Chapter 131: Building a Legend
The first thing Simon did was escort the survivors to the nearest village. He left his mule there with them, along with most of his supplies, because it would only slow him down. It was only once they were safe, that he followed the centaur’s tracks back to see where they’d come from.
No one volunteered to come with him, but that was fine. He might be known as a witch hunter or a gifted healer further south, but he had no reputation here. That sort of trust would come in time, which worked out for him because he was more than a little rusty. In fact, he almost resented having to buckle his leather armor back on after going so long without it.
Of course, by the time he got there, the trail was long cold, but it was a place to start. He’d learned through hard experience during his time serving the Raithewaits that finding the main centaur herd for any given region could be tricky because they were always on the move.
Theoretically there were dozens of them on the plains, and the only reason they weren’t a bigger problem was because they warred with themselves and the orcs as much as they did the humans. Normally all you needed to do was kill the war bands interested in picking fights with men, and the rest would find something better to do with their time. Simon didn’t feel like that was going to be enough in this case.
Three days later, he found his first herd and followed them from a distance, waiting to see what they would do as he hid in the tall grass and the other cover the empty plains provided. He didn’t do anything beyond that, though. Not until he saw them fight with a band of gnolls that had wandered too far from the foothills of the mountains that rose up to the east.
As they skirmished and taunted each other, he moved into position upwind of them, but it was only once the fight was fully joined that Simon lit fires. When he’d worked as a warrior for Baron Raithewait, his favorite tactic had been to bait the trap and surround it with hidden archers. Since he had no army behind him yet, though, he settled for another form of encompassing attack instead: brush fires.
A centaur herd was more than just the young male war bands that did the killing. It was also full of women and colts that would grow up to become killers. He wasn’t an anthropologist or anything, but that much was plain to see. In that sense, this was some kind of war crime, he supposed, as the fires started to spread and fan out, driven by the wind, but he didn’t care.
Half a dozen spot fires lit by a lesser word of fire hundreds of feet apart became a wall of fire in less than five minutes when the winds were right, and right now, the winds were perfect. Within minutes, he could no longer see the herd, and the wall of fire raced toward them. He could imagine what was happening, though, based on what he was hearing.
Right now there was more running than dying. There was probably a stampede, and it was headed right toward the gnolls. That was bad luck for them, but Simon didn’t exactly care if the dog men survived either. They were in no way man’s best friend.