Minotaur: Prayer: The Bestial Tribe Page 3

  Astegur sensed the lights wanted him to follow them, sensed that if he did, the itch would vanish. But the old smell of carnage had him turning away and heading for its source.

  Why would there be minotaur blood here?

  He and his brothers were the only ones in these lands. It did not bode well. He quieted his steps as he approached where the pungence originated from. He knew how to be quiet, to remain quiet, and approach situations with a keen head. He was good at what he did. He could track, stalk, and hunt just about any creature that roamed the lands he was familiar with.

  He was the brother that rarely gave in to the berserker rage deep within. He could keep the fire in his soul contained and could remain clear-headed when no one else could.

  The smell built as he followed it away from the lights, away from the compulsion those lights had on his body—when he came upon a rotting barghest corpse. He discovered another soon after, and before long, one corpse became dozens that led right into an old centaur campsite. Their spears were still in the ground.

  He listened for others but heard nothing approach. His eyes roamed the smoking pit; he found no traps within. There was nothing left except the dead, and the ghosts that may not have yet formed.

  It still didn’t explain the smell of minotaur blood in the air.

  He paused to peruse the scene around the campsite.

  In the middle of the clearing were the remains of a large pyre, and around it, were bones. Bestial skulls rested atop stakes set deep into the mud. Centaur skulls. Pieces of meat still clung to them. Astegur moved closer and swiped his hand at the air around his horns. Flies had gathered for the feast.

  He walked around and took stock of every detail he came upon, looking for the source of bull and human aroma throughout. But nothing in the campsite gave the smells away. He couldn’t find his brother’s body nor the unknown human’s.

  They’re no longer here.

  A few centaurs were no match for a Bathyr.

  Astegur twisted to face the mountains. Thick mist obscured his view of them, but it did not hide the green lights that awaited him—the entrance to the blighted settlement between him and his destination.

  Perhaps the hag will know what happened here. Astegur sneered. He did not like it either way.

  He left the campsite to the flies and their feast. They crawled across his skin, and he swatted them off, but when he looked down at himself, there were no bugs. Everything he felt was under his skin. His brow furrowed as his discomfort built.

  He came upon the first of the lights, its mass ghostly and floating in the air around his head. A dim orb of light had been gathered and caught in a gaseous shell. He waved his hand through it, but the light neither gave off heat or a chill. It was just there.

  Prayer’s hag knows I’m here.

  He sensed her presence nearby.

  Astegur flexed his hand on the handle of his weapon as he growled in warning. An uncomfortable feeling coursed through his body, and as he took a step deeper into the heavy mist surrounding Prayer, it intensified. He reached up to scratch his skin. The smell of his brother’s blood clung to the interior of his nose.

  “You!” a voice roared behind him.

  He swiveled back, cursing his discomfort for distracting him, and unsheathed his battleaxe. Hooves splashed through the swamp water, heading in his direction. He bared his teeth and braced for battle.

  “You killed our leader!” Two centaur studs stomped their front hooves in the mud a short distance away. Each one held fast to a spear that glinted filtered sunlight from above. One had bandages wrapped around his middle and across his left eye, while the other one only had shallow cuts.

  Astegur cocked his head. Their wounds were not done by monsters with sharp teeth and claws. He spied a gash on the bandaged one just under his wrappings that looked like it was from a barghest claw, but the rest of the wounds were made by weapons… By gouges and stabs from a minotaur’s horns.

  Vedikus.

  Astegur glowered when he finished studying his opponents. “You mean the centaur carcass burned to a crisp lying in the pyre behind you? Your leader smells even worse dead than he did alive.” The need to engage in battle was strong in his skull. Anything to distract him from the annoying, torturous itch under his skin. The bugs that danced underneath. These centaurs thought he was someone else, thought he was his brother. It was an easy mistake, he and his brothers were the only bulls in these lands.

  If my brother killed their leader then he must have had a reason.

  Which meant, Astegur had a reason to kill them without question.

  One of the centaurs raised its front legs again and cried out wildly.

  “Heretical bull! You’ll be nothing but a head on our stakes when we’re done with you! Our warchief demands retribution and devastation for the loss of his brother and cousin. Elscalian and Telner will be avenged.”

  Astegur reached behind his back and grabbed his second axe as the two centaurs spread out to attack him on either side.

  A tricky situation. He could not get near the centaurs hooves, nor their weapons. But he had the mud and the marshes on his side. His eyes glazed over with further torment, spiking his frustration as they began to encircle him, swiping their spears outward.

  Crazed eyes and screams filled his senses right before their weapons clashed. He loosened his grip on his axes at the last possible second before they struck in perfect unison with the centaur’s spears to either side of his gut. He rolled forward and dodged, spinning his weapons backwards into his hands before ramming them forward into the back of the man-horse’s front leg. He ducked forward and evaded many of the frenzied kicks and slashes that followed. Several hit home and struck at the muscles of his back and shoulders.

  Astegur swiveled around and turned to the centaur on his left, dodging a back kick as the beast stabbed with its spear. He dropped one of his axes into the mud and snatched the centaurs leg, wrenching it outward. The centaur fell to the mud with a yelp. Astegur climbed over his back and away from the beast’s thrashing legs as the other stud circled around the struggling pair to attack Astegur’s back, the centaur’s weapons thrusting forward in quick succession.

  He knocked the spear blade away with his horns and let go of the fallen centaur’s leg after a final snap of bone. With a guttural howl filling his ears, Astegur twisted and grabbed the spear stabbing at him and yanked it from the centaur still standing, bloodying his hand in the process.

  The last centaur skirted out of his reach and went to ready his bow. Astegur gritted his teeth and threw his battleaxe at the stud, lodging his blade right into its side. He used that moment to turn back to the centaur and thrust his newly stolen spear straight through the beast’s neck, killing it. Blood fed the mist.

  He turned back to his final opponent. The stud’s nostrils flared with rage as he yanked the axe out of his side. They rounded each other away from the bleeding corpse. Somewhere in the distance, a barghest screamed.

  The centaur sneered, eyes hooding with blood loss. “You will die.”

  “You seem sure about that.”

  “You stole a human and then killed our clan leader. You have asked for war, and we will bring it.”

  Astegur licked the blood from his lips. The thunderous hooves on the horizon. The deep pounding in my head. He remembered the noise from the cave.

  “As I see it, only you remain. Hardly the war you promised,” Astegur provoked through clenched teeth. “But I like war. I like the taste of blood. I like the feel of the blade slicing through my skin and the ache of scars that stay with me for the years after.” Astegur reached up and swiped his hand across his chest, across his numerous scars. “But there is only you, not a war at all.”

  “Elscalian!” the centaur screamed, charging him.

  Astegur hesitated. It was almost too easy. The centaur wants to die.

  He bowed forward at the last second and dove under the hooves of the centaur, rearing his head up at the same time. His horn
s slid into the stud’s belly, stopping the beast in his tracks as his innards showered Astegur’s head and horns. He withdrew his horns and rolled to the side just as the centaur toppled to the ground.

  Astegur got to his hooves and exhaled the rest of the steam in his belly.

  He spat out the blood that had filled his mouth at the corpse. When he was sure both centaurs were dead, he dropped his hands into the marsh water and rinsed them clean of horse filth.

  He hurried through the bloodrites for his kills and retrieved his weapons, sheathing them as he went. It wasn’t until he moved away that another noise sounded the air.

  His ears pricked. He slowed his breathing. His hand flexed on his weapon again.

  To his right, a figure moved toward him, growing steadily closer with deliberate, slurpy footsteps. It was significantly smaller than a centaur, and as the figure fell away from the mist and into his line of sight, he recognized the female who had visited his cave.

  Astegur took a step forward but halted as the numbing effect of the blood vial began to wear off, and the itch under his skin returned.

  The female moved closer.

  He narrowed his eyes to search her person for a weapon he might have to dodge, but as he did so, he realized she wasn’t the same female from the cave. The scent of old, dead, human flesh filled his nose.

  A thrall.

  She stopped beside the final green orb and stared at him, as if she could not move closer, could not clear the distance to him because something held her back. Her long, black, stringy hair and features were similar to his phantom visitor...but not quite.

  Her mouth parted slightly as he closed the distance between them. His fingers tensed at his sides when a harrowing scream tore from her throat at his approach.

  Astegur dropped to his knees in excruciating agony, his bloody hands cupping his ears. Mists! Pain in the form of screams ripped through him from tendon to bone, rending his body apart. Gritting his teeth, gathering his strength, he released a bellow of rage and reached for his axe again when a familiar voice shattered the torturous sound.

  “Begone, Mother! He is mine.”

  Chapter Three

  Calavia rushed to the minotaur’s side as he fell to his knees, shoving past her mother as she went. She caught him, pressing her palms to his shoulders as he fell forward, stopping him from landing face first in the water. His weight rocked her back, making her legs slip and her knees sink into the muck, but her strength was enough to stop him from crushing her.

  With as much power as she could muster, she pushed him, her feet and knees sinking further into the marsh, and was able to topple him onto his back. He landed with a splash as she inhaled from the exertion.

  Calavia swiped her hair from her face and crawled to his side, atop the reeds that were now all broken around them. When she was sure he wouldn’t sink, she glanced up to fight off her mother, but she was nowhere to be seen.

  She exhaled and returned her attention to the minotaur.

  Cuts, some deep, some shallow and jagged, lined his chest and arms. Several stab wounds accompanied them. She reached into the pockets of her now sodden dress and pulled out a clump of cove and, setting it upon the minotaur’s lean, hard stomach, crushed it between her fingers. She added a healthy dose of slumber moss to it to help sedate him. Within minutes she filled all of the open wounds she had access to with the herbs, chanting under her breath.

  The wrinkles of pain on his brow soon vanished, and much of the tension left his body in the minutes following.

  She waited, hoping he would remain awake enough to enter Prayer and her domain, but sedate enough to get him there without harm befalling her. As time passed without movement on his part, her gaze left his wounds to travel the length of his body.

  An uncomfortable feeling settled in the pit of her belly.

  He’s so large, so heavy. Her fingers, which had been touching his heated flesh, jerked away. She squeezed them into her palm. His warmth stayed with them.

  The minotaur was completely different up close. That foreboding ache in her gut grew worse.

  He looked more like a man and less like a beast than she realized. Her gaze slipped over his hard, scarred face in curiosity.

  Unlike Vedikus, the bullish look was not pronounced, his nose, forehead, and jawline less blunt.

  Her eyes trailed to his jutting horns, which protruded thickly from his temples and just above his ears. They were covered in blood and bits of flesh, and their tips looked as sharp as a dagger’s point. They were embedded like bone and had the appearance of such… At least she assumed they did from what she could see under the gore upon them.

  Sharpened bone makes for good weapons. This beast of the labyrinth was born with such a weapon straight from the womb, even if they hadn’t grown in yet.

  Calavia swallowed. She dropped her gaze downward, over his thick neck that blended into his huge shoulders and farther down still, over his dirty chest covered in a macabre of scars, and to where his pelvis tapered to his legs. A heavy looking, animal pelt loincloth shielded his sexual organs from view but not his heavily furred legs and hooves. It was all caked in mud but she still touched it with her fingertips.

  The fur was as thick and rough as the rest of his body, and just as wet.

  The minotaur’s nostrils flared suddenly, and her eyes widened. Smoke poured out of him—much like it had pooled out of her days ago.

  The memory awoke a spark of pain inside her, and she quickly swallowed some of the leftover cove to numb it out. Its raw, bitter taste made her eyes water.

  When she blinked the dew away, she found the minotaur staring up at her. Calavia sat forward and leaned over his face.

  “Can you move?” she asked, her voice barely a whisper. She did not want to startle him into lashing out. His gaze was unfocused although he grunted again. She sat back and looked around, searching for a way to transport him to her temple.

  Several thralls came forward.

  Calavia turned back to the minotaur. “You are under my protection now.” She looked at her thralls. “Carry him to the old bath in my temple.” The thralls moved on either side of her champion, and pale, long limbs reached out to grasp the giant bull and lift him.

  “They will do you no harm,” she said, although he made no move as if he heard her, or when the thralls grasped him. Regardless, she had seen him fight off the centaurs from a distance, so she knew what he was capable of.

  He could slaughter every one of us without qualm. Had she made the right choice in bringing him here? The sooner he was in the walls of her sanctuary, the safer they would all be.

  In the end, it took a half-dozen thralls to get him on his hooves and when he looked as if he wasn’t going to fall again, Calavia ducked under his meaty arm and wrapped hers around his back. His bulk pressed against her side but not enough to send them back to the ground. She took a step forward and he moved with her, and before long, she was leading him toward her temple.

  She didn’t know how long it took them, or how much time had passed, but the day was darkening to eventide by the time they made it up the several broken steps of her home and into the overgrown, viney passage beyond. The thralls stopped following them and went back to wander. She led him to the pool room and lowered him to the floor.

  It won’t be long now before his senses return. Calavia hoped that he wouldn’t immediately try to kill her, at least not before they spoke. She didn’t want him to find out he couldn’t kill her.

  She didn’t want to give him another reason to try. If she lost too much blood, her secret would be out. She looked around her and sighed, moving away from the minotaur’s overwhelming presence, and sourced out the blisterbark and bowls she had stashed beside the fire pit.

  Without her knowing, his unfocused eyes watched her every movement.

  Chapter Four

  His vision faded in and out and he was delirious with the pain. His skull was on the verge of cracking open because it could no longer contain the meat w
ithin. But he was moving, that much he knew. A small female was under his shoulder, with her arm around his back, helping him. He vaguely recognized that he was being led into Prayer—into its mist magic—and deeper into the bowels of a place where the mist was a friend rather than a foe.

  It seemed like an eternity before they stopped and the world around him ceased blurring together. The female under his arm helped him to the ground.

  He locked his muscles so he wouldn’t reach for her and the unusual comfort her presence gave. Her touch was gentle and soothing. It had been so long since something touched him in that way. Not since he was a young bull seeking affection from the older female minotaurs in his clan. But their affection was often misplaced.

  He was a Bathyr after all, and his father was the leader of their old tribe. Female bulls often wanted to try and use him—his brothers—to cure their infertility, but he was neither the cause nor the reason for their tribe’s curse. The affection from this small female’s touch was a weakness he would have to cauterize, Astegur knew, because he craved it so much even after such a short time.

  Creatures, once human or otherwise, did not give comfort freely. Not in this world.

  The crackle and heat of blisterbark filled the space and he bowed his head forward in exhaustion.

  A wet rag touched his back and he jerked his head up.

  “Be still,” the female ordered.

  “Who are you?”

  “You know who I am,” she said. “Your hated hag of this settlement. Calavia some call me. It’s my given name, but it is rarely spoken aloud anymore. This place does not get many visitors.”

  Water sluiced down his skin, tickling him with each drop. Slowly, the feel of the itch faded and a sense of calm overcame him. Another, fresher wave of numbness overcame him and took away the majority of his pain. The hag washed him with water fused with medicinal cove. He could smell the herb in the air, could feel its effects immediately within his wounds. Astegur raised his head to ensure he was still in possession of his bags and weapons. They lay next to him.