Read Online The Realms of the Gods by Tamora Pierce - Free Book Online Page B

bull’s tail at the foot of his ridged spine.
    She held very still, treading water lightly. The stories claimed their sight was poor. Smell was the thing to worry about with a tauros. Could it smell her?
    The creature swayed, eyes shut, nose lifted. He snuffled wetly.
    If he catches me, he’ll rape me, she thought, scalp prickling. The stories were far too detailed about the fate of women who met these particular immortals. Quietly, without lifting her arms or feet from the water, she thrust herself to shore, mind fixed on her clothes. She always left her bow with them when she swam. Then she remembered, her strength evaporating. She had no weapon. Her bows were in the mortal realms.
    She heard a bone-rattling bellow and looked back. The tauros had her scent; it was wading into the pond. The need for quiet was over. Making for the rocks, she swam in long, practiced strokes. She had a head start on the thing; she’d outrun it to her ma’s.
    Too busy watching the tauros to see where she was going, she plowed into the mud at the water’s edge. Gasping, she lurched to her feet and ran the few steps to her clothes and towels, grabbing them. The immortal was a third of the way across the inlet. He was an ungainly swimmer, wallowing like a bull, but wise enough to use his arms to pull himself through the water.
    She turned and ran three steps, then halted. If she escaped—
    He would find her mother.
    Nearly four years of protecting others from immortals fused with a lifetime of looking after Sarra. Weiryn was forgotten. Her frightened mind seized on one thing: If he didn’t get her, the tauros would go after her ma.
    The tauros bellowed. Daine spun. She had to do something —in a minute he would be on her. Hands shaking, she dropped what she held. If only she had a bow! Even the sling she’d used as a girl—
    The towels lay across her fallen clothes in a pair of clean white stripes.
    She grabbed both, slinging one over her shoulder,keeping the other in hand. The brambles grew to the pond’s edge on her left. Even if she had seen ammunition there, it would be impossible to get. She’d have to go to her right, around the open edge of the water. Trotting around the cluster of rocks where she’d left her things, she scanned the ground. In a heap of stones and gravel, she saw five rocks the size of hen’s eggs.
    The tauros moaned, a sound that made her own throat go tight. He was two-thirds of the way across the neck of water between them.
    Daine seized a rock. Fumbling slightly—it had been years since she’d used a sling—she folded the towel into a sling and placed the stone in the cradle. Cloth and rock felt awkward, even wrong, as she began to twirl her makeshift weapon. Her body protested the large, strong movements required for a sling.
    When she felt the best moment, when the weight of the stone and the speed of her arm seemed right, she released one end of the sling. The rock shot past the immortal’s head, skipped over the surface, then dropped from sight.
    The tauros watched her missile sink. Horrified, Daine could see that he stood on the bottom. The water was up to his chest.
    When I was little, I would’ve been glad to skip a rock four times! she thought, grabbing a new stone. She neatened the towel-sling, keeping an eye on the tauros. He decided that her first missile was not worth his interest. He ploughed into the shallows, drooling as he stared at her.
    â€œGoddess, help me,” she whispered. Bringing the sling up higher, she twirled hard. The motion felt better. She let fly.
    It struck the tauros on the shoulder, opening a large gash. He roared with pain and fury; silvery blood coursed over his chest. Frantically he scooped pond water to splash on the wound, flat nose running.
    Daine seized two more stones—all she could hold—and backed up, putting the cluster of flat rocks between her and the immortal. It was hard to neaten the