Tamer- King of Dinosaurs 5

by Michael-Scott Earle

  “The bottom of my sky is water like this,” Tannin said. “It is very beautiful.”

  “Salty,” Gee said after she had scooped some up in her mouth to taste. “Are we taking a break? I’d like to submerge myself in it.”

  “Do you know how to swim?” I asked her since she had told me all of her seas and oceans were lava.

  “Nope,” Gee said. “I don’t need to know, it’s just wat--”

  “I’m gonna stop you right there,” I laughed. “Gee, water, especially ocean water, is really dangerous. See how the waves come in and then pull back. That’s the tide, it will suck you right into the waves if you aren’t careful.”

  “I’ll be fine,” she said as she stepped deeper into the waves. A wave splashed against her stomach, and it sprayed over her breasts, face, and hair with a sizzle that made her laugh.

  “And then there are the creatures,” I said.

  “Huh?” she asked as she froze.

  “Yeah,” I said. “The river will have dangerous animals in it, but the ocean is larger and deeper. Those big dinosaurs we just saw on the land fighting? There are bigger and meaner things in the ocean.”

  “If they are that big, they won’t come up this close to the shore,” she said.

  “Maybe,” I replied with a shrug. “I still wouldn’t go in any deeper than you are right now. Grumpy is right next to you, and you don’t even see him.”

  “What?” Gee gasped, and then the purussaurus’ head surfaced a few feet away from her right hand. The onyx-skinned woman jumped completely out of the water with a surprisingly girlish shriek, and then she staggered back a few feet so that the water was just lapping at her feet.

  “You scared me!” Gee growled as she pointed at Grumpy, but then Tannin started laughing, and the fire-woman turned around to glare at her. For half a moment, I thought Gee would get angry, but then she just laughed along with Tannin and turned back toward Grumpy.

  “When you made your way around the hillside, did you see a way to go east through the valley there?” I asked.

  “I wasn’t paying close attention,” Gee said as we continued to walk along the water, “but yes, it did look like there was another valley on the beach side. I’m not sure if it will connect back with the river, but there might be a way to get back to the river without swimming through the marsh again. But why do you want to come back to the river? I thought you said there is one next to your camp?”

  “It’s the malachite,” I said. “If we can get copper out of it, then it might be worth getting more.” Even as I said the words, I knew it was going to be a challenge. I still had no idea how far away we were from Quwaru’s camp, but it had taken us two days to get to this point. We’d taken some breaks, and had a fight, but it had still been a dangerous trek, and I didn’t know if it would be worth doing it again.

  I pushed the stegos into a walk, and we continued down the shore of the ocean. The sun was getting close to touching the water, and I was a bit worried about the approaching darkness, but I could tell that Mike D, MCA, and Ad-Rock were getting really tired, and I didn’t want them to collapse.

  “How much farther do you think it is?” Tannin asked after the sun was halfway into the ocean, and the sky was glowing the same hue as Gee’s hair.

  “I’m not sure,” I sighed. “We might have to camp at the beach to--” my words caught in my throat as I looked down the coast past the marine mist rolling in from the ocean. It looked like there were sand dunes about two miles up ahead, and at the foot of the dunes there looked to be a black line that could have been the obsidian rock and sand flow.

  “I think we are close! Yes!” I fist pumped in the air and then pointed up ahead, “I recognize those dunes. We should be there in half an hour.”

  “That is wonderful,” Tannin sighed. “I am excited to meet your friends.”

  “Me as well,” Gee said, and I was a bit surprised by her earnest seeming smile.

  “If they are still here,” I said. “I’ve been gone for two days, and everyone here was supposed to go back to our main camp.”

  “How far away is that?” Tannin asked.

  “Another few hours of travel,” I said as I looked over at the setting sun. “It is three or two valleys over. Might be too far to make it tonight. I don’t want to travel in the dark.”

  “We won’t have to,” Gee said.

  “We won’t?” I asked with confusion.

  “Nope,” she said with a coy smile as she pointed to her hair. The vermillion mane suddenly grew to twice the size, and I actually had to look away from her.

  “Damn,” I hissed. “Is that hard for you to do? I know you said you couldn’t increase your heat without concentration.”

  “It is less difficult,” she said. “I could maintain if for a few hours, but my hair in its natural state might be bright enough to guide us.”

  “Or it will get the attention of every dinosaur within two miles,” I said.

  “That’s a possibility as well,” she said with a laugh. “It will be your choice, Victor. You are in charge.”

  “Yeah,” I laughed. “For now.”

  “For now?” Gee asked as she raised an eyebrow.

  “Yeah, you know what I’m talking about.”

  “Oh,” the fire-woman said as she bit her lip. “I don’t believe you have any need to worry about that.”

  “I don’t?” I laughed. “What changed your mind?”

  “My observations so far,” Gee said, and then her green eyes focused on Tannin. “You have gotten us this far alive. I trust you.”

  “Thanks,” I said, and Gee’s glowing eyes turned back to me. We stared at each other for a few moments, and then I realized that we were getting close to the jungle entrance for the gorge where Quwaru’s cave was.

  “We have to pass through here,” I said as I pointed at the narrow path. “Gee, you’ll have to curb your fire.”

  “Can you pull me up with you?” she asked. “It’s hard to walk when I focus.”

  “Yeah,” I said as her flaming hair extinguished.

  She walked next to Mike D, raised her hand with her palm toward me in a signal that told me to wait, but then nodded a few seconds later. Both Tannin and I reached down to pull Gee up, and then I ordered the stegos to push through the pathway.

  The trail was actually starting to widen out by the constant passage of trikes, parasaurs, and the T-Rexes that had passed through, so the stegos actually didn’t have as many problems getting through the jungle as I thought they would. I had to cut a few vines that got stuck in Mike D’s armored plates, but it was easy to do since we were riding him in the lead point.

  Then we emerged out of the jungle and were in the familiar sloped clearing of the canyon.

  It had only been two days, well, it was the third day actually, but it felt like it was forever ago since I had been here, and my heart pounded in my chest as the stegos trudged up the hill.

  The other side of the slope revealed the cut “C” shaped gorge. The bridge was still cut right in the middle, and the setting sun wasn’t cutting through the jungle trees well enough to provide enough light to see in the cave. I didn’t see any light in the opening across the gap, and I called out as soon as the stegos stopped right next to the place where the bridge was tied.

  “Hello!” I called out again as my stomach twisted into knots.

  “Maybe they went to your other camp?” Gee asked as Bruce landed next to us and let out a honk.

  “That’s what I’m thinking,” I said, but my mind was filling with all sorts of other horrible scenarios. I knew that this other tribe knew of both of our fort locations, and while Emerald had indicated they were really far away, I didn’t know if they had somehow attacked while I was away.

  I didn’t really see any signs of a struggle though, so I guessed that they had all left.

  That scenario gave me even more questions though. Had Tom followed Kacerie, Galmine, or Emerald’s orders and let them ride him? Did the balaur bondocs follow
them? How had everyone fit on Tom? The purple furry monkey-man Zoru had been really injured, so I couldn’t imagine him being able to ride on Tom’s back. He could have fit on the trunk area, and then Kacerie, Galmine, and Emerald could have ridden on Tom, but what about everyone else?

  “Should I go look inside?” Gee said.

  “Yeah,” I said, “There is a pathway around the cliff here. We can walk--”

  Before I could finish my words, Gee had backed up from the edge about twenty feet, sprinted toward the side of the cliff where half of the rope bridge was tied, and then leapt across the massive gap. Her hair left a long stream of fire across the air, and then she landed on the opposite side like a ballet dancer landing an easy leap.

  As soon as the fire-woman landed, she flicked her hair back over her shoulder, glanced back at me, and winked. Then she walked around the first corner of the cave, and I saw nothing but the glow from her flaming hair bouncing off the inner walls.

  Tannin and I waited for about a minute in silence, and then I saw the light grow brighter again, and Gee stepped out.

  “No one is here,” she said with a shrug.

  “Shit,” I sighed. “I guess they all went back to the main fort.”

  “That’s good, no?” Tannin asked. “We can meet them there. That is the one in the redwood forest?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’m just wondering how they all got there and how long ago they left.”

  “There was a fire pit,” Gee said, “but it was cold.”

  “So maybe a day or two,” I said.

  “Do you want to spend the night here, or push on?” Gee asked from across the gap.

  I knew the stegos were tired. Hell, I was exhausted from the stress of the day, and we hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast. The sky was a dark purple now, and while I could see a bit, twilight would only last about a half an hour.

  But we were so close to getting back home. If we could just push a little farther tonight, I could sleep in my own hut and in the arms of one of my women. There would be food, water, and safety there.

  If everything at camp was okay.

  I’d been gone too long. Anything could happen in three days, and while I knew that my lovers could all handle themselves, I didn’t know how much control they would have over my dinosaurs. I wouldn’t be able to sleep tonight wondering if Kacerie, Galmine, and Emerald had made it back safely.

  It was only another two hours, and I had Gee to light the way.

  “Let’s keep going,” I said, and the fire-woman made her leap across the chasm.

  “Good,” Gee said after she landed. “That’s what I would have done.”

  “Me too,” Tannin said as she patted my shoulder. “This cave seems lonely. I want to meet your friends as soon as possible.”

  “Glad you all agree,” I said as I patted Mike D’s armored plates. “I know you all are tired, but do you have enough juice in you to make it two valleys over?”

  Mike D let out a strong sounding note of agreement, and both Ad-Rock and MCA replied in the same song-like tone. Bruce honked after the stegos had sounded off, and I realized all I needed was Grumpy to give his usual disgruntled growl.

  “Shit, I forgot about Grumpy,” I said.

  “What of him?” Gee asked.

  “He can move across land, but not as fast as the stegos. We’ll have to take him farther south to the other river, and then I’ll need to cut through the next valley in the middle. There is an old river bed there, but the last time I took the route I was attacked by carnos.”

  “Carnos?” Tannin gasped. “What are those?”

  “Big predators.”

  “As big as the ones we saw in the marsh to our north?” Gee asked.

  “No,” I chuckled, “but they are still a threat.”

  “You could just leave the water dinosaur behind,” Gee said with a shrug.

  “Nope,” I said. “He’s coming with me. I don’t want to leave anyone behind. Let’s do this. We are almost home. Ready to get back on?”

  “Sure,” Gee said, and the fire in her hair went out like a snuffed match. A bit of smoke curled above her head, and we waited a few moments for her to cool down before pulling her up on top of Mike D.

  Then we set off back through the jungle and to the beach.

  Dusk was almost night by the time we got to the volcanic river before the dunes, and Gee ran out in front of us so that we would have some light. I couldn’t really see Bruce in the sky, but I could feel his presence above me just like I could feel Grumpy’s in the water.

  When I normally went up and over the dunes, I was careful to look in every direction to make sure we weren’t seen, but I couldn’t do much to hide the woman with fire hair in the dark night, so I just gave the stegos the direct route over the dunes, and I prayed that most of the dinosaurs that saw the fire decided to stay away.

  And I prayed that no hostile survivors were watching us.

  We passed the dunes, made it to the next flat area of the beach, and then came to the river that passed by the fallen tree by our fort. Instead of a marsh, the river here ran through a sand and limestone channel before it hit the ocean. Grumpy still let out an aggravated growl as he lazily swam past us in the river water, and Tannin let out a bit of a laugh.

  “He really is grumpy, isn’t he?”

  “Yeah,” I laughed as I set the stegos back eastward along the river. The channel that the river flowed through in the next valley over was too deep and the forest too dense for us to stay close to him, so I just gave him orders to continue swimming until he came to the next valley over.

  The stegos scaled the hillside, and I could feel their exhaustion with every foot fall. I knew they were doing their best, and I found myself singing “No Sleep Till Brooklyn” softly as encouragement.

  “What is that?” Tannin asked after I had repeated the chorus a few times.

  “I named these guys after singers from my world,” I explained. “It is one of their songs.”

  “Ahh!” Tannin gasped. “We have singers on my world. I was never skilled with my voice, but those who could sing are loved and respected amongst my people.”

  “Those guys are too,” I said, and then I glanced back at MCA trudging up the hill behind Mike D. “Everyone loves them.”

  “We have songs,” Gee said over her shoulder. “We sing them when we sail across the lava seas.”

  “I imagine they are beautiful,” Tannin said.

  “They get us excited for battle,” Gee said with a casual shrug. “We also have our dances.”

  “Dances?” I asked.

  “Yep,” she replied. “It exercises our bodies and minds before we start the battle. We do them with our weapons in our ship battle units.”

  “You look like you have the body of a dancer,” Tannin said. “I bet you are good at it.”

  “Of course!” Gee said as she ran her fingers down the bare skin of her side and then glanced back at me. “I am good at anything that involves my body.”

  “Your Eye-Q ability said Flame Dance,” I said as I tried to keep my eyes from her hands resting on her ass. “Do you think that your dances have something to do with it?”

  “I’m not sure,” she replied.

  “When we have some time tomorrow, I want you to try doing a dance. What level does your Eye-Q say it is?”

  “Level 2,” she replied. “What does that mean?”

  “The larger the number, the more powerful your ability is,” I answered, and then we crested the top of the hill.

  The moons were only partially out, so there wasn’t really any light besides Gee’s hair. She must have understood the risks of being seen though since she quickly moved to the other side of the hill so that her hair wasn’t drawing attention for too long.

  “Where is this passage through the jungle?” Gee asked as we moved down the switchbacks on the other side of the hill and into the jungle valley.

  “I think it’s a bit north of our position,” I said as I tried to rememb
er if Trel and I had gone north or south to scale the hill on this same switchback trail after we had fought off the band of carnotaurus.

  We walked through the darkness for a few minutes until we hit the edge of the jungle. Gee turned left, and we walked for about five minutes in silence.

  “Do you hear that?” Tannin whispered.

  “I hear nothing,” Gee replied.

  “Yeah,” I agreed, “that’s not good.”

  “The animals are afraid of us,” Gee said. “They should be.”

  “I admire your confidence,” I whispered, “but it could also mean that they are afraid of something else.”

  “What would you have us do, Victor?” the fire-woman asked, and I wondered if this was another test.

  “I don’t think Bruce can see if anything is around us, so I need a weapon I can throw.” I realized that my Cricket Bat of Doom was sitting on the pile of supplies on Ad-Rock’s back, but it wasn’t going to be very useful while I was on the back of a stego, anyway. “A spear or two would be good, but we don’t have the time to--” my words froze in my mouth, and I remembered that the four-armed asshole had carried two spears that Gee had sliced into pieces with her whip.

  “What are you thinking?” she asked.

  “Can you use your whip to cut that branch off the tree?” I asked as I pointed to one next to her head.

  “This one?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Of course,” she said, and then the fire whip materialized from her hand with the sound of tearing paper. It stretched only a few feet across, and she grabbed the loose end with her left hand without showing any sort of pain on her face.

  Then she reached up to the branch and cut it from the trunk as if she was trimming a piece of putty with a knife. The branch fell down at her feet, and she quickly moved her whip over the smaller branches to make it straight.

  “Damn,” I said, “that’s incredible. It would take us ten minutes to do what you just did in a second.”

  “This material is soft,” Gee said as she kicked up the pole with her foot. The end tipped up, and she pinched it between her feet so that it was standing up like a pole. Then she passed her whip over the tip four times and made a sharpened point that also looked as if it had been hardened by the heat of her fire.