by Logan Jacobs
“Okay, guess I better keep you entertained then,” I sighed.
“Humans are strange creatures,” Elodette said. “Your people can’t help being amusing even when they’re not trying to.”
“Humans are wonderful!” Ilandere said. “Some of them are mean, but some of them are so much kinder and more compassionate than centaurs are. And they all have such different lifestyles and diverse ideas, not like with our herd where everyone thought alike.”
“Most humans are soft, you mean,” Elodette scoffed. “Our herd knew how to educate and train our offspring properly, so that most of them grew up to be reasonably sensible and competent. Humans have no idea what they’re doing most of the time, and they don’t know how to instill their foals with any kind of proper discipline, so they just turn out any which way.”
“Is your herd the only centaur herd?” I asked. “Or are there others that behave differently?”
“It’s the only one as far as I know,” Elodette answered. “That’s why it’s so important for us to procreate and to preserve our best bloodlines and teach each new generation everything it needs to know to be successful. We tell stories of a time when centaurs roamed the whole earth, and all other creatures bowed before us, but most herds got wiped out during the post-Luma god wars when they fought for gods that lost. After that, centaur culture became more insular. We started sticking to our own kind more and not getting involved in the messy affairs of other creatures.”
“Maybe it’s time for us to start getting involved again,” Ilandere said. “Maybe centaurs have something to contribute to the rest of the world. And maybe the rest of the world has some things to teach us too.”
“You are very naïve, Princess,” Elodette sighed.
“I can’t imagine sticking to my own kind all the time,” Willobee said. “Gnomes are rather unpleasant creatures, except for myself, of course.”
“Do you prefer toad kind?” Lizzy asked.
Willobee glared at her so fiercely that his eyes emitted faint beams.
Chapter Seven
We traveled all that day until dark and did not come across any settlements, so we set up camp in the shelter of a copse of trees, and Elodette happily went off with her bow to hunt some dinner for the first time in a while. Lizzy morphed into a wolf so that she and I could practice wrestling, while Florenia, Ilandere, and Willobee spectated, two of my other selves brushed down the horses, and my fourth self gathered wood and built a fire.
Elodette typically came back with a doe or a stag casually slung across her shoulders, but this time she staggered into the camp slick with sweat and groaning with effort as she dragged a massive shape on the ground behind her by a rope that she must have woven out of plant fibers.
“Elodette?” Ilandere exclaimed as she trotted over. “Are you all right? What is that?”
Elodette disentangled herself from the crude rope harness that she had rigged. I could see that it had left rope burns across her pale skin. The centaur pointed to the large dark mound and announced proudly, “That, Princess, is a boar.”
“Well fuck, nice work!” I told her as I examined her kill. It was about seven feet long, and at first glance I had thought it was a bear. The giant boar was dark brown and shaggy all over. He had an extremely long, tubular snout with yellowed tusks jutting upward. Elodette’s arrows had punctured his chest just to the inside of his armpits and another had struck the hollow depression right behind his ear.
“Er, I don’t really know how to clean one of these,” I said. I had never hunted a boar before.
“I’ll show you,” Elodette said. “It’s not as hard as you’d think.”
First, we rigged it upside down from a tree limb. The boar weighed several hundred pounds, so it was a good thing there were four of me available to help. When Lizzy caught the scent of fresh meat, she had immediately stopped our wrestling match to come over and sit on her haunches nearby and drool.
Elodette and I slit the boar’s hide along the vertical middle of the belly down from the hind legs and up from the front legs and pulled the skin off until it hung down from the head like a cape. Then we severed the neck and twisted the head itself off.
Then we started handing off cuts to Florenia, and one of my selves helped her roast them over the fire.
“Many a king has been slain by a giant boar,” Willobee remarked as we ate happily.
“Gnomish kings?” I asked curiously, because I hadn’t thought gnomes were particularly known for their hunting prowess.
“Gnomish?” Willobee repeated. “Oh, no, gnomes are not so foolhardy as to go out and risk getting gored, trampled, or eaten by wild animals when there are so many more sensible ways to obtain meat, like raising animals in pens, or purchasing meat from humans. Although some clans do slingshot birds and trap hares. But a boar? Ha! Never.”
“Then what kings exactly are you referring to?” I asked.
“Human ones,” Willobee answered.
“It doesn’t happen very often,” Florenia said. “Kings are surrounded by their retainers when they go on hunts. So if they are allowed to get killed by wild animals, then usually they weren’t particularly popular kings.”
“The whole concept of kings is rather absurd,” Willobee said. “Some clans have them, but not Clan Benniwumporgan. And it never works out well for the clans that do crown kings.”
“What do you mean?” I asked him.
“Well, gnomes are a very jealous and quarrelsome people, and someone usually ends up assassinating them sooner or later,” Willobee said. “Usually by poison. So kings always try to employ tasters. But if the kings aren’t very popular, then the tasters get scared, and they hide the food in their mouths or spit it out when the king isn’t looking. And if another clan attacks, then usually the weaker clan will make a deal with them and sell out their king and agree to change allegiances before they actually have to go into battle. And the really exceptionally good kings who somehow manage to more or less please everyone and not get conquered usually eventually decide that the job is just too much work and not as fun as they thought it would be and quit.”
“It sounds as though the problem lies not with the kings, but with their faithless followers,” Florenia said.
“Well, why would other gnomes want to get themselves poisoned or hacked up by swords just because some random guy wearing a crown said so?” Willobee demanded.
“For the good of their nations, and the honor that they would win thereby,” Florenia answered.
“Humans don’t make sense,” Willobee grumbled.
“No, humans don’t make sense, but that part of their behavior does,” Elodette said. “It’s only that they are not as consistent as centaurs in upholding those ideals.”
“I wish that people could be honored and glorified just for being nice to other people and helping them, instead of having to die horrible deaths and kill other people and cause suffering in order to be considered heroes,” Ilandere sighed.
“But think of what we’re doing now, Princess,” Elodette said. “We’re going to go lift the Thorvinian siege on the temple of Tarlinis that Peryenia prophesied would occur. Do you think that’s a nice thing to do that will help out the followers of Tarlinis?”
“Of course it is,” Ilandere said.
“And, do you think it will involve killing Thorvinians?” Elodette asked.
“…Well, I guess so,” Ilandere admitted reluctantly.
“So, would it be ‘nicer’ not to kill any Thorvinians and leave the order of Tarlinis to its fate?” Elodette persisted.
“I guess not,” Ilandere said. “I just wish there were a peaceful way to accomplish the same thing.”
“Yes, geopolitical matters should be settled through games of wit and skill, without violence involved,” Willobee said.
“You mean through fucking card games?” Lizzy changed back momentarily just so she could chime in scornfully.
“Exactly,” Willobee agreed as his eyes glowed with enthusiasm. “
Something like Sandmaster would be ideal. Something that involves planning, taking calculated risks, social manipulation, diversionary tactics, just the right amount of ruthlessness concealed under a guise of benevolence, and a pinch of luck-- the same skills that are necessary to govern a state.”
“Those aren’t the traits of a queen!” Elodette objected. “A queen should be noble, courageous, self-sacrificing, have unfailing integrity, unyielding determination, and be wise and just in all her decisions.”
“Just like Vander,” Ilandere said.
“Hey, I make lots of mistakes and half the time I have no idea what I’m doing,” I said.
“You’re just being humble,” the centaur princess said as she reached out to hold my nearest self’s hand. “You always do the right thing.”
“No one always does the right thing,” I said. “Sometimes there isn’t even really a right thing. But if I had to say that about anyone, it would probably be you, Ilandere. You just never have a bad intention or a mean thought. It’s like you were just designed without all the ugly parts of human nature.”
Wolf-Lizzy swallowed the rest of her pork chop so fast that she made a hacking sound as it caught in her throat slightly, then changed back into her human self so that she could retort, “She was designed to be a prey animal, there’s just no predator in her, that’s what you mean. Without you around to look after her she’d’a been dead ages ago.”
“What am I, chopped liver?” Elodette demanded.
Instead of answering, Lizzy morphed back and returned to stuffing her face.
Thankfully, I think the she-wolf understood that I didn’t really consider Ilandere superior to her or to Florenia, it was just that of my three consorts, the silvery little princess doubted herself the most and needed the most reassurance. I loved the very different personalities of all three women in their own ways. I did have a soft spot for Ilandere’s sweetness, gentleness, and pure heart. I enjoyed Lizzy’s ferocity, fearlessness, penchant for speaking her mind, and general don’t-give-a-fuck attitude. And I admired Florenia’s incredible intelligence, sensual nature, resilience, and fortitude.
I couldn’t imagine my life without any of them. My life was also highly enriched by Elodette, who was as brave, honorable, steadfast, and competent as she was grumpy.
And Willobee.
I never really knew what absurd thing the gnome was going to say next or what kind of trouble he was going to drag us all into, and that was a large part of his inexplicable charm.
He also had a lot of random talents. As the women fell silent, Willobee picked up a couple of sticks to drum on a log to accompany himself as he launched into a sweet, low, mournful ballad about a gnome who misplaced his favorite hat, and roamed the world seeking a replacement, but could never find another hat just like it and eventually resolved to go hatless for the sorrowful remainder of his life.
Willobee’s singing voice was shockingly deep and powerful coming from his three-foot-tall, thoroughly unintimidating frame, and it had the most versatile range of any I had ever heard. It was of course easy enough for him to sound like a gnome as he sang the hatless hero’s parts, but he could also inhabit the gravelly, resonant tones of a troll that was suspected of stealing the hat, but had actually just eaten a child who happened to have been wearing a misleadingly similar hat, or the breathy, seductive murmurs of a gnomish prostitute that distracted the hero from his quest for a while, but in the end failed to fulfill the hat-shaped void in his heart. Willobee could also produce sounds that vividly evoked things that didn’t even make a sound. For instance, during this particular ballad, he managed to sound exactly like the gnome’s missing hat itself, so much so that I could picture the color and style of the hat precisely even without a verbal description.
Lizzy, without even seeming to realize that she was doing it, rocked back and forth drowsily on her haunches to the hypnotic swell of Willobee’s voice and the pounding undercurrents of his drumming. Then eventually she passed out and toppled over, which startled the rest of us since she weighed about four hundred pounds, but didn’t even disturb her enough to wake her up, which became obvious in the next moment as she started snoring.
Ilandere and Florenia, however, remained wide awake, and the centaur princess was peering at me shyly through her eyelashes, and the duke’s daughter was gazing at me sideways with a slight smirk in ways that I knew them well enough to know meant the same thing, which was that they weren’t interested in going to sleep yet.
Two of me remained by the fire, along with Elodette, to appreciate the last few verses of Willobee’s oddly poignant ballad. The other two each led one of my two conscious consorts off a little ways to separate clearings out of earshot of the gnome and the stern black centaur.
First, I stood on my tiptoes to kiss Ilandere on her marble forehead, then on the tip of her slip of a nose, then on her rosebud mouth as I gently removed her sheer pink blouse and revealed the impossibly slim curves of her dainty little body. Her skin was so pale and so radiant that it glowed a little in the moonlight. Then with my hands I traced the soft mounds of her small but perfect breasts and lowered my mouth to suck on one of her pert pink nipples. She tipped her head back with her long blonde hair cascading down like a silvery waterfall and sighed with pleasure.
Meanwhile I laid Florenia down on her back, unlaced her tight-fitting dark gold gown, and peeled it off her lithe olive-skinned body. She had full breasts, not as huge as Lizzy’s, but strikingly prominent on her frame, which was so slim that I could glimpse her ribs a little when she moved. Her hips flared out more than Ilandere’s, which were childishly narrow. Her chestnut hair was wildly disarrayed and partly hid her perfect face, but I could still see the mischief that curved her lips and the desire that burned in her hazel eyes.
I propped myself above her on my elbows and ground my erection against her crotch until she groaned with impatience. Then I crawled downward, lowered my head between her legs, and licked the wetness of her entrance until her hips arched off the ground, and she cried out with ecstasy. I stopped right before she came, unlaced my pants and pushed them down, and quickly shoved my cock inside of her. She climaxed almost as soon as she felt my length fill her completely, and I continued to thrust, slowly at first but then faster and faster, until I pumped my seed into her. Then I rolled her over on top of me with my shaft still jutting inside of her, and we just lay there gasping for breath until we were ready for the next round.
In the morning, we ate as much of the boar that remained as we could manage, which was a surprising amount since both Florenia and even Ilandere had more of an appetite than usual. Then we loaded up the horses, I reassimilated one self so that the ratio of riders to horses would work out, and we mounted up and set off.
About an hour down the road we passed a man going the opposite way who was driving a mule that was carting a load of rosy ripe apples. Ilandere’s huge dark eyes lit up, and she clasped her hands together in front of her chest.
“I’ve never seen such beautiful apples,” she exclaimed with longing in her voice. They were far and away her favorite food.
The mule driver, who was stout, bearded, and had a kind twinkle in his eyes, chuckled at the princess’ reaction. “Why, thank you kindly, little miss,” he said. “I’m on my way to sell them to the next village over. It would do them some good to take those pipes out of their mouths for a minute and put something wholesome in their stomachs. Something real that grows from the earth, instead of something that they just imagine floating around in the clouds.”
“May we purchase one?” I asked him as I nodded to Willobee to signal for him to bring out the bulging pouch of coins from Marvincus.
“No, you certainly may not,” he said. Then he reached back into the cart, plucked out one of the biggest and finest apples, and handed it to Ilandere. “It is my honor to gift one to such a beautiful little lady. And, to someone who knows how to appreciate quality apples when she sees them!”
“Thank you, that is so kin
d of you,” Ilandere replied as she blushed pink. She took a delicate bite of the apple and closed her eyes with happiness as she crunched it in her mouth. After she had swallowed the bite she said, “It’s the sweetest apple I’ve ever tasted.”
The apple seller chuckled again at the centaur’s innocent enthusiasm. “Plenty more where that came from,” he said. “Looks like you’re headed in the direction of my home, Galeurn. The apples that grow there are finer than any others in all of Ambria. When you get there, just tell them that you’re friends of Ned the Younger.”
“Thanks, we will,” I said. “How much farther along is it?”
“Only a few hours,” Ned the Younger answered. “There’s one fork between here and there. Take the left path when you get to it. Then, you’ll start seeing wild apple trees pop up before you even reach Galeurn.”
We thanked Ned for his help, and he insisted on our taking an apple each. Then he spurred his mule on and left us with a merry wave.
“Besides you, Vander, I think that was the nicest man I’ve ever met,” Ilandere remarked.
Lizzy laughed. “You better watch out when we get to Galeurn, Vander, or she’ll get kidnapped by the first guy to show up with an apple in his hand.”
“He wasn’t even very curious about us and didn’t ask us any questions or stare that much,” Florenia said. “Think he’s seen stranger sights before than two centaurs, a gnome, a wolf-woman, and a god with four bodies?”
“I doubt it,” I replied. “I think it’s just that nothing fazes him much. He seems to think that life is good and kind of just calmly accept whatever it hands him. And give back what he can.”
“Well, if everyone in Galeurn is like him, maybe we should come back and live there someday,” Ilandere said wistfully.
I laughed. “Alright, maybe we will, but let’s at least wait till we get to the village before we fall in love with it.”
