Page 49 of Corvak's Challenge

I realize in that instant that Aidy and I are not. We are struggling because it is only the two of us, and the snow-people are more of a hindrance than a help. Our energy is spent every day preventing them from fighting when we could be using it in other ways.

For a brief moment, I feel a stab of resentment toward this male, that he is doing so well here on this planet and I, for all my scheming, am not. "We are not friends," I say back to him, hiding my frustration. "And you know very well what sort of game this is."

The male bares fangs at me. "What are you talking about?"

"The game." I gesture at our surroundings. "We have been sent here to play, and I am determined to win. Give up now and I will take you captive. Do not force me to eliminate you."

It's a bluff—Aidy has asked me to bring him back and I will, because I refuse to disappoint her. But this male does not know that.

His nostrils flare with irritation, his gaze flicking to the top of the pit, where I loom over him. I can practically see his thoughts, see the plans as he discards them, one by one. The snow-people are lining up around me, and he is obviously outnumbered. "Very well," he says slowly. "I will go with you if you promise I'll be safe. And you help me bind my ankle."

I flick a hand at him. "Toss your weapons up and my army will get you out of the pit."

He eyes me dubiously. After a long hesitation, he tosses up a dagger. Then another. His spear is snapped in half at the bottom, and he tosses each end up to me. Each time he flings up a weapon, he shoots me a look of pure disgust and loathing. Eventually there are seven knives, the spear, and a bola tossed up to me.

"Is that everything?" I ask.

"What, you think I have a knife shoved under my tail?" the stranger snarls back at me.

"It'd explain the attitude," I retort back. "This is nothing personal. It's just gameplay."

"What keffing game?" he shouts up to me. "Are you a madman?"

"You know very well what game," I say, though the more he protests, the more I think about Aidy's comments the other day. How she wonders if there is something different about this game because nothing is going as we expected. How the "smooth people on the beach" do not leave. Unsettled, I gesture to a few of the snow-people to jump down into the pit to lift him up.

Six of them do and they're able to lift him by working together, and I use a hand to haul him the final distance to the surface. He glares at me, eyeing his weapons now at my belt, but doesn't reach for them. "Who are these strangers?" he asks.

"They are my army."

"Yeah, well, you should tell your army to wash. I smelled them two valleys over."

I bare my teeth in an unfriendly smile. "And yet you still fell into my trap. What does this say about you?"

He scowls. "It says that I let my curiosity get the better of me, and that I should never go hunting when distracted."

"The smell is that much of a distraction?"

He's silent.

"What are you doing hunting this far into the mountains?" I prod, wondering if they have come looking for us or if he's lost. He seemed surprised to see me earlier.

The praxiian doesn't answer. Instead, he hobbles forward and then hisses, shaking his head. "You're going to have to carry me to your healer because my ankle is keffed up."

"There's no healer down here," I reply.

He groans, staring up at the sky as if his patience is completely exhausted. "Why me?"

"You aren't afraid?"

"Should I be? You would have killed me already if you'd intended to. And I imagine that it's better to go with you for now, because if you don't kill me, someone else might when I don't return." He grimaces.

Unsettled, I pick up one of the furs that fell into the pit with him. It's difficult to inspire fear in an enemy that's merely annoyed by you. He should be worried, not mildly irked at being inconvenienced. I spread the fur on the ground and gesture at it. "You can sit and I will drag you, if you cannot walk."

His annoyance increases. "You should let me go."

"Why would I do that?"

He doesn't answer, his long tail swishing. Instead, he looks unsettled for the first time since I pulled him from the pit. "I need to go back. That's all. I'm needed…elsewhere."

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