The woman ran on shaky legs, but she did not slip or stumble or fall— the magic of her enchanted belt prevented that, at least. She ran and she ran, like a sob echoing through the early evening air, she ran through the forest, careening off of tree-trunks and bits of rock and all about, not really thinking of where she was going except away— and the magic of her enchanted belt meant that after just a few moments of this running, she was away and away and away, nearly half a mile between her and where she’d started. Perhaps the centaurs were chasing after her, or perhaps they weren’t. She had no way of knowing, she was so far from them, now. She was safe, now. She was far from them. She was alone. She was just with herself, and no one else. She was safe.
She slowed. She stopped. All of that energy that had just burst up inside of her was still there, still boiling, she could have run another thousand miles if she’d wanted to, her legs and her arms and her lungs, her body could have done it. But she couldn’t have wanted to. She couldn’t make herself want anything at all. Her mind was burned to empty. She had to stop. She had to reset.
The woman had no words to start building new thoughts out of. All she had were images, sounds. Smells, tastes. Feelings— the sensation of Rhoecus’s sweaty hands pinning her wrists, Hylaios trapping her ankles. The strain of her own muscles, struggling to break free, failing to overpower them, just trembling with exhaustion and exertion, nothing but paltry tremors along the taut cords of the Earth. Helplessness. Weakness. The smell of their bodies. The taste of tree-bark shoved into her mouth— still in her mouth, the taste, on her tongue, her gums, between her teeth, on the inside of her cheeks, everywhere. She spat and she coughed, and she glanced around for water to wash with, but nothing. The taste wasn’t going anywhere, and neither was the sound of those voices, back and forth with each other, so calm and casual, as though nothing at all was happening, as though they were simply discussing the best way to carve a hide or build a fire. Their words were the only words making it into the woman’s head— she could hear their words as her thoughts, but still, she could not hear her own. There was no room for her own. All she could hear was how best she could be used. Forced upon.
All she could see was Rhoecus’s face staring down at her on the ground, eyes corrupted with lust— even as the blood poured from his arm, even as the she-wolf was mere feet away, preparing to strike at him again and he knew it, he stared down at her, at her face at her body. Her hips, her legs, her chest.
All those things to be used.
And then the woman realized. The she-wolf. The woman had left the she-wolf behind. She’d just turned and ran, and ran and ran and ran without so much as a thought— without so much as even room for a thought, and now here she was, alone, and where was her friend?
Where else? Her friend was alone, too. Back with the centaurs, surely. Fighting them— or fleeing from them— or already dead. She might have already been dead, might have already died, been killed, trying to save the woman.
No. No, no, no, she wasn’t going to allow it. She wasn’t going to let it happen, no. Again, without a thought, without even room for a thought, the woman was running, right back the way she’d come. The faces, the voices of the centaurs was gone from her head. There was only one image. There was only one word. The she-wolf, standing there, the bruise on her snout but ready to strike again. “No”.
Not this time. There was no one to stop her this time. There was no one to hold her back. The woman ran and ran and ran, and it only took a few moments for her to reach where the spot where she had left the centaurs and the she-wolf, and none of them were there, now. But the trail was fresh, less than a minute old, it was nothing for the woman to find it, to follow it, it may as well have been lines of pure sunlight leading across the dirt— paw prints and hoof prints and blood— from Rhoecus’s arm? It must have been. The woman followed, followed, and with the speed of her belt it was barely a heartbeat before she’d found the group again, in another clearing. The scene came racing up to her eyes like the ground, tumbling from a great height.
The first thing she saw was her friend on the ground. There was an arrow in her side. Not all of the blood trail had belonged to Rhoecus.
The second thing she saw was Rhoecus, standing over the she-wolf with his bow raised, a second arrow nocked. The first thing she heard was his voice, pained, but taunting— “One arrow for my arm, mongrel. And now two arrows for my trouble.”
The second thing she heard was the sharp exhale of Rhoecus’s bowstring releasing— the dull thud of the arrow embedding itself just beside the first one in the she-wolf’s midsection— the shrill whine and whimper of the wolf at the fresh wound. The woman had been hunting long enough, knew enough by just looking to tell that neither of these arrows had deadly placement to them, not on their own. Much the same as the wound the she-wolf’s leg had gotten from the jagged rock before, these wounds would only kill her if left to fester, or if she was left to starve or become easy prey for something else.
But the third thing the woman saw was Rhoecus drawing a third arrow, now, and aiming it differently— towards the she-wolf’s throat. There would be no surviving that.
No skillful tracking, no careful stalking, no hiding, no waiting for the right moment. No chase for more than a few seconds, by the length of the trail. Just two centaurs overpowering a helpless animal.
The third thing the woman heard was Hylaios’ voice— he was standing beside his companion, impatient. “We’ve been dawdling too long already, old man. You blabber and you blabber and you blabber at the beast, you play games with its pain and fear, you deliver whole speeches unto it, and for what? What will it remember of any of this when you do eventually put an end to things? Hurry up. Leave me some time at least to live a full life before I am as wasted off as you.”
“Now, now,” hushed Rhoecus, steadying his shot, “if you were ever to listen to me, you would know better than this— so listen to me now. This is not just some nameless wolf that had been traveling with the Moon’s once-was daughter. Such a woman as that would not attract anything less than such a wolf as this for a companion. This she-wolf with beautiful silver fur and a death-black tail and spearpoint eyes lashing wickedly up at us, here is no other than Leto, who has haunted this countryside for countless generations. She is as much a story as she is a wolf, my foolish friend. She is hundreds of sheep, dozens of cows and horses, people even and centaurs that have gone missing in the haze of the night and the early morning, those are the stories wrapped up in this wolf at our feet. Stories are important things. They must be remembered, considered, and given their just weight, in both how they are told and how they are killed. But you are right, I suppose, that we have stood here too long when that maiden remains alone out in these woods, waiting for us. So one arrow for my arm, two arrows for my trouble, and now at last three arrows for lost flocks and foals stretching back longer than any single lifetime— and let whomever asks about how such a story of woes and frustrations came to an end be told that it was Rhoecus, Rhoecus was the one to do it.”
“Yes, good,” answered Hylaios. “It was you. Or it will have been you, several years from now, when you finally stop talking and let loose your arrow. You will just have to wait until then for anyone to hear about it.”
Rhoecus sighed, and shook his head, and pulled back his bowstring to a full draw.
“No!” cried the woman, rushing into the clearing. Without a thought, without so much as even room for a thought, she came rushing, racing, she threw herself between Rhoecus’s bow and the she-wolf. She dove down onto the dirt across her friend, and then, scrambling again to her feet, she stood, chest wide, arms spread, legs firm, as much of a wall as she could make herself. “You must not harm her!! I will not allow it!!”
What she meant was “again”. They had already harmed her, the centaurs had already dealt the she-wolf terrible wounds of awful pain and weeks more of healing. But they would not harm her again. Not again. Not so much as a scratch. Not so long as the woman was still breathing. She stiffened her body. She set her soul into stone. She would not budge.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
The first thing Rhoecus did was lower his bow. The second thing he did was laugh. “Look at this, then! I think perhaps your words might have a strange backwards power over the world, Hylaios— you complain of me standing around, taking too much time to finish my kill, you claim that we are wasting the daylight while the lovely maiden is off in the woods, away from us, and now look at this! I have taken my time to do a thing properly and now that same maiden has returned to offer herself! What does that teach you?”
Hylaios ignored him. It was Hylaios, now, who was most deeply lusting for the woman, who had been most deeply lusting since she had vanished off between the trees a few minutes ago. Rhoecus had started off wanting her more, but with the wound in his arm and the weight of the stories of the she-wolf Leto on the ground before him, waiting to die at his bow, his mind had whispered off elsewhere. Hylaios, though, his corrupted lust had come so close, so close to being sated those few minutes ago, it had been awakened in the closeness, like a sleeping appetite at the smell of food, and now he was in near-madness with desire. That was what he had been made to be. That was what he had been taught to be. Those were the sorts of centaurs he had been taught by, and they had been taught by, and they had been taught by, and no one knew any better sort of way of being, but force, force upon force.
His nostrils flared. He stepped towards her. “Are you sad, little girl, that I did not come chasing after you to play? I can only apologize, bogged down with this old imbecile and his endless, endless words. I can only apologize that you should have had to come running all the way back here to be my toy again. But I will make it up to you.”
He took another step towards her. And another. She did not budge. She did not turn and run. She would not allow herself to move from this spot, she would not allow herself to exist anywhere than right here, between the centaurs and the she-wolf. Rhoecus laughed again— “She really must want us after all, it seems!”— he began to step towards the woman as well, returning his bow to its strap along his back. Today would not be wasted.
The last thing he ever saw was the woman’s face staring back at him. The last thing he ever heard was a great battlecry. The last thing he ever felt was a terrible pain straight through his heart, the very core of him. He was so shocked that for a few seconds, his eyes didn’t even budge from the woman before him, all he could think was that she had somehow managed to exist in two places at once, and by the time he finally thought to glance downwards at whatever had erupted from his chest, he was already dead. His eyes dropped, but they saw nothing. They stared blankly, empty, at the long, jagged spear that had been pushed through his ribs from behind, red as the coming sunset with his blood.
Hylaios turned at the cry, and watched his companion crumple, lifeless, to the Earth. He watched the man who had just arrived pull his spear from Rhoecus’s chest as though he was pulling a wood splinter from his own foot— just like that. The man turned to face him. He was wearing polished armor across his brown skin, beautiful fur trimmings and bits of jewelry, but nothing so dazzling as to be obscene or farcical— no, the clean beauty of the man was terrifying. Even from a distance, Hylaios could see the calluses on his hands; this was not a man who picked up weapons as trappings or toys; this was a man who carried them. Who had been carrying them for years. But for all those calluses, that lovely armor didn’t have so much as a single scratch upon it. Those furs did not have so much as a single tear. And nowhere on the man’s skin— what could be seen, at least— was there even a single scar. “You would be wise to leave this place, now,” said the man to Hylaios. “But I hope that you are not wise.”
The centaur did not think. There was not even so much as room for a thought in his head. He drew the sword from his belt and he charged, on just instinct alone, and effortlessly, just as much on instinct, the man twisted his spear and knocked aside the sword and then with another twist ran him through— the exact same spot, straight through the heart. Just like that.
The woman flinched as once again, the man pulled free his weapon from the centaur’s corpse. An end to things. Quick and clean. And what would happen now? Countless scenes played out all once in her head, overlapping. The man would simply walk away without another word. He would take up his spear yet another time, and he would kill her, and then the she-wolf. He would use his weapon to cripple her, and then do to her what the centaurs had failed to do, force himself upon her, and her friend would be helpless to save her now.
“Are you alright?” he asked her.
It wasn’t what she had expected. She didn’t answer, the words hadn’t really made it all the way into her head. There still wasn’t room in her head for any words except what the centaurs had been saying— what they had been doing, what they had been doing to her, what they had been about to do to her. What the man was going to do to her.
“Hey. Are you alright? Can you hear me?”
Still, nothing. The woman stood with her chest wide, arms spread, legs solid, body stiff. It didn’t matter. He could force himself upon her if that was how he was. If that was how the world was— just as the Moon had said. Let him force himself upon her, that was the shape of the world. Even as he went about it, she would not budge from this spot. She would not exist anywhere except between him and the she-wolf. It didn’t matter.
“Your wolf needs help. She’s going to die if we don’t start treating her wounds right away.”
This, finally, was enough to snap her out of it. “Yes,” she murmured. “Yes, yes, we have to help her.”— she turned on the spot, dropped to her knees, began to examine the she-wolf— no, not “the she-wolf”— “‘Leto,’ she whispered to the poor animal, panting and whimpering. “That’s what they called you. Is that your name? Is that what I should be calling you? ‘Leto’?”
The wolf did not nod or tell her so. The wolf simply stared up at the woman, just as she had been staring up at her when they had first met. Her eyes made the woman understand. That was all it took. This was the famous death-black tailed she-wolf Leto, just as the centaurs had said. The terror of the countryside.
The creature who had saved her life. The creature she had abandoned. The creature she would never forgive herself for leaving.
“‘Leto’… I’ve heard the name before,” said the man. He was already busy carving off strips of hide from the lower halves of the centaurs— the horse-halves. It was a nasty business, skinning a thing that could once think and talk and dream and regret, it wasn’t any difference from skinning a human for the man to be doing it, but it had to be done. Time was critical. And perhaps these two upon the ground were really just creatures like any other for how they acted. Perhaps a squeamish knife was a privilege reserved for those whose actions were deserving of it. Perhaps these were just mindless meat after all. “So what if she is a menace?” the man supposed. “She’s a wolf. She has every right to be.”
He had a pouch on his belt with some herbs and other medicines in it, just something he’d been carrying around in case. It wasn’t much, it was just what he had, but it wasn’t nothing either. It was a place to start. He quickly cleaned the strips of hide he’d cut, coated them with the mashed herbs as a balm, and brought them to the woman, still knelt beside Leto.
“Here,” he told her. “These will make sturdier bandages than grass, and she will need sturdy bandages with wounds like those. I learned, once, how to safely remove arrows from flesh— do you know how to do this?”
The woman shook her head. She had never needed to do such a thing.
“Very well. I will be the one to do it, then. You should go and gather more herbs to use as medicine, everything you can find.”
The woman didn’t move. She wasn’t going to leave the wolf, not again. She wasn’t going to leave her friend.
“I swear to you on the honor my name that I will not harm her,” said the man. “I am Meleager, that is the name given to me by my father and mother, it is the name that carries for me all my rightful pride, and so let all of that pride come spilling out of it into the mud if I break my word to you. Your friend Leto is safe with me to watch her.”
Meleager stared straight into the woman’s eyes— and for all the hard harshness of him, what he had done with his spear, his eyes and his voice were soft. She believed him.
He glanced towards the two centaurs sprawled like rugs over the soil. “What’s more, I think it would be best for you to be away from this place for a few minutes. Perhaps longer. Perhaps forever, with all that has happened here— with all that may have happened here. Go and find herbs— and roots as well, I trust you know the ones.”— she nodded, she did— “Good. Go and find what is needed, and I will meet you by the river five minutes walk from here towards the sunset. I will carry your friend carefully and kindly, by the honor of my name, I will let no more of her blood spill upon the Earth, and I will let no further pain or injury darken her life upon this night. I will take her to the river and wash her wounds and give her water to drink, and that is where you will find me…”
He paused.
“You have my name to hold to my honor… I do not have yours.”
“My name…” she said back, hesitating.
It was the second thing she had said so far in his presence, the first thing straight to him, and with her voice and her way of speaking, the man became fully certain of what he had suspected from the start— that she was no ordinary person.
“Your eyes, too, and your hair… those are the marks of it as well. An oracle and a thoughtless scoundrel alike would comfortably call you ‘Moonchild’.”
The woman scowled, hearing herself talked about alongside her most despised first mother this way— her betraying first mother, her rejected first mother. “A thoughtless scoundrel, indeed. I am no child of the Moon,” she spat. “Never say such a thing to me again.”
“I shall not,” Meleager promised. “I apologize for any offense.”
“I am a daughter of the dead stars above. It is dead starlight that shines in my eyes. It is dead starlight that shines from my hair. It is dead starlight that shines through my blood, when it spills, for all the oaths I swear. I swear on my blood, Meleager, not my name.”
The woman would not give to him the name that her most hated mother had given to her, which meant ‘Balancing the Scales’, which meant so many things, so many hopes for her life and dreams and happiness— she rejected that name, just as she rejected that mother, who was just now starting to rise above the Eastern horizon, opposite Her setting brother. And what a perfect thing, for Her eyes to gaze down upon the world at just the moment when Her once-was daughter threw away Her first gift. Let Her watch, thought the woman. She told Meleager to call her whatever he wished— for all that it mattered, she had never been given a name in the first place, and it did not matter at all. He nodded. “Very well, then. You are the child of the dead stars above, just as you say to me; you look to be a good five, maybe even ten years younger than when the first of those stars appeared alone in the sky nearly thirty years ago. They arrived, and then so did you. So it is only fitting that I shall call you their child. ‘Starchild’. That shall be my name for you, she who guards wounded wolves and swears on her blood.”
“‘Starchild’,” repeated the woman. “It will do.”
It would do just fine. She rose from the dirt, walked towards the edge of the clearing, and then she paused— she lingered beside the corpses of the centaurs, hesitating against herself. And then she went, past them. She carried on.
