“Eaten?”
“There’re things in this jungle. Swarms of them. They eat. They followed the trail of the bodies we were putting on the pyre. They devour the dead and the living alike.”
“But you escaped. You ran away after letting all your crew get eaten?”
“I was above it all. My chair was elevated. They don’t climb well, whatever they are. I watched as my people were swallowed in one or two bites. The swarm came in, consumed everything, and left. I don’t know why fate decided to spare me.”
“It’s not a mystery. You’re too disgusting to eat, even for animals that eat rotting flesh,” I say.
Thor gives me an annoyed look. He wants to talk to the lying, evil slave lord who would have tortured him to death if he’d had the chance.
“What do these creatures look like?” Thor asks.
“Locusts with fangs. They move swiftly on six legs, but they have massive maws full of teeth, and big grasping pincer limbs. No faces. Eyes on stalks. Armored backs. They’re the size of large dogs, and they move in a horde.”
“Stop talking to him. I need to kill him. Give me back the knife.”
Thor shakes his head at me. “We are going to need him alive.”
“Why?” I am starting to get very frustrated with Thor’s repeated murder-blocking.
“Because three have higher survival chances than two, and if I am not mistaken we are all stranded now.”
“His ship will be returning,” I say. “There’s going to be more Vikar probably.”
“Exactly. His ship will be returning,” Thor repeats, as if I am supposed to understand what the fuck that means. “And a rescue crew will be sent to our crash location.”
“I can tell you’re trying to get at something, but I don’t get it,” I say bluntly.
Thor walks away from the bound Drako, and beckons at me to follow him. I do so reluctantly, because I know now that Drako is on the ground he has a better chance of escaping the snare.
“I want to bring him to justice,” Thor says, lowering his voice so Drako can’t hear us. “I want him to serve time for what he did to our crew. He deserves to face trial and be punished for the rest of his life.”
“Or I could stab him,” I suggest helpfully.
“If you leave me alive, I will show you what can be eaten and what will definitely kill you,” Drako calls out to us. “There aremistakes we already made in the claiming of this world. You could easily make them too, and it would be the end of you both.”
“It’s not your world,” Thor replies.
“Let me stab him,” I plead as we walk back over. I don’t see how we are going to keep him alive. As soon as he gets free of those bonds, he’s probably going to attack us both.
“You don’t want to stab me, little girl,” Drako drawls, very smugly for a man who is stuck on the ground and unable to move, entirely at our mercy. “You want me to sheathe myself inside you.”
I turn to Thor. Is he going to let Drako talk to me like that?
Thor’s expression draws closed. He looks annoyed. But he doesn’t kill Drako immediately.
“If you want to keep breathing, you’re going to have to respect us.”
“Kill me now, Golden Boy,” Drako laughs. “Oh, right, you won’t. Because I am bound, and unlike your feral little female, you have a sense of honor. You want to face me man to man, but if you do that, you risk injury, and you can’t do that because you want to survive…”
I don’t know what the rest of his little spiel was going to be, because I took matters into my own hands and kicked him in the face. I guess I got the right angle, because he goes limp immediately.
“I should punish you for that impulsivity,” Thor says, trying to hide a smile. “But I won’t.”
CHAPTER 8
When Drako comes around, he’s still tied up, but he’s at our camp.
