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Swallowing thickly, Krista gathers her courage and slowly,slowly,shifts her weight, turning her head to see beyond the rounded pillar of her tree.
The remnants of the Harkurians’ dinner sit to one side, still smoking faintly on a spit, and Krista presses a hand to her hollow belly as her stomach twists wretchedly. They have a small iron pot balanced atop some kind of impossible stove with flames in its belly and they each dip into it with a small scrap of cloth, using the comically small cakes of soap in their palms to scrub themselves down. Steam coils off of their hands and torsos as they work. Just how hot is that water?
Well, there goes the rumor that Harkurians don't bathe. Krista doesn’t know much about them, but the overall impression had been pretty unflattering. Harkurians tend to be hunters and mercenaries, offering themselves as guards or as skilled fighters for other people’s disputes. They don’t seem to make much of their own trouble, but they aren’tsafe.They’re said to be barbaric, sort of stupid, and definitely not suitable company for a young Human woman traveling alone.
But they have tents. And a fire. And they have whatever that thing is on the spit. There isn’t enough of the original animal to identify, but Krista’s stomach wants it regardless and her insides snarl angrily at the thought of turning away.
As she watches, her feet rooted indecisively to the spot, one of the Harkurians stands—Gods, he must be at least eight feet tall—and hooks his fingers into his trousers, unlacing the front. Just in time, Krista turns her head away, blinking wide eyes into pitch darkness.
By the Gods.
Don’t look, Krista, she tells herself firmly.That is not your business.
She looks.
And she stares. OhGods, she’s heard the phrase ‘hung like a Harkurian,’ but she never put much thought into the reasoning behind it. Krista has seen men before. She had a brief fling with the baker's son before the Patriarch put a stop to it and made her see the priest for purification. Her temporary lover had been satisfactory—well-endowed, even. But the baker’s son hasnothingon this Harkurian. Even hanging soft and quiescent, the monster between his thighs is formidable—a smooth bulge of green that the giant male simply works his cloth around like it’s no big deal.
Okay. Maybe Krista could slink away and come back later? They ought to be finished by then. Right? Or she could move on. She should definitely do that, in fact.Humans, she understands reasonably well. For better or for worse, she knowshow they work. She speaks the same language. She knows the same social cues and the same customs. There’s no guarantee that the Humans she finds will begoodHumans, but at least they won’t be completely alien. She's heard things about Harkurians—dangerous things—and now is not the time to find out if those things are true.
Yeah. Krista needs to leave. Her commune is remote, but it can’t possibly be so isolated that she’ll drop dead from exhaustion or cold or starvation before she happens upon someone more suitable.
Can it?
Drat.
Krista doesn’t get a chance to decide. From somewhere out of the dark, another body collides with her own, knocking her into the tree and cutting off her first sharp, involuntary cry. Hot steel coils around the nape of her neck and she’s yanked upright like she weighs nothing.
Now, finally, she draws enough breath to scream.
Well, she will definitely be meeting the Harkurians now. They will probably intercede, won’t they? If nothing else, they ought to like the thrill that comes from killing another big, scary thing. She just has to stay alive long enough for their intervention to matter. Krista lashes out with her feet, her elbows, anything she can jab into the wall of solid flesh behind her, but she’s hitting it with everything she has and the thing only grunts.
Wait.It grunts?
To Krista’s tremendous surprise, her unknown attacker does not try to drag her off into the dark for a snack. Rather, it movestowardthe Harkurian camp, closer to the warm orange light and the hulking forms bunched around it. If Krista points her toes, she can feel them scuffing the ground, but she's busy tensing all of her muscles to keep her spine from falling out of her body, her fingers scrabbling at the fleshy snare on her throat. If she can just relieve some of the strain—
“Look," the thing booms over her head, startling Krista to stillness. "Human spy."
That's Standard! The thing behind her speaks Standard, though it’s unpolished and heavily accented. A third Harkurian? Where did this one even come from? She hadn't heard him at all before he struck her. Something the size of a Harkurian should make at least alittlenoise when it moves. Most of them stand about eight feet tall and they look heavier than draft horses.
“Does it speak?” Her captor says something else in that guttural language of his, then shakes Krista out like a dusty floor rug. Her vertebrae rattle and creak, evoking a weird, terrified gagging sound that Krista didn't even know she could make.
“Let her down, Noss,” one of the others says, his voice as deep as a rocky canyon. “She is a traveler, not a spy.”
Noss opens his hand immediately, letting Krista drop. Only, her feet aren't lined up correctly with the ground and her ankle rolls beneath her weight. Bright lines of pain rocket up her shin as she buckles.
No, no, no, no! Not this!Krista’s knee connects with the prickly pine needles for only half a second before she launches herself back to her feet. Her ankle screams and bile tries to rise, but she manages to stumble away from her captor and remain standing. With her satchel flopping around and nearly tripping her, she must look like a stunned beetle trying to escape a cat’s paw.
“Do nottouch me," she spits at the grabby Harkurian. What had he been called? Noss? “You could have snapped my spine with that, you thoughtless brute.” Does he have any idea? He probably wouldn't have wept about it if he had accidentally killed her, but had he known? Maybe. Noss watches Krista as though he would like to step on her immediately, his expression flat with skepticism, so it wouldn't surprise her if he did.
“Easy,” the seated speaker intones. He sounds authoritative like he expects to be obeyed. Well, it has been a very long week and Krista is done obeying.
“Youcan shut up,” Krista snaps at him, eliciting some very unfriendly-looking teeth from Noss. Wow, the guy hasreallylong canines when he shows them off like that. “No. I have just been manhandled and injured and very nearly broken in half. You do not get tofuckingcommand me.”
This is the first time Krista has cursed so foully. The word is ferocious and exact on her tongue, perfectly encapsulating a lifetime of indignity, of being spoken over, devalued, and patronized. The realization that she won’t have to accept it anymore, not ever again, from anyone, is so potent that her knees wobble. Perhaps they can all feel it because they do not speak. For a moment, all three Harkurians just look at her, the seated guy and the snarling guy and the guy standing by the fire with his giant dick in one hand and his tiny cloth in the other.
“I would not dare,” the seated Harkurian says at last, politely. “My command was for Noss.” He cuts his eyes towards the Harkurian in question. “Cover your teeth, brother. You have been cruel.”
What?Krista mouths. She means to say it aloud, but her anger has been lanced and her voice fails.
