“Are you just going to carry me around with you?” He asks the question in a very snide tone.
“Drag you,” I say.
We reset the trap. I am hoping that we catch something we can actually eat this time. Drako is watching of course, and he has something to say. Something manipulative.
“You two look hungry. Untie me and I will help you find some edible roots. I’ll even help you cook them so they don’t leach poison into your bodies and kill you slowly.”
Thor and I look at one another, considering the offer.
“We cannot trust him,” I say.
“We have to,” Thor says. I don’t know why the fuck he thinks we ‘have’ to do anything when it comes to Jarl Drako.
“But we really don’t,” I respond.
“You must be hungry. Haven’t eaten in coming up on a day. Boiling water to try to deal with the cravings won’t last long. As you start to get weak, the predators of this place will come and pick you off. There are all kinds of scavengers on this world. There are three edible plants in range of you right now, and two that will see you die shitting yourselves.”
“He’s lying,” I say.
“You two are like babies in these woods. We lost a dozen men in the first week here just to mushrooms. The odds of you surviving without my hope are miniscule. You don’t know what this planet is capable of. The horrors that it gives rise to at every dawn and every dusk…”
“Seems fine so far,” I say. “You’re the only horror I’ve met.”
“You can tell us what to eat without being untied,” Thor says. “And we can feed you what we want to eat first, so you have a reason to be honest.”
I feel a creeping inkling of respect for him returning. That is actually smart.
“Start digging around the roots of the big tree with the violet bark. You’ll find some little blue round shrooms there,” Drako says.
I do as he suggests, and sure enough, I find what feels like a little cache of gems, but they’re edible. The notion of surviving the evening is starting to become more concrete.
“Cook it well,” Drako says. “Any trace of raw flesh leads to very unpleasant results.”
“Don’t worry,” I tell him. “You’ll get the first taste.”
When we think we’ve cooked it all properly, we load it onto a plate that Thor salvaged and I carry it over to Drako. I scoop up a spoonful and direct it toward his face. He’s sat up a bit now, so he can eat without choking. A very merciful accommodation, I think.
“Open up,” I say. “The airplane wants to land.”
His eyes flash with fury. I laugh at him as he smolders in his bindings.
“Eat the mushroom,” Thor insists. “Or I’ll force it down your throat.”
See, this is working. Bad cop. Worse cop.
Drako reluctantly lets me feed him the mushroom, well, mush.
“One of these days I’ll feed you my cock,” he promises me.
“Talk to me like that again and I’ll cut it off and feed it to you first,” I reply.
Drako laughs, a slight manic tone to his voice. “You were born to the wrong society,” he says. “You are as feral as they come.”
I do not smile, because I am not joking. I know what was going to happen to me before Thor rescued me. I know what would be happening to me right fucking now if I had not been saved. He would be violating me repeatedly, using me as a captive fuck slave.
“Come over here,” Thor says. “I don’t want you next to him.”
We sit down and we wait to see if anything terrible happens to Drako. I don’t know how long we are planning to wait. Really, it should be twenty-four hours, but we are too hungry for that. Wehave to count on the fact that he ate them at all, and maybe give it a little longer to see if he looks a bit sick.
