Alien Enslaved IV: Spoils of War

by Kaitlyn O’Connor

  “You asked what they were rubbing on the skins,” he reminded her.

  She frowned. “This?”

  He replaced the knife and picked up a tiny grain of the rock in his palm. Pinching it between thumb and forefinger, he held it out to her.

  She took the tiny pebble and stared at it, but she couldn’t tell one rock from another.

  “Taste it.”

  She looked at him like he’d lost his mind.

  Because that’s what she thought.

  He uttered a chuckle. “It is not a trick.”

  Still feeling very much like the butt of a joke, she finally lifted the piece and put in on her tongue. Instantly, flavor exploded in her mouth.

  She rolled it around on her tongue, savoring it. “Oh my god! It’s salt!”

  Mind totally blown, it took her many moments to collect herself enough to even begin to process the implications.

  Because not only was it an essential mineral, it was staggering the number of things it could be used for.

  Not that she had a list ready to mind, but she did know that it was used in food preservation. And that it was good for cuts and sores.

  “This is what Boruc used on May’s foot,” she muttered, more to herself than to Aidan.

  “Very likely—at least one of the ingredients. It kills bacteria … some, at any rate.”

  “We used it for sore throat at my house. We’d gargle with it if we didn’t have anything else.” She grinned at him abruptly. “This is so great! Did you find it?”

  His gaze focused briefly on her smile before he met her gaze again. “Yes. When we went to scout for a place to gather everyone.”

  He pushed the small piece he had broken off into the waistband of his loincloth. “For the stew,” he responded when she glanced at him and then added with a wry smile, “We should get back before they decide to eat all of it.”

  Vaguely disappointed, Lori merely nodded and led the way to the exit.

  He grasped her waist when he’d braced himself as he had before. This time, though, instead of merely swinging her out, he brought her up against his length.

  Lori looked up at him with breathless anticipation.

  “I have wanted you from the moment that I first saw you.” He shook his head. “I know now is not the time, but I give you warning now, the time will come when I will claim you as mine.”

  Lori hardly knew how she got back to the gathering place, but she was there for some time before she realized that the entire group had migrated from the previous campsite to gather around the cook fire.

  She wasn’t sure she would have noticed then except that Aidan approached the pot and broke pieces off of the salt block and tossed them into the pot—which brought it to her attention that people were already lining up.

  A mixture of dismay and indignation fluttered through her.

  She was going to end up at the end of the damned line and probably get nothing but a little watery soup!

  Not that she had anything to use to eat out of, she realized in dismay when she saw that everybody that had lined up had some sort of makeshift plate or bowl to hold their food.

  There was a handful that actually had something manufactured—probably also from the raid—that looked like crockery or metal containers. Some were holding naturally shaped stones or pieces of wood—or bone from the animal that was probably in the pot. Some had gathered leaves and layered them together to hold the meat and roots even if it was unlikely to hold the soup.

  Knowing the entire area had already been picked clean, Lori pushed to her feet and set off to search for something to use anyway. She’d given up on finding anything really useful when Jarek found her.

  He was holding what looked like a large broken shell—that turned out to be a piece of a skull.

  She wasn’t particularly squeamish about the damned skull, though, when she discovered Jarek meant to share.

  He motioned her down on the dirt beside him and held the ‘bowl’ so that she could fish a tidbit out. She damned near cooked her fingers instead, and shoved them into her mouth to cool them while he took a small stick and used it to spear a piece of meat and a piece of root. He held it out to her in offering.

  She’d sucked the juice off of her fingers and discovered the stew tasted like the food of the gods, but it didn’t feel right to get the first bite when he was one of those who’d worked so damned hard to get it. She took a small bite of the ‘potato’. It promptly fell off the stick, but Jarek was quick to catch it. He popped that piece into his mouth.

  Lori had to fan the heat before she could actually taste the food she’d put in her mouth, but she discovered it was actually close enough to potato she could pretend that was what it was.

  It didn’t actually have the consistency of one, and it had a stronger taste, but it was close enough.

  Fayn joined them in a few minutes with his own makeshift bowl and shortly behind him Aidan wandered over and settled on a rock.

  Lori was a little uncomfortable when she discovered all three intended to share with her, but she wasn’t about to turn it down.

  Particularly when she realized it left more for each of them if she just took a bite here and there.

  She ate until she felt like she might explode and finally lay down to nurse her overfull stomach. “I would never have thought I’d miss ‘tastes like shit’ bread, but that would have been good with the stew. That was so good,” she said drowsily. “Thank you.”

  She was more than half asleep when someone curled up behind her, but she smiled, happy to have the warmth … whoever had been kind enough to share it.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Two days later the group started through the ‘crack’ in the mountain and Lori discovered the plan for the animal hides.

  The men cut the hides into smaller pieces and used them to cover the Earth women’s feet, tying them with thin strips.

  It was a pleasant surprise and so thoughtful Lori didn’t have the heart to complain that the hides didn’t really replace shoes, didn’t actually work worth a shit beyond preventing the things they stepped on from making cuts in the tender soles of their feet. It didn’t protect them from bruises or make walking easy because the damn things didn’t want to stay put even though they were tied on.

  Some of the women muttered under their breaths, but everyone was on their best behavior as they headed deeper into the unknown with alien warriors as their only companions, it having finally been pounded home, apparently, that Lori was right. The alien men were the cavalry. If they provoked an attack or assault, they were very likely to get the full brunt of it because there were no cops to race up with guns drawn.

  They were at the mercy of aliens and lucky they’d landed in the laps of aliens that seemed to have a great deal of empathy for others.

  The crevice went on for miles. The stream that ran through it widened and narrowed, grew shallow for a while and then deep enough to go up to their waists. The crevice widened in some places where they could walk three or four abreast and grew so narrow in others that the giants among them had trouble squeezing through by themselves.

  Fortunately, the human women, even the bigger ones, had no trouble at all or they would very likely have balked.

  It made them uneasy—as if the two sides of the mountain might suddenly decide to clap together. It wasn’t really narrow enough most of the time that it should have caused claustrophobia, but it did anyway.

  Everyone, it seemed to Lori, was beyond glad when they finally emerged on the other side about mid-day and found themselves in a hidden valley ringed by mountains.

  To Lori it looked way too fucking much like the mouth of a volcano, but there were trees in the distance, a huge forest of them, that looked big enough to have been around hundreds of years.

  The stream they’d followed widened into a respectable brook and then into a small lake. The almost pasture-like terrain that greeted them when they first emerged gave way to taller shrubs and then the giant trees.
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  It was probably the most bizarre vegetation that Lori had ever seen although it actually seemed familiar in a way because she was certain she’d seen pictures of trees on Earth that were similar.

  It almost seemed as if the forest was made up of two very different species of plant. The one that formed the base almost seemed to have legs that grew in arches and formed a cave-like space beneath. Growing out of the ‘table’ like base was a stubby limbed, fantastically wide trunk.

  Everyone stopped at the edge of this strange looking forest and just stared.

  A good indication that no one had seen anything quite like it.

  Aidan moved forward and turned to look at the crowd gathered to gape, gesturing toward the ‘trees’. “These should provide shelter and also hide our heat signatures from any drones they send out to search for us.”

  Lori felt a rush of excitement. The moment he pointed out the benefits, her mind conjured images of walls going up to fill the gaps formed by the arching roots of the trees. Uttering a gasp of pleasure, she hurried toward the nearest and with only a brief hesitation stepped through an arch to look around.

  It actually looked a bit more like a maze beneath than a cave, she thought once she’d studied it, but she thought it would be easy enough to incorporate the ‘columns’ into a comfortable space.

  “We’re going to stay here?” she asked when she emerged again.

  He tilted his head slightly. “For a time—yes.”

  Lori stepped away and turned to study the tree she’d examined, trying to decide whether to settle on this one or keep looking.

  Aidan moved up beside her. “I found one I think you might like better,” he said quietly.

  Lori sent him a sharp look. “Really? I want to see it!”

  Before she had the chance to brace herself, or to consider what he was suggesting, he swept her up and launched the two of them skyward.

  She clutched his neck a little frantically.

  His arms tightened. “It is alright, dear heart. I will keep you safe.”

  Lori felt a lump form in her throat. She swallowed with an effort, but she found it impossible to relax her hold more than a little, despite his reassurance. Thankfully, the flight was a fairly short one and he kept them just beneath the umbrella-like canopy of the trees.

  Which was a little dizzying, granted, but still less frightening than the heights he’d taken her to before.

  She was glad when he settled with her, shaky, but happy to be on the ground and she saw immediately that he hadn’t just been talking trash. The tree he had brought her to looked to be the grandfather of all the others. It was huge and the cavern it created was spacious enough to make a real house—a good sized house of many rooms.

  “Oh! It’s … fantastic!” She thought about it for several moments. “It’s enormous. It’ll take forever to finish it. I mean to close it in.”

  “We’ll manage.”

  Lori sucked in a sharp breath and looked at him wide-eyed at that, feeling a jolt of anticipation she couldn’t quite put a name to.

  Which was just as well.

  He didn’t have the opportunity to say more even if he’d intended to and she didn’t get the chance to ask him to elaborate on the ‘we’.

  Jarek and Fayn arrived at a jog and neither of them looked terribly happy that they’d been forced to chase her and Aidan down.

  Aidan eyed the two of them with obvious disfavor.

  Lori had a bad feeling that it wouldn’t take much to strike a spark and set off fireworks.

  “Look!” she said shakily. “It’s got to be the biggest in the whole forest.”

  Jarek and Fayn looked obediently, but she could see that neither of them were particularly in the mood to appreciate it.

  Jarek’s eyes were narrowed when he met Aidan’s gaze again. “You are right. This will work for all of us,” he said challengingly.

  Lori blinked rapidly, trying to tabulate that and finally sent Aidan an uncomfortable look. “Uh … well, Aidan picked it out,” she finally said uncomfortably. She wasn’t even completely certain she had been invited to share it. She thought so, but even if she had been—especially then—she didn’t think Aidan would welcome two more men in as roommates.

  “If he does not wish to share we have found a place that will be comfortable and it is close to the center of the forest so it will be more protected.”

  Be careful what you wish for said a voice in Lori’s head.

  Well! She damned sure hadn’t wished for this! She’d hoped, granted, that she could convince one of the guys that she was a keeper, but she certainly hadn’t been confident she could and she hadn’t considered all of them might decide to keep her.

  Of course, there was way more men in their group than females and that was really hard to ignore.

  But still.

  For the first time she began to wonder what sort of customs were typical on their world or worlds. She didn’t think the Satren were from the same world as the Hirachi, but they could be and still practice way different customs.

  It was almost guaranteed, though, that if either group believed in multiple anything it would be multiple wives.

  Because that was the only form of polygamy that had ever been practiced on Earth—as far as she knew. It might be practiced in the animal kingdom, maybe even primates, but not in the human animal.

  Of course, she might be getting ahead of herself—full of herself. Maybe they were just suggesting roommates?

  That would make things way the hell easier on all of them.

  There would be four to divide chores and man power was a premium when that was the only kind of power available.

  “Really that makes way more sense,” she finally said, “than everybody trying to make their own place. It would save a lot of effort and resources. And I don’t know about y’all, but I’ve had about all I can take of sleeping under the stars on the hard, cold ground.”

  She thought, maybe, she’d struck just the right chord. The three looked less angry and more thoughtful. After a few moments, they seemed to let their hackles down. Jarek headed inside the ‘cave’ and examined it. After a brief hesitation, Fayn followed. Lori looked at Aidan a little pleadingly.

  His lips tightened, but he gestured for her to precede him and followed her and the others inside to study the situation.

  They decided to gather stones to create a half wall around the outer perimeter. Using a mortar of clay gathered at the creek that ran through the valley, they filled the cracks around the stones to block the air flow. They’d only managed to put in one full and one partial course of stone before the light failed them, but Lori was convinced it already felt more comfortable, particularly when they’d hung a fairly sizable skin up to help to block the wind and built a small fire in the center of what they’d decided would be the main living area.

  Lori had made herself useful as long as they would allow her to, acting as a gofer. Once they’d dismissed her and told her to rest, she focused on gathering up armloads of grasses to make a ‘mattress’ and then a search for something to put over the prickly grass. Pretty much the only thing she could find was the leaves, but she layered those over the grasses and, if it wasn’t terribly comfortable, it still beat bare ground.

  She woke feeling sore and battered from sleeping on the ground but strangely energized, too. She didn’t really examine the sense of buoyancy too closely, but she could hardly bear to sit still long enough to eat the leftovers they’d set aside for the morning.

  That very quickly became the norm for her. Part of every day had to be spent ‘gathering’, naturally enough. They’d arrived with virtually nothing. They had no garden to supplement the meat the men brought back from their hunts and none of the women had any idea of how to hunt, capture, kill, and clean. That left gathering—which they also didn’t know a hell of a lot about.

  But Lori put what Fayn had taught her to use, explained it to the other women, and they managed to, mostly, come back with edible plants t
hat they laid out for the men to examine when they returned. That task became less necessary as time went on and the women learned which plants to gather and which to leave alone.

  As the days passed, they began to spend less time gathered around the community pot to eat and more time with their own pots and ‘family’ groups, but the women continued to gather around the community pot whenever the men vanished from their camp and went off to raid the alien stronghold or to hunt.

  Not that the guys ever admitted that that was what they were up to, but, little by little, ‘things’ began to appear, useful tools and weapons and household items that added comfort and convenience.

  Lori wasn’t so sure it was really worth antagonizing the grays to sneak into the camp and help themselves to whatever they wanted, but nobody asked her and she salved her conscience about the ‘thefts’ with the reflection that they were taking things the bastards had stolen to start with. And, beyond that, the grays owed them compensation for taking absolutely everything away from them.

  “We’re never going back, are we?” Morgan asked one day as they were gathered tiredly around the pot waiting for the stew to boil.

  Lori and May exchanged a long look.

  Jill released a heavy sigh. “I don’t think we should count on it,” she responded. “I don’t think I’ll ever be able to give up hope of it, but …. I also don’t think it’s likely.”

  Lori had been trying hard not to think about it at all, but she realized something in that moment that she’d carefully avoided thinking about. “I’m pregnant,” she said flatly. “I’ll never go back because my baby wouldn’t be safe and there isn’t anything that would convince me to leave it.”

  She could see the other women wanted to argue that point but also that it didn’t take a great leap for them to realize they had been effectively tied to this life they were trying to build.

  “Do you think we’ll manage to get our ‘nests’ ready before the babies get here?”

  Lori hadn’t thought about it that way, but she realized as soon as May said it that that was what drove her every day—the need to have a safe, comfortable place for her child.