She looked confused. “You yell at people all the time.”
“Just you and my uncle though.” He snorted in dismissal. “That’s allowed. And expected. You’re family. But anyone else raises their voice to me? I’d rip their fucking tongues out and shove it up their asses.” He shook his head, feeling the truth of his words. “I went way, way above and beyond in the spirit of peace today. I mean, he walked out of this camp under his own power! And with all of his fingers! After he said those things! Can you even imagine the kind of self-control I had to have?”
“Umm…” She hedged.
He gestured with his hands, as if strangling the man’s spirit. “Any reasonable man would have squeezed his skinny neck until his fucking eyes popped out!”
Tandrea didn’t appear to have a reply to that. “Umm… no, I have no idea why he was upset.” She shook her head. “To be honest, most Wastelanders seem afflicted by bouts of random fury though, especially you, so I can’t say I’m surprised.”
A new idea occurred to him and he could only put his face in his hands, already knowing the answer. “Wait… when you say every word…”
“Yes.” She nodded again. “Every word.”
He let out an aggravated sound. “Not the stuff you weren’t supposed to say!”
“Which was?”
He started to massage his temples to relieve a growing stress headache. “The mere fact you don’t know, terrifies me.”
“You told me to interpret!” She protested. “I’m a professional! I accurately translated every single word! Not once did you say: ‘Tandy, please don’t translate this’ or even ‘Hey Tandy? Can you not tell him that last part? I was just throwing a hissy fit like a little girl to make myself feel better’!” She jabbed a finger into his chest. “If you didn’t want me to say it, you shouldn’t have said it!”
“I said it under my breath, that doesn’t count!”
“’Under your breath.’” She snorted in derision. “Every single word you’ve ever uttered has been screamed in anger at someone.”
“Well, I’ll have plenty of opportunities to demonstrate, because now we’re at war.” He threw up his hands in disbelief. “Great.”
“I did not create a diplomatic incident.” She protested, insulted by the implication. “I have training at this. I am a professional! You were the one who insulted a head of state to his face. That put him in a bad mood from the very start.”
“He doesn’t speak my language!” Tzadok spread his arms wide, calling attention to her insanity. “I could have called him anything I wanted! He wouldn’t have known!”
“If that’s what you wanted, then why did you call me over in the first place then!?!” She poked him in the chest again, then repeated the process as if testing the firmness of his muscles and getting distracted as a result. “Wow…” She breathed, then refocused. “You… you said to interpret your words for him. That’s what I did.” She shook her head indignantly. “I’m sorry, but the Galland League of Diplomacy and Interpretation would agree with me here, had they not all been starved to death in that pit.” She sniffed, obviously believing that settled the matter for all time and forever. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go record some new data on my study of traumatic bonding. The number is now down to ‘Three,’ because you’re being a jerk.” She started to walk away, then stopped to add something. “’One’ being the lowest and…”
“I know!” He snapped. “You’ve gone over the rules of that damn chart a dozen times!”
She didn’t move.
“’Six.’” He spat out. “I’m at ‘Six.’”
Her brow compressed in surprise. “Really?”
“You’re pretty when you’re angry. And I like hearing you speak weird languages. I find it…” He trailed off.
“Erotic?” She guessed.
“I am helpless in your presence.” He admitted.
“Huh.” She processed that news and started to walk away again. “Interesting.”
Tzadok shook his head sadly.
No matter what she said, he still didn’t see how acting as a translator on occasion qualified you for “research” on sexual bonding. It seemed like she should… just translate words and stuff. But to hear her tell it, interpreting random conversations was one of the high goddamned sciences!
Not that he objected to the study itself. He found it adorable. And… it inspired lust, obviously.
And he certainly couldn’t speak the wide variety of languages she could.
But in either case… she was his.
And the more he thought about it, the surer he was of that.
Which meant he was even surer that Hawser was dead.
The man could show up tomorrow, weeping piteously and begging forgiveness, and Tzadok would still get an unreasonable amount of satisfaction from killing him slowly.
Because Tandrea belonged to him. Not some asshole from the coast and his lies.
No one would touch Tzadok’s prize. Not Hawser, not Aix, and not some sinister priest of a foreign cult.
Tandrea was… weird. She did things he didn’t understand. Crazy, bewildering things. But that just made her more appealing somehow. A little green genius with insane ideas and a stunning body. Who… seemed to like talking to him, for some reason. Or at least more than anyone else in The Wasteland did, anyway. Most people avoided Tzadok like a contagious disease, too terrified of him to be near him for long, but Tandrea was always eager to continue her research and discuss all manner of things that were on her limitless mind. She even raised her voice to him when she was angry, something no one else in the world would dare to do.
He found that… charming. And it made him want her more than any graph could ever accurately convey.
He let out another sigh.
The Wasteland was about to collapse into war.
And all Tzadok could think about was going to help his woman work on her stupid study.
Kobb strolled up a moment later like he didn’t have a care in the world. “So, how did the meeting go?”
“Shut up, Uncle.” Tzadok spat out, fighting the urge to hit him. “My patience today is at a ‘Two.’”
Kobb nodded. “And I assume that ‘One’ would be lowest and…”
“Shut up!”
Chapter Six:
The Kinship of All Wild Things
As it turned out, Aix was not the only visitor the camp had that day. After yelling about something or other with his uncle for several hours, Tzadok finally calmed down enough to send out a scout team to locate and report back on the position of any possible Coastal People groups in the area. He was apparently concerned about an attack, but she couldn’t imagine why.
In any case, the men had left on horseback that afternoon. But rather than finding the Coastal People, they unexpectedly ran into someone no one ever expects to find in the middle of a salt desert: pirates.
Six men had gone out. Two came back.
The others had apparently been killed by the pirate captain and his female companion, who then demanded an audience with Tzadok.
Unexpectedly, The Lord of Salt didn’t simply kill them. Instead, they discussed the matter—thanks to Tandy’s stellar interpreting skills—and Tzadok agreed to give the man supplies.
Tandy wasn’t exactly certain what had happened there.
One minute, Tzadok was threatening to kill him, and the next, the pirate from the Grizzwood seemed to imply his female companion was his… “slave” or “translator” or “Little Bird”… whatever the heck that word meant, and Tzadok’s mood changed entirely. As it turned out, the pirate was the brother of one of Tzadok’s allies from the Grizzwood anyway, so it worked out.
But why Tzadok would care that the pirate was trying to protect his companion, remained a mystery. Tzadok was the barbarian chieftain of a tribal hunter-gatherer warrior society. And Tandy didn’t believe that one rose to that position by sparing invaders.
To further complicate matters, the pirates were traveling with
several other people, one of whom was a young woman who had become infatuated with Xiphos, and she had decided to remain in the village rather than leave with her friends.
At the moment, the pirates were discussing the matter with Xiphos and several other men in front of a nearby tent.
Which left Tandy to sit by the small rocky spring that served as the temporary village’s water supply, pondering the issue. She was joined by a man who was one of the clan’s other recently captured persons, the woman who arrived with the pirates and who now wished to live in the village with Xiphos, and another man who was the pirates’ friend.
The young man who was traveling with the pirates lounged against the rocks, casually waiting for his companions. Several years younger than Tandy, his reddish-brown hair was arranged on his head in a tangle and his clothes looked the worse for wear.
The Great Nothing was not something to travel through lightly.
He looked around at the world like it were his own personal life-size dollhouse. Somewhere between disinterest and mild amusement, while he waited for something new to happen. That either meant he had supreme confidence in himself, or else that he simply didn’t care at all if he lived or died.
Personally, Tandy was thinking it was the latter.
He seemed to joke and smile at all the right times, but there was a deep sadness in him. He seemed… broken. If there was anything left in the world he cared about, it sure wasn’t here. Or himself.
“I need to clean this or she’ll be angry…” The captured Galland soldier taken by Noxii The Coming Death told no one in particular, as he crouched near Tandy’s feet at the water’s edge. The man had been Claimed by the Wasteland warrior woman right before Tzadok had Claimed Tandy, but he seemed to find his own enslavement much more stressful. Tandy was scared of Tzadok, but this guy seemed like he was taking fearful respect to a whole new level. “So, so angry…” He whispered to himself as motivation to redouble his efforts.
The captive man frantically scrubbed at a pile of clothes his mistress had evidently given him to wash, and he was obviously taking the job very seriously.
Whatever the woman had done to him, he seemed almost unhinged now.
Tandy wasn’t entirely sure how you could break someone’s mind in the space of a few days, but his mistress had apparently accomplished it.
The young man who arrived with the pirates frowned at the other man in confused interest, but didn’t bother to ask what was going on.
The silence of the scene was interrupted by the dark-haired cavalry woman from Galland who Tandy had come here with. The woman was walking down the path between the tents, when she turned around suddenly to glare at one of the Wastelanders, apparently believing that the man was following her with nefarious intent.
“What!?!” The woman spread her arms wide, inviting him to make his move or explain himself, despite the fact the man didn’t speak her language. “WHAT!?!” She pointed at the man, stalking towards him. “You been ghosting me all night, motherfucker! You got a fucking problem!?!” She pushed him in challenge, using both arms to shove the man backwards while continuing to advance on him. “HUH!?!” She pushed him again. “GET BACK!”
The man started to frantically explain the situation in Wastelandi, sounding scared. Something about watching out for “Kobb’s woman” while there were strangers in the camp, but the girl didn’t understand and didn’t give him a chance to finish. To be honest though, Tandy doubted the woman would have cared even if she could speak Wastelandi.
She was a very negative person.
“DON’T FUCK WITH ME!” The girl swung her fist and absolutely leveled the larger man, stepping forward into the punch like a fighter so that her full force was behind it. He stumbled backwards from the unexpected blow and fell face first into the salt. The girl launched herself at her fallen foe, punching at his prone form as his friends desperately tried to pull him from her clutches before she did permanent damage.
The group of Wastelanders scampered away like children fleeing a terrifying monster, and the girl was left breathing hard and glowering after them.
Fists clenched. Waiting. Almost wanting them to attack.
They were petrified of her. She didn’t seem like that strong a fighter that a group of warriors who each outweighed her by two-hundred pounds of muscle would flee so quickly. They’d captured her in battle once before, after all. It was the whole reason she was here. She was strong and certainly taller than Tandy, but was still a fairly small woman compared to the Wastelanders. She was by no means unstoppable.
Which meant there was something else going on, which Tandy didn’t understand. Something which kept the men from fighting back or really even defending themselves, no matter how outrageous her attacks or disruptive her behavior.
It was like… they couldn’t. Even if they wanted to.
Like the girl was protected or something.
It was… odd.
“She seems nice.” The young man across from Tandy commented casually, the first time he’d spoken in ten minutes. “You really meet the best kind of people as an internee, don’t you?”
The girl flopped down onto the ground next to the small pond, her face filled with resolve. “They’re going to have to kill me or let me go, because I will not be held here against my will.” She either vowed to herself or the group at large, expertly twirling a dagger around and around in her hand, having secretly lifted it from the warrior during her unprovoked attack. “I am not meat. I will not be bought and sold. Not without a goddamned fight!” She swallowed, like she’d had personal experience with the practice and it brought up old memories. “Not in Galland, not here. Not ever.”
The girl wasn’t terribly pretty by Galland standards. But their standard of beauty called for a sort of bland sameness. Everyone looking like everyone else, so that no one felt envious and no one died as a result. This girl was… different. Tandy wasn’t entirely certain if that was “good” different or “bad” different though, since she’d grown up in Galland herself and it was difficult to try to see her from an outside perspective.
Unless, obviously, the person in question looked as strikingly perfect as Tzadok, which simplified matters.
That man would be considered gorgeous anywhere in the world.
That wasn’t even in doubt.
Such a pretty, pretty man.
This girl though, remained a mystery. Her short dark brown hair was cut so that it hung to her chin, which in itself was odd. Most women in Galland wore it much shorter than that, so as to not attract attention. Her face was composed of simple lines and shapes, giving her what could possibly be an attractive look, but one which was mostly just about determination at the moment. Her cyan eyes were large and bright though, making her face almost comically open and expressive.
She pouted. She scowled. She had a little crinkle between her eyes when she was furious or was thinking hard. She looked around constantly, either in apprehension or suspicion, unable to focus on any one thing for more than a few seconds.
This was a girl always looking for the metaphorical exits from any situation.
Just in case.
From a standpoint of nonverbal communication, the girl was a wonder.
Unlike the other Galland soldiers, this woman had also worn her winter gear on the trip, which spoke well of her intelligence and planning ability. Her coat was tied around her waist at the moment though, despite the deep chill in the air, and she was wearing her undershirt over rather baggy furred pants and thick boots. Her diminished wardrobe revealed that the girl was muscular and fit, but not to the point of losing her feminine form. Being too muscled was seen as showy in Galland and would inspire jealousy from those in society who weren’t incredibly buff. You needed to walk that thin line between “top physical condition” and “show-off.”
Except Tandy.
Tandy’s exercise regimen consisted of climbing ladders to gain access to books on the top shelf and running to quickly hide from people she di
dn’t want to talk to.
That was about it.
The little group of people assembled around the water spring continued to sit in silence for several moments.
The pirate boy was the first to speak. “You know, not to start a pissing contest or anything, but I’m just going to throw the gauntlet down and say it,” he nodded in certainty, “I think my captors could beat up all your guys’ captors.” He held up his hands in a “There. I finally said it.” kind of gesture.
Tandy frowned, rather insulted on Tzadok’s behalf. She opened her mouth to disagree with that statement, since there was really no question that Tzadok could absolutely destroy the pirate captain if he chose to.
The man continued talking before she got the chance to object, however. “I mean, damn. Am I right? We’ve got ourselves the makings of a really awesome kidnapping support group here, don’t we?” He placed his hand over his heart, taking on a fake emotional tone. “They’ve chained our bodies, but our spirits remain forever free.” He cleared his throat. “I’ll go first.” He stood up. “I’m Ryle. From Cormoran. Kidnapped by pirates.” He waved at them. “Really excited to get on with the healing and become more active in the larger hostage community.”
Tandy smiled and waved back. “Tandy. Gallandish, but my parents were from Nellith originally. Held captive by a barbarian warlord.”
“No shit?” His eyebrows rose. “How’s that working out for you?”
She shrugged. “Not so bad.”
“I was kinda kidnapped by your barbarians too for a while today, as you recall, but it was just another in a long string of ‘one night abductions’ I’ve had lately. I mean, I put myself out there, but no captors are willing to commit anymore.” He heaved a theatrical sigh of resignation, then sounded serious. “For what it’s worth though… I voted that my kidnappers kidnap you from your kidnapper, because I thought there was less of a chance of you being… you know… mistreated.”
Captive of a Fairytale Barbarian Page 13
