Page 4 of Surrender
She lengthened her stride to keep up with him. He shot her a grin and picked up the pace. Talia silently thanked her trainer, Nico, for the grueling six-month regimen he’d put her through to prepare her for deployment to a planet that lacked any modern conveniences. She’d been told the primitive lifestyle would be hard on her body. So she’d suffered through the intense workouts without complaint.Well, not too much complaint.
Her body temperature rose. Whether from the exertion of the run or the heat of his body flowing through his hand into hers, she couldn’t say. Or might it have been from the warmth of his eyes – and that wickedly charming grin?
They headed away from the palace, toward the foothills of the mountains north of the city. They’d gone about half a mile when three brutish figures appeared out of the darkness and seized them.
The tallest barely reached her chin, but he was incredibly powerful. She struggled to get away, watched in awe as her companion effortlessly shook off the other two and sent them crashing to the ground. He sprang forward and wrapped his arm around the neck of her assailant. The man loosened his grip enough for her to break free.
“Run!” her rescuer shouted.
Talia hesitated. She couldn’t leave him, one man alone against three.
“Damn you, woman! Do as you’re told or, first chance I get, I’ll yank off Orion’s belt and wallop your stubborn ass,” he growled. He followed up by wrestling the man who’d grabbed her to the ground and putting his foot on the man’s back to hold him there.
Talia needed no more assurances. The arrogant stranger seemed perfectly capable of defending himself. She picked up the hem of her cloak and turned away.
His hand shot out. Grabbed her wrist. “I’ll take my reward for rescuing you first.” He pulled her close, dipped his head, and captured her mouth in a fiery kiss then propelled her forward with a firm smack on her bottom. “Now go.”
Chapter Three
With her mind and body reeling from her first kiss coupled with the sting on her backside, Talia took off at a dead run. Her hood fell back, uncovering the locks that flowed halfway to her waist. The man on the ground shouted something in a guttural tone. She’d never heard anything like it. The Tellex chip would need several hours of exposure to that language before it began the flawless translation in her brain.
His meaning became clear when a horde of savages appeared from a nearby building and took up the chase, all of them yelling in that harsh tone. There was no time to think about the stranger – or the taste of his mouth on hers. She raced down endless alleyways, zigzagged through the city until she was hopelessly lost.
Panting heavily, she risked a look behind. Her pursuers were gaining on her. There was no sign of the stranger. Spying a dark opening on her right, she darted into it.
She ran as fast as she could down the narrow alley, but transport through the portal had taken a toll on her body. Even so, she might have evaded them if not for the new band of marauders who appeared at the other end of the passage. The shouts of her pursuers had summoned reinforcements.
Talia stopped dead. Half a dozen of them blocked her exit on either end. She could never fight her way through all of them. Calling on her training at the academy, she drew herself to her full height and squared her shoulders.Show no fear. Don’t let them see a glimpse of weakness.
One of the men blocking her exit came toward her. He wore a carved stone symbol on a leather thong around his neck.A sign of leadership?His deep-set eyes narrowed under thick black brows as he looked her over, a slow head-to-toe appraisal that made her want to cringe. He reached out and stroked her hair, called out something over his shoulder. The others responded with rough noises and evil grins.
Talia didn’t need a Tellex chip to know he’d made a crude sexual remark. She glared at him and slapped his hand away. The man’s eyes darkened. He gave her a cold smile. Then he backhanded her across the face.
Her head snapped sideways, and she stifled a cry. The blow had been so swift, so unexpected, she hadn’t been able to block it. Shock gave way to a wave of pain she vowed not to show. Taking a deep breath, Talia lifted her chin and stared him down. She towered over him so he was forced to look up at her. She caught a flicker of uncertainty in his eyes when he came face to face with the fury in hers.
He growled a command. Three men stepped forward. They bound her wrists in front of her with a length of rope then tied two more ropes around her waist. One of them groped her through the cloak, squeezed her breast with a vise-like grip. Unable to stop him, she did her best to ignore it. He seemed disappointed not to have gotten a reaction out of her.
Another harsh order had them on the move. One man marched ahead of her, tugging her along with the rope around her wrists. Two others walked on either side, keeping the ropes around her waist taut. The others circled them. There was no way she could escape. Nowhere to run. Captive and helpless, Talia had no choice but to let them lead her through the dark streets.
A flicker of hope arose when she recognized a few landmarks and realized they were nearing King Sigrun’s palace. She’d be among allies there. Even if the king’s guards had been taken prisoner too, there was strength in numbers.
That hope died when they passed through the gates. The palace grounds had been overrun. By the light of torches, a team of invaders dragged a prisoner into the courtyard. She watched in horror as they held him down on a makeshift altar built of flat paving stones they’d scavenged from underfoot.
A figure strode up to the altar, draped in what looked like the skin of a tiger, its head over his head, mouth gaping open with its huge fangs exposed. He gave a thunderous roar then slit open the prisoner’s chest with a gleaming obsidian knife and cut out the heart. The bloody mass was still pulsing when he held it aloft in both hands.
Two other men dragged the corpse off the altar and tossed it onto a fire blazing nearby. Talia gagged at the odor of burning flesh.
A rising wave of terror poured over her when her captors marched her past a line of men hauling more prisoners to the sacrificial altar. Relying on decades of scholarly training to restore her calm rational nature, Talia forced herself to ignore the horrors around her and concentrated on the puzzle of who the invaders might be. They didn’t look like any beings from other planets in the Federation. And their language was like none she’d ever encountered in her studies.
She’d had only a few classes in prehistoric cultures. But she’d studied her captors as they led her through the city and had come up with a theory. The invaders might be descendants of yet another Earthly tribe that mysteriously vanished long ago. A handful of scholars, looked upon as crackpots, thought members of that tribe had also traveled to another world thousands of years ago through a star portal that hadn’t been rediscovered yet.
Looking at her captors, with their powerful squat bodies, deep-set eyes, and prominent brow ridges, Talia was sure of it. The beings before her were descendants of Neanderthals, from a branch on the tree of human evolution thought to have died out long ago, possibly slaughtered by the more advanced homo sapiens. Far from extinct, these brutal creatures still practiced their ancient rituals. Celebrating their victory as they’d no doubt done for millennia, by cutting the beating hearts from the bodies of their vanquished foes. The scholar in her wondered if the Aztecs had adopted the practice from myths passed down through the ages about these primitive hominids.
Her captors led her into the great hall. There was no sign of the king or his entourage. Instead, a short, squat man with a flat nose sat on Sigrun’s throne, an imposing wooden structure overlaid with gold on a raised platform. A pair of massive curved antlers served as armrests. Talia had no idea what species of prehistoric beast had been slain for them.
Fires blazed in iron biers on either side of the throne. The heat they gave off did little to dispel the chill in the room. Talia’s teeth chattered. She wondered how the men around her could withstand the cold. Dressed in low boots, loincloths, and short capes of animal fur, their arms, legs, and chests were bare. But their ancestors had roamed the earth during the last ice age, so their metabolism must have adapted to frigid temperatures.
The men dragged her to the platform, released their hold on her, and bowed to the seated figure. Talia strained to make out the words as the leader of her captors stepped forward and made a speech. He rattled off a stream of sounds in their guttural language. Talia thought one of them translated as “female.” But it could just as easily have meant slave. She guessed that their culture, like many ancient ones, didn’t make much of a distinction between the two.