Chapter 13 #2
Zsekhet didn’t help either, his arm banding around my middle to pull me into him, away from danger.
I didn’t think I’d been in danger, they just wanted our bag for some reason, but still my heart was pounding from the surprise.
“I’m okay, he just wanted our bag,” I said to Zsekhet, patting his chest and urging him away from the perceived threat.
We didn’t have many places to go in this tiny home, but I felt better when we were with our backs to a wall.
Aser remained completely unperturbed by the scuffle, he didn’t even seem to care that Zsekhet was still rumbling with a growl.
He was engrossed in pawing through our things, pulling every single food item out of it to pile neatly on the floor next to him.
Then he uncovered the healing device, which made him growl and pull back his hands as if it had burned him.
He shoved it back in the satchel and tossed it toward the orange male, “Joxra, get rid of that. Permanently,” he curled his lips in disgust on the last word and shot us a fierce, red glare that made my skin crawl. “And now you can leave the cavern. Let me guide you outside.”
Filled with distrust, Zsekhet and I were bade to follow after the ‘King.’ He left his little hovel at a slow pace and started to slither across the gathering place, directly past the open door to that palace-like building.
My eyes tracked after the orange male, who, with a lingering glance, left our party of guards and a King, to do as he was told.
Joxra, yeah, I was sure now. That orange male was definitely the same guy that had allowed Naomi and Krashe to escape out on the tundra.
When we were level with the palace, it felt like Aser slowed his pace to what was almost a crawl.
It was like he wanted us to look inside and see what kind of mayhem had happened there.
Was this how he’d grasped hold of the Clan, killing the Queen and her sycophants?
My stomach was in knots, I didn’t want to see it, but morbid curiosity made me glance inside.
It was dark, and many shapes fluttered from the ceiling.
They were sheets of fabric not actual ghosts, but the effect was spooky and unsettling.
With only a little light to see by, I could make out a portion of the floor beyond the entrance and it was clearly sticky with some kind of dried fluid.
Blood. A massacre had taken place there.
Zsekhet drew in a breath, the only sign that he was shocked.
His eyes were much better than mine in the dark, I imagined he was getting the full picture.
“This is what we do to a Queen that steals from her people,” Aser said placidly in front of us.
He didn’t even glance into the building but just kept up his slow pace across the gathering place and hopefully out of this huge cavern.
While by all accounts that Queen had deserved at least some of what she’d gotten, it made my skin crawl.
He had a trick up his plain brown sleeve. He was leading us ‘outside’ but I was pretty sure we’d be facing a gauntlet when we got there. This entire cavern had emptied out, everyone had to be waiting for us somewhere.
I curled my fingers around Zsekhet’s hand on my waist and glanced up to see how he was doing.
His eyes were tracking the ceiling as much as the guards that followed us with their spears aimed at our backs.
I had a feeling that as long as we were inside this huge cavern, he was equally as worried about the roof falling down on our heads, as those sharp spears.
Then noise started to reach our ears, the babble of a crowd of people all talking at the same time.
The tunnel that led to the exit wasn’t long but it was enough to allow my eyes to adjust from complete dark to the violet sunlight outside.
With a fur around my shoulders, I hadn’t been cold inside the cavern, but as soon as we stepped outside, a cold wind cut hard against my flesh and I started to shiver.
Several hundred Naga had gathered on the flank of the mountain at the cave entrance.
It was a fairly steep slope and some attempt had been made to cut a zigzagging path down it for more easy traversing.
Naturally, a platform of maybe a hundred square feet sat at the opening to the caves.
People had crowded on here too, but most of the place had been taken up by a shocking amount of large cages.
I gasped, coldness forgotten, when I realized what I was looking at.
The crowd was mostly males and younglings, but those cages, that’s where they were keeping the Naga females.
It was a shocking reversal of what was the most common hierarchy structure on this world.
After that failed war, Aser hadn’t just incited them to dispose of the Queen, he’d gotten them to turn on all their women.
How did they think that was going to work out?
“I thought they numbered in the thousand, this looks like only half of that…” Zsekhet murmured in surprise.
He was right, if this was all of them, their numbers had drastically dwindled.
The war at Thunder Rock would have been a contributing factor but this much?
Most Naga Clans supposedly skewed more heavily toward a male population as their females got extremely violent and competitive with each other, resulting in many deaths.
I held my breath as I estimated how many women were in those cages and had to draw the shocking conclusion that it might only be a hundred.
That wasn’t going to be good for this Clan’s survival at all and then, sadly, I wondered if that was bad for Serant or not.
They were supposedly keeping robotic monstrosities out of the lands of the others but was that enough to make up for the rest?
Especially if Aser was about to pull his trick and try to get Zsekhet and me killed.
Aser stopped in front of us on a still fairly empty space on the platform.
He raised his hands and the whole mass of Naga in front of us fell silent.
Now that they were no longer talking loudly and pointing at us, it felt even more awful.
Their fear and hatred were all in their eyes, they glared and bared their blackened teeth.
I pressed myself back against Zsekhet’s side as I waited to see what was about to happen.
There was no way the two of us could walk through that crowd and exit on the other side unscathed.
Was that Aser’s plan? To have his crowd of hooligans deal with us?
He sure didn’t look like he liked to get his hands dirty with violence.
“I have passed judgment on these strangers, a male from a foreign Clan, and a being from the sky. I have decided to let them exit our caves.” Aser’s voice carried far as he spoke across the silent crowd.
I held my breath and Zsekhet was letting out this low hiss, the scales along his back rattling softly.
Nothing Aser was saying was a ringing endorsement to let us go but then, that had been his plan all along.
“Now it is your turn to pass judgment.” The words were pronounced with smug satisfaction and they were followed by the crowd erupting in jeering, shouting, and even growling.
I cast my eyes around, desperately hoping for an exit that wasn’t there.
There were a dozen guards with spears at our back, and a whole crowd of murderous Naga in front of us.
Even the females in the cages seemed eager for our death despite their own predicament.
“Do you have any ideas?” I said to Zsekhet, and I was surprised by how much I trusted him to come up with something.
Where had that kind of faith come from? Fighting a force of over five hundred Naga with just the two of us was impossible.
We were with our backs against the wall, and it was a wall of spears at that.
He tilted his head, his eyes narrowed in a glare as he stared the crowd down with his piercing golden eyes.
A grin started to pull on the edges of his mouth but I wasn’t sure if that was just a weird response to our dire situation or if he was actually somehow amused.
“Now we hope,” he said, and then he stuck his fingers in his mouth and whistled.
It was an ear-piercing, obnoxious kind of whistle that only a rare few people seemed to be able to pull off.
The sound seemed to enrage the crowd, which really was the last thing we wanted.
They started to advance on us, shouting and growling, rattling their spears against armor or the ground.
It was intimidating and I was pretty sure we were not going to make it out of this.
I’d heard Naomi’s account of how she’d faced her own horde of these warriors, I didn’t think I’d be as badass as her, urging them on.
But faced with a similar situation, on steroids, I realized again that there weren’t many options for the mind to go.
Fight, flight, freeze. I’d attempted flight and freeze already when I’d been abducted and when I’d found myself on Serant.
That wasn’t what I was feeling now. Fight was rushing through me, adrenaline soaring.
If they wanted to kill us, I wanted to take some of them with me.
“There he comes,” Zsekhet murmured, “Looks like hope is working for us, my flame-haired mate.” He lifted a hand and pointed at the sky and my heart soared with it.
Sesethul, how could I have forgotten about the giant beast?
Where once I’d been scared just to see his silhouette in the sky, now that giant winged shape represented freedom and hope.
He was still just a small dot on the horizon, so far away that he seemed small as a bird.
How long did we have to delay that salivating crowd?
I didn’t even have a weapon on me. I glanced around, noticing the flash and glimmer of the many black speartips aimed at us.
The guards at our backs were approaching, trying to urge us forward.
Beyond them, I saw another Naga dart out of the caves. His scales caught the violet sunlight and shimmered dark orange and umber. A bundle was cradled against his chest, our satchel with things bouncing on his hip, and behind him trailed two small Naga children. Why was he taking children out here?
I was certain that this Naga was Joxra, and he hadn’t disposed of our things like he’d been told to.
The King, Aser, had noticed him at the same time I had, and he’d raised his arm and started to shout, going unheard over the noise of the crowd.
When Joxra threw back his head and did some kind of loud, ululating cry, everyone could hear that.