I am a creature of war. A centaurine, to be precise. Before my colt died, I was all gnashing teeth and nerves of ice. Even now, my chest burns for air thick with bravado, my ears long for clanging iron amidst hoof beats, and my nostrils quiver for bitter fear oozing from a thousand stupid men. But with Cadeyrn gone, I'm not sure what manner of creature I am anymore. One who trembles more than she ought, banished from battle, and ashamed. Yes, I'm mortified by the fear that licks down my withers and loosens my knees on the quietest of nights.
       I've seen ruined warhorses before. Daft beasts, strung tight as drawn bows, eyes red-rimmed and overflowing with distrust. They're killed when they break like that. I'll not break. Certainly not over something as small as a foal.
       Tonight while I'm walking the borderlands, the hollow wail of a human child rebounds through the mountain pass, and my hysterical mind latches onto the fresh memory of my own colt's hungry nickering. A week ago, he lived. I curl up my lip to keep it from trembling. The stallions usually deal with human brats. I've not got the strength to deal with any sort of infant just now.
       A second cry peels through the flats, and my aching teats tighten even as my legs twitch and bunch. The urge to scramble back to my herd and press into the thick of warm bodies amidst Drest's calming stallion musk overwhelms me. Cowed by the call of a human bairn? I blink up past the mountain walls to the cloud-clogged sky above, exhale with a snort, and trot toward the sound.
       I am not a ruined horse who bolts at noises in the night.
       The stupid child's sobs ratchet higher as I pick my way between lichen carpeted boulders. Snowflakes swarm like clumsy moths, slapping my cheeks and settling in the hollow of my back, but they do nothing to cool the anger bubbling up my chest as I press toward the mouth of the canyon. Why does this child's sobbing pierce me when I've let a thousand death cries roll off my back ignored? I flare my nostrils, sample the frigid air, and pinpoint the human's scent ahead. A boy. He's pissed himself. The only other scents riding the breeze with him are the oily tang of wool and the acrid smell of bird shit. He's leading sheep, and ducks, or geese. I can't tell which from here. So far, no predators have closed on this easy meal. As far as I can smell, it's just the boy, his menagerie, and I.
       The villagers always send their orphans with livestock, part of their tithes to our herd. When they send too many children, Drest just kills them and takes the animals. He'd want me to do the same as we have enough orphans for our needs at present. Prove you are still hard, a steely edge of my mind urges. I scuff my hooves through the scree. Pebbles skitter before me, clattering off into the dark.
       The boy's cries pinch off, and I pick his form out amongst the rock formations. Two sheep trail behind him on leads and he holds a fat goose under one arm. Curled hair tufts the top of his head.
       Like Cadeyrn's. Just like your colt's. My throat closes like a snare, and I cannot call out a greeting.
       "Man or beast?" the boy croaks.
       I blink and crush my misery the only way I know how, with raw anger. "What a stupid question!" I sputter. "Men are dangerous fools, and beasts can't speak. How exactly do you expect one to answer?"
       The goose hisses and the boy drops the bird, reaches behind him and buries his hand deep into the wooly ruff of one of his sheep. It seems I'm not the only one seeking security amongst warm bodies.
       "Some beasts can speak," he says. "Man or centaur?"
       "Neither." I sneer.
       Clouds break, and moonlight waterfalls down the mountain slopes to bathe us in bone coloured tones. I straighten, despite feeling naked under the boy's stare. I've charged bare-breasted into spear-prickled phalanxes of white-eyed soldiers without feeling exposed. Stars above, why would I feel timid now under a pasty child's gaze?
       He lets go of the sheep and pulls at the damp crotch of his kilt. "If you are not a centaur, then your horse has lost his head."
       A whinnying laugh bursts up my throat, surprising me as much as the human. "Centaurine." I shift my javelin from the crook of my arm and spread my arms wide. "Or do I look male to you?"
       His eyes goggle. All the same. I've yet to meet a human male who cannot be flustered by a set of robust breasts.
       "You--you're a mother?"
       That's when I feel it, after I've uncrossed my arms, milk leaking from my teats, running down my lean stomach, a maternal reaction to the child's cries.
       "Was." My chest hitches and, although my skin crawls, I do not hunch over and succumb to my despair. Swallow your emotions, my mind blares, and deal with this half-legs like a proper warrior. Do not think of Cadeyrn now. Forget the pale curls, ruddy cheeks and delicate lips. The boy standing before me is built to the same proportions as my own son, although this one must have at least nine springtimes to his name. Cadeyrn was a mere month old when... when--centaur children grow at accelerated rates their first years, otherwise just picture the poor things, frolicking on coltish legs with flopping, heavy-headed torsos.
       "I'm sorry." The human rubs his lower lip.
       "Why on earth should you be?" I bark, and my hoof stamps, sending gravel flying. "It had nothing to do with you."
       Piteous bawls burst from both sheep, curling past their mouths in puffs of fog. The goose dips its head, mantles its wings, and hisses again. Despite the venom in my voice, the boy grips their leads and, to his credit, does not recoil. "Because your baby died." He does falter then, forehead creasing and chin wrinkling. "My Mum and Dad died too. I know how it feels."
       You have no idea. None. Parents are meant to die before their children. That's what I want to say, but the words catch like burs in my throat. I smooth one hand down my goose-fleshed belly. It's sticky with my milk. My fingers pluck ice clumps from my matted winter hide. Raising my eyebrows, I pour as much compassion into my voice as I can. It tastes like maple sap that's spoiled. "How did they die?" I don't care, really, but two blights are scouring the lower pass village right now, and one of them is transferable to our kind, a wicked cough that fills the chest with thick phlegm.
       The boy wipes his nose, and I frown at the stream of mucous plastered across the back of his hand.
       Club him over the head, take his sheep. Eat the goose. That's what Drest would do. Not worth the risk to the herd. I'd witnessed a coughing illness when I was on siege in Belgica.
       Our Captain disbanded the centaurine group after the first month. Humans appreciated us for our fighting skills, but we ate far too much to be advantageous during an extended siege. Just as well that my older sister Cynbel and I departed when we did, because a scourge of coughing decimated the troops after that. We only caught the edge of it, but I remember hacking all the way home, unable to ease the stiffness binding my top chest.
       I clear my throat. "Was it a coughing sickness?"
       The sandy curls on the boy's head sweep back and forth.
       My hearts ache. I want to run my fingers through his mane to feel if it's as soft as Cadeyrn's.
       "No." He tucks his hands into his armpits. "They got sores and these big lumps under their arms and on their face. They spat up blood at the end." Tears well up in his eyes and he blinks up at the jaundiced moon. "I wanted to stay with my parents, but the elders chased me into the pass when they found them. They're scared I'm sick, but I'm not. I'm not lying."
       "I believe you." I'd encountered a version of the pestilence he described last summer in Aquitaine's coastal settlements. The towns smelled of bile and rotten flesh--like war. This boy did not smell stricken.
       "Are you going to eat me?"
       Another whinny presses past my cracked lips. "Is that what they say we do in the village?" I grin. "I'd starve eating bony half-legs like you."
       "You graze then, like a horse?"
       A disgusted snort punctuates my answer. "I'm no grass guts."
       The boy points a finger toward the beaded gorget around my neck. "Bevyn says that your necklaces are made of the teeth of people you've eaten."
       I run a finger over ridged pearls of worn enamel. "They're my teeth," I purr. "All mine."
       "That doesn't make sense." He frowns and backs away from me, distrust hardening his still moist eyes.
       "You've lost teeth, yes?"
       He purses his lips and nods. One of the sheep butts his hip, and he swats it away with a mumbled curse. The goose lunges and nips at the boy's fingers.
       "Show me, "I demand.
       Curling up his lip, the boy pokes his pink tongue through the square gaps between.
       "Come here."
       He closes his mouth, shakes his head, and locks his knees. The whites of his eyes flash. They remind me of the hoplite's eyes over their cumbersome apsis shields. The Macedonians called me Akonistai--javelin thrower, and they called my sister Toxotoi. She was an archer and never understood why I chose to remain in a novitiate position instead of advancing to the bow. I told her, "I like to see the whites of their eyes before I crack open their phalanx." You couldn't swim in their fear from an archer's far position.
       Whiffs of the boy's terror tickle my nose. Good. He looks nothing like Cadeyrn when he's scared. He's not sick, but I should still kill him to verify that coldness runs in my veins. Flicking my wrist, I pivot my javelin so that its point hovers over the ground before me. "If you would not like a javelin through your belly, come here now."
       He whimpers, hunches his shoulders and edges toward me, wet breaths billowing in and out faster than a winded charger's.
       I draw a long inhalation of his fear and realize my mistake only when my nostrils catch the scent of his hair, sleepiness and sweet hay. Cadeyrn. My legs wilt. I dig the point of the javelin into the ground between the boy's booted feet, but cannot keep my balance as nostalgia drags me down like a wild cat latched onto my back. I drop to my knees and smile unsteadily, masking the move as one of compassion. Before the boy can back away, I grab his chin and press my finger and thumb into the softness of his cold cheeks until he opens his mouth.
       Teeth clenched, saliva bubbling between them, the boy starts to sob again.
       I'd much rather smell his fear than his softness. "You are lucky the valley lynx didn't hear you howling before I did." I rasp, leaning on my javelin and peering into his mouth, all the while breathing in deep draughts of the boy's youth like I could live on it alone. Hooves and hands, I've gone soft. What am I doing, falling into his scent, imagining he's my lost boy? I tighten my grip on the child's mottled cheeks, and he winces and falls silent. The sheep mill behind him, stamping their cloven hooves at the tension crystallizing around us while the goose clicks its beak. "Yes, you've lost all your front teeth. If I knock these new ones in right now, you'd be smiling through that gap for the rest of your life."
       "Please don't," his plea whistles through clenched teeth.
       I let him go. We measure each other, and I wait for him to run, so I can heave to my feet chase him down and dispatch him, but he eyes me and stands his ground, wide-stanced and knobby-kneed like a new colt.
       Stop comparing him to a damned colt, I shiver. Keep him talking while you decide how to kill him. "Do you have any more loose ones?"
       "What?"
       "Teeth."
       Tendons stand out on his neck as he stares at my elaborate necklace. "No."
       I lean toward him, and his breath catches. Peeling back my lip, I grip one of my canine teeth and slur, "Look." I waggle the loose tooth back and forth. "I lose mine all the time. Two stomachs mean double the hunger, and my teeth wear out fast. A couple of sets aren't enough for a centaurine lifetime." I click my fingernails down the beads of my gorget. "All the ones I've lost. All mine."
       Fear dissolves from the boy's eyes, replaced by the kind of unabashed approval young boys reserve for gory achievements. He grins.
       Suddenly, I need to know him before I end him. He's got more bile than most half-legs I've met. "What's your name?"
       "Aedan." He flexes his fingers. "Yours?"
       "Morcant."
       "Are you not cold, Morcant?" Aedan's teeth clatter as he rakes snow out of his hair.
       "Why?"
       "Well, it's winter, and you have…" He dips his chin. "You haven't any clothes."
       "Neither do your ewes or that ornery bird. Do you think they are cold?"
       "They wear wool."
       "Aye, and geese have down, but not on their feet. Traipse through the ice bare-skinned all the time, don't they?"
       "I suppose." The boy considers my logic before pointing at my legs. "You're wearing braces on your ankles. What are they for?"
       I'd gone lame late in my pregnancy. Even now, a month after Cadeyrn slid out of me like a slick fish, the frogs of my hooves still throb, and my ankles often twinge. I wear my battle braces to keep the swelling down.
       "Is it armour? Bevyn says that centaurs don't wear armour."
       "Bevyn sounds like a tremendous idiot." I smile. Gravel prods my knees, so I sigh and ease my back end to the ground, settling into softly curled repose. "Centaurs don't wear armour because they grow too large and slow to be passable warriors. They can't gallop fast, and they're too clumsy to fight over more than a filly. Centaurines." I press a palm against my clavicle and bow my head. "We're the brave warriors." Liar, my mind brays. You've never been so full of fear. You're too soft to kill men if this mere child can beguile you. And if you're not a warrior, what is left for you? Better to take your own life than be a broodmare for Drest. Another pregnancy would break you. You cannot even look at a human boy without Caderyn's memory crushing you.
       "You don't wear armour because you're brave?" The boy interrupts my thoughts.
       I've lost all my armour, and I'm weak and exposed. "I didn't say that." I swallow my thoughts. "I wear a peytral and ankle braces." In truth, the ankle braces are all I have left. I sold my beautiful scrolled breastplate for rations in North Gaul. It would have weighed me down on the swim over the strait anyways.
       "But you wear nothing above the waist?" Aedan looks dubious.
       "I wear my gorget."
       "Do you not have any vitals up top? You're tall, but spears could still reach you."
       Stars, he's clever this one. When was the last time I had a passable conversation with a half-legs? Perhaps, I don't need to decide his fate just yet. "Aye, they could. Macedonian dorys are twice as tall as I am. They're not throwing spears, but they'd reach me well enough." The real reason why I avoid torso armour is a second set of large nostrils on either side of my spine. All centaurs have them. The vertical slits between our shoulder blades furnish our lower bodies with adequate air when we gallop, and allow us to catch scent from two directions. That's how I pinpointed the boy in the dark. Any torso covering would suffocate me and stifle my vital sense of smell. There's a classic falsehood as to why centaurines choose to go bare though, so I offer that instead. "Most men are rendered inoperative by my immaculate breasts."
       Aedan laughs, a crooked, awkward sound, but almost as delightful as a whinny, and I smile back. I've missed social banter, and I didn't expect to find it tonight. I've doubled my solitary border guard shifts, eager to avoid the pitying eyes and clucking tongues of my own herd, but I don't mind basking in this boy's curious awe. I haven't shared anything in a long time. A mindless conversation seems safe enough.
       "Pechtish women go bare-breasted too," he says. "At least in the summertime. Wouldn't their men be used to it?"
       The Pecht tribe east of the range often launches forays into the pass, bent on burning villages and stealing sheep. That's why the farmers pay us a portion of their crops and animals, to avoid losing everything. And the village elders give us their orphans. Our small centaur herd has blockaded the mountain pass for as long as we can remember.
       "It's not only Pechtish men I skewer. Some men, to the south, they've never even seen a centaurine. Half of them stand in place with their mouths agape as I run them down."
       Aedan frowns. "Briton has centaurs, Same as Caledonia."
       "I fought further south."
       "There is no further south, only the salt lake after Briton."
       "Did your Bevyn tell you that too?" I nicker. "It only takes a day and a night to swim the strait. After that, there are lands so far south you cannot even imagine them. Moist and hot, full of sandy beaches and fertile lands, olives, and figs. The summer is so long it nearly lasts the whole year." That, in fact, is what expelled me from my last campaign, not the long summer, per se, but the early spring preceding it.
       Cynbel and I had been hired as mercenaries by the Macedonians to repel their unruly Illyrian foes. I marched in high spirits. Not only was this my first campaign to the far south, but I'd always fancied meeting one of our Macedonian cousins. Centaurs are said to originate from the Greek region, after all.
       Well, meet I did. During a delightful skirmish one afternoon, I extracted an arrow from the thigh of a fellow Akonistai Centaur admiring, as I did so, his slender physique so unlike our thick-limbed stallions at home. Later, when he came to thank me, a lift of my tail and a coy wink suitably aroused him into a proper position of gratitude. He covered me. I leaned back into him as his clipped hooves raked my ribs, and his hands gripped my mane. Our coupling lasted only a few seconds, and while I still preened over it, Cynbel stalked up behind me and smacked my rump with her bow.
       "Donkey brain," she chastised. "What are you thinking?"
       "Leave off, sister." I smirked, thinking her jealous. She'd campaigned here before, but I'd never once heard stories of sleek, exotic conquests from her lips. "I'm enjoying the local fare."
       "You'll get yourself bred, Fool, and then what?"
       "Nonsense. It's only February." I cycled in season from April to September. During winters, I was infertile and uninhibited by the worry of being saddled by an unwanted pregnancy. I enjoyed my stallions freely when the snow flew.
       "Late February, Morcant." My sister hissed in my ear. "Use your head. That's as good as spring this far to the south. It changes our cycles. Keep your tail tucked if you can?"
       I did after that, chastised by my own naivety, but too late. My young Macedonian stud had seeded me well.
       "Morcant?"
       I blink at the small voice, so unlike my sister's hard whisper.
       "Morcant?" It's the boy, Aedan. He's squatting in the snow, kilt still damp with urine, crowding into the warmth of his cud-chewing sheep while the goose preens itself. "Why didn't you stay there, in the land of long summer?"
       I clear my throat as the shameful answer rises like vomit in my throat. Because, three months later, when my Captain realized I'd fallen gravid and was eating five times the rations of a human soldier, he dismissed me. I had to leave without Cynbel because I was a stupid, thoughtless filly. It took me sixty days of hard travel to get back home from there. "I'm not suited to southern climates, it seems." I smile weakly.
       "That's good. It seems wrong to fight a war that's not yours." Aedan's voice sounds strangely patronizing.
       I am a stupid, thoughtless filly. What am I doing? I came here to prove I'm still hard, not moralize war with a half-legs. My short mane bristles all the way down my back, and I run my tongue over my teeth before answering slowly. "How old are you?"
       "Nine springs."
       "As I thought. Same age as me." My tail whips away from us in the dark, restless, and full of static. "And how many of your nine years have you spent fighting battles that were not yours?" Stars above, humans are so stupid. Such a waste of a languorous youth, and by the time they gain any wisdom at all, their bodies fail them. Pity really. My sides swell, then deflate as I sigh loudly. "War is everywhere, boy. Anywhere there are humans. And they're willing to pay us to fight for them. It's the only thing I do well."
        "You fight for coins?"
       My hand clenches with the compulsion to club the little heathen over the head. "What need would I have for silver?" My teeth clack loudly. "Where, pray tell, would I stow it?"
       Aedan's ears redden, and he hunches down into the loose neck of his ragged wrap, shivering. "I'm sorry."
       "Stop saying that," I snap, shaking snow off my back. "You half-legs are always apologizing when you don't know what else to say. I don't even think your lot know what the words mean anymore. Speak your mind if your lips need to run off."
       Aedan's pupils dilate as he licks his lips. "All right. How did they pay you for fighting? Slaves, like me?"
       "We only use your kind here. Centaurs in warmer climates have no need of half-legs. Their growing seasons are long and their soil fertile, but here, in the pass, we don't have time enough to raise livestock and prepare food. We'd starve. And you're not slaves; you're cooks and farmers, same as you'd be in your own roundhouse. Our hours are spent hunting, and defending your fair village from the Pechts while your kin cower in their hillfort, so don't you dare scorn me for fighting battles that aren't my own!"
       Clouds swallow the moon above us, and the boy's shallow breathing echoes between boulders like birds dashing themselves on the rocks. My upper lip tingles, beading with sweat. How dare he?
        "That's it, then?" Aedan whispers after several hiccupping breaths. "You don't eat us? You keep us on as cooks?"
       My exasperation melts under his uncertainty. "Aye, unless you're useless at it, and then I might eat you on principle," I jest, but the boy just crosses and uncrosses his arms. "We've four other orphans in the herd right now. You might even know some of them." Grumbling rolls through my stomachs loudly, and the boy does smile then. "I'm starving. Are you hungry?" Flipping back the head of my otter pelt sporran, I withdraw a compressed suet cake. Seeds tumble onto my hide, and the smell of salted venison teases saliva into my mouth as I break a rind from my rations. "Here."
       He accepts the chunk with eager thanks, and we chew in silence.
       I have to decide soon, whether to kill the boy or take him back to the herd and tell Drest I have need of an orphan of my own. A lie. I want nothing more than to be alone with my misery until it freezes into numbness. I don't want this boy and I don't want to stay tied to my herd birthing colts until I'm a used up, sway-backed nag.
       Clouds curl over the moon like freshly tilled soil peeling away from a plow blade. Somewhere high on the precipice above us, small hooves clack, probably a goat floating up there amidst the flocking snow.
       "You didn't answer my question," he mumbles.
       "About what, brash boy?"
       "How do they pay you to be a soldier, if not with silver or slaves?"
       "It should be obvious." I suck at a large strip of meat caught between my teeth. "Centaurs are driven by hunger. Food. Land that can supply us with bountiful hunting and good crops to fatten livestock. That's in short supply here. They promised us spoils from the fight. Fertile plots to call our own instead of corralling us in a barren mountain pass. Would you not fight for that, Aedan?"
       He squirms. "They didn't pay you though, did they? You fought, and they didn't pay, and you came home and had a baby."
       I should have clubbed the boy. Drawing a steadying breath, I measure my words out like seeds in a row. "Aye, I had a baby."
       "What happened?"
       Shut your gob. You little shit. My ears fill with ringing, like the screeching clash of iron when frontlines collide. Don't think of your son. I bury my fingernails deep into the meat of my palms. "He died," I state flatly.
       Worse, before Cadeyrn was born, I wished for it. Wouldn't that be the easiest solution, if this burdensome, rib-prodding fetus just fell still? I'd flush it out of my womb and return to the warmth of the south, the familiar numbness of war, and my casual, albeit more cautious trysts with foreigners. But then Cadeyrn tumbled into the world, all soulful, searching eyes and tiny buttery hooves. Legs that went on forever, and that hair. Gobs of pale, wild curls that smelled like dried sweetgrass. With ruddy cheeks and a searching mouth, my nickering foal latched on to my breast, and I fell frantically in love. I stroked the white velvet on his legs as they jutted out of the top of his nursing sling, and within three weeks, Cadeyrn doubled in size and took his first, gamboling steps.
       "How?"
       Startling, I turn toward the voice. My hearts skip a gallop as I see my son's round face on this emaciated, human body, but then his features shift, and I refocus, and it's just the boy Aedan. "H-how, what?" I stammer.
       "How did your baby die? Did he get the sickness, like my Mum and Dad?"
       I swear I'll kill you. I'll beat what little brains you have out of your fool head. But the boy won't drop his stare, and my anger seeps out of me like my milk. I can't explain it. It's just gone, and I have nothing left. No one talks of my loss in the herd. They took me in, pregnant and shameful, without a word, and when my baby died, they offered only silent support. Centaurs don't talk of those who've died. No-one speaks Cadeyrn's name.
       "My colt didn't get sick," I mumble. "Ours can't die of that sickness. You'll be shielded from it too once you swallow a cup of centaurine milk."
        My jaw hangs loose. Something cold is filling the void within me. Is this what breaking feels like? Just say it. Say it out loud and be done with it. You haven't shared Cadeyrn's death with anyone. "Cadeyrn," I quiver, nostrils flaring. "He just fell asleep one night, and didn't wake up." And it's my fault. I did something wrong, I know it. Maybe my milk wasn't sustaining enough. Perhaps I didn't stretch his legs properly. Let him walk too soon. Kept him in a sling too long. I'm not a mother; I'm a warrior. I excel at skewering men and watching them die, but I have no idea how to deal with the loss of a child.
       "I'm sorry."
       The touch of Aedan's small hand on my knee startles me, and I jerk away hard. "Shut your gob." I sniffle, stuffing the last wedge of suet cake into my mouth and brushing crumbs off my knees. My head feels stuffed with moss, but I hoist my back end up, dig my javelin into the rocks and press to a stand despite my tingling legs and throbbing hooves. "Well," I mumble past the last gob of tallow on my tongue. "Time to go."
       The ewes bleat. Snow sloughs off their backs. The goose pulls its head from under its wing and fixes its sharp black eye on me. Aedan swallows the food in his mouth and rises from his squat without using his hands. Wind tosses curls over his dark eyes as he draws his wrap tighter. "Go where?" he whispers.
       I shoulder my javelin, hold out my calloused hand, and wait. "Back to my lair, to eat you, of course."
       The boy breaks into a grin and slips his clammy, little hand up into mine, just like that. So full of damned trust. "Just so you know," he says. "I don't know how to cook."
       "I'll eat the goose raw if I must." Not a bad idea, actually. I haven't tasted fresh blood in some time, and it's a thirst one never loses.
       I'm a warrior still.