Child of Flame
“Now what say you, brother?” cried the soldier. “Do they walk forward offering the gold feather of peace? Do they send emissaries with tribute? No, they strike like wolves in the night.” He struck. Alain dodged aside as the prince caught himself and jerked back for another try.
“Hold your point!” cried the Seeker. “These are the Horse folk come for their witch. This one, he does not belong here.”
“Then we shall be rid of him.” The soldier struck again. Alain knocked the point aside with his staff and leaped back toward the wall as the prince pressed his attack.
“Brother! Behind you!”
Two massive creatures scrambled up the lower slope. One, lithe and swift, closed faster than the other. The lamp held in the Seeker’s hand flared as the leading centaur burst into the herb garden, trampling waist-high lavender. The soldier spun to meet her.
The second centaur let loose a piercing scream as she arrived too late to do anything but avenge her companion. She charged the Seeker, who danced this way and that, at some advantage because he could dodge more swiftly than she could turn her bulky body, until at last his enemy cornered him near Alain. She hadn’t the lithe beauty of her dead companion; broad shouldered and barrel-chested, breasts almost lost in her muscular arms and chest, she reared up, fore-hooves striking and club lifted for the killing blow.
Alain thrust his staff up, catching the club at the apex of its arc. She twisted, her fore-hooves knocking Alain hard to the ground, and reared again, ready to strike him, but he pushed his staff between her rear legs and with the weight of his body twisted it around. The wood did not break. She tumbled back onto her flank. He leaped to force his weight down onto her heaving shoulder, pressing his staff against her neck.
“I am Sos’ka.” She twisted her head around to catch sight of the Seeker, standing stock-still against the wall. “Bar’ha and I were sent up here to find the one called Alain. Why do you fight me, if you are that one?”
Alain stepped between them. “No. No more killing.”
She shook her head, making a noise more like a whinny than a word. Where her black hair had been bound back, her ears, pointed and tufted, showed through. She examined Alain briefly with eyes slit vertically, their color impossible to make out in the night. “Come,” she said at last, with only a final, swift glance at the Seeker, who had not moved.
Maybe this young prince, so uncannily like the other, would not die today. Maybe his brother had or was soon to become a shade, caught forever in the shadows of the world.
“Quickly.” Sos’ka grabbed Alain with a burly arm and helped him mount awkwardly onto her back. He righted himself, clamping his staff under his arm as she turned, cleared the wall easily, then half slipped, half cantered down the slope. He had to grasp her mane, which ran all the way down her spine to her withers, to stay on her back. Although she was as surefooted as a goat, the ride was rough.
“Beware!” Sos’ka cried, and he held on for dear life as she jumped a ditch and landed hard on the other side.
He felt at his chest again, but the phoenix feather was gone, lost in the struggle. It was too late to go back now. The battle rose out of the darkness before them.
Alain held tight to Sos’ka as she cleared the worst of the rugged ground and galloped wide around the fighting that had erupted in the encampment. Pavilions burned, fire illuminating the scene with a sickly glow. Cursed Ones fell, and centaurs stumbled, cut down. Screams cut the air. The horrible scent of charred flesh stung at his nose and made him choke. Torches ringed the fort. Flaming arrows made arcs of light across the night sky.