Vale of the Vole Read Online Free PDF Page B

smoke. After my prior experience, I am more sensitive to that signal."
    Now Esk smelled it too. "That's dragon, all right! I wish I could see it so I could know when to tell it no."
    "Use your staff," she suggested. "I'll use mine, too."
    "But I can't hit the dragon if I can't see it!"
    "I mean as a sensing device. Hold it out in front of you, and when—"
    "Right." He hefted his staff and pointed it toward the smell of smoke.
    Now they listened, as the dragon huffed closer. Was his staff pointed correctly? Suppose the dragon slid under it or climbed over it? The monster seemed very close! The odor of the smoke was strong. If he waited too long, and got chomped before he—
    "No!" he cried.
    The huffing paused. "It's still some distance away," Chex murmured reprovingly. "Does your protest work at a distance?"
    "No," Esk said, chagrined.
    The dragon seemed to have paused because of the sound of his voice. Now it had a good notion where he was. It growled and charged.
    "No!" Esk cried again. "NoNoNoNoNoNo!"
    The dragon made a disgusted noise and retreated. They heard the scrabble of its claws on the path. "One of those nos must have scored," Chex said.
    "Um," he agreed, embarrassed. He knew he had panicked, and come reasonably close to making a fool of himself. Again.
    "I'm glad you are here," she said. "I could not have diverted it in the dark, and perhaps not in the daytime either. I would have had to run— and that has its own hazards, in the dark."
    "My turn to keep watch," he said, preferring to change the subject.
    "As you wish." He heard a gentle thunk as she lowered her body to the path. He wondered how the forepart of a centaur slept; did it lie flat on the ground or remain vertical? But he didn't care to inquire.
    It turned out that she had kept watch for most of the night. Before very long the sky to the east lightened, and dawn was on the way.
    As the morning arrived, he saw that neither surmise was quite right. Chex's humanoid torso was neither upright nor flat as she slept, but half-leaning back on her equine torso, above her folded wings. Her arms were clasped below her breasts—her pectoral muscles, he corrected himself. Her brown hair merged prettily enough with her mane. She was right, he thought; the hue of her hair matched his exactly, as if they were brother and sister. Could there be siblings of different species? Perhaps not directly, but if they had been born at the same time, when the order for deliveries was for brown hair and gray eyes . . . well, with magic, anything was possible. At any rate, she was a very pretty figure in this repose.
    A beam of sunlight speared down through a gap in the foliage and touched her face. Chex woke, blinking. "Oh, it's morning!" she exclaimed, lifting first her upper section, then her remaining body. "Let me urinate, and we can get moving." She stood at the side of the path, spread her rear legs and did it, while Esk stood startled. He knew that such things were unimportant to centaurs, and that he should simply accept her ways without reaction, but he knew he was about to flush embarrassingly.
    Then he had a bright notion. "Me too," he said, and quickly made his way to a concealing bush and did his own business. She would think it was because of his quaint human modesty, and that was true, but it was mainly to give himself a chance to clear his flush before rejoining her.
    "You really ought to do something about that foible," she remarked
    innocently as she plucked a pie from an overhanging tree. Her greater height, in the front section, caused her breas—her pectoral muscles to lift to his eye level as she reached up.
    Esk did not respond, because he wasn't sure to which foible she referred. But he suspected she was right, and he resolved to try to learn how to perform natural functions in her sight without blushing. After all, each culture had its own ways, and he wasn't among human beings now. Certainly he never wanted to be caught staring at what he wasn't