Caravan Herd

Zane Joly

“Stay still, sweety,” Akhna instructed as she carefully threaded a string through a translucent blue glass bead. It slid down and joined the others on the necklace.

“This is boring, mom,” complained Rhiannon, “And this thing is heavy.” Resting on the young centaur girl’s horse back was a wooden board with small walls at its edges to keep anything on it from rolling off. The girl’s mother, Akhna, was walking along beside her, hooves treading over the grassy earth beneath them.

“You’ll thank me later,” Akhna said, “It helps to build your leg muscles. And a tolerance for uncomfortable situations is a very important skill. Now which do you think would be best, turquoise, or aquamarine?”

The mother centaur held up two beads of slightly different shades of blue. She was halfway done with a necklace, and the supplies lay scattered on the board, rolling everywhere. About a dozen finished necklaces also lay off to one side, in a pile. Akhna was the best, and only, beader of the caravan herd. Each centaur practiced and excelled at a different art. All around them, the rest of the caravan herd worked on their crafts, mothers balancing boards on their daughters’ backs as they walked. One of them wrote songs, one painted with watercolors, one quilted, another wrote poems, et cetera.

Centaurs, male and female, had long hair that stretched down to the waist and came in all colors, helping to control the temperature on their exposed skin and swat away insects when necessary. Akhna’s was a long indigo ponytail, while her daughter’s brilliant orange hair hung loose.

“I don’t know,” Rhiannon said, “They look the same to me.”

“They are similar, yes, but the difference is still important. Attention to detail is paramount to any craft.”

Rhiannon sighed. “Aquamarine, I guess.” Her mother tried it. She held the necklace up to the sun and looked at it from a few different angles.

“Yes, I think that works,” Akhna said, “Thank you, darling.”

“Whatever,” Rhiannon mumbled as she looked out towards the boys playing near the edges of the herd. While the mothers and their teenage daughters crafted, with the youngest boys and girls following behind their mothers, the teenage male centaurs played and ran, slightly separate from the rest so they wouldn’t upset anyone’s work. They jostled and fought and laughed. “Why can’t I go play like them?” Rhiannon complained.

Her mother looked up at the boys and sighed, “Because, you’re going to have a different life than them. They need to be strong fighters so they can one day protect a herd and prove themselves as a mate and maybe lead male, like Marshall. You need to grow strong so you can defend yourself and flee when necessary, but you also need to learn how to make art. It's much more fulfilling than rough-housing.”

“The boys are so lucky,” the younger centaur huffed.

“They have to leave the herd when they barely reach adulthood, darling,” said Akhna, “I’d hardly call that lucky. There are disadvantages to our role, and disadvantages to theirs, and we do all we can to maintain mutual respect. Be glad you’re not a human. They have even more disturbed views on gender.”

“What about Rosalind?” asked Rhiannon, gesturing to the lead female at the front of the herd. She had dark skin and her green hair was always in a long braid. She had a bow and a quiver of arrows slung over her shoulders at all times, and was always looking around for landmarks to guide the caravan herd’s path from town to town, where they sold their wares. She didn’t have to make bead necklaces. Her husband, Marshall, was the lead male and brought up the rear of the herd, keeping watch to make sure no fights got out of hand.

“Rosalind doesn’t craft, because it's her job to lead and help protect our herd,” Akhna patiently explained, “But she used to be an artist. She crocheted, if I’m not mistaken.” Rhiannon found that unlikely. “You should know how to fight, and how to be fierce, as we all should,” continued her mother, “But it will also serve you to know how to concentrate and make something. I think you might understand better once you’ve been around a few more years.”

Rhiannon was about to say something sarcastic when there was a roar. Cresting the hill in front of them came a lumbering beast. It was humanoid, but about twice as tall as the average human, and a few feet taller than a centaur. Its hands had sharp claws and it was holding a large tree branch as a crude club. It wore poorly stitched together rags that irritated the seamstress centaurs just to look at. Its skin was a dark gray and in the middle of its face was a single eye, large and pale blue. A cyclops. 

“Horsey-men!” the monster yelled. More of its kind began to come up behind it.

“Gallop!” yelled Marshall, “We’re faster and smarter than them, they’ll be easy to lose!”

“That not very nice,” came a deep voice. Trudging up the hill behind the herd came another cyclops, accompanied by his own followers. But this one was a foot taller, and the quality of its mis-matched clothes was better, with several bent pieces of armor added to the jumble. Two horns protruded from its head, and it was presumably the leader.

More and more cyclopes appeared, ahead and behind. The herd outnumbered them about three to one, not counting the youngest children, but they were fierce looking creatures, albeit dumber than moldy cheese. This ambush was unusually well set up for the oafs.

  “No gallopopping for horsey-men,” said the lead cyclops, “Horsey-men will die. We will eat flesh of the horsey-men, and use horsey-men bones to pick our teeth. Crush weak-” He never got to finish the sentence, because an arrow landed directly in the center of his eye. The behemoth fell to the ground, blood pooling from the wound.

Rosalind, the lead female, tilted her head and nocked another arrow, “I’m sorry,” she yelled, “I couldn’t understand your lame-ass monologue that sounded like it took editing passes from a four-year-old. It was too hard to hear over the sound of you dying like a BITCH!”

“Excellent shot, love!” yelled Marshall, brandishing his warhammer, “Now, battle formations!”

The childless adult females and the adolescent boys readied themselves to fight, while the children and mothers clustered together, the youngest children kept safe in the very center. The cyclopes charged, an ugly screaming mass.

Rosalind continued to strike them down with volley after volley of arrows. When they finally reached her, she just kicked at them while firing arrows at others farther away. “Come on you one-eyed, two-legged fuckers!” she yelled, “I know that you don’t have depth perception, so you should know that my hooves aren’t getting larger, they’re just getting closer TO YOUR FACE!”

The cyclopes were strong, but they were much slower than the centaurs, and the caravan herd’s warriors used this to their advantage, dodging out of the way of attacks, then responding by kicking with all the force they had. Marshall swung his hammer back and forth, crunching bones with each swing. The cyclopes were bipedal and as a result had remarkably poor balance. Once pushed over, the young male centaurs would immediately overwhelm them, letting loose battlecries as they stomped the monsters into paste. 

“Every once in a while, they prove themselves to be more useful than they are annoying,” commented Ahkna to her daughter with an impassive tone.

Some of the cyclopes seemed to realize that the warrior centaurs weren’t worth it, and went for the more vulnerable civilians. One in particular was getting very close, and its gaze was set on Rhiannon. Akhna noticed and reached into the saddlebags at her side. She pulled out a slingshot that her daughter had never before seen, and loaded the turquoise bead into it. She calmly lifted the weapon up and pulled back the string. Akhna didn’t release it though, waiting for some cue that Rhiannon couldn’t detect. When the creature was only a few feet away, she released the sling and the bead shot straight into the creature’s eye. It roared and stumbled backwards in pain. It tripped over a stone and landed with a mighty thump on the ground. Rhiannon’s mother wasted no time trotting forward, raising her front hooves up, then bringing them down on the cyclops’ neck. Her daughter looked away and tried to block out the sound. Her mother returned to her side as if nothing had happened. 

“How… how did you do that?” Rhiannon asked.

Akhna just smiled and said, “Well, the turquoise bead is a nice weight and size for slinging, and I had to wait until the creature was close enough that the rock was just behind it so it could trip over it. And I happen to know one specific part of the neck that, if you bring your weight down on it, will kill your opponent. As I said before, attention to detail is paramount to any craft, including the craft of battle.”

“I just didn’t know that you were so cool and… murdery,” said Rhiannon

That just made her mother laugh. “You might not remember this, but I stomped a basilisk to death while holding you when you were a baby. This is nothing. We all need some fierceness in us, and we also need some beauty. The two aren’t as separate as you might think.”

“There’s a gap!” yelled Marshall, pointing to a wide space where there weren’t any cyclopes to stop the caravan herd, “Let’s go! Gallop!”

The sound of hooves striking the earth filled the air as the centaurs turned and escaped. The cyclopes weren’t nearly fast enough to catch up. They tried to throw things at the disappearing centaurs, but a lack of depth perception didn’t help their artillery skills. Rosalind noted this and yelled out many comments on it to the cyclopes, accompanied by a few rude hand gestures and a couple of vulgar obscenities.

When the caravan herd were sure they were a safe distance away, they stopped to catch their breath and tend to the wounded. Thankfully, no one had died, and none of the injuries sustained would be fatal. Just a few flesh wounds and broken bones.

Akhna set her crafting board in front of her while she sat and continued her work. She noticed that Rhiannon had not let a single bead fall out in all the panic of fleeing. She smiled. Her girl certainly could keep steady when she needed to. She was about to put the aquamarine bead on the string when Rhiannon settled down next to her and put her head on her mother’s shoulder. Akhna lightly stroked her daughter’s long orange hair.

“I’ve been thinking about your question about the beads,” commented Rhiannon hesitantly, “And I think that one might work better.” She pointed to one of the other beads.

Akhna held it up to the light, then set it alongside the others already on the necklace. “It’s called cyan,” she said gently, “And yes, I’d say that it fits the color palette quite well. Excellently spotted, darling.”