spear blade away with his horns and let go of the fallen centaur’s leg after a final snap of bone. With a guttural howl filling his ears, Astegur twisted and grabbed the spear stabbing at him and yanked it from the centaur still standing, bloodying his hand in the process.
The last centaur skirted out of his reach and went to ready his bow. Astegur gritted his teeth and threw his battleaxe at the stud, lodging his blade right into its side. He used that moment to turn back to the centaur and thrust his newly stolen spear straight through the beast’s neck, killing it. Blood fed the mist.
He turned back to his final opponent. The stud’s nostrils flared with rage as he yanked the axe out of his side. They rounded each other away from the bleeding corpse. Somewhere in the distance, a barghest screamed.
The centaur sneered, eyes hooding with blood loss. “You will die.”
“You seem sure about that.”
“You stole a human and then killed our clan leader. You have asked for war, and we will bring it.”
Astegur licked the blood from his lips.The thunderous hooves on the horizon.The deep pounding in my head.He remembered the noise from the cave.
“As I see it, only you remain. Hardly the war you promised,” Astegur provoked through clenched teeth. “But I like war. I like the taste of blood. I like the feel of the blade slicing through my skin and the ache of scars that stay with me for the years after.” Astegur reached up and swiped his hand across his chest, across his numerous scars. “But there is only you, not a war at all.”
“Elscalian!” the centaur screamed, charging him.
Astegur hesitated. It was almost too easy.The centaur wants to die.
He bowed forward at the last second and dove under the hooves of the centaur, rearing his head up at the same time. His horns slid into the stud’s belly, stopping the beast in his tracks as his innards showered Astegur’s head and horns. He withdrew his horns and rolled to the side just as the centaur toppled to the ground.
