“Probably from yesterday’s storms,” Gelan answered. “I don’t remember the maps saying this is a very low-lying area. Wynhod?”
“Spots here and there, worse as we get closer.”
They had nearly caught up. Dani turned from them, stepping up on log, crossed it, stepped into a long stretch of smooth, glassy water. She plunged down to her waist.
“Damn it.”
The men paused at the edge. Gelan blew out a breath. “I cannot wait to be back in the mountains. I’ve had enough of this lowland stuff to last me awhile. Hold still, Dani. Who knows how deep this gets?”
He released Krijero and vaulted the log. The Dramok waded out to Dani and picked her up, cradling her against his chest. Dani would have preferred he help Krijero, but she knew her protests would fall on deaf ears. It made her feel good that they placed her welfare in such high esteem, but she felt guilty nonetheless. She wasn’t badly injured, after all.
Wynhod supported Krijero as they carefully navigated their way to join them. Neither man seemed to mind Gelan’s election to carry her.
Dani was in perfect agreement with Gelan’s disgust over the wetland. “If I never see another swamp, I’ll be grateful. What’s your home like?”
They slogged through the water, the water climbing the men’s thighs as they went deeper. Krijero grinned at her, the expression easing some of the tightness on his face. “Curious to know about where you’ll live?”
Wynhod said, “You’ll like it, little fighter. Plenty of mountains to climb. You’ll have a couple of rooms of your own. You can decorate them however you like.”
Gelan added, “We’ll have to make a trip to Joshada. They have the best craftsmen. There’s no better place to buy furnishings.”
Krijero ticked off items as the water rose to his buttocks. “A desk, vid, tables, seating. Shelves and decorative items. Whatever else depending on your hobbies and interests. I’m thinking the rooms between mine and yours, Gelan. We can build a nice balcony for her off the exterior.”
“The view from there is spectacular,” the Dramok agreed.
Hope warred with mistrust. Dani looked at the three men. “That sure is a lot of trouble for someone who’s only going to be around for three years.”
They exchanged looks and slight nods with each other. Gelan turned his attention to her. In a careful voice, he said, “We’ve been talking, Dani. We’d like you to stay on beyond your contract as our Matara.”
Joy rose for an instant as she thought they want me! It crashed the next moment as a little voice asked, then why don’t they make me their Matara now?
They were giving themselves an out in case she proved too much trouble during her servitude.
I’ll screw it up. I always do. They won’t keep me past the contract.
Unable to keep the pain from her voice, Dani shook her head. “It’ll never work. You’ll see. We’re not right for each other.”
Wynhod scowled. Krijero lowered his head to study the water, now nearly to his waist.
Gelan sounded disappointed, but he shrugged his shoulders. “We disagree with you. No matter. We have three years to change your mind.”
It’s not my mind that will change. I’ll always want to be your Matara. You won’t. She knew that as sure as LXS-42 was the worst rock she’d ever had the displeasure of visiting. “You shouldn’t bother. You’re planning to spend all that money and do a bunch of work for nothing.”
Wynhod growled, ferocity making his face hard. “You will be our Matara, Dani. Be scared of it all you like, but the decision is made.”
She said nothing, only laid in Gelan’s arms thinking sad thoughts.
* * * *
Gelan hadn’t expected Dani to be thrilled with their plans to make her their lifelong mate, but he still experienced a twinge of disappointment at her reluctance. The letdown was mitigated by the struggle on her expression, the flashes of fear and pain.
Give her time. She’ll come around. She already shows signs of wanting to be around us despite her inability to trust.
It was Krijero all over again, except in greater measures. Perhaps fate had given him his Imdiko as training to win over Dani.
He was still thinking of all the ways the clan would charm Dani into loving them when they finally reached a rise of higher ground, taking them out of the fetid pool of water they’d been wading in. No sooner had the men’s boots cleared the swamp when Wynhod suddenly froze.
“Down, Krijero!” he shouted, and the Imdiko released his hold on him, crouching on the ground. As Wynhod drew both blaster and knife, putting himself in front of Krijero, Gelan put Dani on the ground next to him and drew his own weapons.
Tragooms burst out of cover, squealing and blasting as they heaved their blocky, armored bodies towards the clan. With Dani’s screams ringing in his ears, Gelan returned fire. Then the Tragooms were on top of them, and all was sweat and blood, pain and fighting.
The clan was outnumbered, and the bloodthirsty Tragooms seemed to be everywhere. Gelan was dimly aware of Wynhod fighting, a savage grin eating up the Nobek’s face as he took his enemies down. The thrill of destruction was on Gelan, and elation burst with every tusked foe that took him on, sometimes four at a time. Krijero rose and fell as his ankle failed him, but his howls of delighted rage told Gelan he was holding his own.
Gelan didn’t know why the typically opportunistic Tragooms didn’t simply finish them off with blasters rather than fighting hand to hand combat. He didn’t care. The glory of battle filled his veins, and he killed the hated enemy, gleeful as blackish Tragoom blood arced from well-placed stabs to chests and groins, the most vulnerable parts in the armor-like Tragoom hides.
Grunts and squeals and shrieks filled the air. Blades flashed silver lightning in the dappled sunlight. Blows thudded off thick Tragoom hides, honed knives found the softer fleshy parts. The rancid stench of unwashed Tragoom and rotted swamp vegetation blanketed the battleground.
Gelan saw Krijero go down yet again, but this time a lucky Tragoom leapt upon the Imdiko, a triple-bladed dagger rushing down to impale his heart. Without thought, Gelan pulled a thin-bladed knife from his boot and plunged it into the Tragoom’s eye, instantly killing the misbegotten beast. Its dagger fell from its hand, the handle bouncing harmlessly off Krijero’s chest.
Gelan pushed the carcass off his clanmate and stood over Krijero, ready to fight on. But the Tragooms had all suddenly disappeared, save the one Wynhod was happily beheading. Seven corpses lay around their little group.
The attacking force had seemed huge, numbering at least two dozen. Where had they gone?
Krijero shoved him aside as he sat up. Gelan joined Wynhod in scanning the trees surrounding them, sure another offensive was going to be launched at any moment. But Krijero’s horrified cry stole his attention.
Gelan’s blood ran cold at as the Imdiko screamed, “Where’s Dani?”
* * * *
Dani ran blindly, her mind gibbering panic, her vision still filled with the sight of hordes of Tragooms with hog-like faces, curved tusks, and glittering knives. Of the Kalquorians taking on two, three, four of the foul beasts at a time. Of Krijero stumbling and falling. Of monsters reaching for her only to be knocked back by the Kalquorians.
She didn’t remember racing off. Animal instinct had taken over, sending her into flight the moment an opening in the wall of fighting opened up. Even now, she wasn’t bothered with coherent thought. There was only the need to run, to escape, to hide.
Dani didn’t notice the branches slapping her face and body as she dashed through the bog. The splash of her passage made no impression. She felt no pain when she stumbled and fell. She was on her feet again without thought, running, running, running, not daring to look back.
Even as hard as her legs pumped, the trees crawled past with nightmarish slowness. She might as well have crawled for all the progress she seemed to make. Her feet were blocks of concrete, her legs as sludgy as the muck that dragged at her. The air she hauled i
nto her burning lungs wasn’t nearly enough, a mere drop of oxygen when she needed barrels to fuel her flight.
Snarls and grunts chased after her, growing louder as her pursuers gained on her. Their footsteps quaked the ground beneath her. The snap of branches, the explosions of trunks broken as they chased her down filled her ears and fed her terror.
The stench of death, rancid like a mountain of rotting corpses, invaded her nostrils. They were gaining on her. They would catch her and add her to the pile of broken, bloody bodies to putrefy in the hot, sweltering tomb of LXS-42.
She saw the cloven-hooflike hand descending from the corner of her eye and put on a desperate, last-ditch burst of speed. It wasn’t enough. The grayish-armored appendage clapped down on her shoulder, closed painfully on it, and jerked her around to face the Tragoom that had caught her.
She screamed, a long trail of audible terror. Then they tossed her amongst themselves, a rag doll for their amusement. The world whirled around her in nauseating turns: pinkish sky glimpsed through tree branches, brown sludgy ground trampled by heavy feet, thick gray rhinoceros-like hides, yellowed tusks. And the rank stench that seemed to spell her doom more succinctly than the grasping hoof-hands.
One of the fiends caught her, ending the game of toss. It held her close to its hard, unforgiving body, filling her gaze with its monstrous face. It leered and laughed, rubbing itself against her. She screamed at the sight of sharp teeth and the feel of a massive erection the size of her thigh.
* * * *
“Go!” Flailing impotently on his injured ankle, Krijero shouted at the sound of Dani’s scream unraveling thinly in the air. “I’ll be fine. Help her!”
He hadn’t finished urging them on before Wynhod and Gelan set off, easily tracking the wide swath of the Tragooms’ passage. A second scream, one filled with absolute terror that made Wynhod’s guts curdle, followed.
They were badly outnumbered. They were leaving a lame Krijero behind. But the vicious brutes that had killed many a Kalquorian, including members of the Nobek’s own birth family, had Dani. Wynhod had seen firsthand what Tragooms did to females.
He and Gelan had paused only long enough to snatch extra percussion blasters from the fallen enemy. If they died, it wouldn’t be for a lack of firepower.
They swept through the heavily wooded swamp, their passage eased by the knocked over trees the Tragooms had left in their haste. Gelan paused where the destruction ended, where the footprints indicated the beasts had stopped running. Had they paused here to do something to Dani? Neither sight nor smell indicated any trace of spilled Earther blood.
Yet.
A less destructive path swept towards the northwest, showing the Tragooms had re-organized before continuing on. The bastards, despite their clumsy looking bulks, could move fast. They were no doubt heading straight to their ship with their prize. Kalquorians weren’t the only race enthralled with the sweet, soft flesh of Earther women. Now he knew why their attackers hadn’t simply blown the clan away with blasters. They’d wanted Dani alive. With barely a glance exchanged, Wynhod and Gelan shot after their quarry.
Over a dozen Tragooms, armed to their yellowed tusks, versus two Kalquorians, desperate to regain their Matara. If not for Dani’s endangerment, Wynhod would find the odds exhilarating. Even with the Earther’s life on the line, he looked forward to the coming encounter. He couldn’t help himself; he was a Nobek after all.
Half a step behind Gelan, he plunged on through the swamp.
* * * *
As the Tragooms ran through the marshy woods, the splash of their heavy treads turned to sucking sounds as higher elevations took them to mucky ground. They huffed in bestial grunts as they went, but they showed no sign of slowing.
Slung over a Tragoom’s shoulder, Dani pounded its back. Its rancid, rotten egg smell made her gag and her eyes water. She’d never known anything that possessed a more noxious stench. She fought as much to escape the odor as the creature that emitted it. The Tragoom wore ill-fitting armor that hurt her fists much more than she could hope to hurt the beast wearing it. Still, she couldn’t just surrender to her fate, so she kicked and hit and squirmed and fought.
Dani had no doubt these monstrous bastards had killed Gelan’s clan. They’d been so badly outnumbered, there was no way the Kalquorians had survived. The despair that came with that realization made her choke. She had told them she didn’t think she could take another life, not even to save her own. But if she’d been able to grab the percussion blaster slung on the Tragoom’s hip, just inches away from her reach, she thought she might prove herself wrong. Vengeance had its own power when it came to quelling conscience.
Dani managed to grab a thick branch as they passed a tree, partially broken off. She finished the limb’s amputation and used it to whale enthusiastically on the Tragoom carrying her. “Put me down you nasty hog-faced bastard!”
With a mighty heave, the Tragoom threw her to the ground. Her body hit with a meaty thud, knocking the breath from her lungs and the branch from her hand. She lay there stunned as the beast loomed over her. With a grunt that sounded full of cruel laughter, it peeled back the scrap of cloth at its groin, exposing a warty male sex as big around and long as Dani’s thigh. It kneeled down, grasping her ankles and spreading her legs wide.
Dani shrieked, knowing the horrible thing would disembowel her with the first thrust. “No!”
She struggled to no avail as other Tragooms crowded around, squealing their companion on. It yanked her hard, pulling her sex into position.
Suddenly another Tragoom, one wearing a bandoleer full of knives, yanked her would-be rapist away. There was a lot of loud snorting as the other one jumped to its feet and confronted it. While they got into each others’ faces, screeching threateningly one snout to another, a third Tragoom dragged Dani across the ground and crouched over her, simultaneously holding her struggling body down and freeing his horrid cock as he prepared to take advantage of the dust up. A fourth Tragoom dragged him off before he could do any damage.
Suddenly most of the group was fighting, pounding each other with mighty booms of cloven fists on armored skin. Dani leapt up to run, but another Tragoom, one not engaged in combat, slung her over his shoulder and stepped back from the battle. It watched, snuffling as its fellows beat the hell out of one another, unmindful of Dani’s desperate punches as she tried to get free.
Screams of pain and anger blasted the woods as the fight raged. Suddenly, two percussion blasts rang out, making Dani’s ears pop. She managed to twist in her captor’s grip enough to see what was going on.
The Tragoom party had frozen, all their tiny eyes directed at the bandoleer-wearing Tragoom. The creature glared around at them, a blaster in each hand. Two of its fellows lay unmoving at its feet.
It snorted and snuffed at everyone, obviously issuing orders and threats. Everyone got to their feet and fell in line. Then Bandoleer eyed Dani and grinned. It stroked itself and nodded before grunting at the Tragoom holding Dani. It also got into line, and they resumed running on as if the fight had never taken place, leaving the fallen behind.
Hopelessness took Dani’s will to struggle away. She knew her rape and death had only been delayed. Her lone hope of escaping the horror lay in getting hold of a blaster and keeping it long enough to kill herself. The chances of that mercy were incredibly slim.
It can’t end this way. But Dani knew it might.
* * * *
Gelan scowled at the two dead Tragooms. “Damn it. They’re fighting over her already.”
Wynhod was prancing with impatience in spirit, though not in body. Only minute twinges gave away his desperate need to hurry after Dani. “She stopped screaming two minutes ago.”
Both their heads went up at the sound of faraway splashing back the way they’d come. Gelan blew out a breath of tolerant frustration. “I wish Krijero would stay behind. He’s in no condition to fight.”
Wynhod had already brought his attention back to the task at hand. He bent
to sniff at the ground. “He’s in love with her, the same as we are. He’ll die trying to save her.” He paused at a patch of ground, picked up a large branch, and inhaled deeply. “Her scent. But no sign of Earther blood.”
“Only Tragooms were hurt then. She’s still alive. Let’s go.”
They chased after, neither discussing the terrible end Dani would come to if they didn’t get to her in time. She wouldn’t survive a Tragoom rape, not even if they arrived to stop it midway through.
Gelan fought off a surge of panic, but he did encourage his Nobek to run faster. “Hurry, Wynhod. They’re not hiding their trail, which means their ship is near. They could take off at any moment.”
Wynhod growled in response, and they raced as hard as they could go.
* * * *
Dani ached all over from bouncing on the Tragoom’s shoulder and back. But when the group slowed, sick terror bloomed. They were nearing the end of the journey, and what waited for her would be a billion times worse than jolting across the uneven terrain.
The trees ended in a clearing much like the one Reggie had crashed his ship in. Another ship waited there, so haphazardly constructed that at first Dani thought it too had crashed on LXS-42.
But her mind was on much more terrible things as the Tragooms began squealing their fingernails-on-chalkboard speech at each other. Their headache of a spaceship was the last thing on her mind.
Some Tragooms moved towards the ship. Others stood in loose groups, staring at her and poking one another as they planned … God, she didn’t want to think about what they were planning. Bandoleer Tragoom stalked up to the one that held her and began to screechy-squeal.
The Tragoom whose shoulder she draped across returned the squeals. Its hold loosened just a bit. Seizing the opportunity, Dani lunged for the blaster attached to its belt.
Alien Slave Page 24
