She supposed at least part of their reasoning for holding off on leaving was because they weren’t really able to set out again and knew it.
It worried her—both the possibility that they were hurt worse than they wanted to let on and the fact that Aydin had said the king’s men were tracking them. How far behind them were they? Was it far enough that it was really safe to hold off continuing the trip?
She had a far better idea of just how close to them the men were when they finally did set out shortly after they’d eaten their noon meal. Neither Colwin nor Aydin had made any attempt to rush, despite the late start. They moved steadily, but at a brisk walk, not the jogging gait they’d favored for most of the trip. They’d been traveling for only a couple of hours when they heard sounds in the distance, and everyone halted, lifting their heads to listen.
Even she didn’t have any trouble deciphering the sounds she could hear faintly in the distance—screaming, the sounds of fear and challenge, the clang of metal and dull thuds that were more of a reverberation through the woods than actual sound.
The hoonans had met up with the ogres!
Aydin and Colwin exchanged a speaking glance. When they began to move again, however, they were moving faster, making it clear to Emma that the king’s men were a lot closer than they’d thought they were.
She felt horrible for the thoughts that flickered through her mind. She hated and feared the hoonans. She’d never hoped something horrible would happen to anyone, though, and yet she found herself hoping harder than she’d ever wished for anything that the ogres would either kill them all or drive them back.
There was no way to tell what was happening from such a distance, but they either moved beyond range of hearing the battle, or the battle ended a short while later. Aydin and Colwin pushed on until it was full dark, not stopping to make camp until the moon rose. They didn’t make a fire, not that they’d spared the time to hunt anyway. Instead, they all ate the little bit of left over food they’d brought with them, drank the small amount of water Colwin had used the rabbit stomachs to carry and settled together on the bare ground.
Emma realized immediately that the brush they’d gather every night to make a pallet made a huge difference in comfort, but she still had the warmth of Colwin’s and Aydin’s bodies against hers and the sense of safety it gave her to be sandwiched between them. In spite of her discomfort and her anxiety, she managed to sleep for a few hours.
She was heavy eyed with exhaustion when they rose before dawn. She wandered around a few moments before it dawned on her that they hadn’t found a watering hole or stream the night before. Trying to ignore the discomfort of having no way to clean up even a little, she finally went into the brush to relieve herself and returned to join the men, who’d already gathered up everything and were waiting for her.
Aydin grasped her arm and swung her up onto his back. She’d already settled her cheek against his back before she remembered his ankle. “You’re sure I’m not too heavy?”
He glanced back at her. “I am well enough now. How are your ribs? Does it still hurt to breathe deeply?”
She tested it. “A little twinge. It’s better, a lot better.”
He didn’t seem convinced and it occurred to her to wonder if the time they’d lost was because of her—again. She realized almost immediately that that was why they hadn’t been in a hurry to leave. They’d seen how banged up she was and had ignored the danger to allow her a little time to heal.
Their thoughtfulness warmed her. At the same time, it made her feel awful that they kept taking risks they wouldn’t have had to if not for her.
She was going to get them killed, she thought despairingly.
They began seeing more of the giant statues, or totems as they’d called them, the first not long after they set out and then another a few hours later. Emma grew more and more uneasy as Colwin and Aydin stopped to examine them, wondering what new horror the damned things were warning.
“It’s more warning, isn’t it?” she asked when they’d stopped the third time.
Aydin glanced back at her. “These are different.”
Emma chewed her lip, wanting to be reassured. “It isn’t more warnings about the ogres?”
He shook his head.
She would actually have felt better if he’d said yes, that it was warnings for people traveling in the other direction. “What do they mean, then?”
He glanced at Colwin. Colwin shook his head. “I am not certain,” he admitted.
“Guess!” Emma demanded.
He sent her a look of amusement mixed with irritation. “It is warnings to go back.”
Emma felt like the bottom dropped out of her stomach. “Really?” she asked weakly.
“I am not certain. I cannot read these symbols. You asked me to guess.”
She glared at him. “But you think that’s what it might mean?” she persisted.
“It is clearly a warning. That is all I am certain of.”
“Maybe we should try to find a different route?”
Aydin scanned the rocky cliffs that now hemmed them in on either side. “Even we could not scale these canyon walls,” he said finally. “We would have to return to the territory of the ogres and try to find a way around and I am not anxious to do that.”
Emma swallowed a little sickly. “Me either,” she muttered, tightening her hold on his waist. He patted her hands, cupped his over both of hers reassuringly.
“We are better armed now. There are few who can outshoot Colwin with a bow.”
Emma glanced at Colwin, or specifically the arrows he’d made, held in the carry he’d fashioned with a piece of their dwindling supply of fabric. He’d made a couple of dozen, but she thought there’d been at least a dozen ogres in that attack. To her mind, they weren’t nearly well enough armed against whatever might be ahead of them, but she kept her peace. What was the point of complaining when he’d already pointed out their choices? Bad and worse. She thought worse was going back through ogre territory, but then who knew what lay ahead?
They discovered it when they halted at a trickle of water to drink. Emma hadn’t even managed to slide off of Aydin’s back when he stiffened, abruptly pulling his sword. Colwin had unslung his bow from his shoulder and fitted an arrow into nearly as quickly and yet they were surrounded so swiftly by a dozen centaurs that that was as much as they managed. Emma was wrenched off of Aydin’s back and bound by arms that felt like steel.
The blade that pinched into her throat was steel.
“Not one move unless you want to see her pretty little head separated from her body,” the man holding her growled.
Aydin’s gaze met hers for a prolonged moment, but they both knew there wasn’t a chance in hell that he could strike before the man holding her could. His expression twisting with fury and disgust, Aydin dropped his sword.
The centaurs surged around them, snatching up Aydin’s sword, relieving Colwin of his quiver and bow. The man holding her didn’t ease his grip until the centaurs had bound both Colwin’s and Aydin’s arms behind their backs.
Emma gaped up at the centaur who’d been holding her when he removed the knife from her throat and swung her around to face him. He was dark like Aydin, maybe even a little darker skinned, and clearly several years older. He studied her assessingly for several moments and finally nudged his chin at someone behind her.
A blindfold descended over her eyes. She flinched instinctively but even as she lifted her hands, her wrists were caught in a steely grip. “You will wear the blindfold, little hoonan, unless you prefer that I slit your throat and leave you here.”
Emma swallowed convulsively. “I’m not a hoonan,” she said a little hoarsely.
He shifted his grip to her upper arm when the man behind her had finished tying the blindfold and swung her up onto his back. She grabbed blindly for a hold to keep from falling off but he grabbed her wrists, yanking her forward as he pulled her arms around his waist and tied her wrists together.
/> Ignoring her comment if he even heard it, he launched into a brisk trot that nearly unseated her as soon as he’d finished tying her hands. The blindfold was more effective than she’d expected, but then again no one had every blindfolded her in anything but a game. Still, she could see a sliver from the bottom edge, enough to see they left the little stream immediately.
She was tempted to tilt her head back to try to see where they were going, but the warning he’d given her was enough to squelch the urge. She couldn’t even lean away from him. He was broader even than Aydin and her arms felt like they were going to be wrenched out of the socket by the stretch to reach around him.
Realizing fairly quickly that there was nothing she could do when she was tied up, blindfolded, and surrounded by what was clearly an enemy tribe of centaurs, she focused instead on trying to manage the fear struggling to become full blown panic. They’d only been moving a few minutes, she thought, when darkness descended over them. The sounds of the centaur’s hooves echoed back to her eerily. She lost the feel of the sun’s heat on her skin.
A cavern?
Flashes of light from time to time against her blindfold seemed to belie that but, they were certainly following something with the feel of a tunnel—with a stone floor and rocks hanging over them much of the way to block out the sunlight. The sound of their hooves rang in her ears. They slowed. Her heart instantly began to hammer with renewed anxiety as the thought leapt into her mind that they were about to meet their fate.
They man carrying her only slowed, though. He continued forward at a walk. She didn’t realize how much the walls had closed in around them until she felt her knee brush rock. She jerked fearfully at the touch until she realized what it was, clenching her legs more tightly around the centaur to avoid the abrasive cut of the rock. He shifted a little until her knee was no longer bumping the rock, but she knew it had to be very, very narrow.
After what seemed hours she began to notice from the sounds that the tunnel-like passage they’d been following had widened again. Her heart, which had settled as time passed and no new threat had arisen, again began to pound out a rhythm of fear. When the centaur carrying her began to gallop, she felt her heart match the pounding rhythm of his hooves on the hard dirt that replaced the stone.
She heard sounds in the distance that she couldn’t quite identify, but as they drew closer to their destination, at least some of those sounds became recognizable—people, or rather centaurs—and the sounds of a city. She could almost imagine it as any city she was familiar with.
The centaur carrying her slowed and then stopped—walking. He didn’t stop moving. Untying her hands, he grasped her arm and dragged her from his back. Her feet touched something moving and she threw her hands out for balance instinctively. The man steadied her and then reached up and removed her blindfold. She blinked, trying to dispel the blurriness and bring her vision into focus. Her eyes watered from the brightness of the light after so much time in darkness. Finally, she began to pick out the things around her.
She discovered she was standing on a people mover with a jolt of amazement. She didn’t doubt that Colwin and Aydin were even more amazed, but it was hard to tell from their expressions when she searched, and then found them. Their eyes were moving assessingly over their surroundings, but they both grim faced.
She glanced up at the man who still held her and discovered that he was watching her keenly. Questions rose to mind, but she tamped them. He’d ignored any attempt to communicate with him before.
In any case, she’d had a hard time understanding him. He was speaking English just as Colwin and Aydin did, but the dialect required mental translation. Maybe he had as hard a time understanding them as they did him?
It was abundantly clear when she looked around that they were a technologically advanced people—so far they almost seemed like aliens compared to the hoonans. They even had motorized transport, although it looked as if they favored walking. The vehicles moving along the streets seemed to be primarily for transporting goods.
Most of the people she saw were dark skinned and dark haired like Aydin, and the leader of the men who’d captured them, but she saw a wide variety of hair color and skin tones.
Except red, like hers, she thought in disgust. Even here she stood out like somebody waving a flag. Everyone they passed, or so it seemed, turned to look at her.
Then again, maybe she was just paranoid? Maybe it wasn’t the hair at all but the fact that she was clearly not one of them?
How would they know that, though? If they could shift into human form like Colwin and Aydin, how would they know?
Colwin and Aydin both had remarked on her hair. She’d figured that was how they’d immediately known she wasn’t just a centaur in human form.
Well, her skin color was different, too—fish belly white and freckled didn’t seem to be a popular color here—but she’d just figured Colwin had a golden tan. He was fair. She didn’t look that different, did she?
Or was the scent, she thought abruptly? Aydin had indicated they had senses humans didn’t and most animals seemed able to pick up ‘different’ without getting particularly close to whatever it was that was different.
These people, though—it seemed to her that they must be far more advanced than any of the other tribes on their world. Otherwise, where would the legends have come from? And that being the case, didn’t that also imply evolution? Or did it? Were they just like everyone else on the planet except that they’d somehow collected together the most brilliant minds and built this city for themselves? Or were they sort like the Greeks and the Romans? Their culture had made it possible?
It was probably the most confusing thing she’d encountered since she’d arrived. They appeared more advanced, but were they really? Attacking them and taking them prisoner certainly seemed more like the act of barbarians than civilized people.
They’d reached the heart of the city before her captor led her off of the moving sidewalk and onto another going off in at a ninety degree angle. They weren’t on that long at all, however, before they again stepped off and she was dragged up a set of wide steps and into a building.
It was bizarre how much it reminded her of a busy metropolitan police station—except with centaurs walking around everywhere.
The man pulled her to a stop beside a desk. “Out-worlders. Three of them.”
It got so quiet so suddenly Emma felt a shiver creep down her spine. The man he’d spoken to gaped at her and then at Colwin and Aydin.
“This one is hoonan. The other two primitives.”
Anger erupted inside Emma. “I’m human, not hoonan! I’m not even from this world! And Colwin and Aydin aren’t primitives—asshole! I demand to know what we’re being charged with! And we want lawyers!”
Everyone turned to look at her as if she’d grown two heads. Emma felt the creepy sensation again, but they couldn’t consider themselves civilized and not have some sort of law, she reasoned!
“You are out-worlders. We are not required to provide you with representation,” the man holding her said coldly.
“Well! Don’t turn your nose up at us and call us primitives!” Emma snapped. “Where I come from even outsiders have rights, by damn! And I’ll have you know we didn’t come here! You dragged us here and you have a hell of a nerve charging us with trespassing or something like that when we didn’t want to come here in the first place!”
“I should have gagged her,” the man commented, but there was a trace of amusement in his voice. “I am going to take them down to the holding cell until the council is ready to see them.”
Emma was feeling far more subdued by the time she got a look at the hold cell he’d spoken of. It didn’t look anything like she imagined a holding cell on earth would look like. It looked like a dungeon cell.
She was relieved when they shoved Colwin and Adyin in behind her because the cell was already occupied by nearly a dozen centaurs—all male.
She launched herself into Aydin’s a
rms. He tightened his arms around her for a moment, but his focus was on the other occupants of the cell. After a moment, he pulled away and led her to a corner. There was filthy bench there. He pushed her toward it and then he and Colwin stood in front of her.
As relieved as she was that they’d blocked her view and prevented the others from staring at her at the same time, she would’ve liked it better if one of them had volunteered to cuddle her while the other stood guard. “I guess this must be the city of the lost tribes,” she murmured after a few minutes.
Colwin glanced at her. “That would be my guess,” he said wryly.
“They don’t seem terribly civilized for an advanced race if you ask me,” she muttered.
“I did not ask,” Aydin said sharply, “and I do not think it wise to antagonize them.”
Emma felt her face heat. Unfortunately, he had a point. “You’re right, I know, but I certainly didn’t see that it would be a good thing to let them keep thinking of me as hoonan when everybody hates them!”
“No one on Mearth knows of the other world except us,” Colwin responded tightly.
“Oh.”
“She’s an other-worlder?” one of the prisoners on the other side of the cell asked abruptly.
Emma craned her neck to see who’d spoken, but since Colwin and Aydin shifted when the man spoke, she discovered it was useless. “You know about other-worlders?” she asked.
“I will gag you myself if you do not shut up, Emma!” Aydin growled.
The other prisoners had begun to mutter, however, and seemed to be working themselves up to something. It didn’t take long to figure out what that something was. They began lobbing insults at Colwin and Aydin about primitive out-worlders. Aydin seemed to ignore them, but Colwin’s expression became harder and harder.
Aydin finally sent him a look. “Ignore it,” he said under his breath. “They are trying to lure us into a fight to get to Emma.”
The comment wiped the fury from Colwin’s face for a split second. He threw a glance at her over his shoulder, and then turned to stare at the others stonily.
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