14. Chapter 14
Chapter fourteen
-Bryce-
I came to slowly, as if from a deep sleep. I was curled up, with my head resting against something warm and firm, while rocking slightly side to side. It was pleasantly soothing. I felt completely exhausted, and part of me just wanted to roll over and go back to sleep.
I turned my head slightly, and with my ear pressed against the firm, warm surface, I could hear a deep, steady thud, like a heartbeat.
That struck me as slightly odd. Usually, I didn’t sleep on things that had a heartbeat. I raised my head and froze. The tiredness evaporated from my bones.
The Aldar was carrying me in his arms bridal style, holding me tight against his warm expanse of chest. The rocking movement was because he was walking. He was carrying me somewhere, and it appeared my hands were tied behind my back.
I must have stiffened, because he noticed I was awake almost immediately and glanced down at me. He laid me on the ground with noticeable care before backing up a few steps, squatting on thick thighs.
What the hell? I couldn’t remember exactly what had happened before I passed out, just that I was sure the enemy was going to pounce on me. God, had I gotten so panicked I passed out?
The Aldar watched me with narrow, honey-colored eyes, as if wary I might do something unexpected, but he didn’t come closer. He just perched there and watched, his face hawkish.
I swallowed. There was a long, drawn out silence where the Aldar just stared at me and I stared back at him. Was he waiting for me to say something?
I cleared my throat.
“Where’s my leg?” I said in Panlin.
It seemed like a safe question, if not my smartest.
He tilted his head a little. Obviously, these guys didn’t use the pan galactic language. I’d heard him speaking his own language earlier, and while it sounded pretty, it made zero sense to me.
Then he turned away from me, picked something up, and came back holding my leg in his huge hand, his fingers wrapped around the calf like a club. He presented it to me.
I blinked at it. So maybe he could understand me.
I cleared my throat. “I mean you no harm,” I said, slowly and clearly.
He stared at me for a while longer, considering me, and then said, “Why are you here?”
His voice was so deep and fluid, it took me a moment to register that he’d actually spoken words I could comprehend. His accent was thick, and his Panlin slightly clunky, but I could understand him.
I stared at him, and he blinked back at me.
He cleared his throat and said, “You understand?”
“Oh yes, I do. I understand,” I said.
He nodded and smiled a little. It was an intelligent smile.
This was getting stranger and stranger, and, against all odds, it didn’t feel like another panic attack was incoming. Which was weird, considering my position.
I must have stared at him for too long, because he repeated himself.
“Why are you here?”
Right, he’d asked me a question, hadn’t he? I hesitated. I didn’t know how much he knew about us already. There was a chance he’d come across me by mistake and didn’t know anything about the landing party.
“I’m exploring,” I said.
He cocked his head, eyes so intelligent they put me on edge. I shifted.
“All of you?” he asked.
Ah. So he had seen the camp. And we’d had no idea. My mind raced. That meant there could be more of them around. I needed to warn the others, and that meant convincing this Aldar to let me go. Convincing him that we were harmless.
I nodded carefully. “We thought this planet was uninhabited. Empty.” He considered me. I’d never been a good liar, and I tried to keep my face straight. “We don’t want to fight,” I added.
He seemed to take that into consideration. He sat back again and picked up my leg, fiddling with the ankle.
“Please don’t damage that.” He stopped fiddling with it, looked at it, then at me. “I kind of need it.”
“Are you hurt?” he said in his deep voice. It sounded so alien that I had to think about each word to understand its meaning.
“Nothing major.”
He looked at my stump, questioning, confused.
“It was like that already.”
“The fall did not cause your limb to…become separate? Do humans all have this?”
The way he spoke was fascinating. I could see his thoughts travel across his face as he formed the questions. “Most of us don’t. But I lost my leg.”
“Where did your leg go?” he asked.
I had the image of my leg wandering off on its own. That was definitely more funny than what had actually happened.
“I had an accident.”
For some reason, that made the corner of his mouth curl up slightly. “You appear to…have many accidents,” he said. Was he laughing at me? This whole situation was just getting weirder and weirder. I was in a cave, tied up, while the enemy asked me about my leg and…made fun of me? And I felt completely calm. Was this some kind of weird dream?
“Not usually,” I said. “You’ve caught me on a bad day. Week. Month.”
He turned his attention away from me and back to my leg again. He tapped it, making a dull thunk noise. He weighed it in both hands, turning it over and bending it at the knee. Then he brought it to his nose and sniffed it. The way he moved reminded me of a bird, which was ridiculous since he was about seven feet tall and so beefy he could probably twist my head off with one hand. He sighted along it like it was a telescope, then touched the crack.
“It is broken.”
“I think I damaged it when we fell.”
“I am sorry for that,” he said.
This was not at all what I thought meeting one of these aliens would be like. There were a lot more awkward silences, and a lot less blood and guts.
“You saved me,” I said.
He blinked at me. “Maybe.”
“Why did you save me?”
He frowned. “I did not want you…” He waved his hand, looking for the word, then grunted and slapped his hands together palm to palm and ground them. “ Saelèn .”
“Squished?” I hazarded.
He nodded solemnly. “Squeeshed. By…er… ahk-bkèlearino . Big animal.”
“Thank you,” I said.
There was another long silence as we stared at each other. Maybe it was time to address the elephant in the room, that being the fact that I was tied up and obviously being taken somewhere.
“So, what are you going to do now?”
He smiled again. It was a strangely charming smile, considering it was full of fangs. “I will take you Amalya.” My expression must have given something away, because he placed a hand on his chest. “Do not fear. I will keep…protect. You can tell them why the humans have arrived.”
Ok, so that sounded a lot like I was being taken prisoner and forced to explain myself to the rest of the Aldar. Not ideal, but at least I wasn’t going to be roasted over an open flame and eaten. Unless they did that afterwards.
“And then you’ll let me go?”
He considered it for a moment, and then said, “Yes. We also do not want to fight. You may leave afterwards.”
Well that was good. All in all, it could be a lot worse. I could work with this.
I shifted again. I was sitting directly on a jagged piece of rock and my ass was starting to go numb.
“Can you untie me, then?”
He tilted his head. “Sorry, but…I do not trust you.”
“Fair enough,” I said. “I’ll need my leg back on though, if we’re going to be walking.”
He nodded and shuffled back a bit to allow some space between us. I had expected him to untie me just long enough to reattach it, but instead, he took my leg in both hands and held it out in front of him. Ok, so he was going to do it for me.
“You’ll need to roll up my pant leg.”
He placed the leg down carefully next to me and rolled my pants up until my connection port was revealed. He looked at it for a while, obviously interested in it. Then he picked up the leg and brought it close.
“It slots in there, you have to press that down, no, not that, the little bit next to it—that’s it. Now, slide it in.”
He slid the leg into the base.
“Great. Now give it a hard shove and twist it to the right.” His shove moved me back several inches across the ground, and he pulled a face that looked a lot like an apology. “Yeah, now release the catch.”
He rolled my pant leg down again, patted my knee, and grinned. I sat on the ground with my hands tied behind me and gazed up at his white, toothy smile. It was…dazzling.
He pulled me to my feet and inspected my leg as I regained my balance. He considered it with a serious expression and nodded.
“It is a good leg.”
I felt weirdly pleased by that, as if I’d made it myself. “Thanks.”
He pointed to the far end of the huge cavern. It seemed to continue as far as I could make out in the gloom. “We go this way.”
I nodded and we started walking. Going along with this was my best chance of getting out of here alive. When we got out of the caves, I would have to reassess. Maybe I could get back in contact with the team. For now, my Aldar captor didn’t seem to want to hurt me. Still, when we were out in the open, I would find a way to escape.