Perhaps, Ryne thought, but he did not believe he had read the male wrong.
They left the village of the star people and headed toward the river village where they had been living since the war had ended with the bastard that had come to claim their world and rape it of everything of value--leaving almost nothing to keep the natives alive--no shelter and very little food.
The welcome smell of food cooking on the hearth greeted them when they had made their way behind the waterfall and through the hidden entrance to the underground village.
The gathering place was full almost to overflowing, they discovered.
Torr and Ryne shared a speaking look and simply got in line. Ordinarily, since they were villagers and contributed to the food supplies, they would have expected to be served before visitors, but they had not arrived until after the distribution had begun … unfortunately.
Luckily, food was far more plentiful than it had been in years past when they had had to avoid capture or death by the hunters whenever they went out to try to gather food, and they found that there was plenty for everyone.
When everyone had been served and settled to eat, those who had gone to the village of the star people to see what they could discover began to share the news they had gathered.
“They have the look of the star people who came before--those who fell from the sky in eggs. They use the same speak, as well,” Milak, the eldest warrior present announced.
“I spotted tek in the sky below us,” Ryne said when his turn came. “It did not have the look of the tek the conqueror, Ama-Zing, used, but it was very similar. Mypadurand I followed. Itwent straight to the ruins. It stayed and looked long enough we decided to follow it when it left and came upon the village the new star-people are building. It landed there.”
Their observations started an angry uproar.
Ryne and Torr exchanged a long, speaking look.
“They are like the sky egg people who came to live among our people. Not like the usurpers,” Torr shouted above the others.
That assertion silenced some, quieted others.
“They are not welcome to take what we have either!” another warrior shouted.
“You are certain? You saw them well enough?”
“You heard their speak and it was the same?”
“I approached a young female and spoke to her,” Ryne shouted over the other voices. “Yes. We are certain.”
“Their leader came to warn us away, but he did not attack,” Torr said. “They were working very hard to make a village for themselves.”
“We cannot afford to make war if we do not have to. Roque is a man I call friend who, with hispadur, fought the evil bastard who destroyed our villages and won a great victory by blowing up that evil place of our enemy. I have heard that he has taken one of the women of the sky eggs as hispadra. I will go to speak to him and his woman and see what I can learn of this.”
That did not settle the matter entirely, naturally. There were more who did not trust the sky people among them than those who did--even though they had absorbed them into their tribe and some had taken a sky woman as theirpadra--not in their own village, but in some they had all heard.
Because females of a mating age of their own people were few in numbers.
He was of no mind to make war on the people if it was not necessary, however. He wanted the woman he had found. The one the possessive bastard had called Belle. He would steal herif that was what it took, but he wanted more from her than she would willingly give, he feared, if he was forced to that.
“Do you think if we make peace with her people that she will consider accepting us?” Torr asked in a carefully neutral voice when they had found a place to make a pallet and settled to sleep.
“I think we will have no victory otherwise,” Ryne retorted tightly.
“Likely you are right,” Torr agreed. “I am thinking we will have to steal her away from that bastard that claimed her, however.”
Ryne thought much the same, but he was willing to coax her to him either way and he thought, wryly, that it would be less frightening, and more effective, if he did not have to steal her first.
* * * *
Belle was thoroughly unsettled by her experience.
A level of excitement thrummed through her so powerfully, though, that it was difficult to collect her wits enough even to attempt to analyze the source of it.
There was fear in the mix.
