“There is much to do,” Liahpa said. “I understand now why you were eager to bring us here. Thank you again.” The silver floating woman turned to me and nodded slightly. I returned the motion, and her shoulders seemed to relax a little. I felt like the conversation I had just had did a bunch to establish my role as the leader of our small tribe, and I knew it was just a matter of time before the strange floating woman came to trust me more.
“Let’s get going,” I said as I turned toward Bob. “We’ve got hundreds of hours of work ahead of us, and it all needs to get done as soon as possible.”
Chapter 5
Trel jumped on the back of Bob with me, Kacerie and Emerald jumped on the back of Hope, and Sheela and Liahpa jumped on the back of Cher. We didn’t have a saddle on Cher, but it wasn’t that far of a ride out of the gates, and I commanded the biggest of our female parasaurs to just go slow with a smooth gait so the two athletic women wouldn’t accidentally get thrown off.
As soon as we made it out of the gate, I realized I had forgotten something important, and I stopped their mounts near me so we faced north toward the cave.
“We have to deal with this,” I said as I gestured to the corpses of the two allosauruses, the trike, and the parasaur.
“Agreed,” Trel said. “We won’t be able to keep the meat for long, but we can use the sinew, teeth, and skin.”
“Door first,” I said as I pointed back to the place in the forest where our workstation was. “Once that is repaired, we’ll work on these corpses. I don’t want you all out of the walls unless I am nearby and have the dinosaurs patrolling.”
“I agree,” Trel said, and then we spun our mounts around and rode the short distance to our work site.
There were plenty of branches left over from the hundred and fifty-ish trees we had pushed down in the last few days, and I guessed that we would easily have enough wood to repair the gate, build all the platforms, and craft plenty of spears and bows. I worried we might run out of cordage, but we also had a lot of sinews that we had already gathered from the orange birds and pteranodons who had fought over our camp last week, so we would probably not have a bottleneck there.
Getting all the branches into the fort was somewhat of a challenge since the pieces weren’t uniform in size, had offshoot branches themselves, and were covered with needles. It had been easy to move the larger logs because their uniform size allowed the parasaurs to roll them across the grass to the build locations, but the smaller branches were stored like chaotic haystacks, and the act of untangling and re-sorting them quickly became a cumbersome task. Liahpa and Sheela started off by just grabbing the largest branches and dragging them toward the gate like makeshift sleds, but it quickly became apparent to me that their strategy would take too long and leave us too spread out if the allosauruses suddenly decided to come back.
“I like the sled idea,” I said to Trel as I pointed to Liahpa and Sheela. “We have the harness we used for Hope to drag the logs of our first fort. Can you modify that so we can make some sort of sled, stack the branches on in a pile, and then drag it through the gates?”
“I can do that,” Trel said with a laugh, “but now you’ve got me repairing the gate, making the platforms, and building a sled. What is the most important?”
“Dragging this shit back to the fort is inefficient,” I said as I watched Kacerie and Emerald try to untangle more branches. “It’s going to take us too long to get everything into the fort.”
“Maybe,” Trel said as she tapped her lips with her finger. “But it will take me a few hours to build a sled, maybe even half a day. In that time, we can move a quarter of the branches into the fort. I suppose it will still be better to build the sled, but we don’t need all these branches to repair the door and build all the platforms. We have tons of them.”
“Plenty of these branches are thick and long,” I said as I saw Kacerie pull one out that was probably six inches in diameter and ten feet long. “They will be great for building new huts. If we have all of it inside, it will be awhile before we run out of wood for making huts, platforms, or anything else. It will be more efficient long-term.”
“You got it,” Trel said as she smiled at me. “The stuff that Liahpa and Sheela are dragging should be good enough to repair the door and craft a sled with Hope’s old harness.”
I called out to Emerald and Kacerie and told them that we were changing our plans a bit. They nodded, but then grabbed what they already had pulled out of the piles and began to drag them toward the gate.
“Ugh. I suppose I should take some as well,” Trel moaned as she stood up from her spot on the saddle behind me.
“You are going to drag the branches?” I asked with surprise when she landed on the ground below Bob.
“Victor, my love,” she said with a laugh as she adjusted the skin-tight silk cloth around her large breasts. “Don’t you recall me lifting logs and chopping wood a few days ago? In a perfect world, someone of my standing, intelligence, and beauty should be attended by at least thirty servants. However, this is not a perfect world. I am committed to our cause, and I will perform this physical labor to ensure that you are happy with me.”
“Trel-Idil-Iria, Duchess of family Iria, are you saying that you will do something you don’t enjoy so that I am happy with you?” I chuckled a bit as I asked her the question.
“Of course!” She snorted. “You make me happy. You have protected me and given me pleasure and children. If I am not going to kill you and feed you to our brood, I might as well ensure that I lubricate our relationship with various small acts.”
“Uhh. Well, thanks. Does that mean that, uhhh, you are pregnant? Should you be doing any heavy lifting or--”
“I do not know for sure,” she said with a shrug. “I will know in a few days. I am certain I am.”
“Why?” I asked, and I felt my head spin a bit. I knew what I was getting into when I had sex with Trel, but I had trouble believing I could get an alien woman pregnant.
“You filled my womb with your seed plenty of times,” she said with a sly smile. “Don’t you remember? Or should I remind you tonight?”
“Oh, I remember,” I said with a laugh. “But I’d love for you to remind me.”
“I will be pregnant. Do not worry. Once my brood is born, the tasks around here will be much easier.”
“Alright,” I said as I moved to dismount from Bob.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“I’m going to help you--”
“Bah!” she scoffed as she waved her hand. “Go get our dinosaurs their morning drink. I can drag this over myself. It is mindless enough, and my body is strong.”
“I want to stick around in case we get attacked,” I said.
“Sheela and Liahpa are almost to the gate,” Trel said as she nodded her head. “They will return, help me with my burden, and then we will fix the gate, by the time you finish with the watering, we will be ready to work on the animals. You complain about your bottlenecks all the time, but now you are about to become one. Hurry up and finish your task, Victor.”
“Alright,” I said as I gave one last look to Emerald and Kacerie. They were about halfway to the gate of the fort, and my parasaurs didn’t seem too concerned with the surrounding forest.
While we worked on building the outer wall, we’d all been positioned much farther away from where we could take refuge. I shouldn’t have been that concerned with me leaving my friends alone for a few minutes since they could make the run to our gates quickly, but I remembered the look that female allosaurus had given me with her one good eye. It was pure malevolence, and I knew she would eventually be back.
“I’ll get going,” I said, as I ordered Tom to come out of the gate. I also commanded Sonny to come with me, and I commanded Nicole, Katie, Cher, and Hope to stand guard at the gate. The four females stood at attention after I willed them the command, and I turned Bob around so that we could make our way to the river.
Tom wasn’t quite as fast
as the parasaurs, but his bulk and horns inspired a lot of confidence when I traveled with him. We made it to the river after only a few minutes of riding, and I let them drink while I surveyed the shore. Bob and I had just been here a few hours before, so he was the first one to bring his head up from drinking and look for some ferns to munch.
My mind slowly visited the various tasks we had to accomplish in the next few days, and I set about the task of trying to identify our bottlenecks and places where we could improve my plans. I knew that Trel’s expertise was needed everywhere, but as I started to think through her engineering skills, I realized that she wouldn’t be the bottleneck forever. Eventually, she would teach others how to build or repair what we had already created, and she could spend her time working on the harder projects. The saddle stuff was a good example. She had built one, but now Kacerie would create the rest. Yeah, Trel would probably have to inspect the pink-haired woman’s first and second attempts, but eventually, Kacerie would be able to do them all. Same with the platforms Trel would soon start building. Once she figured out how to do it, others could copy the design.
I thought about what our camp would look like in a few months. We’d have lots of tile roofed huts for survivors to live in, we’d have paved walkways going between our farm, stables, kiln, bathhouse, toilets, and various workstations. We’d have ample food from the farm, eggs from the chicken coop, fish from the river, and running water. We’d have a system for new members to go through basic training, and then we’d have jobs waiting for them. It felt a little crazy to think that I was building a small civilization, especially when it had just been the four of us a month ago.
We just had to make it through the next few months so that we could get all the systems and defenses built. Right now I was still scared that we were vulnerable to dinos, but I knew the ultimate threat would be the other tribes. I really didn’t have any proof there were other groups out there, but I knew the fire I had seen in the far distance and boot prints in the clay by the lake were not caused by dinosaurs. I had to assume that there were other groups out there like us, and I had to assume they would be hostile. Thinking otherwise would just be foolish and put my tribe in a position of weakness.
Even if there weren’t violent tribes out there, thinking that there might be would ensure that we all lived a lot longer.
Bob and Sonny pulled their faces out of the river and turned around to munch on some moss and ferns by the shore. I wanted to get back, but the plants in this area were a darker green than the ones that grew in our clearing, so I let them feast for a few minutes before I ordered everyone to return. Food for the dinos was one more thing I needed to worry about. Eventually, they would graze all the grass and plants from our clearing, and I’d have to take them to new pasture. By plumbing water from the river into the fort, I had hoped to eliminate the need to make these twice daily trips for water, but I now realized that I’d have to take them all out for food, anyway. I was sure there was a way I could rotate the pasture land so that grass grew back when the dinosaurs weren’t grazing, but these guys ate a ton of vegetation.
It might not make sense to tame more dinos until I had a better way to feed them. I also didn’t know how I would handle caring for a large predator I might have tamed. It would be great to tame one of those Utahraptors to ride on or one of those allosauruses, but how would I feed it? I’d have to take them out hunting every day.
Thoughts of animal husbandry occupied my mind as we rode back to the fort. When I got there, I was happy to find that the women had all pulled their branches inside of the walls and were almost done repairing the gate.
“I was going to take one at a time,” I said as I got off Bob’s back and walked over to Hope, “but I’ll just do one more run with Hope, Cher, Nicole, and Katie. So, I’m leaving the boys here to guard.”
“That is fine,” Trel called out as she wrapped some cordage around the gate while the other women watched. “We will be done soon and then work on those carcasses.”
“Wait till I get back,” I said as I jumped on Hope.
“We will, Victor.” Sheela smiled at me and then she crouched down with Liahpa so that they could lift up the gate that Trel had just repaired.
I commanded Bob, Sonny, and Tom to guard the gate while the female dinosaurs followed me to the river. It had been a few days since I’d ridden Hope, and I definitely felt more vulnerable on the back of the smaller dinosaur. Riding Bob was like riding on the back of a massive elephant, but Hope was like riding on a horse. It was still all sorts of awesome, but I knew that a group of the smaller green feathered raptors could cause a problem while I was on her back.
When we reached the edge of the redwoods by the river, I saw movement on the opposite shore, and I commanded my group of dinosaurs to skid to a halt. We were close to the group of boulders beside the giant hollowed out redwood, so I rode Hope forward down the slope toward the river and then waited for a few moments before urging her to step forward slowly.
On the other side of the river, a pterodactyl had landed on the shore and was drinking from a small whirlpool. The creature was about the size of a man, and as I watched, it darted its long beak deeper into the pool before coming back out with a large fish in its beak. It gobbled the meal down with a quick upward flip of its neck, and then the creature flapped its wings a few times before it pooped on the shore.
I relaxed with a silent sigh and then prepared to ride Hope out, but something flashed in the bushes across the water behind the winged dino, and I froze in place.
A second later, I was glad that I did.
Some sort of spinning projectile flew out of the forest, twisted through the air like a heat-seeking missile, and then slammed into the pterodactyl. The dinosaur didn’t even get a chance to scream, it just fell over instantly and started twitching with death spasms. I couldn’t quite see what had struck the dino from my position, but I didn’t want to push Hope out from behind the stack of boulders any farther.
A figure walked out of the forest a few steps, cautiously looked around, and then took another few steps away from the tree line and toward the shore of the river. It was easy to guess that the figure was male because of his exceptionally wide shoulders, muscular arms, Conan-like chest, and tree trunk legs. He wore a loincloth just like a barbarian but his skin was a dark navy blue, and there didn’t look to be a single hair on his entire body. I guessed he must have stood six and a half feet, and he probably weighed two-hundred and fifty pounds easily. The guy was solid muscle, and he gained a bit of confidence in his movements once nothing hostile emerged from the river or tree line to attack him.
The blue-barbarian reached the body of the pterodactyl and pulled at the corpse. A glittery gold ring that was about the size of a Frisbee came free of the dino, and the man shook the blood from it before he held the ring up above his head. I let out a soft gasp of amazement when he let his hands go, since the ring stayed floating above his head as if it was some sort of halo.
The blue-barbarian reached down to the pterodactyl corpse again and made another yanking movement. A big chunk of the carcass’ chest peeled off with a bloody snap that I heard over the sound of the river, and the alien squatted down deep on his thick legs as he brought the raw meat to his mouth.
“Well, shit,” I whispered to myself as I thought about what to do. If I had seen this guy just standing on the other side of the river, I would have called out to him and asked him if he wanted to come to my camp, but I’d just seen him kill a pterodactyl from who knows how far away with a fucking Saint Barbarian halo. The river was about fifty-ish yards across, but I had no idea how accurate this guy was with his aim. I could greet him and then get a ring to the face an instant later.
Those were the cons, but I quickly thought through the pros. The guy looked really strong, and he had a natural ranged weapon. I didn’t know how long he’d been out here in the wilderness, but it seemed like he knew how to survive. He might have known about other settlements, or he might have ideas
about improving our camp. If he would cooperate, he’d be a great asset to the team.
I turned the possible outcomes over in my head a few more times while the blue-barbarian munched on the raw pterodactyl. Blood now dribbled down his muscular chest, splattered on the sand of the river shore, and had the effect of making him look even more intimidating. This guy could probably bend me in half with a casual flex of his arms, but the mental image made me wonder if he had seen me come earlier to give Bob, Tom, and Sonny drinks. I’d been here only ten or so minutes before, and I had to guess that the blue-barbarian had been waiting by the shore for something to hunt.
Had he seen me? If he had, then he had decided not to attack.
He’d also decided not to follow me to the fort, and that could mean he didn’t really want new friends.
I decided to test his reactions a bit, and I ordered Nicole and Katie to move out from the cover of the tree line and take a drink at the river. It took them a few dozen seconds to walk down there, and I saw the blue-skinned man glance up from his meal, study the massive trikes, and then go back to eating.
I let Nicole and Katie drink their fill while I studied the man, but I realized that the clock was ticking. Eventually, he was going to leave, and I had to decide if I wanted to do something about it or let him go.
I thought about the pterodactyl getting killed instantly and then took a long gulp of air. I knew that I wanted to try to talk to the guy, so I planned on the worst case scenario. If he did attack, I wanted to be in a strategic location so that I could get away quickly. And if I had to get away, I wanted to be able to use my dinosaurs offensively to take the guy out so he wouldn’t be a future danger. I realized that retreating before the parasaurs got a chance to drink would just mean that I’d have to come back here sooner rather than later to get them water. I silently slid off Hope, grabbed my spear, and commanded my mount to wrap around back through the trees and then approach the water with Cher at an angle that looked a bit different than how the trikes got there.
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