Chapter Two

“Can you believe those stupid bastards led the damned Amazons back to the colony and got us captured?” Monica burst out angrily.

Noelle still had a headache—from being carried with her head hanging down, she thought. “Did I get hit on the head?”

Monica’s anger subsided abruptly and she moved toward Noelle, examining her head carefully. “I don’t see anything. Whiplash probably,” she diagnosed, “from being body slammed on the ground by that bitch.”

* * * *

Drak stared out at the drifts of snow that were gradually growing higher, his expression a cross between disgust and plain out anger. But it had very little to do with the weather conditions outside that were more miserable than usual. He had hated this time of year since he’d been a boy. And the fact that a forced peace lay over the lands due to conditions that no sane man would tackle for glory or riches had little to do with it, directly, at any rate. It reminded him of his losses, filled him with fresh pain that he had hoped every year would not visit him with his memories.

The distance of time didn’t seem to have helped a great deal.

He considered that for a moment. How many anums had passed?

He had been four anums when his sister had been born. He recalled the birth. He would not have recalled the age he had been—didn’t—but he did recall that his mother had said that he was four years older and that he was certainly old enough to be his young sister’s protector.

Except he hadn’t been competent enough to protect her and no amount of practice or skills acquired since that time could make up for the lack he had had when it had been needed.

That was what tormented him, he realized, far more than the losses.

It had been his fault—all the way around.

His father, Drak the Dark, had broken centuries of tradition when he had decided to keep his woman until she delivered his son—his heir. He had ignored his advisors when they had pointed out that it was always possible to determine his seed from the others—a Flaxen always knew his get by scent—knew the scent of the woman they’d impregnated. Even if it transpired that the child favored his mother rather than his father—a rare thing!—he would know the off-spring by scent!

There were reasons for the traditions! And refusing to honor age old traditions was just asking for trouble!

The advisors hadn’t lost their heads for pointing that out to their Prince, but it had been a near thing.

He, of everyone, even his closest friends, knew why his father had ignored tradition and kept his woman.

In the beginning it had been because, despite the myths to the contrary, a man did not always know his child—sometimes, yes, but there was no absolute certainty except when the child looked like a copy of the father. It rarely mattered, however, and that was why most men were content to adhere to the centuries old tradition. Unless a man had valuable possessions or property that he wanted to ensure passed to his son, there was no reason to be concerned.

His father was not actually the son of Drak the Red, however, as he was first believed to be and he had suffered for his father’s ‘mistake’. Until the day he died, Drak the Red had searched for his ‘true’ son, determined to usurp the changeling that was his namesake and replace him with the true heir. Drak the Dark refused to take a chance that he might repeat that mistake and bring another man’s son to his throne.

So he had taken the woman and she had born a son for him—and then a daughter—and still he would not return her to her people because he had become enthralled with her long before she had born his first child. It hadn’t been until she had become pregnant a third time that Drak the Dark had begun to feel some concern that his son and heir might be weakened by the presence and influence of a female.

And that anxiety had been compounded by the worry that his woman might produce a second heir who could create a split in the realm if the younger son should decide not to accept his elder brother as high Prince.

That decision had pitched all of them into a nightmare. For although he had hated his father ever afterwards for his decision that had cost him his beloved mother and sister, he hadn’t been so blinded by his hate that he wasn’t aware that it had created a hellish existence for his father for his final years, as well.

Occasionally, he wondered what his life would have been like if his father hadn’t thumbed his nose at tradition, but he didn’t like to travel that road because he was fairly certain his mother would still be alive if his father hadn’t kept her, hadn’t become obsessed with her.

That was the danger of keeping a woman! A man could lose his head over a woman. It would warp his judgment and distract him and that would make him dangerous on the battlefield.

Uneasiness slithered through him at the last thought, but he dismissed it.

He would not make the same mistake his father had!

The approach of his second in command distracted him from his dark thoughts. He straightened, studying the older man as he moved briskly across the great hall. Kulle bowed respectfully when he reached him. “Lord, the ship is prepared.”

Drak felt his belly tighten. It was much the same reaction he had to imminent battle—the thrill of the fight, the fear of defeat and death—anticipation and dread rolled together in an unidentifiable rock in his belly.

There was more fear and dread in this, however, than anticipation. “And Moden—is he confident that that rusting contraption will make another voyage and back again?”

Kulle released a snort that was part amusement and part disgust. “Likely your order would have worked with anyone else, Lord. But that one became witless the moment I suggested he would be sailing with us if he was so confident in it. He has not had a woman before.”

Drak rolled his eyes. “A miscalculation, that! Well, we will all know before long if it will make the journey there and back.”

Kulle frowned, glanced around uneasily, and moved a little closer to where Drak stood in the window embrasure. “I am not concerned that it will hold together for the voyage,” he muttered in a growling whisper. “It is the speed—or lack of it—that concerns me. If it will not make the trip there and back swiftly, it will not make it at all and then you would be trapped in that dread, dark sea forever! For you would not catch our world or its sister before you ran out of supplies.”

Drak shrugged. “There is always that risk. There has always been that risk. But they will not come to us and if we do not go while the two worlds are closest there is no chance of catching our prey.”

They had always been inclined, in point of fact, to consider that the gods favored their voyage/endeavor. For the one time of year that the sister worlds were closest was in the dead of winter when the weather was far too foul for hunting or warring, making it the perfect time to turn their attentions to mating. And the second closest approach was just before spring thaw. This circumstance made it just possible to take them back to the more benign of the two sisters for their delicate term of gestation and return in time to prepare for war.

Not that there was always a war to return to. Historically speaking, war was actually fairly rare. There was likely to be a skirmish or two between rival clans over some dispute, however—which made it absolutely necessary to make and repair weapons and polish their fighting skills—but they had not had all out war with another clan since he’d been a boy.

That war had broken out when his mother had tried to escape with him and his sister to prevent his father, Drak the Dark, from separating her from her son.

He had made treaty with their enemies after the death of his father in battle. It had not been a popular decision since their enemies had killed the ruling Prince in battle—earning him the sobriquet of Drak the Fair—but he had considered his father as responsible for his mother’s death as he had the man who’d captured her—or more. After ten years of war and the death of all parties initially involved in the dispute, he had figured it was time to make peace between their two clans.

“Well I am too old for such things, Lord. I am happy enough to wait here by the fire,” Kulle commented with a touch of amusement, “while you strapping young lads pursue the vixens.”

Drak uttered a derisive snort. “You do not have enough anums on me to consider yourself old,” he retorted. “And I am beyond the thrill of capture myself, if it comes to that. I would not be going if it was not my duty to the men and to the realm.”

Kulle’s amusement waned. “Will you be taking young Prince Terl on this raid?”

Drak’s own humor vanished. “I have said that I will not,” he responded tightly. “When he is old enough to lead a raid he may do so with my blessing. Until then, he is my heir and will do his duty to the realm and stay here.”

Kulle nodded quickly and backed away. “I will tell the men to prepare themselves quickly for the voyage. You will be leaving at first light?”

“Aye. Make certain my sons are there to bid me farewell.”

* * * *

“Well that didn’t work worth a damn!” Monica said irritably.

She had hatched an escape plan after their third miserable night in the wooden cage where they were being held prisoner by the alien women they’d dubbed the Amazon warrior women because their society seemed strongly reminiscent of those mythological warrior women of Earth. She’d talked Noelle into helping her ‘jump’ the elderly woman that usually brought their food in the evenings and then they were going to lock the woman in the cage, sneak out of the village with the help of the cover of darkness, and find their way back to the colony—a half a day’s walk roughly South East of their current position.

As simple as the plan had seemed, the execution hadn’t gone down quite the way they’d envisioned it would. And the problem hadn’t been the one that Noelle had been most worried about—facing the darkness and their new home world’s night predators on the long walk back to the colony.

As planned, Monica had leapt onto the woman’s back as soon as she’d leaned over to set the pot she’d brought down. On cue, Noelle dove at the woman’s legs, trying to knock her off balance so that the two of them could quickly overcome her. Despite doubts she’d harbored but not voiced, she had actually succeeded in that goal.

And then everything had gone completely wrong! Both Monica and the older woman had landed on top of her, pinning her at the bottom of the pile where she was unable to lend Monica a hand in subduing the alien woman. Before they could scramble to their feet and make another attempt to overcome the old woman, three more Amazon women had piled into the cage—because the old woman was screaming her head off—and they’d been subdued in a matter of moments and tied hand and foot.

As if they hadn’t been miserable enough before the damn women had decided to tie them up!

“No!” Noelle said sarcastically, glaring at her companion. “I thought it went well.”

Monica met her indignant gaze for a long moment and finally shrugged. “It was worth a try.”

“Says who?” Noelle snapped. “I didn’t think it was worth a try. I didn’t want to do it at all!”

“Hey! Don’t blame me! I didn’t make you do it.”

“You talked me in to it!”

“Exactly! Your decision. I just made a suggestion. It isn’t my fault it didn’t work! Everything went just as I’d planned until you sprawled out instead of leaping up and helping me subdue the bitch!”

Noelle was convinced there was something wrong with Monica’s logic, but she was too upset over their most recent confrontation with the damned amazons to think it through—at the moment.

“Back to the drawing board.”

“Oh, I don’t f’ing think so! If you come up with any more bright ideas for escape you can damn well think up something that doesn’t include me! I’m going to just wait here for them to come rescue me! At least I won’t get trampled!”

“Them who?” Monica demanded. “The assholes that got us here? Those damn cowards ran past us and into the colony and locked the fucking gates! We’ve been here three freaking days! You honestly think any of them have the balls to launch a rescue mission? We’ll be dead with old age before they even get up the nerve to try to negotiate a release!”

Noelle eyed her friend with disfavor. “I wish you wouldn’t use the ‘f’ word.”

Monica gaped at her. “The f … You say f’ing all the time!”

“Exactly! I don’t use the f word. I say f’ing!”

Monica looked as outraged as she felt. “You think that’s … better? Like nobody knows you mean fucking?”

“Of course that’s what I mean, but I don’t say it! Anyway, I really don’t think it’s a good idea to talk about the people back at the colony like that. You know they’ll be launching an all out attempt to get us back. They need us. We’re very important colonists! They might even declare war on these bitches for daring to take us,” she finished, trying to silently message Monica via her twitching expression to go along with her fabrication.

Monica gaped at her with her mouth open. Finally, she glanced around, saw that none of the Amazon women were within several yards of the primitive prison where they were being kept caged and whispered, “You think they’re just pretending they don’t understand us?”

“Mmmhmm.”

“God! Noelle! They don’t even understand us when we speak their fuc … f’ing language!”

Noelle was disconcerted, briefly. “I think they’re just pretending they don’t understand us when we speak their language. The computer broke it down. I don’t believe for a minute that it didn’t translate their language correctly!”

“And these people have been sneaking up to the colony and listening in and they’ve figured out our language even though they’ve barely figured out how to make fucking fire?”

It was a slight exaggeration. The aliens had clearly advanced a good ways from ‘cave’ people. True, the village they had been brought to bore strong evidence that the people lived at least a semi-nomadic lifestyle—either that or they were in the process of building new huts because there were a number of bare ‘skeletal’ frames sprinkled about the village—including the one she and Noelle currently occupied. But there was also a large, cultivated field just on the edge of the village, signs of advanced growing techniques like irrigation, and fairly sophisticated tools for cultivation among other things.

They didn’t just cook on spits over open flame. They had mud ovens and, in fact, the huts they lived in, from what she and Noelle could see, were evidence of advanced knowledge of engineering. These were carefully crafted structures that would be excellent protection against the elements.

There was also evidence of higher level craftsmanship in weapons and household implements and textiles.

Noelle felt her face heat. “Ok, so it’s farfetched, but I still think it’s a bad idea to talk about nobody coming to rescue us. In the first place, there’s the morale issue.”

“There’s nobody here but me and you and I’m pretty fucking demoralized already!”

Noelle glared at Monica. “Does using the f word every five seconds make you feel better?” she demanded testily.

Monica thought it over for all of five seconds. “Actually, yes, it does! I’m using it to expel my frustrations so I can restrain myself and not choke you for moralizing over one fucking word when we are in such deep shit it doesn’t even bear thinking on!”

Dismay flickered through Noelle. She’d been working hard to convince herself that this wasn’t nearly as bad a situation as it seemed on the surface. True, they were being held against their will, and these alien females appeared, on the surface, to live a rather primitive life. But they couldn’t possibly be as savage as they’d seemed when they’d attacked the colony and captured them. They didn’t look or behave like animals in their everyday life. In fact, except for the clothing and the huts, they seemed perfectly civilized, going about many of the same chores the colonists did—except the scientific research, or course.

Which Noelle had considered the bright side to their situation—the chance to study the natives up close and in their natural environment. “How do you figure that?” she asked uneasily.

“Well my god, Noelle!” Monica snapped. “They’re aliens and they’re primitive as hell besides!”

Noelle had been trying hard not to remember her history where it pertained to primitives on Earth. “You think they might … they might have evil intentions toward us?”

“I don’t know enough about these people and their customs to even begin to guess, but I’m thinking they might not be friendly,” Monica responded tartly. “They could have anything in mind for us and I don’t fucking want to wait around and find out if their customs are anything like the customs I read about that primitives on Earth practiced!”

“Like … what sort of customs?” Noelle asked uneasily.

“Sacrifices.”

Noelle felt her bowls turn to water. She thought for several moments she would pass out—or lose her grip on her sphincter. “I think, maybe, if you wiggle around with your back to me that I might be able to untie your hands and then you can untie mine.”

She’d almost managed to loosen the bindings around Monica’s wrists when the damned guard came back to check them. After checking the binding Noelle had been working at, she tightened it again and left.

“Bitch!” Monica snarled.

Not that Noelle didn’t agree wholeheartedly. Her fingers were bleeding from all the effort she’d wasted trying to untie Monica. But she also didn’t think it was a good idea to antagonize the giant, evil, primitive women. “Will you keep it down!” she hissed.

“You still think they’ve figured out English?”

“I think that didn’t need a fucking translation.”

Monica snickered. “You said fucking.”

“I’m going to choke the life out of you if I manage to get these damned things loose!”

Monica sniffed and then burst into tears.

Noelle felt really low. Shuffling around to face her friend, she moved a little closer. “I’m sorry. Don’t cry. We’ll figure this out, ok?”

“We’ve already spent three horrible nights here, Noelle. I have a bad feeling about these primitives. I really do.”

“Well, let’s don’t talk about it, ok?”

“Like that’ll help.”

“Scaring the shit out of me isn’t going to help either, damn it!” Noelle snapped.

After a brief struggle, Monica managed to get a grip on her emotions. “I don’t think they’re going to even try to rescue us,” she whined after a moment. “They could’ve come after us right away—should have! My god! It isn’t as if we don’t have superior weapons!”

Noelle sighed. “Yeah. I thought about that, but we’re building here. I guess they’re trying to decide what to do about the natives.”

“Well, I think they’ve made it pretty fuc … f’ing clear already that they aren’t interested in a peace treaty!” Monica snapped, recovering enough from her tears to get angry all over again.

That seemed inarguable. Noelle didn’t like to think that they were on their own, but she realized that they were going to have to proceed as if they were. They couldn’t just wait to see if the other colonists mounted a rescue mission or even tried, again, to negotiate a peace treaty and get them back. It wasn’t at all beyond the realms of possibility, unfortunately, that the women that had captured them intended to sacrifice them to their gods.

She had been heartened that they hadn’t been killed outright or executed immediately after they’d reached the village, but she was afraid, now, to allow herself to think they could count on that as proof that the aliens didn’t have something horrible in mind. Clearly the aliens had had something in mind when they’d captured them instead of killing them outright or they wouldn’t have captured them at all. They would’ve let them scamper inside the colony walls like the others.

And she didn’t especially want to hang around long enough to find out what the plan was.

“I guess it’s probably not likely that we could convince them, now, that we’re resigned to our fate and lull them into a false sense of security.”

“After the attempt to escape? And catching you trying to untie me? Probably not. I’d like to think they’re stupid, but ignorance and stupidity aren’t the same thing.”

“Ok, so …. We’ve lost the element of surprise. We’ll just have to think of something else.”

She couldn’t think of anything else, though, and finally decided to try to sleep on it.

She shifted restlessly for a while and finally managed to find a relatively comfortable position where her face wasn’t burrowed into the stinky fur they’d been given as a bed by wiggling to the edge. The dirt actually wasn’t nearly as offense as the smell of the hide. And once she’d gotten a little more comfortable, she dozed off, exhausted from her fears even more than she was physically drained from their attempt to fight their way to freedom.

The village woke before daylight. It was the sounds of activity that drew Noelle from her uneasy rest. She discovered that Monica had burrowed tightly against her and was still asleep. She stilled for a few moments, uncomfortable with the thought of rudely waking her friend, but she was more physically uncomfortable the longer she lay still and she finally nudged Monica with her elbow.

Monica lifted her head and stared at her blurry eyed. “We’re still here,” she muttered. “It wasn’t a nightmare.”

“Actually it is. Unfortunately, it’s also real.”

The old woman they’d jumped the night before came in with some more of the same nasty food she’d brought the night before, grinned at them, displaying more gum than rotting teeth and then left without untying them.

“I guess we’re supposed to make like inch worms and mosey on over there and eat with our faces,” Monica muttered. “Not that I’m hungry enough to eat that … whatever it is. I’m dying of thirst, though.”

“Let’s don’t talk about that. My eyeballs are floating.”

“You just had to bring that up!” Monica snapped irritably.

“I didn’t bring it up! You did!”

Monica fumed for a little while. Fortunately, a guard came as the sun began to rise above the horizon. Opening the door to their cage, she gestured at them to come out.

Monica and Noelle both stared at her uneasily and pretended they had no idea the woman wanted them to leave the cage. After glaring at them for a moment, she lifted her head, turned, and yelled at someone they couldn’t see.