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“My brother is quick to react. It will not happen again.”
The seated Harkurian moves to stand, but Krista steps back, unsteady on her screaming ankle. “Don’t.” Gods, it hurts, but she thinks she can run on it if she has to. Will it come to that? She can’t tell. Noss is one thing and the seated guy is the other. “Don’t,” she warns him again. “You stay right over there and my—" What do roaming groups of bandits and raiders call themselves out here? Her commune just called them barbarians or savages, the same things they called everyone else. She can't callherselfa barbarian or a savage. They wouldn't do that. "Myraiding peopledon’t have to know anything about this. Just let me walk away."
Noss The Nasty snorts. Great, even he doesn't believe her, and he barely speaks Standard.
“Where are your weapons, little raider?” The seated Harkurian asks from his place by the fire. He doesn’t attempt to rise again, but he speaks slowly and languidly like a king. He does not fear Krista’sraiding people."What are you raiding?"
Think, think, think, think.“Not this camp, if I leave unharmed." Can Harkurians truly smell fear? Someone back home told her that they can, so Krista focuses on the pulsing knots of pain that riddle her body. There is no room for fear. "If I don't return, they will come looking."
"Bring them," Noss growls, his enormous shoulders angling toward her. It’s a clear threat. Krista shifts her weight, ready to bolt. She doubts she will make it far, but she will certainly give it a shot. Why not? She wants to see more of this galaxy before she dies, and dying so close to the commune would be humiliating.
"Noss." Seated Guy doesn't have to raise his voice. He just utters the other Harkurian's name and Noss settles, his posture relaxing. Krista has no idea what to make of it, or of the guy with the open pants, who stands there idly stroking his dick with his thumb, seemingly without realizing it. His thoughts are not a mystery.
“You have courage,” the Harkurian leader rumbles, though Krista's story has not convinced him. Who decided that Harkurians are stupid? This one isn’t stupid at all. “Do you want to know what I think?”
“Probably not.”
“I think you are alone. Raiders carry weapons. Travelers carry bags.” He pulls a long breath through his angular nose, his nostrils flaring wide. “Caution is smart. This forest is very dangerous, but we are not the reason. Are you sure you want to leave us?”
Krista’s eyes move involuntarily to the dick on display. “Certain.”
The leader looks there too. With a small sound of realization, he turns and says something to Pantsless in their guttural language. It sounds harsh, but everything in that language does. What did he say? It's something about all the dick on display, because Pantsless looks down at himself, bewildered, then back at Krista, then at their leader. He makes a growly-sounding comment, though his face is more bemused than angry. He tosses his washing cloth to one side with a slight flick of his wrist and begins to tuck himself back into his leather trousers, grinning lazily at Krista.
"My people are not shy." Lead Harkurian waves a vague hand towards Pantsless's—now blessedly covered—pelvis. "He meant no harm. I am Thon. These are my brothers, Noss and Pel.”
Pel The Pantsless, Noss The Nasty, Krista’s mind provides a bit hysterically. This is not going as expected. No one else has attacked her. Noss has been reprimanded for the manhandling. Pel’s dick has been safely stowed. Thon has been … polite. The thoughts behind his eyes are organized. Civil.
“I'm Krista.” She might still run, though, and Thon must know it because he still doesn’t try to stand.
“Join us, Krista. We will see to your needs.”
With a deeply put-upon sigh, Noss slouches over to the fire without protest, though he bares his teeth at Kristaagainwhen her gaze follows him. Just like that, their confrontation has ended. She's left standing by herself at the edge of their camp, her body throbbing dully and her stomach rumbling as her eyes blink dumbly into the fire. The message is clear. She’s free to leave or not leave as she pleases. The choice is hers.
3
Krista
Intheend,itisn’t much of a choice at all. The power lies in the Harkurians’ hands and they know it. They know there’s no raiding party. They know Krista cannot fight them. Gods, they probably even know how badly her ankle hurts, especially now that they’ve seen her hobble on it. She is completely, excruciatingly, at their mercy and their response is to offer her a seat at their campfire.
So Krista limps over and awkwardly places herself on a log that someone has covered with what appears to be an enormous fur-lined overcoat.
“Does it hunger,Guest?” Noss asks her sourly. All Krista can do is nod, her head tipping back as Noss rises to his feet. She can’t help but lean away from him as he stomps past, her body rejecting his proximity as it recalls his ire.
“Where are you traveling, Krista?” Thon asks, drawing her attention back to his strange collection of features. The firelight plays around his face like it cannot keep away and even harshly shadowed, he is compelling. Krista finds herself focusing on her pain for a different reason, now.
“I … don’t know.” Rather than address the curiosity that Thon and Pel direct towards her, Krista tears her eyes away to watch Noss take a sharp blade to the hunk of meat on their spit. He slices off a generous piece for Krista and spears it on the end of the knife—perhaps with more force than necessary—then brings it over and offers it without a word.
“Thank you.”
He nods curtly and returns to his seat.
To their credit, the Harkurians hold their questions while Krista eats, allowing her to take the edge off her ferocious hunger in peace. They busy themselves with bathing their top halves and conversing quietly in Harkurian.
Without any distracting conversation or mortal terror to claim her attention, Krista has nothing to do except eat and thaw out and … and watch these guys rub soap on themselves. An unexpected problem presents itself in the form of a little rivulet of suds, which slips into the deep notch between Thon’s pectorals and slides innocently down toward his sternum. Progress slows as the bubbles pop, at least until Thon swipes them away and its clear water there instead, sluicing rapidly down, dodging abs, ducking into his navel, disappearing into the shadow there. It shouldn’t mean anything, except now Krista is looking, and now that she’s looking, Thon is rather the opposite of hideous, isn’t he?
The Harkurian leader’s face is harsh and angular, cut through with a ragged scar that begins just beneath his hairline and severs his eyebrow into separate halves before skipping over his eye and picking up briefly on his lower socket. Both of his pointed ears have been pierced with the same dull metal that decorates Pel’s entire face, but he’s more conservative with the placement. Thon wears his hair pulled back in a glossy black knot, though the underside is cut short, shaved nearly to the skin. In this light, his eyes could be any color.
Krista realizes with a guilty jolt that she's been studying him with thewrongkind of interest. Worse, when she lifts her eyes guiltily to his face, she’s pretty sure that he knows. Not only that, but his eyes are on Krista too. He leans forward and rests his thick forearms on his knees, his ambiguously colored eyes roaming without shame over Krista’s rapidly heating form. He’s right. His people are not shy. They aren’t subtle, either, because he hasn’t said a word and she still knows exactly what he’s offering.
