“Are you thinking to disguise yourself, girl?” Using the bag, he gave her head a shake.
“Yes?” She smiled inside the bag. “That’s the whole point.”
“That’s truth.” The captain was a very matter-of-fact person. “While we are on the subject of our human girl, by which I mean huleon, why did you cloak her? Was naked too much for your old brain?”
From his sigh, Kondio was annoyed. “Fook, no. I had a fookin’ thought, unlike some here. Her pussy hair and those...” he released her head and gestured vaguely at her front, “...rings she has stuck through her bits are also a giveaway as to who she is.”
“Red hair, nipple rings, clit ring, and a huleon? She is a special one.”
Confused, she stared at the reins where they ran past her hands. Takk had echoed Zo’s earlier words. That was weird and disturbing... and weird.
She prayed they’d not decide to remove the rings. They were a part of her. Her decision, nobody else’s.
“Fookin’ special,” Timin mocked. As he trotted up to ride in line with them, he leaned over, peering across at her, his curled brown locks as chaotic as ever, if cleaner. His eyes seemed baleful, like he’d found a pest and wondered why it hadn’t been sprayed with pesticide already. “And she’ll kill you as soon as look at you. We shouldn’t forget where she comes from. Her loyalty is to the humans. You of all people should know this, Kondio.”
“Listen, last time I say this. I will always have a place in my heart for Fayra, boy, but I’m tired of being angry at everyone, at the whole world. This one is just a girl.”
“You’ll learn.” He let his florse slow and drop back.
The cloak wrapped about her insulated against the chill and possibly Timin’s evil thoughts, and she pulled it closer.
“Warm enough?” Kondio asked. “Ignore him. He’s just... slow to adjust.”
She grunted an affirmative, hoping he understood grunt language. Saying yes would make her uncomfortable. What was it with this one? She preferred Timin’s hostility. It was honest.
The dark brown florse under them kept trotting down the road, clip-clopping, fluttering its mini-wings now and then when a dragonfly or a rattlebug dithered by its ears. The sun was high overhead.
She craned back her head, squinting at the pale sky. Lunchtime, her stomach told her.
The white bag slipped on her neck and Kondio adjusted it back into place carefully, like a momma fixing the bib on a child. Or so she thought, until his hand slipped between the front edges of the cloak to cup her breast.
He tugged on the ring there, slowly smoothed his palm down her belly and wormed it between her legs. Then he left his palm over her mound, over her clit, stirring to life feelings that she did not want.
“Now all of you is warm. Let’s just ride and watch the birdies.”
Birdies? She squirmed.
He was taking liberties with her body, as had Zo.
Difficult to think of anything much at all, or to stay upright in the saddle, when his forefinger came to rest along the groove of her pussy. Slowly, she grew wetter.
To her relief and perhaps discomfort, none of them touched her that night when they camped. She was left tied up, horny, and dissatisfied with herself and Zo. And Kondio.
There was a whole lot wrong with lusting after your enemies.
Chapter Fourteen
For three days they rode, with Takk and Timin venturing into a town to purchase food, as well as clothes for her, boots, and a set of lockable manacles for her wrists. Of course, with the right tools she could undo these. Each night she considered escape. There were factors to take into account.
The distance from the border.
The alertness of each mauleon.
The chance of stealing a florse and/or of somehow slowing down the remaining ones.
The size of Zo’s cock as it entered her.
Yeah, that was not supposed to be on her list, but she spent a good part of those nights staring up at the stars from her muddle of blankets, alone. The ground was hard, harder and colder than it would be if she snuggled close to one of the males who fenced her in.
She’d have to step over one of them to leave. That alone had become a huge problem. Females didn’t have wet dreams, did they? She never had. Yet each night she’d woken to find herself... ugh... leaking wetness and her pussy lips horribly swollen and throbbing. The slightest touch of a finger on her entrance made her gasp and conjured up tendrils of, call it what it was, lust.
Masturbating around these males was both tempting and horrifying due to her wondering what she’d do if they caught her at it. She’d learned to pad her underwear and wash out the cloth daily. And so stepping over Zo, or any of them, seemed fraught with more than the danger of being penetrated by a metal sword.
Daytime, thank the gods, she had less problems in the downstairs department—as her aunt had called it.
Zo himself? He snored and ignored her.
On the fourth evening, she listened to their chat and learned they had one last town to stop at for provisions before going through the mountain pass on the way to Omage and home. The lowest pass of the three available was still open. She could do it without winter clothes, maybe even dressed in the ones she wore?
Avalon plucked at the light pink overtunic they’d given her. This would stand out in moonlight. The dark gray leggings and boots were fine. It would be wise to wait for them to give her warmer clothes before fleeing.
Dusk was approaching. It would not be this night. Not yet.
Decision made, she sat on a fallen log beside Kondio and ate the stew of smoked meat and fire-roasted vegetables from a metal pan, using a spoon. The chain from the manacles kept falling into the food. They hadn’t made her cook, yet. Maybe they knew she sucked at it, but she suspected they worried she’d steal a knife, or poison them somehow. The plants here, the bark of this log, might be deadly but truth be told she was no gardener.
The spray of red berries at her foot might be concentrated death or medicinal.
The bowing stalks in the far meadow that hung silhouetted against the waning light—their yellow seed-heads were as likely a cereal crop as they were an assassin’s choice of vegetable.
“What are you thinking?” Zo stalked over and perched his large butt on the opposite side of her from Kondio. The two mauleons eclipsed the last of the sun and made her spot prematurely darker. She’d swear the log had sunk into the damp ground when he sat.
“Ohhh, umm. What am I thinking?”
“Yes.”
The scythefox had followed Kondio, limping, and she frowned at it as she scurried for something sane to say to Zo. The animal collapsed nearby and began licking its paw. Her paw. Girl. She was late pregnant according to Kon. The coat of these creatures was prettier than she’d known, but she’d never seen one up close. The reason for their name must be the coat pattern, what with all the long red hook shapes among the gray fur.
He nudged her.
“Um. That I’m a bad cook?”
“Ahh.” Zo nodded as if she’d said something wise. “You know, I’m surprised you—”
“What is she doing?” Avalon pointed at the scythefox. “Is something stuck in her paw?”
“Oh?” Kondio leaned forward off the log, dropping to his knees and placing his plate on the ground. He gently examined the creature’s front left paw. Her ears flicked back and forth while she waited patiently for the mauleon to be done. Clearly, she trusted him. “Yes. I do see something. A thorn. Let me get a flashlight and a pair of tweezers, Gia. I will be back.”
He rose, walking past Timin, where he was carefully setting out weapons on a blanket, to the packs piled in the middle of the camp. Only the three mauleons and her were left in camp. After a quick supper Takk had ridden off toward a farm, or so he’d said. With the chillier night falling he was determined to find them a warmer place to bed down.
She shivered, rubbed her hands together. She’d be glad of that.
Looking around at
them all, she was struck by how homely this was. A bunch of males who knew each other well enough to trade dire insults yet take no or little offense. It made her pine for the same. Yet it was impossible. Ridiculous to think it.
Her bound hands, locked into manacles, showed her true status—prisoner.
She’d been asked a question by Zo, an incomplete one. Whatever it was he meant, she was sure she did not want to answer it. He’d expected something of her, and she’d surprised him? This could not be good.
As if he knew she needed another distraction, Nibbles shot from the undergrowth of low grasses, did a quick zigzag, and paused before Gia. Whiskers twitching, the two seemed to exchange some communication, though likely that was her imagining.
Gia rolled onto her side and extended her injured paw. It wavered in the air near the mouse-bot. Nose to paw, Nibbles appeared to do something, reaching out, perhaps, with his forelimbs. There was a blurred scrabble of white and gray and the mouse-bot backed away, with a thorn in its teeth.
Mouth agape, flashlight on and sweeping light over the scene, Kondio stopped in mid-stride.
Nibbles fled and Gia sat up and licked at her paw again.
“What the fook happened?”
From where he sat, legs spread on the blanket, Timin drawled, “The fookin’ bot thing extracted whatever was in her paw and fooked off. Right? Told you it was tech-y.” He bent to the disassembled rifle he’d been studying and poked it with a tool. “Magic. Pfft.”
“Yup.” Zo pursed his lips, smiled at her then at Kondio. “That’s about it. Except we still can’t exclude magic.”
Timin blew another raspberry.
“Uh.” Gia’s master kneeled before her. “The thorn has gone.” He looked about. “Where’d that smart lick-ass little gadget get to?”
None of them could find it and she wasn’t saying which patch of twigs the bot had zoomed into. It... he had helped the enemy, and she’d thought Nibbles was on her side. Was he a healer-bot? If there was such a thing.
What interested her more was what Timin was up to. He seemed less angry tonight. More contemplative.
After helping to wash the few dishes in a creek nearby, she wandered over to where he sat under a powered lamp he’d hung from a tree. She squatted.
A fire roared a few yards away too and the heat beat at her face.
“Stay back. Touch anything, any weapon ...” He looked at her from beneath his brow, through the curls of tawny mane that swung over his forehead. “And I will cut off that hand.”
Swallowing would be a telltale sign of fear. She held it in and grinned then raised her manacled wrists. The chain swung, reflecting the light. “I’m not going to do anything. Just curious. I see Nibbles is curious too.”
The bot had arrived first and was near the weapon Timin worked on. Between the Y of his legs, the blanket was covered in gears and wires, power packs and telescopic sights, and sundry other things she didn’t understand.
“It’s not set a paw wrong. It’s small and I trust it more than you.”
He shouldn’t, she decided. The mouse-bot was a huge unknown.
“Ask me how to put that back together.” She unfolded a finger toward a pistol. “And I’ll be clueless.”
“Good.” He slotted a magazine to the frame of the weapon, slapped it home. “Stay that way.”
“So, I can watch?”
He said nothing but she took it as permission and sat down carefully with a florse blanket about her shoulders and her legs crooked to the side. She arranged the dress tunic so none of her skin showed except a peek of her belly. The side split had accidentally fallen awry. She might lull Timin into thinking her harmless and leaned over to let cleavage show too.
The sky might fall before he calmed, she realized after a half an hour passed and he remained vigilant and suspicious.
When something soft nudged at her arm, she looked down and was surprised to see the scythefox. Gia padded forward and lay next to her, half on the blanket—close enough that Avalon could feel her warmth and see the rise and fall of her chest and the ruffle of fur. Hesitantly, she reached out and stroked her head then continued down her flank. Though her tail flicked, Gia lay even flatter and seemed content. Her fur was extraordinarily soft. Patting her was comforting, like a piece of quietness in the midst of these violent and grumpy mauleons.
Timin kept working.
Then she noted a tremble in his fingers and a muscle tic on his face.
The mauleon shuddered, his fingers shook harder, and when she looked carefully, she saw he was staring into the darkness around them, unaware of anything. Sightless.
This was a seizure and she recalled his head wound had caused a brain injury. Only a small patch of bald scalp above one eye showed where that had happened. She looked around and no one was watching them. Zo was snoozing, hands bunched under his neck like a baby. Kondio was reading something with his flashlight. If these guys were at war, this lit-up camp would show for a long way.
But they weren’t at war, were they? They might not be at war; however, she was.
Timin was still away somewhere else, in whatever world played in his brain.
Slyly, she shifted her butt, leaned in and took a small piece of cut wire then wove it into the material band of her pants. One weapon was fully assembled and loaded. It lay under Timin’s hand. Without letting herself think on this much at all, she drew it to her, lifted it, switched it on.
A fucking red ON light glowed and the thing even whined. Who used a weapon like this on the field? Startled, she covered the light with her thumb.
Nevertheless, in three shots she could be done with these men. Kill them or wound them badly and be gone. It was doable. But...
But Timin was vulnerable. Which, she told herself, was the whole entire point of this. Yet she hesitated to shoot, her finger above the trigger.
The moment became pivotal, crucial. Excruciating. Shoot him in the chest then shoot the others and be free.
Shoot Timin while he seizured and mark herself an awful person of few morals, an asshole really.
They had kidnapped her. By agreement, she reminded herself. Because otherwise she’d be dead, back in that grave, under several feet of earth, cold and dead and rotting.
There were other ways to be free.
Which sort of person did she want to be? She’d never forgive herself—maybe no matter which choice she made.
Fuck. Or fook this, as Kondio would say.
She raised her forefinger then twisted around to check on him and Zo.
Eyes looked back at her. And a gun. Kondio was watching her. He shone the flashlight at her eyes. Apart from wincing she stayed still. It seemed wise.
Her moment to use the pistol was past.
“We usually tape over that ON light. I’m glad you didn’t shoot. I was wrestling with shooting you in the back. I do like Timin. Even if he is an ass. Put that down before you, between us, slowly. Turn it first so it lands butt out.”
Heart thumping, nerves clawing at her throat, she did as he asked.
By then Zo was alert and on his feet. He tsked then walked to her and fetched the gun from where she’d laid it. “Takk is not going to be happy with you.”
“What happened?” Timin asked, voice slurred.
“She picked up a gun from your blanket, aimed it at you.” Zo shook his head. “There will be consequences, girl.”
She shrugged. “Had to try.”
“What. The bitch did that?”
“She didn’t shoot you. I would have.” Chuckling, Kondio rose, stretched. “Looks like Takk is coming back.”
Hoof beats were clopping closer.
Consequences. She wondered what those would be. She’d been right not to shoot. And wrong. “What do you mean consequences?”
“Punishment.” Casually, Zo squatted before her. “He’s big on that.”
Sounding hopeful, Kondio suggested, “Spanking? We could all—”
She snorted. Yeah, that’d convince her, not.
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“Fuck, no!” She heard Timin begin to rearrange the weapons at her back. “Take her out and whip her bloody.”
“I’m no soldier from your troop,” she growled. “Nothing you do will convince me what I did was wrong. I’m huleon, not mauleon. Montague, not Snaar. Spanking? Spare me from fools.”
One of them laughed. “The kitten shows her claws.”
Boots crunched through the forest litter—Takk’s boots, and he slowed as he came into their light.
The four mauleons gathered closer.
“What’s this?” Drawing off his gloves, Takk held his palms toward the fire.
They hesitated, shifting their feet. Finally Timin spoke up. “She thinks we are fools.” He cracked a wide grin. “And almost shot me. We’re waiting to see what you want to do to her.”
Oh, this was too much. Riled up, she raised her hands then erected the middle finger from both in the universal insult.
At least she hadn’t said it.
“Ooo.” Zo rubbed his hands together. “Whipping it is.”
After shaking his head at her, Takk looked along the line of his mauleons. “Let’s get to the barn I’ve arranged. I’ll decide then and there.”
As they packed up camp, with her fastened to a hammered-in stake by a neck chain, Timin held up the gun she’d almost shot him with.
“This isn’t functional anyway, girl,” he sneered. “The trigger locks.” He aimed it off to the side and pulled the trigger. It fired off a pulse of blue energy, cracking into and highlighting a sapling, which promptly cracked down the middle. Flames licked upward.
“Gorram! What’d you do?”
She shook her head. “Nothing. I told you I don’t know how to fix guns.”
His scowl said Timin thought her lying. His question about why the gun had fired, she thought she knew the answer.
Chapter Fifteen
Avalon, having been laid over Takk’s saddle and strapped down, was taken to the barn. They led her inside and pulled off her clothes. She was left tied, with only an itchy florse blanket wrapped around her. Her hands were linked to another stake in the dirt floor. If the ride was meant to show her how uncomfortable it would be to be transported in that way, she had it figured. Her stomach still ached. She’d almost thrown up at some of the bigger bumps and Takk hadn’t been driving his florse hard.
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