Riding a horse – or, more accurately – being tied to a horse, for most of a day is not pleasant. So when we stopped for the night, I was relieved.

Until it became clear my captor was going to leave me tied to the fucking horse?

“Come on,” I said. “You can’t leave me here all night.”

We’d stopped at dark, and the woman dressed in a leather skirt and a leather corset with dark green skin quickly gathered wood and made a fire. Then she found my satchel tied to the horse she’d taken, made herself comfortable next to the fire she’d built, and enjoyed the food Martha had packed. For me.

“Sure I can,” she said as she munched on my food.

Okay, she had a point. She could leave me here all night, and there was nothing I could do about it.

“But please don’t,” I said. “I’ve been tied to this thing for hours.” I was sore all over from the horse and from the beating I’d taken. “Please let me down. I’m dying up here. I promise I won’t run off.”

She stared at me coldly. “No. All you men promise you won’t run off, but then you do, usually with the neighbors’ fat wife, and when you’ve knocked her up and can’t take any more of her shit, you come crawling back.”

I looked at her, green and beautiful and smiling mercilessly at me. “OK, that’s oddly specific. But please.” I was whining now, and I hated the sound of it. “You can tie me back up in the morning. And besides, you could easily kill me.”

“No.” she threw a stick at me, and it scared the horse, who jumped around, smashing my guts against his rough back. “Shut up and keep quiet,” she said when the horse had calmed down.

I really wanted down off of the horse. “Please.”

“Not going to happen,” she said. “And you wanna know something? Slaves don’t need tongues, so if you open your mouth anymore, I’m going to cut yours off.”

She looked completely serious.

I didn’t say anything else. Not for a while. I just watched her eat, my mouth watering at the site of the bread and jerky Martha had packed me while my throat seemed to get drier by the second. I hadn’t had any water all day.

I had to try again. I couldn’t stay up here all night.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

She smiled at me, then pulled a dagger out of her boot and stared at me. “You sure you want to keep talking?”

“Okay, fine,” I said. “But I just need some water. At least give me that.”

She ignored me.

I was beginning to become delirious. I was sore from being kicked and punched, dehydrated from no water, and going completely insane being tied to a horse. I didn’t care what she did to me. I just wanted down.

“Fine. If you’re not going to let me down, just for the night, where I promise not to escape… then I will have to sing.”

“Don’t even think about it!”

I took a deep breath. “We’re no strangers to love. You know the rules, and so do I. I… just… wanna tell you how I’m feeling. Gotta make you understand…”

She started towards me with her dagger in hand, its sharp point gleaming like a, well… like a sharp dagger someone’s about to cut your tongue out with.

I hit the chorus with everything I had.

“I’m never gonna give you up… Never gonna let you down… Never gonna run around and desert you… Never gonna say goodbye… Never gonna make you cry… Never gonna run around and hurt you.”

I was pretty sure I didn’t get the words exactly right, but nobody in any world like’s to be Rick Rolled.

She came at me with the gleaming dagger. It was right in front of my face. I closed my eyes and sang as loud as I could while I still had a tongue.

Then I felt the tension of the ropes on my hands and feet go slack. I opened my eyes to see the ground coming at me fast. I slammed hard into it, dust filling my open mouth. Then, with strong hands, she flipped me over onto my back and sat on my chest.

She pressed the dagger into my chin so hard I felt the point break the skin. I looked into her face, and her green eyes were full of fury. “Shut. The. Fuck. Up.”

I nodded, but only barely, as the dagger's point dug into my chin, and I didn’t want it any deeper. I smiled at her.

She jumped off of me and pulled me to my feet but kept the dagger jammed into my chin. She held my eyes and, without looking down and with only one free hand, curled the rope around my wrists and tied it off. Tightly, I might add.

When that was done, she put the dagger back in her boot. “Now, sit the fuck down and shut up, or I swear I don’t care how much coin it costs me. I really will cut your tongue out.”

I sat down next to the fire. She sat back down and picked up the loaf of bread she’d been eating. I looked at her with sad eyes.

With exasperation, she said, “Fuck,” tore the bread in half, and tossed some to me.

“Thanks,” I said. I dug into the bread, holding it up with my tied hands, and after not eating all day, it could have tasted like microwaved dog shit, and I would have eaten it. It was a little hard, but it tasted a lot better than dog shit did. I assumed.

She tossed me a small piece of jerky, which was soft and melted in my mouth like butter, and I gobbled that down to.

“I don’t know where those assholes got this,” she said between bites, “but I’d love to have more.”

“They took it from me,” I said. “My friend Martha gave it to me.”

She looked at my satchel, the one I’d been carrying before I’d been kidnapped. The one she’d dug the food out of. “Did your friend Martha give you the purse, too, or was that something you had before.”

“It’s a satchel.”

She grinned, and I could see two of her bottom teeth were longer and sharper than the others. “No. It’s definitely a purse.”

I didn’t argue. “So, how far until we get to the Traders?” I asked.

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She shrugged. “Day after next.”

Great, another day of being tied to a horse, which was probably way better than whatever was going to happen to me once she sold me.

“So, is this what you do? Sell people? Is this like your job?”

“You can say that,” she said. “I take advantage of opportunities when they present themselves. And you, handsome, are a very big opportunity.”

I didn’t like the sound of that. “So, how much are you going to sell me for?”

She kicked back and leaned against a log, making herself comfortable. “I’m not taking anything less than one thousand coins for you. You being a big, strong, strapping lad like you are. But, if I’m being optimistic, you might even create a bidding war. I could get a lot more.”

“And I guess the fact that I don’t want to go doesn’t matter to you?”

She smiled, her little pointed teeth showing above her bottom lip. “Not one little bit.”

“Didn’t think so.”

We sat silently for a few minutes, finishing our makeshift dinner as the fire burned between us. I asked for some water, and she rolled her eyes in a what more do you want way but gave me some from the wineskin Martha had put into my satchel.

I drank it down greedily, my throat aching and burning from the long day without any.

After I drank, I said, “I could pay you one thousand coins.” Of course, I couldn’t pay her one coin, much less one thousand, since I had nothing and didn’t know where to get any or even what a coin in this world looked like. But I had to try something.

She held out her hand and stared at me with her dark green eyes. “Give them to me then, and off you go.”

“I mean… I don’t have them right now… But I can get them.”

She laughed. “I’d say nice try, but it wasn’t even that. Now shut up.” With that, she laid back and put her arms behind her head. “And if you try anything… I’ll make you regret it.”

I had no doubt she would. So I got as comfortable as possible on the ground with my hands tied up.

I was really starting to hate this place.

#

I slept as best as I could with my hands tied on the cold, hard ground. I wasn’t going to try anything on her, whoever she was, since she could quickly and easily kill me. But I needed to figure something out. She didn’t look concerned. She’d shut her eyes and fallen fast asleep.

She woke me up with a kick to the stomach. I took some solace in the fact that it wasn’t that hard.

“Rise and shine, buttercup,” she said. “Time to go.”

The day had barely started, the sky still purple but giving way to red and orange on the horizon.

She left my hands tied but at least allowed me to ride the horse upright and normally. I’d never ridden a horse, but it didn’t really matter since she was leading mine. All I had to do was hang on and not fall off.

After a few hours, my balls and legs hurt, and I wondered if she was hurting down there at all. It didn’t look like it. Guess she was used to riding without underwear.

At some point, I couldn’t take it anymore and had to talk.

“I just need to get to Citadel City,” I said.

“Well, we’re riding in the opposite direction,” she said. I was afraid of that.

“My brother’s there. I hope,” I said sadly. “I need to try and save him and get us home.”

She was ahead of me on her horse and never turned around. “You said that already.”

Had I? I couldn’t remember.

“His best friend betrayed him, and I have to get him home. He may have even gotten his hand chopped off. He doesn’t even know I’m trying to save him.”

Without turning, she said, “Don’t you humans believe in the gods and all their divine wisdom and intervention and shit like that?”

I wasn’t sure. My family had never been very religious.

“I guess.”

“Well,” she said, “look at it this way. The gods have put me in your path, and this is part of their plan. You’re on your way to your brother, somehow, someway. I just get to make a thousand coins along the way.”

She was fucking with me.

“You really can’t be this heartless, can you? I mean, what did I do to you? So, you have no problem ruining my life for your coins? You have no problem selling me to the highest bidder, who will subject me to god knows what, as long as you get paid? My pain and suffering make no difference to you at all?”

She pulled her horse up to a stop and pulled the rope to bring mine up beside her. Then she stared right at me with no emotion. “No. Your pain and suffering do not matter to me. At. All. Remember that. Then you won’t be so disappointed next time.”

I gritted my teeth and resisted the urge to spit in her face. She might have been beautiful, but she was mean and nasty on the inside.

She laughed in my face. “Oh, he’s angry with me now. Well, go on. Try it!” She stared at me, smiling, on the verge of laughing at my anger. She didn’t feel threatened by me in any way.

I didn’t do it. She could kill me, or worse, just beat the shit out of me and take me to be sold as a slave anyway.

She kicked her horse, took off, and pulled me along behind her, laughing to herself.

We rode on, and the forest began to thin. On the edge of the forest, as it gave way to grassy plains that reminded me of pictures I’d seen of Kansas, there was a rundown keep. It had one tower and a few buildings surrounded by a crumbling wall. This had been a small stronghold a long time ago.

She rode through what was left of the gate, my horse in tow. When we were inside, we stopped. I wondered what we were doing here. It was late afternoon and at least a few hours before dark.

She dismounted her horse and told me to do the same. She led the horses to a stone basin that might once have been a fountain in the center of the town. It was full of murky water, but they drank it without caring much about how dank it was.

She searched the town and, to the side of one of the old buildings, found an old rusty water pump. She leaned her sword up against the building wall and worked at the pump until, finally, it moved, and rusty water poured out of it. She called me over and made me pump until the water was clear, which took a while. By the time all the rust was gone, my shoulders were aching.

I leaned down to take a drink, and she shoved me out of the way. “Ladies first.” She smirked at me.

I sat down on a nearby collapsed wall to wait my turn.

She drank from the pump, then, with no hesitation, unclasped the leather corset she had been wearing and took it off.

Her breasts were firm and round, the green skin on them smooth and blemish-free. Her nipples were even darker green than her skin, so dark green they almost looked brown, and in the cold water, they stiffened. She looked at me, clearly thinking she was taunting me with her nakedness.

I hoped she got pneumonia from the cold water and died, and I hoped it happened quickly. Like instantaneously would be the best-case scenario for me.

She seemed to notice I was making a point of ignoring her, so she took her skirt off. She filled her hands with water from the pump and splashed it all over herself. If I hadn’t hated her so much, I would have watched every move she made. But as it were, me being tied up and about to be sold as a slave, I looked away.

“I was just trying to give you a little joy before tomorrow,” she said as she put her clothes back on.

“What are we doing here?” I asked.

“We’ll stay here tonight,” she said. “We can’t make it across the grass before nightfall, and trust me, and you do not want to be out there at night.”

“Why?”

She gestured to the pump, and I got up to get a drink. I pumped it as best I could with tied-up hands and then tried to get my mouth under it before it stopped quickly. It wasn’t working well, and I was getting pissed off.

She didn’t offer to help me with the pump. She just sat down and said, “Well, goblins, for one. And other stuff. But there are goblins around here, and they hunt the plains. We’d be dead meat if they caught us. Not that I couldn’t kill any of them one on one, but they attack in hordes, and you obviously wouldn’t be much help.” She gave me a dismissive look. “So we’ll stay here and take off at first light. Then tomorrow, I’ll drop you at the Traders and get my money.”

“Good for you,” I said.

“Oh, don’t be a baby,” she said.

I pumped the water pump, and the water died before I could get my mouth down to the spout for a drink. For the tenth time.

“Fuck you,” I said. I was pissed off. I wanted to kill her and get away, and I couldn’t.

She looked at me in mock shock. “What did you say?”

I glared at her. “Fuck you.” I gritted my teeth as she stood.

“You want to eat tonight?” she asked.

“Fuck you!” I said, louder now.

“Keep your fucking voice down,” she said. She looked around. There was no one in the ruined town but us.

“What?” I said. “You scared? Are you scared some goblins will come? Whatever the fuck those are! Well, I want them to come. I’d rather they come and kill me than spend one more minute with you?”

She closed the distance between us quickly and grabbed me. “Shut the fuck up, I said.”

I spit right in her face, then. I was so angry. I was going to die in this world without getting to Lucas or back to Martha and Harper because she wanted to make some money.

My spit dripped from her nose. I spit on her again before she could wipe it off.

She punched me in the stomach, and I doubled over, the breath knocked out of me so hard I thought I’d never get it back. My vision went white, and my knees went weak. It felt like my heart and lungs were going to burst.

I was expecting more blows, but none came. I got up on my knees and slowly opened my eyes, the white stars fading finally.

When I could see, what I saw made my stomach clench into a knot, and I wasn’t sure I wasn’t going to crap in my pants.

Ten goblins stood around us. Surrounding us.