Hearts of Ishira (Hearts of Ishira Saga) (7 page)

As she began to stir once more, he wondered if she’d remember him this time. He hoped so. He needed her awake, but more than that, he needed to get her safe and healthy. He wanted to know so much about her, about her people, where they had come from… everything. Her mind had been so bright, so full of life and spirit, and he longed to touch that energy again, to absorb it and let it fill the cracks in his soul that had grown over years of battle, loss, and the abandonment of his world.

He could feel her spirit gathering energy, trying to rise through the pain and the blackness of unconsciousness. He laid his palm on her bare shoulder, sending gentle waves of energy into her, helping her through the fight. Her mind latched onto his power, drinking it in to fuel her ascent into the real world. Hunter had to shake his head at her strength of will.

Such a strong, determined little warrior.

As she blinked her eyes open once more, he decided that she
had
to be their highest ranking lady, possibly in charge of the gaggle of younger women. No one else in the group gave off such a determined, willful aura. Bravery, authority, and the ability to Read were how his people chose their leaders, so it was plausible that hers did as well.

He felt drawn to her in a way he hadn’t felt toward a woman in nearly thirty years. He would see to her safety personally, sure that she would be the one the girls looked to, when she was finally healed.

Satisfied with his conclusions, he took up the braces and began to assess the multiple scrapes, gashes, and bruises on her lush little body.

When she came to again, Arianna’s head was still doing the
whomp-whomp
thing. She was lying face-up once more, but on a blanket instead of on a stretcher. She remembered enough to know better than to try to move this time. Not only was it futile, since the huge warrior would only catch her, but she would probably hurt herself even more than she already had.

Before she could truly take stock of where all the pain was coming from, she felt large hands on her body, quickly exploring her legs and arms, gently running over her tummy and testing her ribs. She froze, terror rushing through her anew. The hands were not threatening, nor did they try to restrain her in any way. Something nagged at her sluggish memory, something that told her she was safe, guarded. But she was still in an unknown situation and that was enough to scare her, memories or no.

She tried very hard to hide her pain, in case the hands belonged to someone that intended to harm her if she was deemed too weak. Try as she might, though, when the hands hit particularly tender areas, she could neither keep still nor quiet. She gasped when a deep male voice spoke, close to her ear. His words were exceedingly odd, but his voice was pleasant, even soothing. She managed to cut wide, frightened eyes toward him without moving her head.

It was the ‘man’ from before, the one who had been reaching for her as she passed out. He was leaning over her, his face close to hers. She could look right into his deep, intelligent, green eyes. Trying hard to fight through her mental fog and figure out what he was saying, she automatically opened her senses to him. His touch and tone were too gentle to be threatening, which allowed her to relax a bit. She sensed the lessening of some of his tension, as though he was just as relieved as she was. He said something else, his eyebrows and inflection going up at the end. A question, then?

She closed her eyes and whimpered against a shaft of pain that impaled her head, then blinked up at him once more. Frustration was coming off of him in waves. She could sense his urgency and wished she could let him know she was hurt but could not understand him. When their thoughts touched, his eyes widened and he lowered his face closer to hers, touching her cheek tentatively with a calloused fingertip.

She stared at him, her brain suddenly presenting the details of their earlier mental contact. She felt his thoughts a bit more clearly, reassuring impressions of
safety, help, urgency, danger
. They weren’t words, but the concepts behind the language. And his was definitely the mental touch from before. She relaxed with genuine relief and offered a weak smile to acknowledge the images and impulses he was sending to her. He smiled with fierce satisfaction when the tension left her body and he went on with his exploration of her injuries.

She had no clue what was happening or why, but she knew that there was an incredibly handsome man with very large hands feeling her up, presumably to help her, and she was hurting too badly to protest. He had such kind, intelligent eyes and big, gentle hands, and he was sending her reassurance through their mental bond, to augment the tenderness of his touch. Sensing absolutely no harmful intent from him, Arianna relaxed as much as she could and just let him help her. She was truly too tired to do much else, anyhow.

His hands moved up her shoulders, to her neck, and slowly explored her skull. She cried out when his fingers hit the lump on the left side of her head. She felt rather than heard the meaning behind his spoken words as he urged her not to move on her own, then he leaned back to kneel next to her, bringing his face fully into her line of vision. She blinked in surprise when she focused on his face, instead of just his eyes.

Humanoid, but definitely not human. He waited, giving her a few moments to accept and adjust. The intelligence and compassion in his eyes was enough to almost make her cry. He opened his mind to her, allowing her to explore him inside and out. She took him in, her mind surrounding and delving into him for a long moment, reading his intentions and his emotions, and there was one thing she knew, without a doubt, to the depths of her soul, within that moment.

She trusted him.

It was idiotic, it made no sense, and she would never be able to explain her feelings, should anyone ask, but she could touch his mind and she somehow just
knew
that he would do all he could to help her, to protect her and the young women with her, with his life and those of his men, if need be. The conviction in him surprised her more than the fact that he wasn’t human. Her breathing hitched, but she had the presence of mind not to try to move, more than that first twitch of surprise. His mind wrapped gently around her probing energy, adding his own formidable power to it and strengthening her.

He smiled warmly at her when he caught her thoughts, sensed her utter trust. Holding her eyes with his, he touched her mind again, and this time she saw a space ship tearing through incredibly tall teal-leafed trees, crashing. An explosion, wreckage, and bodies all over the place. Female bodies, naked, tumbled from the ship and strewn in the mud.

Then he blinked and she saw a picture in her head of a large building of stone and wood nestled against a high cliff face, with many large windows and openings, balconies, hanging plants and neat little gardens. He ‘thought’ that his men needed to take her there, to get them to medical help and shelter. Then his eyebrows rose and he sent an image of her talking to the girls, explaining to them what had happened, what needed to happen next. Would she do it?

She blinked once again in surprise at his rather eloquent, if wordless, request. He and his men may look like half-naked barbarians from some medieval planet, but he was obviously highly intelligent.

“Yes,” she breathed. She couldn’t speak very loudly, she found, nor breathe very deeply. Her chest hurt, her ribs were stabbing her, and her head was moving from nauseatingly throbbing into excruciating migraine territory.

The man spoke a command to one of his warriors, who took something from him. Looking back at Ri, the leader showed her the strip of thin material, sending a mental image of what he wanted to do with it. She held very still as he gently worked the brace under her neck and secured it, then did something that made it inflate. The device was really remarkable, actually, because it formed to her flesh, supporting her neck perfectly without giving her the strangled feeling a regular neck brace did. The man sent her a questioning glance, and she tentatively responded that she was fine. He seemed relieved. She smiled once more at him before the other warrior murmured something and the black-haired man moved to help hold her leg steady as they put another of the inflatable braces under her calf. The pain was incredible. Her back arched in reaction when the men gently straightened the limb enough to put the brace on. Her mouth opened in a silent scream, but she held her lower body still, clenching her fists in the grass beside her.

Another man approached, his voice irritated as he spoke to her warrior. The new arrival, a man with chiseled features, furrowed brow and tawny hair, knelt beside her, taking her leg in his big hands. Ri sensed that the new guy was a physician, and one that her black-haired guy trusted implicitly. Her warrior moved away from the doctor, taking Ri’s hand in his, silently urging her to grip it if she needed to. This time the pain nearly sent her into oblivion, as the newcomer nodded to the other warrior medic and they quickly straightened her leg enough to wrap the brace around the break. Panting shallowly through the agony, Ri allowed herself to relax. Once the brace was supporting it, the break felt much better than when the leg was just hanging there. The handsome young doctor watched her with dawning approval as she calmed down, then nodded to her and went back to whatever he’d been doing before.

“Who are you?” she asked softly, when she caught her breath and the leader was looking at her once more. He cocked his head to the side in curiosity and she pointed to herself, saying her name. “I’m Arianna.”

His face mirrored his understanding.

“Hunter,” he said succinctly, pointing to himself.

“Hunter,” she breathed. Narrowing her gaze on his, she sent him an image of him creeping through the woods, a bow and arrow in his hands, searching for food to take back to his people. “In my language, that is what ‘Hunter’ means.”

He smiled, cocking his head to the side. The image he sent her in return was of him standing on the bridge of a space-ship, calling orders to his men and directing them to follow something in the distance.

Another space-craft? she wondered. He caught the picture and sent another back, this one of him and the doctor, among others she could feel nearby, wandering the stars, visiting other planets and collecting samples from dirt, flora, and fauna.

“You’re scientists?” she breathed. He thought about the concept she sent him, then shrugged. She got the impression that he was much more than just a scientist or a warrior. He touched her face, sending her a rapid-fire series of images. She saw many, many space vehicles, chasing his ship from a lovely planet that looked much like Earth, but with different continents. For a long moment, she simply stared up at him, her mind joined with his, both of them exploring each other with curiosity and a good bit of wonder. She sensed in him the same deep need to understand, to know everything he could about an alien species, a new friend.

As though he’d forgotten, just for a moment, that he was the leader of these huge warriors, he held her gaze and sent her gentle questions. He wanted to know where the women had come from, so she sent him the image of Earth, her Solar System, her sun, and some of the constellations and stars she knew of. He sent her a picture of his home planet, a lovely ball of blue and green. She sensed that his world was smaller than Earth, but much less polluted and ravaged.

A call from one of his warriors snapped Hunter out of their fascinating, lightning-fast trade of information. He gave her a sheepish smile before turning toward his man. They both heard the renewed weeping of the women then, and Ri sighed, remembering that he wanted her to talk to her women. This was going to hurt, but it needed to be done. She let him know that she was ready to speak to them.

He sent her a command to take a deep breath and not try to help as he lifted her, wrapped in the thin blanket, and held her to his strength and warmth. One of his men moved to pull Hunter’s cloak around her, so that she was further sheltered from the rain and his body heat was captured. The warmth was such a welcome relief from the chilly air that she whimpered.

Hunter carried her over to where the women were being corralled. Some of the girls, mostly the ones who were unconscious or too weak to fight, were wrapped in the men’s cloaks. Arianna was pleased to sense that Bev was one of those who had wisely accepted a cloak without being forced. The girls who had fought being covered were huddled together, naked in the rain, covered with mud and debris from the forest floor and some of them had blood streaming from various injuries. Amy stood defiantly before those girls, glaring at the women who’d accepted help, as though they’d betrayed her.

God, they were so young. Ri was definitely the oldest and she had a wee bit of a clue as to what was going on, even if the girls didn’t. It didn’t seem that any of the other women had the ability to touch the men with their minds, as Ri had been doing, either. Then again, perhaps Hunter was the only one who could do that among his people?

Amy’s small army of followers had to be freezing. Ri sent a shaft of thought to Hunter, imagining the women covered and protected from the weather and the men’s eyes. He hesitated, as though unsure about the wisdom of that, but called an order to his men. Almost as one, the warriors stripped their cloaks from around their bodies and wrapped them around the girls who were still unprotected.

But when the men took off their cloaks to cover the wet, shivering girls, all hell broke loose. From the front, the men seemed to be just that… men. From the back, though, they were sleek, muscular, furred creatures. How had she missed that? Oh, right, she’d been dealing with debilitating pain. She shivered, trying to take it all in. They looked almost like cats, from behind, but without tails. All colors and patterns of cat, too, including some she’d never seen on her planet.