As soon as I made it to the top of the limestone stairs, Gee pointed over to the limestone stairs. The slopes were filled with loose rock, and I guessed there might be a little slipping involved, but the angle of the descent wasn’t too steep.
The path moved down a good hundred feet, and even though I couldn’t see the river to my right because of the tall maples trees, I guessed that it would end at the base level of the lake where Grumpy had landed.
I ordered Ad-Rock to move down first, and he made it halfway down the switchbacks before I sent MCA down after.
“It’s going to be really hard to get back here,” I said after Ad-Rock had slipped a bit.
“Why would you come back?” Gee asked.
“For the malachite,” I said.
“Copper?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “You know about it? One of the cliff walls had green stone that I thought might be malachite. If it is, I’m going to want to come back to get a lot more.”
“I said I don’t know much about metal, but I’ve encountered various mining sites in my career. Can you show me the rocks? I’ll tell you if they are malachite.”
“Yeah,” I said as I ordered Mike D to head down.
“If it is, and you want more, we can dig steps into these switchbacks so that your dinosaurs can climb up easier.” Gee pointed down to the switchbacks with a steamy finger.
“That could work,” I said as I studied the slope and thought about the various hiking trails I had been on where people nailed railroad ties into the slopes to create steps. “We’d need something to use as nails.”
“Hmmmm,” she said with a laugh. “I guess it would be hard to use copper nails before you have copper.”
“How hot can you get again?” I asked as I glanced down at her beautiful body.
“Plenty,” she said with a smirk, and I wondered if she got my double entendre.
“I asked about melting rocks before. I could burn holes in some logs, then dig holes in the ground. Then you could melt some rocks to make a makeshift dowel between them. I could do the same thing with wood, but it might be faster and sturdier if you melted them.”
“This limestone has a high boiling point,” Gee said as she picked up one of the rocks, flipped in on her fingers, and then squeezed it.
I was standing about ten feet away from her and started to sweat because of her body heat, but then her arm started to pulse a bright orange, and it felt like I was standing next to a barbeque that someone had just thrown gasoline on. I had to move away six more feet, but then the woman opened her fingers, and I saw that the limestone looked like wet clay in her hands.
“That’s about as hot as I can get it,” she gasped, and I noticed her chest was heaving. “It’s almost liquid enough to pour. I could pack this into a hole you made to seal the step into the ground. It will probably hold.”
“How many of those could you do?” I asked.
“Hmmm,” she said as she flicked the molten limestone away. “Maybe one every few minutes. It is a bit easier to do just my hand versus my whole body. I can only do that once a day before I feel tired. I was tired after I made myself cool and climbed onto your dinosaur.”
“I’ll think about it,” I said as I turned back to the switchback path leading down the cliff face. “It might just be easier to use wooden dowels.”
Gee grunted, and I watched Ad-Rock make it to the bottom of the cliff. MCA and Mike D made it down after, and I walked down the trail with Gee behind me.
“Tell me about your tribe members,” she said when we reached the bottom of the path and began to make our way north toward the river.
“You’ll meet them once we get there,” I replied.
“Yes, but I’d like to know their names and abilities. You said everyone on this planet has abilities like my Flame Dance? You can control these creatures, correct? What is that called?”
“It’s called Tame,” I answered as the maple trees parted, and we came to the river again. The waterfall had ended in a small lake, and I could sense Grumpy relaxing at the bottom of the pool.
“What of the others?” Gee asked.
“Galmine grows plants, and is very kind,” I said. “Trel is good at building our fort, but she can be a bit prickly when she first meets someone.”
“What do you mean?” Gee asked.
“She’s kind of like you,” I laughed. “She was a ruler of her people and was used to getting what she wanted when she asked.”
“Was she born into her position, or did she earn it?” Gee asked.
“She was born into it,” I answered, “but she could have earned it. She’s a genius with building and engineering.”
“Okay,” Gee said. “Who else?”
“Sheela is a great hunter and warrior, you will like her a lot.”
“I can already tell that I'll like her,” Gee chuckled.
“Kacerie helps with cleaning and organizing,” I said.
“Logistics?” Gee asked.
“Yeah,” I replied. “She’s great.”
“Those people are always very useful,” Gee laughed. “Who else?”
“Liahpa was a professional athlete on her world, and she is really strong.”
“Strong?” Gee asked. “How strong?”
“I’m not sure,” I shrugged, “but she’s much stronger than I am.”
“Who else?”
“Emerald doesn’t speak, but she’s polite and always helps out around the camp. Those are my original tribe members, but I told you that we were about to merge with another tribe.” I was keeping their powers from my description, but Gee didn’t seem to notice. “We haven’t had much of a chance to get to know each other. So I’m not quite sure what their roles in the tribe will be.”
“You know some of them, though?” Gee asked with a raised eyebrow. “You must have spoken to their leader to broker the deal.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Quwaru was their leader--”
“Was?” Gee interrupted me before I could say more.
“I’m their leader now,” I laughed.
“Oh, yes,” she smiled at me. “That makes sense. What of her powers?”
“She’s good with people,” I said with a shrug as I tried to twist my explanation around without lying to the fire woman. “Seems to know if people are telling the truth or not.”
“That is useful,” Gee agreed. “What of the others?”
“I’ve only met the other seven briefly,” I said. “I’m looking forward to learning more about them.”
“Hmmm,” Gee said as she turned her glowing eyes to me. For half a moment, I thought she was going to call me out on my lack of detail, but then she turned back to the river and let out a sigh. “I’m still amazed by this. The flow of water is beautiful to see, but it is also so pleasing to my ears.”
“Yeah, it’s really calming.”
“The trees are amazing also,” she said as she gestured to the maples. “There is little greenery on my world, and we have few trees.”
“This place looks a lot like my homeworld,” I said, “and these dinosaurs lived on it millions of years ago.”
“I have never heard of such creatures,” Gee said as she looked at Mike D, “did they model this world after yours? That seems like a bit of an advantage to you, but I am not complaining, since there is plenty of water.”
I didn’t answer the fire-haired woman, but her question set my mind racing. I had wondered about dinosaurs before, and the only answer I could come up with was that they were one of the strongest predators our planet ever knew, so it kind of made sense to put them on a world where you were planning some sort of dangerous survival experiment. Basic survival would have been really easy for the type of people that the powerful beings placed here, but adding the dinosaurs in the mix created a constant tension and danger that meant the survivors had to corporate to survive.
Gee didn’t seem to mind that I hadn’t answered her. As we traveled, she frequently stepped into the river water, and
occasionally dove into the shallow parts to cool herself off. We didn’t talk much more, but I found it a bit hard to keep my eyes off her body when she stepped out of the river, and the beads of water began to steam off her onyx-skin.
Other than a herd of trikes that scattered when we approached, we didn’t see any other large dinosaurs on the river shore, and after we had traveled for a few hours, and followed the river’s twists through another half dozen valleys, my stomach began to growl, and my mouth became dry. I didn’t really want to stop in the middle of the day, but I’d skipped breakfast, and I knew I was starting to get really dehydrated.
“I need to rest for a bit,” I said to Gee as I instructed Mike D, MCA, and Ad-Rock to pull up to the edge of the river and take their drinks.
“Good,” she replied as she sat down in the water with a grateful sigh. A moment later she was laying in the water, and I had to force myself to stop staring at the liquid as it flowed over her nipples and hips.
“Just as a word of warning, there are dinosaurs in the water, so you might want to be careful.” I knew there weren’t any, since Grumpy was patrolling, but I didn’t want Gee to get eaten.
“I’m not concerned,” she said as she raised her hand up out of the water to beckon to me. “Come relax beside me, Victor. The water here is nice.”
The river looked clean, but Trel’s warning about drinking unclean water still echoed in my brain. I didn’t have much of a choice though, so I moved to the edge of the river a few feet upstream from Gee and bent my face down to drink from the water. I was close enough to hear the river hiss when it hit her skin, and I stopped myself before my lips touched the surface.
“Hey, Gee. Earlier with the limestone rock, you just made your hand get hot.”
“Yes?” she asked as she sat up from the water and turned her body to face me.
“Hold on,” I said as I stood up from the edge of the river and looked around. There was a clump of bamboo about fifty yards from where we stood, and I climbed up on Ad-Rock’s back, grabbed my simple rock-axe, and then walked over to it.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“We are going to boil some water,” I said as I grabbed the largest diameter cut of bamboo I could find. It was about the same girth as a coffee mug, and I quickly chopped the base of it free before cutting into the joint. In about ten minutes I had a hollow cylinder with one side open, and I brought it back to the river where Gee was still lounging.
“Can you make this water boil?” I asked after I had scooped some up in the bamboo cylinder.
“Of course,” she said, and then she dipped her finger into the water. Her hand started to glow orange, and I almost had to let go of the bamboo because her skin was too close to me, but then the water began to bubble, and I nodded at her.
“Why?” she asked as her eyes studied the bubbling container of water.
“There might be bacteria in there,” I said.
“Ahh,” she said with a laugh. “I do not have to worry about such things. Nothing survives me.”
“Yeah,” I said as her hair began to catch fire again. “I can imagine. By the way, did you eat the fish I cooked?”
“No,” she said as she returned to the water. “I was in a hurry to catch you.”
“Are you hungry then?” I asked.
“I will eat if you need it,” she said as she began to rub water in her hair.
“I’ll have Bruce--”
Before I could finish the sentence, the pteranodon let out a double honk as he swooped through the air toward me. I knew what his honk meant, but Gee didn’t seem to notice.
“Danger,” I hissed at her under my breath as Bruce landed. He was looking across the river, so I pointed in that direction. The water here was about thirty feet across, but various waist high boulders dotted the edges to create slower pools, and the center was rushing deep and quickly.
“Where?” Gee asked, but I was already moving back into the tree line with Bruce, and I gestured for her to take cover behind a boulder as I carefully set down my bamboo cup full of hot water.
For half a moment, I thought the onyx-skinned woman wasn’t going to bother following my instructions, but then she pushed herself through the shallow water and grabbed the face of a boulder. The water where she hid was deep enough to cover her hair when she tilted her head back, and she shot me a questioning look.
Gee had been just in the nick of time. A moment after she took cover, the bushes on the other side of the river began to shake, and four muscular men stepped onto the shore of the river opposite me.
Chapter 6
The men moved cautiously to the edge of the water and glanced both ways across the flow as if they were searching for something or someone. I wondered if they were searching for Gee and me, but then I realized that they wouldn’t have known we were here because Bruce had warned us in time to hide. Then I realized that might not matter; I had no idea what abilities these four men possessed, and it was possible that one of them could know about us from a distance.
One of the men moved out from the tree cover, across the rocks, and to the edge of the water. His legs looked like a pair of snake bodies, but his arms were human-like and almost comically muscular. His skin was a reflective white color, and his head had a cobra like hood which extended from his neck. He only had one eye in the center of his forehead, and his maw looked like a crocodiles’. He didn’t carry a weapon in his hands, but a long forked tongue emerged from his mouth and licked at the air around the river.
Maybe I was being a bit judgemental, but the guy looked like all sorts of bad news.
The second man looked humanoid, but he had four muscular arms instead of two, no hair, and his skin was a peach color. His eyes were white, and didn’t look to have any pupils, and he carried two massive spears in his hands.
Alien guy number three must have stood eight feet tall. He had two heads and each of them came from necks that were placed above his shoulders, instead of in-line with his spine. In his hands, he carried a bow that was as tall as I was, but I had no idea how he’d be able to aim the thing, since each of his heads were set at an angle and each skull only had one giant eye.
The last guy had red-skin the color of Quwaru, but that was where the resemblance ended. The succubus-looking woman was all sorts of next level super-model hot, and this guy looked like a human somehow made a baby with an octopus.
Only worse than I could have ever imagined. Basically, he was pure nightmare fuel.
The right hemisphere of his face was made up of three beaks, the chin on the other side of his face ended with a long tentacle, and he had little twisting tentacles coming out of his shoulders, elbows, and knees. His hands looked human, but the fingers were long thin tentacles, and they wrapped around the haft of what looked like a wooden cricket bat that looked as though it had shark teeth stuck into the thin sides.
Yeah, the other three looked like assholes also.
The man with the snake legs licked the air again, and then he gestured over across the water. For half a moment, I thought he was pointing at me, but then I realized that he was aiming his finger across the water at Ad-Rock, MCA, and Mike D.
“Fuck,” I whispered under my breath when the other men moved to the shore. Now it made sense that we hadn’t seen a lot of dinos on the way here. These men must have hunted along the coast. Were they part of a bigger tribe? Was there anyone else in their hunting party? Should I confront them now, or use the stegos to fight them off?
My decision was kind of made for me before I could think it through. The only place for my three spiky-tailed pals to flee was either up the river on the shore or down the river on the shore. The forest where I hid was too dense for them to make it through. Either direction would end up putting them really far away from me, so I decided that fighting the four ugly ass males was probably my best option.
As the men on the other shore stood next to each other, the two-headed giant aimed his massive longbow across the river. It looked lik
e he was trying to aim at MCA’s head, so I mentally commanded the stego to pivot, squat, and turn his back. He did so right as the two-headed man released his arrow, but the shaft bounced off one of MCA’s back plates that he had angled toward the four men just in the nick of time.
The archer turned to the snake-headed man with a look of confusion on his faces, and the other men gestured for him to try again.
He pulled another arrow out of a quiver on his belt, walked up river for ten feet, and then took aim at MCA’s head again. This time I didn’t move the target stego, I just had Mike D roll over at the perfect moment, and the long arrow the man shot bounced off one of his back plates.
Now the four men were really confused, and the two-headed man with the longbow was getting angry.
I was standing behind a tree peering around the side. I doubted that the men could see me in the shadows from across the river, but Gee made eye contact with me, and she pointed over her shoulder toward the boulder that concealed her from the four men and then drew her finger across her neck.
I shook my head, held up four fingers, held up one finger, and then made a drawing motion as if I was shooting a bow. Then I pointed at her and pointed my hand into my chest. Gee shrugged and then motioned with her hand to indicate that they might try to cross the river on the various boulders.
I nodded, and then she drew her fingers across her neck again.
I nodded again, and she smiled wickedly.
The two-headed giant pulled out another arrow and leapt on top of a five foot high boulder at the edge of the river. Then he moved to the edge and drew another bead on my stegos. As he pulled back his bow, my crew was already moving into position, and Mike D twisted his back shields to the side a bit to catch the next arrow.
“They aren’t even running!” The man with the bow shouted down to the other three loud enough for me to hear him across the water.
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