Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 80439 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 402(@200wpm)___ 322(@250wpm)___ 268(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 80439 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 402(@200wpm)___ 322(@250wpm)___ 268(@300wpm)
Thor’s shadow falls over me. He reaches down between us.
“You can’t kill him,” he says, gently taking the knife from my hands.
“Why not?”
“He is more useful alive. And he has friends.”
“If his friends were in earshot, he would have yelled for them,” I say. “His friends are either very far away, or…”
I have a strange feeling in this moment. Drako being in the trap doesn’t make any sense at all. He was the leader of his crew. There should be dozens of them following him.
If this was a trap for us, they would have caught up with us now. We’d be surrounded. I look around. I don’t feel surrounded.
“Where are the rest of your crew?” Thor asks.
“Dead.”
“What?” I kick him in the ribs again. Thor pulls me back. I kick Thor.
“Sorry,” I say. “Reflex.”
“They’re dead,” Drako repeats. He’s not choked up. He says it like it’s just simple fact. They were alive, and now they are dead. What is anybody going to do about it? Nothing.
“He’s lying,” I say. I give him another swift kick. “They couldn’t be dead. Not all of them. There were hundreds of people there.”
“Stop kicking him,” Thor tells me. “If you break his ribs and penetrate his lung…”
“He still won’t have suffered enough,” I interrupt. “If you knew what this piece of shit did to me, and actually gave a fuck about me, you’d kill him yourself.”
“Better get your woman under control,” Drako says to Thor.
“I’m not his woman. And I’m not yours. I belong to myself, and you’re a liar.”
Thor grabs me and pulls me away before I can kick him hard in the ribs again. It’s annoying that this big man is intervening. I should be kicking the hell out of Drako. I should be taking him apart and making him suffer. But no, we have to listen to his stupid lies about everybody he knows suddenly being dead.
“How did they die?” Thor asks the question with a calm kind of assurance. He thinks this man is telling us something true. That’s a mistake. Thor is an honorable man. He’s not talking to one.
“Eaten,” Drako says.
“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 are mistakes 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.