O'Rrin The Protector, page 7
part #1 of Thoherian Barbarians Series
7
Hetta
It’d been a couple days, but O’Rrin and I were starting to establish a routine. We would sleep silently, side by side, sometimes touching, then get up, break camp, and walk next to each other. I would ask questions, he would answer, and sometimes he would ask me some in return. In the background was Dana demanding answers of N’Ashtar, rapid-fire questions that seemed to amuse the N’Akron leader more than annoy him.
“Where is Kohta?” “Why were they headed to the capital?” “Do they have doctors?” “Who is the leader?”
“Dana’s on a roll,” I muttered under my breath.
O’Rrin frowned at me, his confusion clear on his brow ridges. “A roll?”
I flushed at yet another Earth saying that didn’t translate well. “Um, she’s talking a lot.”
O’Rrin’s frown deepened, but his look was directed towards Dana this time. “She is.” We continued walking, but it was more awkward now.
“I am not going to give you the answers you want, as you’ve demonstrated,” N’Ashtar said finally, his voice firm but louder than I would’ve expected. “If you wish to hear yourself speak, go direct it at your Jackie friend or R’Asha.”
“Oh, snap,” I said under my breath. That earned me another puzzled look from O’Rrin, who seemed to write it off quickly this time as just yet another human expression.
“Talking to R’Asha is like talking to a pile of stones,” O’Rrin muttered, giving a quick shake of his head.
I giggled, because that, at least, was similar to something from home. “Have you ever heard of brick walls?” His blank stare told me that he had not. “It’s basically a bunch of stones put together to make a wall,” I explained.
“A pile?” He still looked puzzled.
I glanced around us, trying to think of something to use as a comparison. “Sort of, but we used a type of sap to make them stick and make them strong.”
“So a pile of rocks, but the human version,” he surmised.
I chuckled, because at that point, it was close enough. “Basically.” Although I wasn’t a linguist, the cultural distinctions were interesting to me. It was clear, even with the translators there were fundamental differences, things that didn’t translate correctly. Maybe what he said would have made more sense if I could actually speak his language.
“Why are you accompanying them to Kohta?” I heard Dana ask R’Asha in the background. Internally I winced. While I admired her tenacity, it was becoming clear she wouldn’t take no for an answer.
O’Rrin let out a faint chuckle, which made me stare at him. He did have a sense of humor. When he didn’t say anything else, I decided to push a bit.
“Why is he so difficult to talk to?” I asked, trying to sound as nonconfrontational as possible.
O’Rrin tensed, his grip on his spear tightening for a second before it relaxed. He still didn’t look at me. “R’Asha is our spiritual leader and believes everything happens for a reason,” he spit out. “He would thank the Goddess if he was gutted with the sharp end of a spear, because fate.” The bitterness on his face and in his tone surprised me. It wasn’t quite hatred, but it wasn’t that far away, either.
“Did he… do something to you?” I wasn’t sure how else to phrase it, but something had to have happened to cause that bitterness. Right?
O’Rrin was quiet for a long time, to the point that I didn’t think he would reply. That was just my luck, destroying the fragile rapport that had started building between the two of us. Then when he did speak, I yelped, because I’d gotten so distracted.
“In our world—” He stared at me, mildly concerned by the high-pitched noise I had omitted. “Are you okay?”
“Sorry, just surprised,” I muttered, my cheeks flushed pink.
He frowned like he didn’t understand why, but apparently decided not to push it any farther. “Our world is cold and hard, and many things happen for no reason. It is impossible for me to attribute such happenings to some deity, or to fate. Sometimes my people die. It is what it is, but it is not fate.” His eyes were distant, like memories were flashing through his mind. “Each N’Akron must make their own fate, not let it be decided for them.”
We walked in quiet for a while, his words churning through my mind like a hamster on a wheel. Something had obviously happened in his past, bad enough to disturb his way of life and his view of the world.
“Why were your eyes leaking water?” O’Rrin’s words were sharp and they caught me off guard.
Lost in thought, I hadn’t realized he had moved closer until I lifted my head. It took everything I had to contain another yelp, not wanting to make a fool of myself. I was already doing a good enough job of that without his help. “What?”
“Last night.” He was looking at me now, his gaze assessing. “Is it a problem? Do you need a healer?”
Oh. My cheeks flushed again, like they seemed to do chronically around him. “You guys don’t cry, then?”
A frown gave me an answer.
“It’s basically, uh, when you’re sad, sometimes these tear sacs in your eyes leak water.” While I’d majored in biology, my specialty was botany, not humans. But I was fairly certain that was the case, at least from my long-ago physiology classes.
“Why?” O’Rrin looked puzzled.
“I…” I stopped mid-step, since it was something I’d never really thought about. “I don’t know,” I admitted.
“Seems like a waste of water,” O’Rrin muttered, shaking his head.
I conceded that with a nod, because in a world like this, where water seemed to be a scarcer resource, crying probably was wasteful. Dehydration could kill even on Earth, and here it seemed to be much more dangerous.
“Why were you crying?” O’Rrin asked suddenly. “What made you sad?”
I opened my mouth to stumble through an answer, then snapped it shut after realizing I wasn’t entirely certain what to say. It was a complicated question, when it came down to it, with an even more complicated answer. “I miss my family,” I said finally, the guilt pulling at me. “I’ll never see them again if we don’t get the ship fixed and get off the planet.”
O’Rrin paused, using his spear as a walking stick now. “And this makes you sad?”
Shame turned my face tomato-red. “Not as much as it should,” I muttered. “I also worry about Rachel and Erica,” I added, swiftly changing the topic. I didn’t want to talk about the fact that I was closer to happy at the thought of never seeing my family again, at never dealing with their expectations. It was strange, that ache of missing someone while at the same time wanting to smile at the thought of never seeing them again. Two contradictory emotions that were side by side, hurt and happiness twining together.
Not that dealing with expectations was completely gone. Now I had the N’Akron to deal with, and given I didn’t know their culture or their norms, it was a lot more difficult to stick to them. All my brain did was shout that I would screw something up, and they would toss me aside. But the most resilient part of me didn’t think so.
Even worse, it seemed fairly confident that O’Rrin wouldn’t do that to me, or let it happen. It just made me want to help more, even though I wasn’t really sure what I could do. Especially since there seemed to be such little plant life.
“Your missing friends?” O’Rrin’s words startled me back to the prior topic. God, I was doing a sucky job of paying attention. He probably thought I was a flake.
“Erica’s unconscious,” I corrected. “But Rachel…” I wasn’t sure how to finish that. There was a part of me that didn’t want to admit she was probably dead, that her pod had likely crash-landed somewhere with her remains inside. But the optimistic part of me? That part still held onto hope, the distant thought that maybe someday we would stumble across her pod and find her in stasis or find her having survived in the wild.
“Ra-shell?” O’Rrin seemed to struggle with the ch sound, which I thought was sort of adorable.
“Rachel,” I said, enunciating carefully for him. He seemed baffled by it but nodded anyway.
“You do not miss your family?” O’Rrin asked, his words cautious, like he was weighing each one before he spoke.
I glanced down at my feet, nearly tripping over myself. “Kind of,” I mumbled, not sure how to explain it. They seemed like an honorable culture, full of hard-working people. How could I tell him that I never lived up to my family’s expectations, that no matter what I did, I wasn’t good enough for them? “Did your parents ever want you to do something that you didn’t want to, but you wanted to make them happy, so you tried to do it anyway?”
There was an awkward silence. “I am an orphan,” he admitted. “My parents died when I was young. I always knew I would take my father’s path.”
Ah, shit. There I went, sticking my foot in my mouth. Crap. “I’m sorry,” I mumbled. “That’s pretty insensitive of me—”
“R’Asha would tell you it’s your fate, to do what your parents want.” His words had that bitterness in them again. “When my parents died, I was young, not yet able to hunt on my own, and his predecessor, the one before him, stood at the ceremony and said it was fate, destiny, that my parents be taken away so early.” He had stopped moving now, his whole body tense. “That I be left alone. I am sorry your family wanted you to do something you didn’t want to.” Lifting his head, his golden eyes met mine. “If you don’t want to do what your family asks of you, make your own fate, Hetta.” The words sounded abrasive but sincere, like his version of a pep talk. “You are in charge of your own fate.”
“Thanks.” I couldn’t help my smile, which won me a quizzical look from the taciturn N’Akron. “I do think it’s weird that fate would land me here,” I admitted.
“On Thoheria? Or with me?” O’Rrin seemed to regret his words the moment he finished them, clearing his throat and turning away. “We do not have much longer before we stop for the night.”
“On Thoheria,” I answered softly, aware he wasn’t looking at me. I didn’t think he could, not after what he said. Maybe he did like me. “I don’t regret meeting you.”
When that didn’t get me an answer, I knew it was time to move on. Neither of us really wanted to spend more time delving into uncomfortable topics, especially when we needed to be focused on our surroundings. It was far too easy to be attacked out in the plains. It was true you could see far in many directions, but the tall, thick grasses made it easy for smaller people, or aliens, I suppose, to conceal themselves.
“What is a Setti?” I asked instead, thinking of the earlier conversation. I hadn’t seen any fauna, but certainly some had to exist on the planet. The N’Akron seemed to be omnivorous, and meat had to come from somewhere. “Is it a creature you hunt?”
O’Rrin visibly hesitated, then shook his head. “The Setti are a sentient race, but not like us. They have no leader.” There’s a distance to his features, like he was reciting something he didn’t like but was used to. “They’re occasionally hunted or eaten by the Caterri.”
I swallowed thickly. “The Caterri?” My stomach threatened to rebel. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard their name, and at the rate we were going, I wasn’t certain I ever wanted to again. Maybe they were the dominant predators, but with what they’d said earlier…
“The Caterri are the rulers of Thoheria,” O’Rrin explained, some of that bitterness back in his voice. “Many years ago, our tribe set up a deal with the Caterri leader in Kohta. Every two sun cycles, we would tithe an unmated, fertile female, and in exchange, the Caterri would not attack us.”
I blinked. “You have a female with you?” I looked wildly from N’Akron to N’Akron, baffled. They all looked the same to me, with no typically feminine features like I had as a human.
“L’Anna is our tribute.” His words were disgruntled, but his expression was softer as he nodded towards one of the N’Akron who had been quiet and mostly stuck to the edges. She—because apparently, she was a she—looked very similar to the rest, although her coloring was darker and had a grayish tinge the males didn’t have. She also didn’t have the same prominent head ridges that N’Ashtar and O’Rrin shared.
I swallowed despite the lump in my throat, trying to come to grip with the fact they were taking a living, breathing person to be given to someone like property. “And this…is okay? With your people?”
When O’Rrin’s eyes met mine, there was a kaleidoscope of emotions there. Maybe ‘okay’ wasn’t the right word. “It is my tribe’s biggest shame,” he said quietly, just loud enough for me to hear. “But we do what we must to protect our people.”
The weight of what he’d just revealed hung between us. “Does Dana know this is what we’re doing?” I asked, keeping my voice as low as his. If she didn’t, I didn’t want to be the one to break it to her. Then another, more appalling, thought hit me. “Are you going to turn us over to the Caterri, too?” My voice was getting louder in alarm, dread surging through me.
That made O’Rrin stop and swing around, his face a storm as he stood right in front of me. As he breathed in, his chest seemed to inflate, his muscles gaining more definition, and his eyes flickered red in a way that both scared me and made me warm inside.
“No matter what, I will never let you be given to the Caterri,” he said in that deadly quiet way of his, sending shivers up and down my spine. The intensity in his eyes made my knees weak, a hunger there I hadn’t seen before. Then, as quickly as it had appeared, it was gone, his chest deflating, his eyes shuttering. He stepped back, giving me a curt nod. “I must talk to N’Ashtar.”
I stood there, not wanting to risk tripping over my own feet if I walked while I was so distracted. Had I said something wrong? Had something gone wrong? Did he really need to talk to N’Ashtar, or was he just running from me? I turned my attention back to walking, although I allowed myself to rub my forehead. Maybe I really was just terrible at understanding others.
Now that I knew who L’Anna was, I watched her as I walked, trying to resist the urge to go up and talk to her. I wanted to, wanted to hear what she thought about such a barbaric practice, but my history of social awkwardness didn’t exactly give me confidence. But we were women, and women stuck together, so if L’Anna was being held hostage or something, we could go to Dana and Dana would kick ass and get us all out of there.
Feeling a bit braver, I moved up towards the darker-scaled N’Akron. “L’Anna?”
She didn’t stop moving, although she did turn to look at me. “Yes, human?”
I took two strides for every one of hers, envious at how much taller she was. Then again, if I was that tall, I wouldn’t fit so nicely in O’Rrin’s arms…not that I was thinking about that. Because I wasn’t.
Much.
I cleared my throats to recenter my thoughts. “Are you okay?”
She looked puzzled. Or what I presumed was puzzled. “Why would I not be?”
“O’Rrin said you’re being given to the Caterri,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest at the thought. “Look, if you’re being forced into this, we can get you out of here.”
Surprise, then amusement, crossed her face. “You, small human?”
“Not just me. I leave the planning to Dana,” I said instead of getting offended. I was short, I’d be the first to admit it. I sure as hell wasn’t going to fight any of them. “But we could help you.”
L’Anna watched me for a long time, her lithe limbs moving in the steady motions of someone used to the movement. “I volunteered for this, small human,” she said, her words gentle. “This is my decision.”
I scoffed, because really, at the very least it was coercion of some type, but L’Anna just gave me that same polite look. Then she looked forward, making it clear the conversation was over.
Ignoring the need to grab her and shake her until she came to her senses, I went back to where I’d been walking, looking for Jackie and R’Asha. They were easy enough to find, just by listening for Dana. If I couldn’t walk with O’Rrin, wherever he’d gone off to, at least I could walk with another human.
8
O’Rrin
It’d been an excuse, claiming I needed to talk to N’Ashtar. As it was, I now walked next to him, doing anything but looking at him and facing his probing questions. No, ignoring him was best. My heart was still racing, my groin still warm and threatening to grow. The ache, the need to make her mine was still thrumming through me, buoyed by the rage from her suggestion.
The very thought of turning her over to the Caterri made my scales prickle with anger. Her betrayal, her fear, were palpable in the air on my tongue. I didn’t know how I could prevent whatever would happen from happening, but I knew I would do my best. I would take care of her. I had to.
I just also had to stay away from her.
Every time she spoke, her words went straight to my heart, the melody in her voice making me itch unbearably. The hind part of my brain was screaming to grab her, take her into the grasses, hidden from the others, and make her mine. But I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. It was far too dangerous, and far too dumb.
Yet I still found myself sneaking glances at her as I walked, surprised to see her wandering up to L’Anna and striking up a conversation. My eyes narrowed, the pupils slitting. I had a feeling that what she was going to say wasn’t going to help tribal harmony, but I wouldn’t interfere unless I had to. The more time I spent close to her, the more likely I would forget myself and grab her like an animal in heat. I was more than that.
Then L’Anna’s eyes flashed red, just the briefest hint, although the anger in her tongue-flicks was unreadable to someone like Hetta. Inwardly, I bit back a groan. I would have to interfere, I decided, but then I would transfer her to someone else. Yet she beat me to it, because she walked away from the irritated L’Anna.
Still, it would have been polite to go check on her, would it not? With that in mind, I moved next to her anyway, earning another one of her loud shrieks. Apparently, humans did not have very sensitive ears, or so Dana shouted at N’Ashtar occasionally. “Hetta.”
