Barbarian Prince (4 page)

“
Back to the drawing board.”

“
Oh, I don’t f’ing think so! If you come up with any more bright ideas for escape you can damn well think up something that doesn’t include me! I’m going to just wait here for them to come rescue me! At
least
I won’t get trampled!”

“
Them who?” Monica demanded. “The assholes that got us here? Those damn cowards ran past us and into the colony and locked the fucking gates! We’ve been here three freaking days! You honestly think any of them have the
balls
to launch a rescue mission? We’ll be dead with old age before they even get up the nerve to try to
negotiate
a release!”

Noelle eyed her friend with disfavor. “I wish you wouldn’t use the ‘f’ word.”

Monica gaped at her. “The f … You say f’ing all the time!”

“
Exactly! I don’t use the f word. I say f’ing!”

Monica looked as outraged as she felt. “You think that’s … better? Like nobody knows you
mean
fucking?”

“
Of course that’s what I mean, but I don’t say it! Anyway, I really don’t think it’s a good idea to talk about the people back at the colony like that. You know they’ll be launching an all out attempt to get us back. They need us. We’re
very
important colonists! They might even declare war on these bitches for daring to take us,” she finished, trying to silently message Monica via her twitching expression to go along with her fabrication.

Monica gaped at her with her mouth open. Finally, she glanced around, saw that none of the Amazon women were within several yards of the primitive prison where they were being kept caged and whispered, “You think they’re just pretending they don’t understand us?”

“
Mmmhmm.”

“
God! Noelle! They don’t even understand us when we speak
their
fuc … f’ing language!”

Noelle was disconcerted, briefly. “I think they’re just pretending they don’t understand us when we speak their language. The computer broke it down. I don’t believe for a minute that it didn’t translate their language correctly!”

“
And these people have been sneaking up to the colony and listening in and they’ve figured out
our
language even though they’ve barely figured out how to make fucking fire?”

It was a slight exaggeration. The aliens had clearly advanced a good ways from ‘cave’ people. True, the village they had been brought to bore strong evidence that the people lived at least a semi-nomadic lifestyle—either that or they were in the process of building new huts because there were a number of bare ‘skeletal’ frames sprinkled about the village—including the one she and Noelle currently occupied. But there was also a large, cultivated field just on the edge of the village, signs of advanced growing techniques like irrigation, and fairly sophisticated tools for cultivation among other things.

They didn’t just cook on spits over open flame. They had mud ovens and, in fact, the huts they lived in, from what she and Noelle could see, were evidence of advanced knowledge of engineering. These were carefully crafted structures that would be excellent protection against the elements.

There was also evidence of higher level craftsmanship in weapons and household implements and textiles.

Noelle felt her face heat. “Ok, so it’s farfetched, but I still think it’s a bad idea to talk about nobody coming to rescue us. In the first place, there’s the morale issue.”

“
There’s nobody here but me and you and I’m pretty fucking demoralized already!”

Noelle glared at Monica. “Does using the f word every five seconds make you feel better?” she demanded testily.

Monica thought it over for all of five seconds. “Actually, yes, it does! I’m using it to expel my frustrations so I can restrain myself and not
choke
you for moralizing over
one
fucking word when we are in such deep shit it doesn’t even bear thinking on!”

Dismay flickered through Noelle. She’d been working hard to convince herself that this wasn’t nearly as bad a situation as it seemed on the surface. True, they were being held against their will, and these alien females appeared, on the surface, to live a rather primitive life. But they couldn’t
possibly
be as savage as they’d seemed when they’d attacked the colony and captured them. They didn’t look or behave like animals in their everyday life. In fact, except for the clothing and the huts, they seemed perfectly civilized, going about many of the same chores the colonists did—except the scientific research, or course.

Which Noelle had considered the bright side to their situation—the chance to study the natives up close and in their natural environment. “How do you figure that?” she asked uneasily.

“
Well my god, Noelle!” Monica snapped. “They’re aliens and they’re primitive as hell besides!”

Noelle had been trying hard
not
to remember her history where it pertained to primitives on Earth. “You think they might … they might have evil intentions toward us?”

“
I don’t know enough about these people and their customs to even begin to guess, but I’m thinking they might not be friendly,” Monica responded tartly. “They could have anything in mind for us and I don’t fucking want to wait around and find out if
their
customs are anything like the customs I read about that primitives on Earth practiced!”

“
Like … what sort of customs?” Noelle asked uneasily.

“
Sacrifices.”

Noelle felt her bowls turn to water. She thought for several moments she would pass out—or lose her grip on her sphincter. “I think, maybe, if you wiggle around with your back to me that I might be able to untie your hands and then you can untie mine.”

She’d almost managed to loosen the bindings around Monica’s wrists when the damned guard came back to check them. After checking the binding Noelle had been working at, she tightened it again and left.

“
Bitch!” Monica snarled.

Not that Noelle didn’t agree wholeheartedly. Her fingers were bleeding from all the effort she’d wasted trying to untie Monica. But she also didn’t think it was a good idea to antagonize the giant, evil, primitive women. “Will you keep it down!” she hissed.

“
You still think they’ve figured out English?”

“
I think that didn’t need a fucking translation.”

Monica snickered. “You said fucking.”

“
I’m going to choke the life out of you if I manage to get these damned things loose!”

Monica sniffed and then burst into tears.

Noelle felt really low. Shuffling around to face her friend, she moved a little closer. “I’m sorry. Don’t cry. We’ll figure this out, ok?”

“
We’ve already spent three horrible nights here, Noelle. I have a bad feeling about these primitives. I really do.”

“
Well, let’s don’t talk about it, ok?”

“
Like that’ll help.”

“
Scaring the shit out of me isn’t going to help either, damn it!” Noelle snapped.

After a brief struggle, Monica managed to get a grip on her emotions. “I don’t think they’re going to even try to rescue us,” she whined after a moment. “They could’ve come after us right away—should have! My god! It isn’t as if we don’t have superior weapons!”

Noelle sighed. “Yeah. I thought about that, but we’re building here. I guess they’re trying to decide what to do about the natives.”

“
Well, I think they’ve made it pretty fuc … f’ing clear already that they aren’t interested in a peace treaty!” Monica snapped, recovering enough from her tears to get angry all over again.

That seemed inarguable. Noelle didn’t like to think that they were on their own, but she realized that they were going to have to proceed as if they were. They couldn’t just wait to see if the other colonists mounted a rescue mission or even tried, again, to negotiate a peace treaty and get them back. It wasn’t at all beyond the realms of possibility, unfortunately, that the women that had captured them intended to sacrifice them to their gods.

She had been heartened that they hadn’t been killed outright or executed immediately after they’d reached the village, but she was afraid, now, to allow herself to think they could count on that as proof that the aliens didn’t have something horrible in mind. Clearly the aliens had had
something
in mind when they’d captured them instead of killing them outright or they wouldn’t have captured them at all. They would’ve let them scamper inside the colony walls like the others.

And she didn’t especially want to hang around long enough to find out what the plan was.

“
I guess it’s probably not likely that we could convince them, now, that we’re resigned to our fate and lull them into a false sense of security.”

“
After the attempt to escape? And catching you trying to untie me? Probably not. I’d like to think they’re stupid, but ignorance and stupidity aren’t the same thing.”

“
Ok, so …. We’ve lost the element of surprise. We’ll just have to think of something else.”

She couldn’t think of anything else, though, and finally decided to try to sleep on it.

She shifted restlessly for a while and finally managed to find a relatively comfortable position where her face wasn’t burrowed into the stinky fur they’d been given as a bed by wiggling to the edge. The dirt actually wasn’t nearly as offense as the smell of the hide. And once she’d gotten a little more comfortable, she dozed off, exhausted from her fears even more than she was physically drained from their attempt to fight their way to freedom.

The village woke before daylight. It was the sounds of activity that drew Noelle from her uneasy rest. She discovered that Monica had burrowed tightly against her and was still asleep. She stilled for a few moments, uncomfortable with the thought of rudely waking her friend, but she was more physically uncomfortable the longer she lay still and she finally nudged Monica with her elbow.

Monica lifted her head and stared at her blurry eyed. “We’re still here,” she muttered. “It wasn’t a nightmare.”

“
Actually it is. Unfortunately, it’s also real.”

The old woman they’d jumped the night before came in with some more of the same nasty food she’d brought the night before, grinned at them, displaying more gum than rotting teeth and then left without untying them.

“
I guess we’re supposed to make like inch worms and mosey on over there and eat with our faces,” Monica muttered. “Not that I’m hungry enough to eat that … whatever it is. I’m dying of thirst, though.”

“
Let’s don’t talk about that. My eyeballs are floating.”

“
You just
had
to bring that up!” Monica snapped irritably.

“
I didn’t bring it up! You did!”

Monica fumed for a little while. Fortunately, a guard came as the sun began to rise above the horizon. Opening the door to their cage, she gestured at them to come out.

Monica and Noelle both stared at her uneasily and pretended they had no idea the woman wanted them to leave the cage. After glaring at them for a moment, she lifted her head, turned, and yelled at someone they couldn’t see.

“
That sounded like ‘come help me’ to me,” Monica murmured.

“
Yeah. So they
have
been pretending they don’t understand us. I mean, assuming we’re right and that’s what she meant.”

Apparently that was exactly what she’d yelled because in a few minutes another warrior arrived and the two ducked through the door of the prison/cage. Each of them was grabbed unceremoniously by an alien, hauled up and out of their cage. The binding at their ankles was removed and then they were marched through the village and out the other side.

Noelle, convinced they were on the way to a sacrificial ceremony, began to fight for her freedom the minute that thought occurred to her, fought for all she was worth—which was not much since she was still tied. The warrior woman merely hauled her up and flung her over one shoulder, gripping her thighs hard enough she couldn’t kick and ignoring the blows she rained down on the woman’s back with her bound fists.

She reared up, trying to see where they were going, trying to convince herself they would’ve headed to an altar or maybe the main lodge near the center of the village if they actually were plotting a sacrificial ceremony. She was still struggling to break free when the woman abruptly stopped, dragged her from her shoulder and then half shoved, half pitched her backwards.

Flailing wildly to recover her balance, Noelle caught nothing but a flash of rocks. She screamed at the top of her lungs as she felt herself flying backwards and descending—her first thought that she’d been thrown from a cliff—a scream that ended in a gurgle when she hit water and sank below the surface like a stone. As tired as she was from fighting the warrior, the fear of drowning galvanized her. She began beating at the water around her and trying to push herself upwards with her feet.

That was when she discovered the water she’d been tossed into was only a few feet deep.

Monica was bobbing up and down a few feet away, screaming her head off when Noelle stood up.

“
Stand up!” Noelle yelled at her. “Can’t you reach the bottom?”

The question seemed to penetrate Monica’s terror. She stood up shakily. “I was in a hole,” she lied.

The two alien women, they discovered, were laughing at them.

It was the first time in her life that Noelle had actually experienced the urge to kill. She thought, though, that if she’d had a weapon to hand she would have slain both of their tormentors in that moment.

She exchanged a long, speaking look with Monica. “It’s a damn good thing I don’t know their language,” Noelle muttered. “I might be tempted to say something I shouldn’t.”

“
Bathe!”
the alien that had carried her to the river snapped.
“You stink!”

“
And you smell like a
goat,” Noelle responded in the alien tongue, although, naturally enough the aliens didn’t know what a goat was.
“See, Monica! They aren’t nearly as stupid as you said they were.”

Monica gaped at her. “Are you trying to get me killed! That bitch is twice my size!”

“
But I have a rock by my foot. When she charges in here to throttle you, I’ll bash her head in.”

Monica’s eyes widened momentarily with a mixture of horror and outrage. After a moment, though, she turned to look at their guards assessingly. “Let’s not try that.”

“
But there’s only the two of them and we’re away from the village. We might not get another chance!”

“
You think this is a chance? We’re tied up! They’ll just wade in and drown us!”

Noelle frowned. “You think they can swim?”

“
I don’t think we can when our hands are tied!”

Noelle released an irritated huff of breath. “Fine! Bathe then. I guess we’ll have to think of something else.”

“
Shut up and bathe!”
the bitchier guard snapped.

“
I hope this is your drinking water I just pissed in,” Noelle said, smiling at the alien woman.

Monica gaped at her. “Tell me you didn’t! I’m downstream, damn it!”

“
Sorry. I had to go. Bad! There was no holding it when she threw me in.”

Monica stared at her a long moment and then snickered. “I wet myself, too.” She thought it over. “Oh my god! I swallowed a pint of fucking water! I’m going to choke you, Noelle!”

“
Choke the bitch. It was her fault. Better yet, I told you I’d found a rock. I’ll give it to you and you can bash her head in.”

The silent guard waded in and Noelle and Monica immediately retreated, or tried. It didn’t take the damn giant long to corner them against the rock wall that lined the opposite side of the channel of water. Fortunately, her intention didn’t seem to be anything violent in nature. Although she did produce the wickedest looking knife Noelle had ever seen, she merely used it to cut their wrist bindings.

Relieved when she waded out again, Noelle and Monica made a stab at washing. It wasn’t as if they could actually get clean! They had no soap and no wash cloths and they were standing in a natural body of water! True the water didn’t look nasty, but it was out in the open! There was no telling how many things had pissed in it!

Or died in it.

Or what was living in it, for that matter.

Finally, the alien women seemed satisfied they’d bathed long enough and summoned them out of the water. That was when Noelle discovered the ‘silent’ guard had brought a change of clothing for them.

Not that she didn’t appreciate the change of clothes! Hers were wet and didn’t smell that great even after the dunking. But she couldn’t imagine the clothing they were being ‘offered’ was terribly clean, either—probably riddled with alien germs!

It was clear that they could voluntarily change, though, or the guards would ‘help’. Resentfully, Noelle shed her waterlogged clothing, took the shift that seemed to be made from animal skin and pulled it on. Not surprisingly, it dragged the ground.

And that wasn’t even the worst of it! The shift was a simple T design with a seam across the tops of the sleeves and a gap left between for the head. The neckline, very modest on the native women, was too wide for Noelle’s shoulders and kept slipping off first one shoulder and then the other, nearly exposing her boobs.

She surprised a look on the ‘silent’ guard’s face that unnerved her when she looked up from trying to adjust the garment.

She wasn’t actually used to seeing such a blatantly lustful look on a
man’s
face when they examined her. Sexual harassment wasn’t tolerated among the colonists and however much any of the men might admire any of the women, they were never so blatant in their sexual interest. She
certainly
wasn’t used to another woman looking at her like that!

She was unequivocally heterosexual for one thing and wouldn’t have noticed if one had, but, more importantly, the colonists chosen for the trip were expected to populate the new colony with new humans and no one who preferred partners of the same sex had been included for the simple reason that they couldn’t offer that particular, all important, service to the colony settlement.

Feeling her face heat with discomfort, she glanced at Monica to see if she’d noticed, wondering if it had been imagination of her part, and discovered Monica was studying the alien female through narrowed, assessing eyes. After a moment, Monica met her gaze.

Noelle wasn’t certain, at first, what Monica had been trying to convey with that look, but the more she thought about it, the more closely she studied the guard herself. By the time they were nearing the village again she’d arrived at a shocking and thoroughly confusing conclusion.

The ‘female’ guard
wasn’t
a female!

All sorts of questions instantly crowded her mind, foremost the puzzle of why, if they had two distinct sexes, they would go so far to hide that fact.

She didn’t actually get the chance to discuss her conclusion with Monica, however. They’d barely reached the edge of the village when they heard a sound above them that drew everyone’s attention.

The sight that met their gazes froze everyone in their tracks.

Noelle was so shocked she couldn’t even think for several moments.

There was an airship descending from the clouds, heading directly for the village!

A
spacecraft
!

Bedlam abruptly erupted all around them. A hundred women screamed seemingly at once and began to charge off in every direction like a flock of birds startled by a predator.
“The barbarians! It’s the Flaxens!
Run!”

The two guards escorting Noelle and Monica gave them a shove that knocked both of them off their feet, screamed at them, and took off at a run in two different directions.
“It’s the Flaxens!
Run!”

That was almost as shocking as all the rest—to suddenly discover they’d not only been freed. They’d been abandoned.

Who the hell were the Flaxens? And why were the giant alien/Amazon warrior women so terrified of them?

Particularly when they hadn’t seemed the least bit impressed or intimidated by Earth technology!

Monica grabbed her with hands curled into claws that dug into her flesh hard enough to break through her shock, jerking at her to urge her to her feet. “Move!”

Almost as if they were one person, of a single mind, they scrambled up, whipped a look around to get their bearings, and then headed toward the colony like the hounds of hell were on their heels.

A bizarre sense of unreality settled over Noelle as she and Monica, tethered together by their hands as if they’d been permanently joined and as mindless in their shock and terror as the villagers apparently were, struggled to fight their way through the madness to the other side of the village. Noelle didn’t think ‘home’ ever actually entered her mind. She simply headed toward the safety of the colony because her primitive mind was totally in control of her actions.

In this particular circumstance, their wits would have been better weapons than their survival instincts, however.

They were on the far side of the village from their colony when they first spotted the spacecraft coming in for a landing. The village itself was laid out haphazardly, with no regard for the movement of traffic and there was no straight shot through in
any
direction. Which meant they would’ve been far better off, despite the fact that the stream they’d so lately visited lay at the foot of a steep cliff they couldn’t hope to climb, if they’d simply whirled around and headed back that way.

Their wits had scattered like leaves in the wind, however, with the panicked scattering of the barbarians who’d been holding them prisoner.

For if the ‘barbarians’ arriving by airship were capable of striking that much terror into the hearts of the savages they’d been dealing with ….

Well, it didn’t bear thinking on!

Not that either woman was actually capable of doing a lot of thinking at the moment.

They charged through the village, hands linked, knocking down or being knocked down by anyone who tried to run between them, first one then the other slamming into immovable objects. Rather than release their death grip on one another, however, they finally simply plowed through the melee single file—Noelle in the lead part of the time and Monica switching places with her when she’d caught her breath enough to outrun Noelle.

They’d lost sight of the ship as it dropped to land, but they managed to get a very good view of it as they managed to leave the village at last, for they were the only ones who actually ran
toward
the landing ship rather than away from it.

Not that they had mistaken the alien craft for one of their own even momentarily! The ‘alien’ look to its designed was unmistakably
not
human. Besides that, the thing looked ancient, so rusted with time that it flickered through Noelle’s mind to wonder if it was actually capable of space travel at all!