“You could put it like that,” I replied and she nodded with understanding.

“Many girls, my father told me, were sheltered from this information. It’s understandable. I spent my life mostly on ships with men. I was loved,” again with the small, weird smile, “but not sheltered.”

I knew what that was like.

“So you know where we are, why we’re in this pen?” I asked.

“Indeed,” she whispered but before I could ask more, a strange, expectant vibe stole through the crowd, most of the girls in the enclosure came alert and then suddenly there were drums. The steady, deep, thumping beat of very loud drums.

Oh crap. I did not get a good feeling about that.

“The parade,” Narinda breathed.

Oh crap!

“What parade?” I asked but her eyes weren’t on me though she kept her hands on me. She was looking outside the corral so I shook her hand. “What parade, Narinda?”

Her eyes came to me and she said urgently, “We’ll walk together and we’ll talk. Stay close to me. We’ll try to hide you. You do not want the Dax to see your hair.”

“What?” I whispered but the girls were moving, pushing in toward a swing of the stakes that was being opened by a guard.

Narinda moved me with the girls, keeping me close, her hands on me, her eyes scanning.

“We will not be able to hide you from the warriors. They will see you. The Dax, though, I hear does not leave his podium and gives

scant attention to the parade. It is said he is prepared each Hunt to claim his bride, should he see something he likes, but he has never seen something he likes. We should try to keep it that way.”

We moved through the opening and out being jostled by some of the girls who clearly could not wait to start the parade.

Very weird.

“They don’t seem scared,” I whispered to Narinda as she kept us moving ever forward, a line of onlookers forming at both our sides.

“They are Korwahk,” Narinda explained. “Some, daughters of The Horde, others from the villages and settlements of Korwahk.

They feel this is a great honor, to be chosen for the Hunt. They grow up wanting nothing more than to be chosen, paraded, hunted, claimed and taken as wife by a Korwahk warrior.”

There were a lot of words I didn’t like in that statement but I didn’t dwell. We were walking through tents and moving toward an area that was much better lit. I didn’t have time to dwell.

“And you and me?”

“Scouts sent out to faraway lands. I don’t know this Seattle where they found you. I did not know they travelled beyond the Green Sea.

I have heard they scouted in Hawkvale but rarely. King Ludlum is not a big fan of this and will, if a scout is captured, deal with them harshly so they usually find women like you and me who are travelling. I was with my father on a ship on the Marhac Sea. We’d anchored at a Korwahk port. Father left me with two guards who were overwhelmed and I was taken.”

“Kidnapped?” I hissed in shock, her eyes came to me, she didn’t smile her small, weird smile; she just looked in my eyes, kept us steadily moving forward and nodded.

Oh crap. This had not been pleasant. Even in the torchlight dancing, which did not exactly illuminate the space like a football field, I could see this had not been pleasant.

“I’m sorry, Narinda,” I whispered on a squeeze of her waist, “so sorry.”

“It has happened, it is past. I must look forward. Father taught me that. What has been has been but what will be is what you make of it.”

Well, that was a positive way to look at it.

Still.

“I just hope the warrior who chooses me is kind,” she said softly, her eyes were now peering at the sidelines from under her brows.

I did too.

“And I hope we can keep the Dax from seeing you,” she continued.

“Why do you keep saying that?” I asked.

“You are fair,” she replied. “You are the only fair woman in the parade. You stand out.”

Oh no.

“And you have great beauty,” she went on.

That was nice. Or it would have been nice at any other time in my life.

Not this one, obviously.

“Does he like blondes?” I asked and she shrugged.

“I do not know. What I do know is that they do not have any females who are fair in the Southlands, Korwahk or anywhere. You will stand out.”

She wasn’t wrong, glancing at the girls, I definitely stood out.

“Who is the Dax, anyway?” I asked, moving my gaze to the sidelines then back to the girls around us, some preening, smiling at the onlookers, nearly skipping with excitement. The few, like us, dragging their heels and moving forward warily.

“King Lahn,” she answered and I looked at her. “They do not use our language. In Korwahk, ‘king’ is ‘dax’,” she explained then shivered before going on. “He is a savage. Tales of his exploits have spread wide. Very cruel. Heartless.”

I didn’t have a good feeling about that either considering we were walking through a village of tents and torchlight, people wearing

hides and wisps of material. I figured they were all relatively primitive. “Savage”, “cruel” and “heartless” upped that ante by quite a bit and were not a words I liked.

She looked forward and suddenly her manner became urgent, her hand slid from mine up to my forearm where she grasped it and pulled me closer even as we kept walking.

“We are about to enter the avenue of warriors, so you must listen,” she said swiftly, sounding just as urgent as she was acting and a thrill raced up my spine and it was not a good one. “The Wife Hunt is what its name says it is. The warriors of Korwahk are strong and fierce. They are respected. To be a warrior, you must train from a little boy and endure many trials. Only the most powerful men will be allowed into the Korwahk Horde. To give your life to this training and then go out on raids and make war with the Dax, you are promised riches, booty from pillaging and war and also participation in the Wife Hunt which offers you the opportunity to claim a great beauty as your bride.”

Okay, it was safe to say that things were not getting better.

Narinda continued. “As you can see, we are being paraded through the Daxshee, or the Dax’s village, his camp where he lives with his warriors. We will be paraded in front of his warriors. They will look us over, decide who to take as wife. Once the parade is finished, they will mount their horses while we are taken outside the Daxshee. There, we will be set free. And there, they will hunt us.”

Oh.