Page 3 of Condemned

“Shhh!” She smiled up at the creature, then did another hop, was swinging her leg over when—

Someone thumped into her body with a massive arm, wrapped it about her waist and dragged her off the florse, then rammed her into the ground.

Coughing, blacking out, she barely had time to register that the lean mauleon had her, before he flipped her over and held her face down in the dust while he wrapped something about her wrists and tied them.

“Here!” he yelled. “I’ve got the human!”

No matter how she struggled to rise, he easily held her down.

He pulled off her gloves, yanked back her hood, patted her down, and removed every weapon, even the sheathed blade at her ankle... also the lock picks, the spare ammo and, last of all, the miniature smoke bombs. Then he felt along her fingertips.

“Well, well. You are not quite what you seem.”

More boots arrived, surrounding her. Four mauleons. Though genetically close to human, with their heavy catlike claws and their paired fangs, they were deadly even without their metal weapons. They could disembowel her with one swipe.

Her stomach squeezed in, as did her chest. She swallowed, flexed her fingers, hoping Nibbles had gone somewhere safer than her hood.

The florses squealed and trampled the ground until one of the soldiers talked them down from panicking.

Once the hooves stopped stamping, a mauleon squatted before her, cramming his clawed hand into her hair. He hauled back her head, tucked her hood neatly onto her neck.

“It’s a girl,” he observed, his eyes scanning her face and lower, surely checking out her breasts, as if those and she were a rare curiosity. “You’ve done a bad thing, girl human.”

“My name,” she ground out, “is not girl.”

“Huh.” He shrugged. “Well, not-girl, stealing the Claw of Truth was a mistake. The courts will not gift you with a mild sentence. There’s a peace treaty being hammered out and this was foolish. Even humans will find you in the wrong.”

“Fuck you,” she snarled.

“Tsk.” He slapped her face lightly. The pain made her eyes water. She blinked to clear them and saw the many blond braids flopping at his shoulders, the gun holstered at his hip. With that in her hand, she’d leave them all dead. “No curses. Save them for the judge. Though it would not be wise to curse him either.”

He rose, leaving her to lower her head to the dirt.

“They’ll have her impaled,” another said.

She froze. Her hands grew instantly cold, reminding her to strive to break the bonds. Nothing moved; she only wore a line of pain in her wrists. Her heart bumped urgently, telling her to run. As if.

She’d known. She had. They punished lawbreakers harshly in Snaar. All sorts of facts piled into her brain, as if it knew she needed to think about anything except the here and now. Snaar was the only mauleon kingdom on this continent. Maybe on the whole planet. Who knew what happened on the other side of the world? Tech had turned to rust since the Quarantine. Mauleons seemed to like making examples out of wrongdoers.

“Yes,” the fair one who’d talked to her agreed. Scars distorted parts of his face. “Impalement. A pity. She smells good. And has a nice ass.”

They laughed. An unwelcome heat burned her cheeks—both from anger and embarrassment.

“No one will care if we fuck this morsel before we hand her in, Captain Takk. We found the Claw. It’s our right.”

“No. She’s not ours.” Takk again, who must be their leader. His boots turned as he addressed the others. “No. Let the courts handle her. We are headed home.”

Avalon shut her eyes. One blessing. Now all she needed was a thousand more of those.

All this because she wanted to impress Uncle. She’d known it was the wrong choice. A compelled choice but wrong. If she hadn’t, he’d have let her be sent to some faraway prison, to be forgotten to the family.

But she would’ve been alive.

“Bring her, Zo.”

The sneaky one who’d caught her, the one with the black hair in a single tail and the narrow face—and that was unusual for a mauleon—hauled her up by her arm and made her walk.

Zo and Takk. Knowledge might help her. Even their names.