by Bailey Dark
The Barbarian’s Captive
Warlords of Farian | Book 4
Bailey Dark
Copyright © 2019 by Bailey Dark
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
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One
Cartari
I jumped out of the transport, snow sifting onto my boots as I landed, more flakes settling onto the scuff in my beard and the fur in my hat and coat. I clapped my gloved hands together and then palmed the trigger on the side of the spaceship and closed up the entryway, lugging my gearbag to my shoulder. I slid the door of the garage space closed and thumbed in the code. I had rented the space for one month. I should be back well before then, but had given myself a couple week’s space, just in case. The mission should be over within ten days, but… This was uncharted territory and I was far from home.
I was on Vailstor, a snow planet a couple solar systems away from Farian, but still within the same galaxy. We used one of the minerals, called calasis, to fire our laser cannons. We were interested in striking up a new contract with them. If I could get General Blatson on board with the deal I had been authorized to make, my trip would be much quicker. If I couldn’t, well… I had been authorized to make some winds of change blow that this planet might not be ready for…
I pulled the fur cap lower on my head and ducked into the roaring gale. I had purposely landed at a spaceport in a more obscure part of the Capital City, but that meant there were also less buildings blocking the severe weather conditions. Not that there were that many skyscrapers, or infrastructure to speak of at all. It was a mining planet. Not much else going on here. Some ice fishing. A few yak ranches.
I followed the trail into the city. I needed a warm hearth, a nice meal, and a drink. It had been a long trek across the stars alone.
It had been six months since the battle for Bristola against Gorgin and his pirate goons on my home planet Farian, the rest of the pirates having been cleaned up in the meantime. I had been worn out by the battles on the seawinds. Prince Axis could tell. He knew I needed a break from Command. When he asked for a volunteer to take this mission, I jumped at it, even though it was solitary. He and Princess Ceritha were doing amazing things against the blue flu that had been decimating the ocean animal life. It was well isolated and the firefins and dolgans were flourishing again. Their wedding had been one of the most beautiful, and spirited, celebrations I had ever been to. But, I needed some time away.
This was the perfect solution.
I was to check in every two days with the handy com, either the one in my pack or the one at the spaceship. General Blatson reportedly had a few military fortresses around the Capital City, but we didn’t know much about Vailstor, so this was as much a reconnaissance mission as it was a networking and offer-giving one.
A wooden sign swung in the wind picturing a stein. That had to be a symbol known across the universe. There was no better vessel for holding liquids that made a man merry or woman swoon.
I let myself in the door as the wind burst particularly cold against my face and was greeted by a much warmer temperature and not a few warmer smiles. This would be the place.
I thumped the snow off my feet and the chill out of my bones at the door on the mat and made my way to the bar, happy to hear the trill of some odd musical instruments, stringed and winded, striking up a tune just as I entered.
The rather heavyset and pinched looking old woman behind the bar glared at me as I set down on the stool. I twisted my universal translator under my heavy coat as she began speaking. It hummed slightly and conveyed her words to me telepathically. When I spoke, she would hear my words in my tongue, but understand them through the mental connection. She would feel slightly dizzy, but not typically realize the difference. She would just understand what it was that I was saying. This was not a telepathically or kinetically skilled planet, and it was a bit of manipulation of their mind, that they weren’t quite giving permission for, but… It made the communication much easier.
“What can I get you, stranger?”
“Beer and a meal, perhaps?”
“Just have stew and whiskey tonight, that all right?”
“Absolutely.”
“Good enough.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
“Pay up front. Ten glorain.”
I had made change at one of the universal exchange depots on the way here and put the right amount on the table, with a substantial tip. She nodded her thanks and bustled her way to the back. I kept my hat pulled low, but scanned the bar underneath the slight lid. Most people seemed at ease, enjoying the evening with their friends. There were, however, two unruly youths who seemed to be eyeing me in a way which I found most unpleasant.
Axis had found it quite useful, more than once, that I squeezed my way out of fights with a glib tongue and a joke, rather than my fists, but as they neared me, just as the old woman approached with my stew, which smelled so good I could taste it, I knew this would not be one of those times.
“What are you doing here, off-worlder?”
“Hey there, friends. Just stopping for some dinner.”
“We aren’t your friends.”
“I can tell you right now, boys, you’d rather be my friends than my enemies.”
“Are you threatening us?”
I sighed and looked longingly at the stew. There was some type of meat in a huge chunk, steam shivering off its hindquarters, lumps of green and orange and black vegetables clumped around it. My stomach growled. My mouth salivated. The woman set the stew down and moved away. The people around us backed off.
I stepped off the stool entirely and looked at the two youngsters, holding my hands down loose at my side, my gear bag hanging over my shoulder. With a quick flick of my fingers I bashed the two kids’ heads into each other so hard they split their eyebrows open and collapsed to the ground.
“A telekinetic! He’s one of those damn Curans! A charzbos!”
I waited a moment for the translator to catch up, but it didn’t catch the last word. It didn’t matter though, because panic was spreading quickly through the bar.
“Quick! Call the guards!”
Screams and yells stunned me and the place emptied surprisingly fast, the music screeching to a halt. The youths stumbled to their feet and ran out the door.
I was alone, except for the old woman.
I shrugged and turned to the stew. It tasted just as delicious as I had imagined it might, matching the brown liquor that I poured down my throat. It burned a bit as it went down, but warmed me up inside.
Something sliced into my side, and I fell to the ground, shaking uncontrollably, sh
uddering with pain, electrodes sticking out my body, the lines of tasers protruding through the heavy coat, the guard who fired it leering over me, lashing my hands to my body quickly, then jabbing a sedative into my neck, and everything went dark.
* * *
I awoke in a shitty, sparse jail cell.
My gear bag was nowhere around.
A shuffling made me spin and pull myself to my feet. I was not alone. A woman crouched in the corner, as far away from me as she could get.
I reached to my chest. My translator was still affixed beneath my coat. They had clearly searched me. All my weapons were missing, but they had left my translator there. I twisted it to make sure it was on.
“Hello. My name is Cartari. What’s your name?” As I spoke, I took better stock of my surroundings. Where I was, if I was hurt, what there might be around me that I could use as a weapon, how many guards were nearby. It was a fairly blank cell in a dimly lit grey room. There were some cushions on the floor, metal cell bars holding us in with plaster walls on the other three sides. One gate with a fairly pickable lock, if I just had something slender and metal. Not real tools or weapons to speak of. I was not hurt, though my ribs stung a little from the tasers. I could hear the voices of three guards around the hall and the sound of soft music playing. It was fairly cold. The woman was wrapped in a thick blanket, an amorphous blob.
I turned to look at her better.
“They brought you here with tasers. You’re a telekinetic. A charzbos. Are you a Curan?”
I nodded. “That’s right. How do you know about Curans?”
“We have heard you are a warrior planet. Always at war. Always expanding your empire. We don’t want you here. You can control things with your minds.”
“You can’t believe everything you hear.” I didn’t need everyone around here being afraid of me. I hadn’t realized there would be a myth about Curans all the way out here. I wondered if it was the Beast King Kajo that had spread that. “Anyway, I’m not here to hurt you,” I said. I peered through the darkness at her more closely, finally settling back down, sitting on one of the cushions. I rubbed my ribs. “What’s your name?”
She leaned forward into the light a little, the first time I was able to see her face, and I almost gasped, she was so gorgeous. A shocking surprise, to find someone so beautiful, in a prison, on a planet like this. Her eyes were an illuminating turquoise, almost teal, in a dark brown face, framed by luscious black hair, with finely chiseled, fragile features, like a carved china doll. “Zaya. My name is Zaya.”
“Zaya, why are you—”
The guard walked into the room and Zaya tucked herself back into the shadow and the blanket again. The guard stood and looked at me. I looked back at him evenly and waited for him to speak. When he didn’t say anything, I thought about slipping the Taser out of his belt loop at his waist and shooting him with it, but restrained myself. They might find another place to keep me, like in solitary confinement, if I messed with them too much.
“Where’s my gear bag?” I asked.
“In my office. I’m enjoying those sweets from Farian. Thank you very much,” the guard said snidely. Then he patted his belt and I realized he had one of my throwing knives buckled there. “Also, we split up your weapons. You won’t be needing them.”
“What charges do you have against me?” I roared and the lights rattled. I couldn’t help it.
The guard shrugged, looking uneasily around him. “We will think up some.” He walked back around the hallway.
Zaya shook her head when I looked back at her. “You shouldn’t have come here, charzbos.”
“What’s that word? A charzbos?”
“A charzbos. It’s what you are. Unruly. Reckless. Dangerous. Savage. Wild. Beast. You have a Charzbos King on your planet Farian.”
“Like, a beast, a barbarian?”
The translator buzzed. That was it. That was the word it was trying to find. Charzbos meant barbarian.
It was truly surprising that they had such stigma against us, but I was ready to fight, and I was ready to get out of here. If they were going to distrust me for being a Curan, then I was going to show them what a Curan could really do.
“You were going to tell me what you did to get in here, Zaya?” I said, settling back on one of the cushions, plotting my escape at the same time.
Zaya leaned forward again. “No, Cartari Charzbos. I was not.”
I smiled at her and winked. “But I bet you were innocent right?”
She smiled, a surprising flash of soothing beauty in the dank cell. “Aren’t we all?”
I nodded and imagined my weapons in their wrongful hands. “Except, sometimes, we don’t deserve to be…”
Two
Zaya
I watched the charzbos ease back into the cushions, clasping his hands behind his head in a restful position, and close his eyes, taking deep breaths, as if he were relaxed, but I knew better. He was just preparing himself for something bigger. He was plotting. He was planning an escape. And, very likely, he was figuring out how he could use me in that escape. That just meant I had to figure out a way how to use him, first.
He was a charzbos, so he probably had more ability to use me than I did to use
him... I hugged my knees beneath the blanket, feeling my rather large breasts press into my body. I hid my smile. Maybe, in some ways he was more skilled, if he really could direct people and things with his mind. I could direct people, too. I had always been skilled in that way. I was quite beautiful. It was one reason I was in this mess. If I didn’t manage to escape this time, I would just run again. And again. And again. I would keep finding ways to escape from him. I would never give in. I would never give in. I just couldn’t. I would never give up. I couldn’t. That would be like giving up my soul and saying I was just the expensive piece of property he assumed he had bought. I was more than that.
I had to be, right…? I had to believe that… I had to hold to that truth, or else… What was it worth living for…?
The Curan barbarian cleared his throat and opened his eyes, focusing on me.
“So, Zaya… Why are you in here?” His eyes were green, like mine, but not the enigmatic turquoise pools that I knew enraptured men, his were a soft grass green, pale in the dim light of the cell. He had freckles across his nose, a charming, boyish look that was irresistible. His hair was dark brown, barely revealed beneath his fur trapper’s hat. He had a finely trimmed beard, just the barest scruff of the man who hadn’t shaved in a few days of space travel, but still kept it neat. Even though he was wearing a thick winter coat that didn’t define his body that well, I could tell it was lean and athletic, muscular and chiseled. He was tall, with a triangular shaped chest, as if he were a swimmer, or maybe a climber. If he was Curan, maybe he was from one of the water areas. I had heard there was a large ocean on that planet. I sighed dreamily… an ocean that was warm, with beautiful sealife with whom you could swim and and play and sail. Where sunsets didn’t mean icing over the entire tidal pool shores and sunrises didn’t bear witness to the frothy ice of waters that you could never set foot in.
“Zaya?”
I shook myself from my dreams of palm trees and dolphin dragons and bare shoulders in the sun. Things I would never see. I pulled the blanket closer to my body.
“I am not going to tell you why I am in here.”
“Oh, come on, that’s part of the fun.”
“There is nothing fun about this.”
“The way I see it, life is only tolerable if you make fun out of every situation,” Catari said. He sat up and flicked his fingers. Two blankets stirred in the pile just outside the cell and hovered in the air. They floated toward us, magically, shook themselves out so they were long and skinny, then slid between the cell bars, until they came to hang in the air in front of me, waiting for me to take them. Cartari remained with his fingers up, looking at me. He smiled. “Well? Aren’t you cold?”
My heart was pounding, but I was cold. I was also
exhilarated. That was amazing! It was terrifying. But, it was alarmingly beautiful, too. Oh, to have that type of power…
I reached out and snagged first one and then the other blanket from the air. There was nothing special about them. No electric shock rippled through me. They were normal blankets. I wrapped them around me and was immediately soothed.
“Thank you…” I whispered to the charzbos.
“You are welcome.”
“So…” He clapped his hands together. “How are we going to get out of here?”
I frowned at him. “What do you mean?”
“Surely you have been considering a way out.”
Had he been reading my mind? They could, I think. I had heard they could do all sorts of stuff with mental powers… I peered through the light at him as he rubbed his hands together and held himself tightly, a rush of cool air coming down the hallway from an opened doorway. Loud voices echoed down the hall. We couldn’t make out what they were saying, but there was shouting. Someone was in trouble for something… Was it regarding one of us?
“I sure wish I could teleport out of here.”
I looked at him, startled. “Is that a magic you have?”
“Usually. But, for some reason, I can’t. It’s restrained in here. I just can’t summon the ability. I can do other things, like moving the blanket, but I can’t teleport…” He pursed his lips and furrowed his brow, concentrating… Then breathed out hard, looking disappointed. He sighed and shrugged. “Oh well. We will find another way.”
What was this we? Was he thinking I would team up with him? Why?