Waiting impatiently for the starting gun, Stacey rocked on the balls of her feet with her eyes fixed on the big centaur. The centaur had noticed her eyes on him and grinned with a ferocious reassurance.
"You will come with me soon," he called to her. "With the way you're looking at me, you can't wait, can you? The Ancients might let me keep you for myself. I'll fill you up and satisfy you such that you'll never want another male. I'll carry you back to our tribe to bear our young. We will welcome you to help expand our population."
He went on to give a graphic account of what the Ancients might do to her. Then he detailed what he was planning to do to her if he was allowed to keep her. His fellow beastmen listened and whooped as they listened. Stacey wanted to reach out and cut his tongue out, chop the head off his neck and quarter his horse parts. But a hand on her arm held her back and she remembered what the evil man had told her earlier.
The evil man walked with another man wearing a gold medallion around his neck to the middle of the empty land between the two armies. The centaur stopped taunting her go to meet them there. They talked but Stacey couldn't hear what was being said. She only heard a distant murmur covered by the wind.
What were they talking about? Stacey danced on her feet, wanting to go up and at them. Only the hand on her elbow holding her back reminded her that she wasn't allowed to go after her enemies just yet. Stacey glanced back. A woman held her elbow firmly. The woman's short hair was hidden beneath a helmet and she carried a spear that held a curved blade to one side of a central spike and a sharp hook on the other.
As if feeling Stacey staring at her, she met Stacey's eyes with a gentle smile.
"Scared?"
"Scared?" Stacey repeated. "No."
Why would she be scared? She was going to kill and disembowel and castrate that centaur. And then she was going to kill the evil man who was her real enemy. He said she could try.
"Good. That's good," the woman said, almost to herself. "It's better that way. Maybe he was right."
"I'm going to kill him," Stacey told the woman, assuming she was talking about the evil man.
The woman sighed and pointed to the beastmen.
"Pay attention. It's nearly time."
Stacey went back to staring at the centaur, focusing all her intent on killing it first.
The centaur returned to his army. The evil man and the fat man with the golden chain returned to the human army. There was shouting and roaring from both sides. Both sides chanted things at each other for a bit.
Then BANG.
The sudden sound echoed across the plain, silencing both armies. It shocked Stacey. The shock struck her in the heart like an arrow, making her stumble back and clutch her chest. Panicking fear suddenly pierced her through. Her mind whirled in confusion and her vision blurred for a moment.
The thunder of hooves and roar of many voices, both human and animal filled the air. For a moment, Stacey couldn't breathe. She dropped whatever she was holding to cover her ears and crouch down.
The woman by her side was shouting and pulling at her but Stacey could only stare at her with wide eyes. The woman pressed something back into her hand and stepped away from Stacey to defend her from a cat-eared man with claws on his fingers. Hard hooves leapt past them, kicking people or bashing beasts aside. The centaur loomed over Stacey with a chipped machete in his hands and an arrogant smile.
The machete was dripping blood.
Centaur. The centaur.
The sight of the creature with his big dangling organ overrode the panic with the need to kill. It was like a ride of blood washed through her, casting the paralysing fear aside. Anger burned from deep within and flared up to give her mind sudden clarity. Purpose filled her limbs with an intensity that made her shake. He was the one to blame. It was his fault. All his fault. And she was going to kill him. Kill him!
"Were you waiting for me, sweeting?" the centaur's voice rumbled and his arm reached down to pick her up but Stacey's sudden return of her senses gave her just enough time to evade with a roll. She felt the brush of his hand against her back.
Gripping the weapon in her hand, Stacey found her feet. The world shrunk around her into a space with just the centaur and her. With a shout, she attacked, but the centaur met her with contemptuous ease.
Her arm went numb when he parried her blow and staggered. He used far more strength than that evil man had. So much so that she knew there was no way for her to fight him head on. He sliced toward her slowly and lazily, seeming to be aware of how poor her skills were and wanting to play with her. This time she parried his blow, only to be driven back once more. She shook her numb arms out, but he chopped at her with another downward stroke without waiting for her to recover. Stacey could barely keep a grip on her weapon and stumbled when she jumped aside on the uneven ground. With a contemptuous horizontal stroke and a flick of his wrist, he disarmed her.
Her long knife flew in a shining arc to land a fair distance away behind a trainee who stepped on it by accident and fell. The blade was too far away for her to be able to safely retrieve. Stacey didn't have the time to see what happened to him because the centaur's bulk filled her vision and blocked her view.
Stacey shook and rubbed her right hand. He was far, far stronger than her - than even that evil man. If the evil man had been using his full strength, he might not even be a match for this centaur. But then the evil man had taught her other strategies to deal with opponents stronger than her. She just needed to be smart enough and fast enough to distract them to give herself an opening to attack.
She fumbled to unsheathe the knife at her belt but the centaur had caught her about the waist before she could fully pull it out. When she was yanked up into the air and folded over her middle, she could only watch the knife fall to the ground. She lost her breath for a moment, slightly confused at how the world had turned upside down and needed a second to reorient herself. Stacey lamented her poor reaction speed for a split second and regathered her determination. She hadn't lost yet. As long as she was still alive to fight, she didn't have to surrender. Then she kicked and fought to escape the centaur's grip, but a hard fist knocked the back of her head, stunning her.
The ground whooshed and blurred past dizzily. Her ears rang.
It hadn't been a hard knock. It hadn't knocked her out. But it had made her feel stupid and dizzy for a long moment. Perhaps the centaur had been worried he might kill her if he hit her any harder. In any case, he had achieved his goal in capturing her. The centaur laughed, patting her backside. Stacey felt her already red face redden even more in humiliation. His arm dug into her midriff painfully and the whole weight of her body was hung on his arm as if she was a pile of laundry. Every forceful bump of his hooves striking the ground jogged Stacey in his arms and forced the air out of her.
Humiliating. This was humiliating.
Frustration and anger shook Stacey out of her stunned state but she didn't immediately start struggling again. She needed to think things through and plan. Against a stronger enemy, she had to be smarter. That's what the evil man had said. She had to be sly, devious and plan ahead by several moves.
Stacey took stock of her situation. Raising her head, she realised that she was being carried away from the battlefield. There were other girls also being carried away like her but they were fighting tooth and nail with everything they had - if they weren't unconscious. Some were pulling out weapons from all sorts of places on their bodies. Stacey could see one beastman fighting with his prize but was being stabbed by multiple hidden weapons until he almost looked like he was turning into a pincushion. Another slit her own throat but the beastman didn't even notice.
Hidden weapons. That was right.
What hidden weapons did she have?
Then she remembered. The evil man had stuck something under her helmet in her hair. That's right. She still had that knife.