Fintan stumbled while crossing a stream, and his boot sunk into a thick black ooze just beyond the wooden planks he’d manifested for the crossing. He and RuTing had been following the river all day. Without the sun or stars, it was difficult to judge direction in the afterlife, so he used the river as a guide.
According to RuTing, her town was a brief walk from the portals. She’d only been here days, but she died after he did. As his grandfather had mentioned, time passed quickly on the inside and slowly near the portals.
The startling reaffirmation gave them both hope.
“Two children,” RuTing said. “They are everything to me.”
RuTing was detailing her losses. She didn’t fear for her husband, but she’d planned on raising her children according to Eastern traditions. Her husband wouldn’t be able to do that.
Fintan didn’t want to give her false hope, but his grandfather had mentioned there might be a way to get a message back. Or maybe a portal. A portal to life would be better. The old man was uncertain, and uncertainty left a lot of room for hope.
His revelation sparked life in her eyes.
“Who do I have to kill to get out of here?” she asked. The spark was smothered with grim determination.
Fintan missed a step. That wasn’t how people talked in the Union. East and West, North and South, the Union was the rule of order and peace, and in the Union, no one would break the Peace.
RuTing was from the Union. She wore a Union exosuit, but she was also something more. She handled his blade with familiar ease.
“My grandfather said that if there was a way out, the Adversary knows it,” Fintan replied, pulling his boot from the mud, “but he also said the Adversary would be best avoided. He’s the last of the old gods before they left.”
“Where did the others go?” she asked.
“He didn’t say.”
There was no point in telling her the Adversary spoke to him. The lion that visited him the night must have been ensorcelled by the god. It seemed a bit like casting. In the Union, you could cast your eimai into a machine. The Adversary had done the same with a walking nightmare.
They foraged through the swamp. The sticky black mud didn’t have the same effect as the clear water, but it did have mosquitoes and black flies.
A swarm of biting insects attacked them, penetrating the best of Fintan’s manifestations. He attempted a hazmat suit, but as it formed around him, they were inside. RuTing faired little better, and they fled uphill and ran on a wide trail cut in the landside.
“Stop, humans, this is centaur territory!”
An arrow sprouted on the trail in front of Finton, and he skidded to a halt, almost falling over. The arrow was a good yard long and an inch around. It was twice the size of the villager's arrow.
The man wielding the bow was also substantial, with bulging muscles above his abdomen. Below his waistline, he was all horse and stood feet above Fintan as he galloped, stopping sharply in front of them with flashing hooves.
The muscular centaur had a companion of much more modest proportions. He was about Fintan’s height and wore clothes. There was no doubt he was a centaur. Behind one set of legs, the equine body extended to another set of legs and a long tail that nearly touched the ground.
The smaller centaur danced to the side following Fintan’s inspection. He kept himself face forward, perhaps because his body was so puny.
“Centaur territory,” Fintan asked. “Can we go around?”
“Go back to the portal,” the muscular centaur said. His front feet pawed at the ground as if he wanted to trample them.
“Unless you have gilders, of course,” the smaller centaur said. “We’re always happy to see people with gilders.”
The muscular centaur looked at the smaller one incredulously.
“The northern herds aren’t as rich as their southern brethren, friend,” the puny centaur reminded him. “What hurt is a free ride? They could walk for two days and pay the trolls or ride with us, and we keep the coin.”
“I would never keep the coin,” the muscular centaur said, but the puny centaur stopped him.
“Of course, it would go to the herd,” he claimed magnanimously, and he sniffed the air with a pronounced ‘neigh.’ “I can tell our customers have gilders to spare.”
“How do you know,” Fintan asked. There wasn’t anything noticeable about the gilders he’d deposited around his body. When he woke, he’d make a new one without any particular difficulty and add it to the pouch under his robe. Making a whole lot of metal was challenging, but a gilder here or there wasn’t too much effort. RuTing had tried without any success at all. He wondered if it was because she knew their value before she knew she could make her own.
“It’s a Skill,” the puny centaur said.
“Centaurs don’t have Skills,” the muscular centaur said.
“Of course not. Southern Centaurs don’t have Skills. Only Northern Centaurs do. I think I read that in a book some place before I died. Or was it the other way around.”
“I’m not sure if I like you, friend,” the muscular centaur said. His bow had angled precariously close to his companion, but the puny centaur wisely skittered backward. His four legs jumbled together while he waved his hands in contrition.
“The Head Mare won’t like it if you shoot me,” the puny centaur said. “She told you to show me around. This might not be to your liking, but it happens on this slow day, some humans showed up. If we can do them a courtesy and make a gilder, then everyone is happy.”
“She’s soft on humans,” the muscular centaur admitted, “and now is not the time.” He lowered his bow with a shake of his neck. “Despite what my northern friend says, the herd could use the gilders. I’ll entertain this farce—for a little while. My name is Clyde, and this is Hector. As you can see, he’s not a local either. Two gilders and you can cross our territory. If you don’t have it, start walking.”
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“We have it,” RuTing said, looking expectantly at Fintan.
He wanted to know more about their destination, but asking questions without gilders in hand seemed like a bad idea, so he took two out of his pouch and held them in front of the muscular centaur. If he knew anything about currency in the afterlife, this was a lot of money.
“Two, and you will carry us there,” Fintan said. He’d prefer Clyde’s backside to his bow arm. He didn’t want the angry centaur walking behind him.
“Of course,” Hector said. The coins disappeared from Fintan’s hand and reappeared in Hector’s, rolling across the back of both hands like a magician’s trick. Fintan pulled back his hand, involuntarily reaching into the air after the instantaneous theft.
“Another Skill?” Clyde demanded.
“We aren’t so rigid in the north,” Hector said. “Mist is weak, and the land is poor. We have to make do.”
“I will manifest a wagon,” Fintan said. He didn’t need to make anything special. He’d seen simple leather yokes and was ready to produce his own, but Clyde shook his head.
“I’ll use my own unless you want to pull them?” he asked Hector.
Fintan saw a well-crafted cart in the trees behind the centaurs. It was loaded with hay bails, but there was plenty of room to ride on top. With his stout body, Clyde could easily pull the bails, but Hector would be crushed under the load, presuming he could muscle up the effort to turn the wheels at all.
“I’ll leave it to you,” Hector said. He scrambled around them while Clyde grunted. The giant centaur dismissed them as he turned his back to them. He was so large he probably couldn’t conceive of Fintan doing any real damage. One swift kick of his leg could crush Fintan’s body.
Death by bodily injury was impossible in the afterlife, but Fintan knew well the pain was real. How much pain could he withstand before he gave up entirely? The water was welcoming. It promised peace and an end to pain.
I will find a way out. His resolve wasn’t so firm to deny reality. Inside the span of Clyde’s muscular shoulders, Fintan thought the centaur could twist him into a pretzel. Best to keep my distance. With a little room, he could always escape. The thought left him ashamed because he knew RuTing didn’t have that option. While they had just met, he wasn’t going to abandon her, but so far, he hadn’t evinced any Skills that worked at a distance.
They followed Clyde while fragile Hector kept the rear. He sidled up to RuTing. Outside of her desire for escape from the villagers, she showed little emotion since Fintan had found her. She’d thrown back her cowl and respirator on her camo exosuit, and her dark hair hung loosely down her back. Her face was an emotionless mask.
The exosuit wasn’t widely practical without electricity, but she seemed attached to the clothing that identified her as a Free Person. To Fintan’s knowledge, most Free People were meat eaters, and they weren’t particularly picky about plain mustangs, so he was surprised when Hector walked almost shoulder to shoulder.
He leaned in conspiratorily to whisper to her, and his arms seemed to itch to wrap themselves around her shoulders.
If he tried that with one of the Free People, he was in for a surprise. They lived outside the safety of the protective bubble. Fintan didn’t have experience with guns, bows, or knives beyond his poniard, but she was sure to have at least some experience with all three. The Free People were very particular about who they associated with. He had some experience with them at his job.
Clyde threw a harness over his shoulders that slid down his chest, and with marvelous flexibility, he tightened it around his equine body. Fintan vaulted on top of the hay wagon, and after a second, RuTing followed. He could not have made a jump like that in real life, but his grandfather taught him to find new limits.
They took off at a fast walk for the centaurs, probably three times Fintan’s walking speed. The road was straight, well-maintained, compacted clay under the mist that swirled around Clyde’s hooves.
His hooves flashed in the ambient light, and Fintan knew at once that they were worked steel. The sizable piece of steel was all the metal that Clyde evinced. His bow and arrows were made of wood. The arrows were stone: expertly manifested and large enough to cover the palm of Fintan’s hand. They looked fragile because they were so fine, but they would be expert at perforating an organ.
Hector was a different matter. The front of him looked human, and he had an overly large metal belt buckle and a wide hat in a different style than Fintan’s, but it still had a band with a big feather. The rest of his ensemble seemed like a mishmash of comfort and style that was uniquely his own. Fintan couldn’t date it. He couldn't say if Hector was from the Union or somewhere else or how long he’d been dead. His clothing covered the entire front of his body and stopped where his equine parts started. He appeared to be a completely different type of centaur. Maybe that was the difference between the North and South? His grandfather hadn’t mentioned navigational directions other than to say the afterlife was not hemispherical.
“Prepare humans for a sight you will not see ever again,” Clyde said.
The trail opened to a small valley with a large stable running the course of a tributary. The valley was thick with mist and dotted with many other shops and buildings. The land beside the valley was lightly wooded, and the evidence of forestry abounded with stumps, loaded carts, and hatchet weilding centaurs at work. Fintan couldn’t tell if they were working to keep the landscape at bay, but they were using materials.
As they rode through the centaur village, Fintan spotted a waterwheel running a mill and smiths at work forging horseshoes.
The other centaurs gave them no heed. He’d feared they would stand out as humans, but they were not the only ones.
Corralled near the center of the village, naked humans ran in circles, pawed at the ground, and consumed grass.
“You have slaves,” RuTing said. Her voice was cold and Fintan glanced sharply at her. She had a look in her eye he remembered seeing when he told her the Adversary had a way to her children.
“Not at all,” Hector said. “These are recruits. I admit my northern herd is a bit more sophisticated.” He pulled out a watch on a long metal chain and examined it. Fintan felt the time was a bit past midmorning. He could tell the mist around the village was thinning. The mist set its own clock, but he wasn’t sure how to measure it. “They will discover the horse inside or be cast out.”
“They are foolish humans,” Clyde said. “I was born a centaur, not made by chewing grass. If they have the will, the Head Mare will welcome them to the herd, but first, they have to give up all devices from humanity.”
Clyde looked pointedly at Hector’s timepiece. The centaur had amazing flexibility to twist his torso while walking. Even from behind, Fintan had no advantage, and he could readily understand how the monstrous Clyde felt completely comfortable with them riding behind. Clyde was larger than almost all the centaurs around them, but in terms of metal, he was far less wealthy.
“How does it work?” RuTing said.
“It’s a hydrometer,” Hector said. “It's not very good to tell time while you travel. It has to be calibrated to the location. Sadly, no one has been able to invent a solid timepiece with the temporal distortion.”
Clyde didn’t offer them an explanation as they crossed the village. They stopped briefly to empty the hay near the stables, where other centaurs hoisted the bales and put them on racks inside. As far as Fintan could tell, they weren’t eating the hay. He also didn’t see anyone manifesting anything inside the village. Perhaps there were other sacrifices to being a centaur. If so, other herds did not do the same thing.
They left the stable and crossed a bridge built over the river. Unlike Fintan’s hasty manifestation, the stone and wood construction felt solid and looked new. A small boy centaur tested the blocks with a little forked hammer, hitting each one a few times and listening. Another trick his grandfather hadn’t had time to tell him?
Without the bales, Clyde picked up speed. Hector held on to the cart with a free hand. His ragged breaths puffed out to the timing of Clyde’s cantor and Fintan wondered if Hector’s small human lungs provided oxygen for the centaur’s whole body. Clyde didn’t seem to be affected at all, and Fintan couldn’t tell which lungs actually worked or if his internal organs were repurposed.
He’d seen people damaged in the Afterlife, but what if they were cut in half?
Clyde stopped on the road.
“This is the end of Centaur territory,” he said. “Get off.”
Fintan hastily obeyed, followed by RuTing. Hector didn’t stop panting. His eyes looked ahead as if he was running, but his feet weren’t moving.
“Hector?” he asked tentatively, but the centaur didn’t acknowledge his presence.
Clyde cast off his harness and waved a fist at Hector.
The hand passed right through the illusion.
“A seeming,” Clyde said. “Human tricks.”
The big centaur pranced around, looking into the trees.
Something was wrong, and Fintan realized his hat felt lighter. The gilders under the band were missing.
All the gilders in his belt were gone as well, and he suspected the hidden slots in his boots were emptied.
Hector was gone along with all their money.
