Tamora Pierce - Squire

Kel, hidden by a large boulder where the trail met her ledge, lunged into the open, driving her glaive down. She halted her thrust a bare inch from a squalling girl tied to the centaur’s back by crossed lengths of rope. A cool part of her mind noted that this was why no one had shot the centaur: they had feared to kill the child.

The centaur hacked at Kel with his cutlass as he wallowed, fighting to get to his feet. Kel’s moment of panic – had she cut the girl? – ended. She jerked away from the sweep of the enemy’s blade and cut the rope that held the child. ‘Jump!’ she yelled. The dog leaped over the fallen immortal, seized the child’s gown in his powerful jaws, and dragged her free.

‘Get her out of here!’ Kel ordered him. The centaur heaved himself to his feet and backed against the stone, cursing breathlessly. She ignored what he said: she had one eye on Jump, who towed the shrieking child back up the path, and one eye on the centaur’s blade.

The immortal sidled, trying to find room for his hindquarters as he fumbled to yank a saddlebag over his head. He tossed it to one side, out of the way. Its contents thrashed and squealed like a large, frightened animal.

The centaur chopped at Kel, trying to draw her away from the opening where the trail continued down to the river. Kel blocked his cutlass, keeping herself between him and escape. There was nowhere for him to go on her right, unless he were mad enough to try that thirty-foot leap to the foaming, rock-studded river. If he ran that way, she half-thought she’d let him go. It would be a quicker end than hanging.

The centaur groped at a heavy leather belt around his waist with his free hand. He yanked out a throwing-axe.

My luck, thought Kel. He comes the way no one’s supposed to come, and he can use weapons in both hands.

He hurled the axe. Kel dodged left, still between him and escape, and stepped in with a long slash across his middle. He blocked it with his cutlass and hacked down at Kel’s head. She caught the blade on her weapon’s hard teak staff, angled the glaive, and rammed the iron-shod butt straight into the spot where the creature’s human and horse parts joined.

The centaur went dead white, uttering a gasping whine. His eyes rolled back in his head. Kel swung the glaive’s blade around, placing it where the centaur’s jaw met his neck. She pressed until a drop of blood ran down the razor edge.

‘Yield for the Crown’s mercy,’ she ordered.

Even as he snarled a reply the centaur kicked out with his forelegs, ramming Kel back. Her right side was on fire; her left thigh hurt so fiercely she thought she might faint. Instead she clung to her glaive and staggered to her feet.

The immortal charged, cutlass raised, and nearly speared himself on Kel’s blade. Kel silently thanked the Yamani armsmistress who had bruised her all over to teach her one simple rule: never drop the weapon.

Pain made her weak – she tried to ignore it. Her main attention, her serious attention, was on the foe.

He spun and kicked, his back hooves showering her with rock and dust. Kel shut her eyes just in time. She whipped her glaive in a sideways figure-eight cut to keep him back until she could see. Warm blood trickled down her cheek where a stone had cut her. The sparrows shrieked. Kel knew they were at the centaur’s face. Terrified he might kill them, she opened her eyes. The creature roared his fury, shielding his face against the birds, forgetting his cutlass as he spun, wildly hunting for an escape route.

Kel lunged, sinking the eighteen-inch blade deep below the centaur’s waist and yanking up. His belt dropped, cut in two; his forelegs buckled. Kel pulled her glaive free as her foe went down, clutching his belly. Blood spilled around his hands. From the stink, she knew she’d hit his human intestines.

He would die even if a healer could be found. No healer could save anyone from a belly cut. The foulness in the intestines spread, infecting all it touched. Kel gulped hard and cut the centaur’s throat, a mercy stroke. Blood sprayed, spattering her with drops that burned. He was dead when she lowered her glaive. His eyes never left hers. Even after he died, they were still wide, still fixed on this human who had brought him down.

Kel braced her glaive on the ground and hung onto it, swaying, her ribs and leg on fire. Her stomach was in full revolt over the mess she had made of the centaur – Kel swallowed rapidly until she defeated the urge to vomit. She prayed that no more fugitives came her way. She wouldn’t be able to stop them.

‘Jump?’ she called softly, not wanting to attract attention from the battlefield above. ‘Jump, where are you?’

She heard a scrambling noise on the trail, and a human whimper. The dog walked onto Kel’s ledge with the rescued toddler’s wrist held gently in his teeth.

‘Guard the path,’ Kel ordered. ‘Don’t let anyone take us by surprise.’ Jump wagged his tail, freed his charge, and trotted back the way he had come. The little girl ran over and clutched Kel’s injured leg. Pressing her face into Kel’s leather breeches, she began to cry.

Pain made Kel turn grey; sweat rolled down her cheeks. The girl clung to Kel’s bad leg with all of her strength, sending white-hot bolts of agony shooting up Kel’s thigh. Using the glaive for support, she gently prised the toddler’s arms open and lowered herself onto a stone. Once down, she pulled off her tunic and wrapped it around the girl, listening to the sounds from above. Either the battle was moving away or it had ended: she heard a handful of horn calls, and no clanging metal at all.

‘We’ll be fine,’ Kel told her companion. The girl curled up on the ground, sucking her thumb, with Kel’s tunic for a blanket. She was asleep almost instantly. For a moment Kel looked at her own thumbs, thinking it might be reassuring to do the same. But centaur blood was on her hands. Also, the thought of the teasing she would get if anyone found her doing it kept her from tucking her thumb into her mouth.

A shrill, quavering shriek reminded her of the centaur’s leather pack. Looking at it, she saw the pack thrash. Something was alive in there. Kel carefully got to her feet, moving like an old lady. Using her glaive for a crutch, she hobbled over until she could grab the pack.

‘Calm down,’ she told the occupant, lurching back to her seat. ‘It’s all over.’ Settling the pack on her lap, she opened the buckles that held it shut and thrust a hand inside. Later she would wonder where she had misplaced her common sense. She had known too many animals in her life to grope blindly for one. All she could think was that pain and exhaustion had betrayed her this once.

The creature in the pack took exception to her hand. It clamped a hard, sharp beak on the tender web between Kel’s thumb and index finger. Kel yanked her arm free. The creature hung on, emerging with Kel’s hand. It was an orangey-brown bird, its feathers caked with dirt and grease. Blood welled around its beak as it held onto Kel. She didn’t want to hurt the thing, but she did want it to let her go!

Kel shook her hand, to no effect. She tried to press the hinges of its beak to open it. Catlike paws armed with sharp talons wrapped around her captive wrist, gouging deep scratches where they found flesh. She pressed harder on the hinges of that murderous beak until it popped open. Kel yanked her hand free.

The creature leaped free of the pack to wrap fore-and hind paws around Kel’s mail-covered arm. Kel grabbed its curved, yellow beak with one hand to keep it shut. She yanked her captive arm free of the creature, pressed it onto her lap, and wrapped the leather pack around it to neutralize the thing. Only when she was certain it couldn’t free itself did she pick it up to look it in the eyes. They were the hot orange of molten copper. She’d never heard of an animal with copper eyes.