Chapter 16 Jean
I sit and watch in stunned silence as the creature approaches through the murk.
It walks on six spindly, stilt-like legs that support its body a good fifteen feet above the ground.
That body is roughly the same shape and size as the empty husk I took shelter inside of yesterday.
Only this one isn’t empty. It’s very much alive.
“Longstrider,” Scythro whispers.
An apt name.
But the bug isn’t alone. There’s something riding on its back.
Something vaguely humanoid in shape. Or maybe demonic would be a better description.
The figure is still just a silhouette at this point, but I can see what looks like a pair of ram’s horns curling out of its head.
It’s holding something in one hand, a staff of some sort.
Glowing pink energy drifts from the tip.
Is that what took out the last of the lizard-wolves? I think it must be. The pistol splattered the first five, but that last one…
That last one just went poof.
“Hello!” Scythro calls, his voice loud but not threatening. “Who goes there?”
The bug stops about ten yards away from us.
Close enough that I can see the rider more clearly now, though his outfit isn’t giving away much information about his actual appearance.
His eyes are hidden behind a pair of dark-lensed goggles, and the lower half of his face is covered by a worn-out-looking scarf.
There must be a slit in that scarf somewhere, because the guy appears to be holding a cigarette in his mouth, and he’s puffing on it slowly as he watches us.
Anyway, I’m assuming he’s a guy. Scythro told me all the aliens on this planet are males.
And there’s one more detail I can make out now. The thing I thought was a staff actually looks more like a rifle. A really primitive one. The pink stuff drifting out of it appears to be smoke.
What the hell?
The rider still hasn’t made any effort to answer Scythro’s question. The silence goes from uncomfortable to oppressive. My heart is thumping inside me.
I have the pistol. I picked it up after Scythro dropped it during the fight.
Now I pass it to him behind his back. It’ll do more good in his hands than in mine.
Scythro tucks it into the waist of his pants, just below the small of his back, out of sight but accessible.
Then he stands and makes a second attempt at establishing contact.
“Thanks for intervening, friend. We’d have been goners if you hadn’t shown up when you did.”
Once again, there’s no response—not a verbal one anyway—but at least the horned rider lowers his rifle. He stashes it behind his saddle, and I breathe a little sigh of relief. So does Scythro.
“Who the heck is this guy?” I whisper.
“A Weedian,” Scythro whispers back.
“A what?”
“Weedian. They’re a faction I didn’t have a chance to tell you about yet. They cultivate a plant called dreamweed and sell it to the other inmates.”
“Dreamweed?”
“You smoke it,” he says. “It gets you high.”
So this dude’s a drug dealer? Great. I’m not sure exactly how Scythro sussed that out, but I’m guessing it has something to do with the cigarette the guy’s smoking.
At the moment, however, I’m more interested in what this so-called Weedian is doing now.
While Scythro and I were talking, the horned rider dropped a rope ladder from the side of the longstrider. The end of it dangles a few inches off the ground. The rider swings his legs out of the saddle and slowly starts to descend.
He’s halfway down when his foot slips.
He tumbles backward, hitting the ground with a heavy thud.
“Whoa!” Scythro calls, starting forward. “You okay?” I stand up and follow after him.
Ahead of us, the fallen rider rises, grumbling and brushing dust from his soiled tunic.
From the looks of it, the only part of him that’s injured is his pride.
Somehow he managed to hang on to his cigarette through all that, though I can see now that it isn’t really a cigarette at all.
More like a green stalk of some kind, almost like a section of bamboo.
The stranger takes a few puffs through the slit in his scarf as Scythro and I come jogging up to him.
Wow, this guy is tall. Like, really tall. Taller even than Scythro. A hell of a lot taller than me.
“Are you okay?” Scythro asks again. “That was quite a tumble.”
The big guy yanks his goggles off, revealing a pair of bright green eyes that look a little unfocused. The skin around them is also green, and higher up, between the roots of his horns, he has a thick mane of messy, dark-green hair.
“Doing better than you,” he grumbles, looking down at Scythro’s arm. “That’s a nasty bite.”
He’s right. Scythro’s forearm is all bloody from where the lizard-wolf-thing bit him. The blood is a glittery pink.
“I’ll live,” Scythro says. “I’m Scythro, by the way.”
He offers his unbitten hand, and the not-so-jolly green giant stares at it for a tense couple of seconds.
Then he takes it in a firm grip. I still can’t see his mouth behind his scarf, but the corners of his eyes crinkle as if he’s smiling.
His voice is so deep, it feels like a miniature earthquake.
“Name’s Ghorak,” he says. “Pleased to make your acquaintance. And who is—”
His voice cuts off as his eyes meet mine. I suddenly realize why those eyes look so weird to me. It’s the pupils. They aren’t dots, they’re dashes. Back on Earth, such eyes usually belong to herbivores—goats and deer and the like.
So why is this guy looking at me like he’s thinking about eating me for breakfast?
With one hand, he plucks the cigarette-stalk out of his mouth.
With the other, he pulls his scarf down, revealing the rest of his face.
The nose looks like it’s been broken once or twice, but maybe it’s just shaped that way.
The brow is rugged and heavy, the chin square with a lopsided cleft.
Any one of those details might be ugly on its own, but taken together the effect is weirdly… handsome?
“Is that what I think it is?” he asks, still staring right at me.
“Depends,” says Scythro, moving protectively closer. This morning, I would have been terrified by that proximity. Now I find it comforting. “What do you think it is?”
“Female.”
The way Ghorak says it sends my heart into my throat. My muscles feel like coiled springs. I’m ready to bolt at a moment’s notice, but somehow I manage to keep my feet planted. Slowly, carefully, I extend my right hand.
“My name is Jean,” I say with a confidence I don’t really feel. “Um… thank you for saving us.”
Ghorak just stares at me for a moment, then at my hand. I’m about to draw it back again when a big goofy smile spreads across his face. An enormous green hand engulfs mine.
“No,” he says. “Thank you, little female, for giving me the opportunity to save such a fine specimen as yourself.”
Fine specimen, huh?
Not sure how I feel about that, but I keep my mouth shut.
With a gesture that sits somewhere between chivalry and drunken charm, Ghorak bows and presses a kiss just above my knuckles. His lips feel surprisingly soft against my bare skin. What’s even more surprising is how much I like it.
He stands up a little too fast and starts to wobble. For a moment, it looks like he might fall over again, but he quickly regains his balance. He’s starting to remind me a bit of Captain Jack Sparrow, only bigger. And greener. With horns.
“And how,” he asks, “did a female end up here on Ul?”
“My ship crashed,” I answer, leaving out the lie about the research vessel. It obviously didn’t work the first time with Scythro, and I’m too flustered to come up with anything better. Ghorak strokes his chin thoughtfully.
“Explains the thrumwings,” he says.
Scythro’s ears perk. “Thrumwings?”
“Pharod’s pets, I reckon. Seen a whole swarm of them scouring the ashlands yesterday. Thought I was just seeing things again.” He blows out a big cloud of white smoke. “The weed’ll do that to you, you smoke enough of it.”
I’m not sure who this Pharod person is. I don’t know what thrumwings are either. They both sound like bad news though.
I turn and look at Scythro. He looks worried.
“Yeah,” Ghorak goes on. “You don’t wanna be caught out in the ashlands when this haze settles.
Pharod’s boys’ll see you from a trillion draths away.
’Course, you two are more than welcome to ride along with me.
Just finished making my rounds, and now I’m heading back to the farm to collect a fresh load of weed.
It’ll be a tight fit on the longstrider, but… we can make it work.”
He doesn’t sound too concerned about the tight-fit part.
Scythro’s body is still positioned slightly in front of my own. I give him a little tap on the back. Scythro picks up on my intention.
“Would you excuse us for a moment?” he says.
Ghorak gives a casual wave of his hand. “Sure, sure. Take your time, take your time…”
He begins wandering among the dead lizard-wolf-things, examining their carcasses and swaying slightly with every step. I give Scythro’s arm a tug, being careful not to touch his wound. He leans down and puts an ear close to my face.
“Can we trust this guy?” I whisper.
The fact that I’m asking this question of Scythro is pretty wild, but desperate times call for desperate measures. I mean, he did just save my life.
Come to think of it, so did Ghorak.
“He seems harmless enough,” Scythro says.
“If what he told us about the thrumwings is true, it would be unwise to cross the wasteland on foot. Besides, the Weedians’ camp wouldn’t be the worst place to hide.
They tend to be slightly less aggressive than the other inmates.
And I do have some, ah… acquaintances there. ”
Not sure what he means by acquaintances, but less aggressive sounds good, even if it’s only slightly. I’m not super keen on the idea of waltzing into a drug farm, though.
I glance back in Ghorak’s direction.
The horned giant has stopped wandering, and now he’s examining something on the ground. When I see what it is, my heart jolts with panic.
Gerber. He has Gerber.
“Hey!” I shout, rushing over to him. “Be careful with that!”
I’m not so concerned about him doing something malicious; it’s his clumsiness that’s got me worried. Gerber’s already been through the wringer as it is. The last thing he needs is to get crushed underneath a giant stoned orc.
But Ghorak is being surprisingly gentle with the little droid. He cradles Gerber’s small body in the palm of one big hand, inspecting the damage.
“Cute little bugger,” he rumbles. “Looks like he got pretty busted up, though.”
He holds out his hand, and I carefully scoop Gerber up.
“Busted,” he says, “but fixable.”
I gasp. “You can fix him?”
“Me?” Ghorak grunts. “Nah…”
My hope sinks. I don’t know what I was thinking. Of course Ghorak can’t fix him. The dude’s so high, he can barely even walk straight, let alone work on delicate electronics. He sticks the weedstalk back in his mouth and takes another long drag, looking off dreamily into the distance.
“…but I know someone who can.”