And as if the grime of the forest and however many days of no showering or cleaning wasn’t enough, I exit the forest stinking of ratskunk blood. The smell clues me into why the earpiece decided on the “skunk” part of the translation.

“God,” I say, scrunching up my nose. “I smell awful.”

“Ah,” he says. “So you can smell.”

“Humans can only smell really good stuff or really bad stuff. Usually bad stuff. Like open pits of garbage, burned food, or...ratskunk.”

“It’s a foul smell to us as well,” he says. “It’s important to drain all the blood before eating. The smell of the blood can ruin the flavor. Normally I drain the blood into the soil, but this time I saved all of it for you, and I have more in my satchel. You’ll need to apply it often.”

“Great,” I say.

When I was trying to sneak a peek under his loincloth earlier, I noticed his satchel. There’s a bag strapped to his thick thigh, while the folded up skullspear is strapped and holstered to the other. I didn’t quite manage to see what was between his legs, however.

We crest a small hill, and suddenly the forest is over. It’s not a clear border, but the trees thin out so much down the hill that it can no longer be called a forest. The dying sun’s rays break through the thinning canopy of the forest, and they are a pale red rather than the radiant golden rays you’d expect on Earth. I see the actual sky for the first time as we move forward, and the sun.

The sun is red, and twice as large in the sky as our sun on Earth. Still, I barely have to squint when I look at it, and I feel no real warmth on my face as its rays touch my skin. The sky is a pale violet, which fades to near black at the horizon. Even though it’s permanently daylight, I can see all the stars in the sky. I wonder if one of them is the sun I know from Earth, or if we’re too far away to even see it.

The river cuts across the land in front of us, and there is a large bridge directly in our path. Beyond the bridge, every inch of the landscape is covered by buildings or roads. The buildings just beyond the bridge are small and run-down, but further into the city they grow taller and taller, until spires taller than anything I’ve ever seen on Earth tower over everything and blot out the violet, star-filled sky.

Under that strange light and daytime stars, the city looks even more alien than its twisted spires would transplanted onto Earth.

“Therassus,” he says, pointing out toward the city, as if I didn’t already realize or see it.

“Do you think the other women could be here?” I ask.

He shakes his head.

“They could be though,” I say.

“This city is nothing to the Emperor Clan,” he says. “It’s too poor, small, and dirty for them. They will sell the women to the richest men they can.”

I frown. “So you won’t sell me here then, right?”

He ignores my question, pointing toward the bridge.

I see a line of horned people in loincloths–I’ve stopped thinking of them as aliens–crowded near the entrance to the bridge. Among the horned and teal-skinned people that look like Proximus, there are also things much stranger. I see things with four arms, and legs like goats. There are things covered in fur that barely look like men, but are clearly not animals. I remember the green aliens on the ship, but I see none of those here. It seems other types of aliens visit this planet, or maybe they were all kidnapped and brought here by force, just like I was.

All the aliens, most of them like Proximus, shove toward the bridge, while horned men in some type of armor, which I can make out from the gleam of the sun on their plated chests, hold them back.

“Will they let us cross?” I ask.

“We will see,” he says, and he takes hold of my upper arm through the mantle. “Do not speak. Do not make eye contact. Do not become aroused, or even the ratskunk blood will not mask your potent scent.”

He tugs me forward before I can make any comment. Not that I’d know how to respond to that, exactly. As if I can choose when I become aroused. There’s probably little risk of it anyway, as I don’t expect that trying to sneak past scary guards in armor is going to get me dripping wet and horny.

As we reach the throngs of people crowding to try to cross the bridge, I notice a large space clearing for us. At first I think it’s because of Proximus’ imposing figure and presence, but then I see everyone is scrunching their noses up at me. The ratskunk blood.

Proximus shoves everyone away who doesn’t move, and we are soon in front of the guards. They have helmets on, with holes for their horns. They look like a mix of roman centurion and Viking, though with teal skin and violet eyes glaring down at me as if I were a stinking heap of garbage.

“You want to bring this into Therassus?” One of the guards shouts at Proximus. “That will be expensive.”

“I have no money,” Proximus says.

One of the guard raises what looks almost like a gun. He presses something, and the barrel glows crimson. “Then step away!”

Proximus doesn’t back down. He even takes a step forward, until the glowing barrel of the weapon is just inches from his chest. As he steps closer to the guard, it becomes clear that he’s taller, and then he leans his head forward, knocking his horns against the guard’s. Proximus’ horns are larger too, and the fact that he’s pressing his horns against the guard’s makes me think that the longer horns must mean something.

The guard’s pistol wavers, and two of the other guards look nervously up at Proximus.

Proximus and the guards speak to each other in their own language, so Proximus voice comes to me through the earpiece, sounding different than I am used to. His accent is gone, but the speech and word choice seems more artificial to me.

“I’m on the business of the Emperor Clan,” Proximus says, jerking his head and slamming his horns against the guard’s. The guard presses his horns back, adding an intense and physical tension between the two of them. Their eyes meet, and the guard clenches his square jaw.

“The signal house will confirm it,” the guard says

“And how long will that take?” Proximus says. “My overseer is in space. I’m to bring this barbarian to the city for sale, to fund the next voyage.”

The guards eye each other.

Did he just call me a barbarian? I’m not the one with a skullspear and freaking loincloth! Though I am covered in ratskunk blood. I remember what Proximus told me, and I look down, not wanting to risk meeting either of the guards’ eyes.

People push in from behind, and the moment one bumps into me, Proximus slams his elbow into them, forcing them backward. He clutches me protectively against his body, growling back at the crowd of people.

The head guard looks us over for a long moment. I can tell he really doesn’t know what to do. If he checks with the “signal house,” he may get in trouble for wasting everyone’s time, but if he lets Proximus in and he causes trouble, he’s also screwed. His jaw clenches tight, and he finally sighs.

“I’ll let you through,” he says. “Just sell off the barbarian and be on your way. Quickly.”

Proximus grunts and pulls me along behind him and onto the bridge.

No one else is heading into the city, but I see a six-legged thing that looks like a horned horse pulling a wagon heading toward us. We have to step off to the side to avoid it running us over, and as I get a closer look at the wagon, I see it’s made of some kind of metal. I catch a glimpse of violet eyes through the window, but an ornately carved cover slams shut as soon as it nears us.

“They smelled you,” Proximus says.

“Great,” I say. “Now I know what it was like for the smelly girl in second grade.”

Proximus shoots me a serious look. “You saw the alternative in the forest. Better to stink and to be safe.”

“Why did you call me a barbarian?” I ask.

“What?” he says.

“The earpiece translated what you said, and you called me a barbarian.”

“I don’t know what that is,” he says. “I called you an alien.”

“Barbarian is what you are,” I say.

“We are both aliens to each other,” he says. “What is the difference?”

We keep walking, with his strong arm still around me, as if he’s worried someone might grab me and snatch me away at any moment.

I think of telling him that a barbarian is brute, crass, savage. Then I worry it might sound rude, and I hold my tongue. I vaguely remember that the original meaning of the word was just “foreigner,” it’s what the Romans called anyone who wasn’t Roman. Or maybe it was the Greeks? Either way, the earpiece probably honed in on that definition, resulting in me being called a barbarian, which seems absurd in this world filled with actual barbarians, who butt horns with each other to assert dominance.

I look out over the bridge as we reach its peak. The river looks like a dirty green-brown, not something I’d ever want to swim in, and I’m pretty sure I can even smell it. It smells almost as bad as I do. The buildings of the city press against the shore on the other side of the bridge, and no two look like they were designed in the same era. I see what looks like a mud hut from some kind of South American tribe next to something made of a gleaming and pulsing metal which vibrates in the sun.

As we descend the bridge into the city, I lose the forest for the trees, and we are swallowed up into a large main road of the city.

It’s suddenly very crowded again, and I become incredibly disoriented as Proximus drags and pulls me from road to road. I find myself clinging to his forearm for fear of losing him. There are so many people around us that I might never find him again if we were separated.

As if reading my mind, he says, “If I lose you, I can smell you from leagues away. Though as soon as we find time, you need to drench yourself in more blood.”

“Do you think,” I say, “There is another way?”

“What do you mean?” he asks.

“Something that can mask my scent,” I say, “That doesn’t smell like raw sewage?”

“We don’t have time for that,” he grunts.

When we finally stop, I see Proximus eyeing a narrow, but very tall, building made of sheets of metal bolted together. Some of the sheets are new and shiny, while others are covered in rust and full of holes.

“We will stay here,” he says.

And then he’s pulling me toward the door. I notice that the doors are much higher than I’m used to, probably because most people on this planet are much taller, and because their horns add to their height. Still, Proximus has to tilt his head slightly to get his horns through the door frame.

We enter what looks like a mix between a bar and a restaurant, though many people are simply sprawled out and sleeping on the floor. The floor is some kind of tile, but it’s chipped and dirty, and the occasional missing tile reveals a packed dirt floor.

Proximus takes hold of me, gripping me protectively as he leads us through the room. Many men look up and stare at me, but I can tell from their reactions exactly when my smell hits them. I hear a few people shout to “get that thing out of here,” but Proximus’ steely gaze silences them.

We work our way through the room until we reach a man far in back. He’s sitting at a large table with his feet up on the bench, and his body is resting against the wall. He has a drink in front of him, but he’s not touching it. He’s instead scrawling on paper with some kind of inked quill, in a writing style that looks like total chaos–barely writing at all. It’s the same scrawls I’ve seen plastered on buildings and signs as Proximus whisked me through the city. I hadn’t realized it was writing at the time, and only now that I see it being written with what looks like a pen do I make the connection at all.

“Can’t even properly bleed a ratskunk?” the man asks, in a voice higher-pitched than I’d expect for so large a man.

“This is a barbarian,” Proximus says in his language, the earpiece translating for me. “I’ve just returned from the stars.”

“Fancy,” the man says. “But if it’s going to stink up my common room, you need to get it out.”

“I need a room,” Proximus says.

The man shrugs. “You’ll pay extra to keep that thing with you.”

I glower a bit. I’m tired of being called a thing. Or just “that.” I’m tired of smelling so bad that even these savages can’t take it.

“I’ll pay nothing,” Proximus says. “I am Proximus of the Wandering Clan, and you owe us a debt.”

“Do I now?” He asks. I assume at this point that he’s the innkeeper.

“You insufferable woman,” Proximus growls. “Don’t slip out of what you owe us. If you have a room available, you owe it to me.”

Woman? This muscular, wide-shouldered innkeeper is a woman?

I look him–her–over again. The horns are much smaller even than those of the Icecliff bandit who I thought of as “Smallhorns,” but everything else about her body is...masculine? There are no breasts visible at all, and her muscles are larger and more defined than any man on Earth. Her shoulders and chest are wide, and nothing of her facial features give me any hint of femininity.

She glares at me, and I look down at once when I realize I’ve been staring.

“I have free rooms,” she snaps. “You may have a small one. If paying customers show up and need a room, I’ll kick you right out.”

“Good,” Proximus says, pressing his hands onto the table and leaning further into her. “Now, tell me. Have you heard tell of where my clan is? Have you seen any of us?”

She shakes her head and looks away. “No idea. Not in at least a cycle.”

Proximus clenches his jaw. “A whole cycle and you’ve not had to help one of us, and still you’re this reluctant to give me what is owed?”

She reaches into a bag and pulls out a jumble of metal discs. She sorts through them and finally slides one to Proximus. “I give you a room. Which is what is owed. Now go in there, and keep the door shut if you insist on keeping that stinking thing in there with you.”