Dino riders, p.10
Dino Riders, page 10
She led me along a flat, hard surface until we reached a point where the ground started to curve downwards. The slope looked like a slide from a water park, and I pressed my lips together to keep from shouting excitedly.
“It’s smooth enough to slide down,” she said as she sat down and then started to scoot toward the bottom.
“It’s every kid’s dream come true,” I chuckled as I followed her down.
The prehistoric ride ended at a wide stone riverbank filled with a glowing stream, and the water splashed against the stone as Sara’s feet landed gently against the bottom of the river. I, however, quickly hopped to my feet before I landed in the water so I could check for any signs of dinosaurs, but the only creatures in the area were some strange iridescent fish that lit the entire cave like LED light bulbs.
“Can we eat those?” I asked and inched closer to the edge.
“I’ve never tried,” Sara said with a curious look down. “They only swim through here during the day. I’ve never seen them at night. Maybe one or two that got lost.”
“Where do they go?” I asked and watched them swim upstream like salmon during mating season.
“No idea,” the brunette said as she turned to follow the path of the glowing fish. “My brother would never let me follow them. He was always afraid that there was something bigger that they were headed to, though that never made sense to me. Why would they work so hard to go to their doom?”
“A lot of people do that,” I laughed. “But you do have a valid point. We should still keep an eye out, just in case. So now where?”
“This way,” she replied as she splashed through the water.
We walked along with only the glowing fish to guide us, until we reached a cliff so steep that it might as well have been a rock-climbing wall. There were plenty of pockets in the stone that would work as hand and footholds, but it took considerable effort not to picture what slimy bug might be waiting to bite me in the darkness.
“We’re close,” Sara said as she started to climb.
“Oh, good,” I sighed as I sheathed my knife.
I took a few moments to give myself a pep talk, and then I started to scale the wall. I’d never been fond of being underground, and my heavy breathing when I reached the top had nothing to do with the physical exertion it took to climb to the next tunnel.
Sara rested against the wall across from me and flashed a small smile as I plopped down. It was hard to believe that the woman had grown up in a colonial world, though it sounded like her father was an inventor, so that probably had something to do with how adaptable she was. The brunette was definitely too beautiful and smart to be tied down to someone like the Governor General, and I grinned at the idea of her staying with me, or maybe coming back to my world if I ever found a way home.
“We should eat,” I said before I could get carried away in my thoughts. “There’s enough bread to get us by.”
“I’m famished,” she said and quickly took the piece that I handed her from the bag.
We ate in silence for a few minutes, but then one of the dogs barked, and it echoed throughout the cavern. The soldiers had actually managed to find the entrance, and it sounded like they would catch up soon. Sara and I were up without a word to each other, though we both looked back as something splashed in the river below.
Screams filled the air as the other soldiers and the dogs slid down the slope into the river. Their heavy armor clanged against the stone as the men struggled to get out of the water, and all the racket covered our hasty footsteps. My ears rang as the screeching metal on rock continued for what felt like an eternity, but finally I saw a shaft of light up ahead.
The tunnel was so dark that I could only see Sara’s silhouette ahead of me, but the brunette let out an excited gasp and turned enough for me to see the light. There was another hole up ahead, and it looked just big enough for us to squeeze through. I glanced over my shoulder as a dog barked and growled, and the first hunting mutt snarled as he climbed into the tunnel.
“Shit, shit, shit,” I whispered. “Sara, get up top right now.”
“Working on it,” she huffed as she grabbed onto a rope vine that dangled into the tunnel.
It was braided so thick that it was practically a ladder, but there wasn’t time to be suspicious about why it was there. If someone had made it, then we could deal with them when we reached the surface. And at the moment it was the perfect escape plan for us, especially as the soldiers lobbed the other dogs over the tunnel’s edge like the Tasmanian Devil ready to spin over and eat us.
“I’m up!” Sara shouted through the hole. “It’s clear. Come on.”
“Coming,” I said and jumped as high as I could onto the ladder.
Snapping teeth barely missed my ankle as I scrambled up the ladder, and my heart beat so fast that it felt like a bird beating against a cage. The dogs growled and snarled beneath me, but thankfully there was no way for them to climb up after me, and the soldiers were still too far behind. I managed to get all the way up before the first armor-plate-wearing jackass hefted himself into the tunnel, and the ladder came up right behind me.
“It won’t take long for them to double back,” I said as I tugged the vine ladder all the way up. “But this will at least keep them in check for now.”
“My property is almost half a day from here,” Sara said and offered a hand to help me stand. “And if they know about the cave system now, then they’ll be on the lookout for more places that we could hide.”
“We’ll head into the interior of the island,” I said and tugged the tall woman behind me.
Sara stumbled along beside me as we crashed through the ferns that littered the forest floor. I was glad that I’d had the tall woman change into trousers and a tunic, because there was no way that she’d be able to climb over logs and force her way through thorny bushes in a long dress, even one as tattered as the one that she’d had on in the dungeon. Still, the brunette had to pause a few times to catch her breath, and I listened hard for the hounds with every step.
“I think we lost them,” I said after an hour or so. “We can slow down and look for somewhere to get water.”
“They might not come this far into the forest,” Sara panted as she retrieved the water pouch from my bag. “Most of them are cowards. They won’t chance getting caught by one of the larger dinosaurs. Of course, the Governor General will be very angry about our little trick, so he might insist.”
“I wouldn’t put it past him to put someone else’s life in danger,” I huffed and gladly took the water when Sara was done. “I only met him for a few minutes, but he definitely seems like the type to sacrifice everyone else to get what he wants.”
“He is,” she said and then stiffened like someone had just groped her on the subway. “He might even let the men take the horses.”
“The horses?” I asked and turned my attention back to the trees. “I didn’t see any horses in the colony.”
“He keeps them in a stable in the back of his property,” the brunette said and stretched from side to side. “They’re from very good stock so he tends to keep them close, especially with the dinosaurs so close by. But he already let them take his hunting dogs, so--”
One of the mutts in question burst through a fern like a hungry wolf, but instead of attacking he lifted his head and let out a howl like it was a flare to alert the others. It wouldn’t take long for them to find us, and there wasn’t anywhere for us to hide even with the thick tree trunks that surrounded us. The dog crept forward as if it was about to pounce, so I held my hunting knife at the ready.
The last thing that I wanted to do was hurt an animal, especially a dog, but the hunting dog that inched closer was all hungry predator and definitely not man’s best friend. If it came after us, then I’d have to defend myself, and there was no way that I’d let us get killed by some ravenous Cujo. I’d just have to take it down, and then I’d make its owners pay for making it into a salivating monster.
“What are we going to do?” Sara asked in a slightly panicked voice. “There’s nowhere for us to run, K.O.… And neither of us can go back. The things that they’ll do…”
Sara’s voice broke as if the Spurya man’s torture had rushed back to the surface of her mind, but we both knew that would be mild compared to what the lecherous men would do to the beautiful woman. If there was nowhere for us to run, then we’d just have to stand and fight. The brunette seemed to come to the same conclusion as I did, because she looked around and quickly found a large branch that was sturdy enough to act as a bat.
It only took a few seconds for the horses to break through the brush, but thankfully there wasn’t enough room between the trees to easily get to us. The dog trotted back to the pimpled guard from the day before, and the other hunting hounds stayed right by the horses as if they were just waiting for the command to devour us whole.
“There you are,” the guard said with a satisfied smirk. “And here I was starting to think that something had come along and eaten you. Which is fine for you, Tracker, but I have plans for the witch.”
“You’ll take her over my dead body,” I said and flipped the hunting knife around in my hand.
I’d learned how to do it so fast that it was hard to keep track of, and the trick must have been as intimidating as it was supposed to be, because two of the soldiers looked at each other nervously. Of course, all four men had arquebuses, long blades, and pikes were strapped to their backs, but even a hunting knife could be scary with the right bladework, and Luca had taught me everything that he knew in between mending our clothes. I finished the trick and then flashed a smile that had made the most vile hunters have second thoughts about attacking me.
“Don’t think that you’ll survive this encounter,” the pimpled man laughed.
One of the dogs whined, and the entire pack backed up as if they could sense the storm that was coming. There was definitely enough tension in the air to make most animals nervous, but the mutts had that hard edge that only came with being beaten until they were nothing but mindless monsters, so if something scared them, then I needed to pay attention.
And the pack turned tail and ran before their keeper could stop them, and even the horses started to prance.
“Dinosaurs…” Sara whispered right as I came to the same conclusion.
“Be ready to run,” I said and inched closer to the tall woman. “With any luck, they’ll take these assholes out for us so we can run for cover.”
Sara nodded, and I took a deep breath to steady my nerves. It wasn’t the first time that I’d been in a no-win situation, but it never got any easier. At least my companion was ready to fight as she held on tightly to the thick branch that she’d picked up.
“Sir,” one of the younger soldiers said with a nervous look around. “If the dogs ran…”
“You shut your mouth right now, boy,” the pimpled guard snarled. “I’m getting a taste of that witch if it’s the last thing I do. She’s going to scream for mercy by the time I’m done with her.”
In the blink of an eye, three horse-sized raptors raced out of the forest behind us like bullets out of a gun, and I stared in shock as one of them leaped up to devour the pimpled guard’s head in one bite. The six-foot-tall lizards swiped at the horses with the giant claw on their hind legs and chomped on the soldiers so fast that it was hard to keep track of them, but my attention was on their riders more than their claws.
Each of the three raptors had a human on their back like something out of a Hollywood movie, and I quickly motioned for Sara to start running. The tribesmen hadn’t noticed that we were there yet, and I didn’t want to try and fight them or their mounts, especially since they were already halfway through the soldiers despite the heavy plated armor.
“Let’s go,” I said and grabbed Sara’s hand.
We crashed through the ferns as the soldiers’ death screams filled the otherwise silent forest. It was as if even the trees wanted to hear the Anglish jerks die, but I had no intention of joining the list of deceased for the day. Sara and I stayed close together as we burst into a clearing where the midday sun shone like a spotlight on a stage, but we didn’t make it to the other side before the raptors and their riders had caught up to us.
Blood covered the giant lizards’ claws and dripped from their teeth. One of them still had skin dangling from its mouth, but it quickly flung that into the air and then caught it like a piece of popcorn. The raptors were a lot bigger than the textbooks had claimed they would be, though there were a lot of different types that varied from the turkey-sized ones to the giant ones in Jurassic Park, and they also didn’t have feathers, but I was beginning to wonder if anything from the textbooks would be accurate, including when different dinosaurs lived, or how big they’d get since these were bigger than what Hollywood had depicted.
Of course, that would all be a moot point if I was eaten.
Two of the dinosaurs had men on their backs, and they chomped at the air like they and their riders wanted to tear into us just like they had the soldiers, but their female leader put a hand up to signal them to stay in place. The petite woman’s dark skin glistened in the afternoon sun, and the pure white tattoo beneath her right eye glittered like a jewel, but it was her purple irises that caught my attention first. The other two men had dark violet eyes, but hers were as bright and vibrant as Sara’s teal color, and just as breathtaking.
“Who are you?” the woman asked in a thick accent as her raptor came forward.
“You speak Anglish?” Sara gasped. “Are you one of the escaped slaves?”
“I am no slave,” the woman snapped and glowered at the colonial woman.
The older of the two men hissed something in their native tongue, and his raptor chomped at the air to tell me everything that I needed to know about what he said. It was clear that the gray-haired tribesman wanted to finish the job, and the younger man nodded in agreement, but the woman shook her head firmly at them. They all started to argue in their own language, and I took a step backwards.
“You cannot outrun us, Anglishman,” the woman said as she slowly turned back to stare at us with those intense purple eyes. “And if you try, then I am likely to take my uncle and my cousin’s side and let our mounts devour you.”
“Don’t trust her,” Sara said. “These people will stab you in the back the second that you turn it.”
“You’re starting to sound like the Governor General,” I warned.
Sara gasped and put a hand over her mouth as if the accusation had struck her to the very core. A deep blush crawled up the colonial woman’s neck, and she pressed her full lips together.
“You’re right,” she whispered after a few moments of silence. “I apologize.”
“Accepted,” the purple-eyed woman said as her raptor trotted forward.
The older man said something that sounded a lot like a warning, and I took a risk and sheathed my hunting knife. It wouldn’t do much against three six-foot raptors anyway, and the woman had two long scimitar-like blades sheathed on either side of her thin hips. If they wanted to kill us, then I couldn’t stop them, and I’d learned a long time ago that putting away weapons could open dialogue a lot faster than suspicion.
My heart still pounded like a jackrabbit, especially as the woman inched closer on her raptor. I had to fight the urge to look at the dinosaur’s claws, though that middle one was big enough that I could easily see it out of the corner of my eyes. The giant lizard looked like some of the fan drawings of dinosaurs rather than anything that archeologists had actually dug up since they were bigger than even the largest raptor bones that stood at about six-feet. It was like they were some kind of ultra-raptor that had eaten all of their Wheaties to grow up big and strong.
“Why were the soldiers hunting you?” the woman asked as she leaned forward on the raptor’s back.
“Because I wasn’t as dead as I was supposed to be,” Sara said over my shoulder.
“We pretended that I killed her during an interrogation,” I explained when the woman tilted her head to the side.
The woman’s braided hair was pulled into a high ponytail, and the beads and bits of sharp bone interlaced in her silver hair clinked together like a windchime. She didn’t look as old as the man behind her, and there wasn’t a single wrinkle around the tribal woman’s purple eyes. Despite her youth, there wasn’t any color left in her hair, which somehow made her more beautiful. Taut skin and muscles peeked out from beneath her lizard-skin miniskirt and halter top, and there was no mistaking the fact that she was in the prime of her life.
“You may stare as long as you want,” she said quietly enough that only Sara and I heard her. “But you will not touch me, Anglishman.”
“I’m just trying to figure out how old you are,” I said and ran a hand over the back of my neck.
“My hair,” she said with a knowing nod. “It was a gift from the gods. Along with my eyes. It is why my uncle and cousin will allow me to make the decision whether to let you live or die.”
“You’re one of those heathen tribes that sacrifice humans, aren’t you?” Sara gasped and then gripped my arm tightly.
“As if your Anglish blood could appease the gods,” the woman sneered and then turned her attention back to me. “You have not answered my question.”
“He does that,” the colonial woman laughed. “He’s as tight as those leathers that you have on.”
The two women glowered at each other, and I could practically see the sparks flying through the air before I stepped between them. The last thing that we needed was for Sara to start a fight that we couldn’t win, and the tall woman blushed when I turned to pin her with a pointed stare. If they kept it up, then the leader would feed us to their raptors, and my companion quickly bobbed her head in apology.
“I’m pretty sure I answered your question,” I pointed out. “I said that she was supposed to die in an interrogation. She didn’t. And they came after us.”
