language. I don’t even speak the modern form of our language very well. English replaced it mostly.”
“Can you understand him?”
“Just barely,” he says.
Krakon has the little magic box make something that looks like handcuffs. He creates a second pair. He cuffs the man while he’s still hanging, cuffing both his hands and ankles. He cuts him down with the carving knife.
He crashes to the snow, and Krakon drags him by the legs toward our fire.
“You’re not going to torture him, are you?”
Krakon narrows his eyes at me. “We need to know how many of them there are and if they are coming.”
Krakon switches to another language, shouting questions at the man.
In the firelight I get my first real look at the tribesman. He’s Cygnian and almost as big as Krakon. The orange markings that run across Krakon’s face are different on this man’s, and they are covered in a white paint, as well. He’s wearing a thick suit of black fur. It’s covering his entire body save for his head.
The man answers, but I don’t understand.
I fall asleep while the two men talk. I meant to stay awake, but since I couldn’t understand a word, and since I was bone-tired, I couldn’t manage to keep my eyes open.
When I wake up, Krakon is on guard duty and the tribesman is gone.
“Did you…?” I ask, looking around for a body.
He scoffs. “Did I what?”
“Kill him?” I whisper.
He shakes his head. “I made a deal.”
“What kind of deal?”
I showed him everything we had. I explained how the matter reshaper worked. I asked him what he needed.”
“And…?” I ask.
“Once he figured out what it could do, he asked me to make a strong knife with it. I did. He asked how many I could make, and I showed him the raw material I had. Basically, since I had him all tied up, he saw everything we had. He knew there was nothing of value for him to take from us, aside from the shaper, so I just made him seven knives--that’s all the matter I had left--and he took them. He’ll tell his tribe he got all he could, and they’ll have no reason to bother us anymore.”
“What about the one you killed?”
“He said the knives he got will be worth much more than one life. They will be given to their strongest warriors and handed down for the next hundred generations to those warriors’ sons. To think, just some shitty knives!”
Krakon stretches and yawns. “I’m going to take a quick rest, then I’ll re-set the snares. Maybe make some more.”
“They said they wouldn’t come back, though, right?”
He nods. “But they aren’t the only tribe. He warned me about others. We can’t let our guard down.”
18
Krakon
I lied to her.
As soon as she fell asleep, I took that fucker just to the edge of the trees and slit his throat.
I saw the way he looked at Catherine. She wasn’t going to let me kill him, I knew that from the way she first asked me what we were going to do. And if I let him go? He’d tell his tribe about the wondrous thing he’d just smelled and they’d be back in this forest the next morning, dicks hard and ready to do unspeakable things to her.
My blood boils just thinking about it. My breath gets heavy and I start to tremble.
No. She’s a new ship. That’s all she is. Still, I have to protect her.
I told another lie. I couldn’t understand a word that guy said. He couldn’t understand anything I said either. I thought I might have picked out a few words here and there that maybe resembled words in modern Cygnian, but there was no actual communication happening. I got no information out of him. Still, I did what needed to be done.
But two of them found us. Did they send them out to scout our forest specifically, or did those two just happen to see our fire while out hunting and come over to check?
Since they came in the night, they probably were sent deliberately to scout. Since there were only two of them, they probably didn’t know where we were until they found us.
But those two will not return to report to the rest of the tribe what they saw, and when they don’t, the tribe will know we are here.
I decide it’s better to fortify this position than to try to move. If I was alone, I’d probably just move, but with Catherine, it’s better and easier