The parasaurs followed my orders, and I ensured Hope’s placement was behind Cher’s so the blue-barbarian wouldn’t notice the saddle on the smaller parasaurs’ back. I let them drink for half a minute, and then I moved the trikes around so that they were knee deep in the water and between the blue-barbarian, parasaurs, and my position.
Then I took a deep breath and stepped out from behind the boulders a bit.
“Hello!” I called out in my friendliest tone as I waved across the river. I felt like it was my first day at high school and the teacher had just asked me to introduce myself to the class, but I knew my life was on the line with this, so my back was dripping with sweat.
The blue-barbarian flinched when I called out, dropped his hunk of raw dino meat, and reached up to his halo with startling speed. I was already stepping back behind the boulders, and I heard a metal clanking sound ricochet off the rock right where I took cover.
“Shit! Hey! I’m just saying hi!” I shouted across the water as I fought against the panic blossoming in my stomach, and I began to move Cher and Hope back toward me so that I could retreat with more speed.
I didn’t hear an answer from the other side of the river, so I poked my head out again. It took me a second to locate the blue-barbarian standing behind the trunk of a thinner pine tree, and the only reason I saw him was because he flicked his hand around the trunk toward me like he was cracking a whip.
I ducked instinctively, and something metal bounced off the boulder an inch above my head. I glanced up as soon as I heard the sound and saw the golden ring slide through the air across the horizontal plane and then return right to the tree where the blue-barbarian was hiding. He reached his hand out to catch the ring on the inside of the loop, and I ducked back before crawling to the other side of the boulders.
“Oh, come on!” I shouted as I slid my spear across the ground. “I don’t want to fight! I want to talk!”
There was silence from the other side of the river, and I took a second to catch my breath and plan my next move. I was frustrated that he hadn’t attempted to speak to me, but I wasn’t going to try again. I’d given him a chance.
Now he was an enemy, and enemies needed to be dealt with swiftly.
I moved to the boulder and kicked up the side of one while I used my spear as a climbing aid. Then I jumped up on the next one and crested the top on my belly so that he’d have a smaller target. A group of ferns grew out of one of the rocks at the top, and I was able to wiggle beside it and peer out with what I thought was good cover. I saw the blue barbarian peering out from behind the tree, and I made the trikes casually move into the river a bit more so they were closer to his position.
“I’m listening!” the man’s voice boomed across the river, and I saw his head twist and turn across the boulder mound so that he could find me. I saw a crack beside my right shoulder, and I crawled closer so I could yell through it.
“How long have you been on this world?” I called out into the crack with hopes that it would make it harder for him to hear exactly where I was speaking from. We were still some sixty or seventy yards apart, but he’d been deadly accurate with that boomerang ring of his, and I didn’t want to give him any hint as to where I was.
“A few weeks!” He really did have a badass voice. It was super deep and thick with the air of authority.
“Have you been surviving on your own?” I shouted.
“I do not wish to answer that question!” he replied. “I don’t know who you are.”
“I don’t want to fight!” I shouted. “Why did you attack me?”
“You called out to me. Everything on this planet is hostile.” His eyes seemed to focus on a point on the stack of boulders that wasn’t me, and I guessed my voice was coming out of the crack there.
“I just said hello!” I yelled into the crack. “If I wanted to attack you, I would have just done it without warning you.”
“Fair point!” he shouted. “Are you alone?”
“I’m as alone as you are,” I yelled. “I’m looking for help to survive.”
“I can’t see you,” he replied. “We should speak face to face.”
“Are you interested in working with me?” I asked. I didn’t want to mention my camp or friends before I got more information from him.
“I prefer to work alone,” he shouted. “What are you offering?”
“It will be safer if we are together,” I said. “We can watch each other’s back and increase our chances of survival.”
“How long have you been on this world?” he asked.
“Almost two months,” I answered, and I could see him look a bit surprised.
“Are you skilled with survival?” he asked. “I don’t see how anyone could survive on this world for that long unless they were incredibly powerful.”
“I know my way around.” I’d almost blurted out that I was pretty fucking powerful, but I didn’t want to show my hand too early. “My name is Victor. What is yours?”
“Thackgrun,” he said. It totally did sound like a barbarian kind of name.
“Nice to meet you,” I said. “Can you drop that ring weapon so maybe we can talk in person?”
“No,” he replied. “My soulring stays with me.” His eyes were still searching the boulders.
“You’re crazy accurate with that thing. I’d like to talk more about us working together, but I’m afraid you’ll just kill me as soon as I poke my head out.” I crawled back a bit as I spoke so that I could yell more into the crack, and it seemed as if his eyes turn to where my fern was. I froze my movements and could hear my heart pumping the blood through my body like a lopsided washing machine.
“It seems we are at an impasse, Victor,” the man said. “I am unwilling to give up my weapon, and you are unwilling to show yourself.”
“I’m sure you can understand my hesitation,” I said. “You’ve thrown your soulring at me twice already, and I have not made any hostile move toward you.”
“You surprised me,” he yelled.
“Are you kidding me? I just yelled a greeting. Look, I know this is a crazy dangerous world, but I’d prefer for us to get along and team up.”
“You are one man,” he said. “You may have survived longer than me, or you might be lying since I told you how long I have been here first. As it stands, I believe you have nothing to offer me.”
“I guess that is your decision,” I said as I pondered how to extract myself from the situation. On the one hand, I did want Thackgrun to join us, but he seemed resistant to the idea of working with me. Something in my gut told me that I didn’t want to use the fact that we had a base to leverage his decision, so I wasn’t going to mention it.
I thought about how I would have acted in his position. I wasn’t a badass barbarian dude with muscles layered on top of muscles, but if I’d managed to live on this world for a week or two, and I saw someone else that wanted to team up, I’d be super grateful. This guy didn’t seem interested. It could have just been that he wasn’t a team player, but something seemed a bit weird about the conversation.
“It is my decision,” he said as he looked around the boulders again.
“Alright,” I called into the crack. “I’ll let you get going.”
“No,” he said. “You will leave first.”
“Nope,” I replied.
“If I move to leave, you will follow me and attack me.” His voice was a loud bark, and I guessed he was projecting his plans for me onto him. Or maybe he wasn’t. I’d hate to kill an innocent man, but I realized that I was now putting myself and the women in my tribe in danger. Thackgrun knew I came here for water, and it would only be a matter of time before he found our base. He’d be able to kill us from a distance if he wanted.
I hated to be an asshole, but this guy was fucking dangerous. It was either join or die, and I was now certain that I didn’t even want this guy to join.
I wasn’t being an asshole. I was protecting myself and the women I loved.
�
�Look, man,” I shouted. “Last chance. Get out of here and don’t come back. I made you an offer, and you refused. If you want to live, just go away and don’t come back to this river.”
“No one tells me where to go. I am Thackgrun. Warrior emperor of the Arkatia People. My soulring has killed hundreds of men, and I have claimed their wives and possessions as my own. Victor, I will offer you mercy by killing you quickly, and I will swear on my father’s honor that I will not devour your corpse if you present yourself to me.”
“Ohh, fuck this guy,” I muttered under my breath. I was happy he’d shown his true colors, and I was glad that my gut had been right. I didn’t want him anywhere near my friends, and the decision to kill him now wouldn’t even be a feather’s weight on my conscious.
Thackgrun flicked his wrist half a moment after his soulring dropped into his hand. The golden missile arched toward the boulders where I hid, but a half second read of it convinced me that he was going to miss me. I still backed away from the crest of the boulder just in case, and I heard the ring bounce against the rocks like a spasmodic pinball.
Half a moment later, I realized I really fucked up, and I rolled out of the way as the soulring spun out of the crack that I had been talking into.
If I had been a fraction of a second slower, the weapon would have cut me in half. It instead bounced off the rock right next to me, launched into the air, and then spun around through the sky back over the river to return to the muscular blue-skinned man.
I scurried back up the top of the boulder and watched him punch his fingers through the hole in the middle of his weapon. The ring spun around his arm a single time, and then he twisted his muscular torso around to fling it in the air again. This time, the gold ring went way wide and passed over the river far to my left.
I didn’t want him to run and escape into the forest, so I commanded Katie to slowly exit the river on his side and then move to flank him from behind. I planned to bring Nicole at him as soon as the other trike was in place, but then my eyes focused on Thackgrun’s blue face, and I felt my stomach drop.
He was staring right at where I was crouched behind the fern.
I spun around with my spear in my hands in time to see the man’s soulring coming right at me from behind. It was flying as fast as an eagle and the only thing I could do was thrust the haft of my spear out like some sort of shield.
The soulring slammed right into my weapon, and I felt my feet lift off the boulder.
Then I was falling.
The cold fist of the river grasped me a moment later, and my back collided with the muddy river stones at the bottom. The force was enough to push the air from my lungs, and I kicked around frantically in an effort to find the surface.
I popped up out of the water, but as soon as I gasped for air, a massive hand wrapped around my neck and Thackgrun lifted me out of the water like a ragdoll. I felt my spine chiropractic-crack as the weight of my body pulled on my neck, and the blue barbarian let out an evil sounding laugh as he held out his right hand. His soulring instantly returned there, and his thick fingers danced around the inside of the weapon with the elegance of someone who had done the movement millions of times.
“Now you do not get a quick and clean death,” he growled as he smiled, and I saw that his teeth were sharp like an alligator’s.
“All you had to do was be nice, and I would have let you live and join us,” I choked out around his grip, and I could see a look of confusion come to his face.
Then Nicole’s nose horn tore through his chest like a red-hot poker through a piece of tissue paper.
Thackgrun’s blood was bright red, but the bones of his ribcage were black like obsidian. The man looked down at the horn coming out from his chest with an expression of complete disbelief, and then I felt his hand lose all of its strength around my throat. My legs went back into the water, and I pulled free of his grip as the last light of life fled his eyes. His arms went slack, and I grabbed his right hand with my left and then let his soulring fall around my arm. The outside part of the ring was sharped to a razor’s edge, but the inside was made to be gripped, and it actually felt really comfortable in my fingers. I doubted that I could throw it more than twenty feet, and I knew it wouldn’t come back, but we might be able to use it for something around the camp.
“Too fucking bad,” I said as I cleared my throat and massaged my Adam’s apple. “Throw him in the river, please.”
Nicole twisted her head and flung the blue-skinned man’s body into the current. It made a very small splashing sound when it landed, and I commanded Hope to come over to me so I could mount her. While I waited for her, I spent a few moments thinking about all the men that Thackgrun had claimed to have killed. He might have lied about them, or he might have been telling the truth. Either way, he was an asshole, and now he was dead, and I hoped that I’d avenged some of the men he had killed and the wives he had claimed to have taken.
Something pressed against my shoulder, and I turned to find Hope nuzzling me. The sight of her big eyes made me sigh, and I reached up to pet her under her chin.
“Thanks, Hope,” I said.
She let out a little toot and then pushed her nose gently into my chest.
“Yeah, you are right. Fuck him, he was an asshole. We’ll find cool people to join us.”
I jumped on Hope’s saddle and then commanded Cher, Katie, and Nicole to follow us back to the camp. The ride was uneventful, but I did feel a bit of dread growing in my stomach. Thackgrun was the third man that I had met on this planet, and the other two had also been skilled warriors. Were all the men taken by our captors fighting type men? Were they all aggressive? The first man I had met was Heracula. He had looked like a cross between Hulk and a shark. He’d been somewhat nice to me, but I hadn’t really spent more than half a minute with the soldier. The other man I had met was the monkey-man Kelg, who was also a soldier, and he had tried to betray me as soon as he could. A sample size of three wasn’t enough to make a judgement call, but I wondered if a warrior background was what the aliens wanted.
If so, I totally didn’t fit the bill. The only fighting I was good at was Street Fighter, and video game moves wouldn’t help me here.
But I’d still won. Thackgrun had underestimated me, and now he was dead and I was alive. Yeah, I’d taken an unexpected dip in the river, but he’d taken an unexpected trike horn to the chest, so once again I’d defeated Dinosaurland.
I just had to keep winning.
When I rode through the gate, I found Trel tying the last bit of cordage around one of the platform posts. Everyone but Galmine had been watching the spider-woman work on it, but they all turned their attention to me when I stopped the dinos beside them.
“What happened?” Sheela asked as her feline eyes focused on the ring in my left hand.
“I met someone, he was an asshole, now he is dead,” I said.
“There is another survivor?” Kacerie asked, and her blue eyes opened wide with excitement.
“There was,” I corrected her. “He wasn’t a good dude, but it doesn’t matter. He isn’t a threat to us anymore. We have a ton of work to do. Trel, please begin working on the sled. I want to get all the spare branches inside the fort before the sun goes down.”
“I will start on it right now,” Trel said as she smiled at me.
“Great,” I said as I glanced at the golden ring in my hand. “Everyone else, get outside the walls and carve up those carcasses. We need the sinew, skin, teeth, bones, and meat.”
“Yes, Victor. Thank you for protecting us.” Sheela’s eyes glowed as she appraised me, and then she grabbed a stack of baskets and led the women past the trikes and out of the gate.
Chapter 6
“Now that they are gone,” Trel said as soon as everyone left. “Will you explain what that is?” Her finger pointed at the soulring I’d taken from Thackgrun.
“He had the ability to throw this thing with accuracy for maybe eighty yards. I asked him if he wanted to work with
me, and he was more interested in fighting.” I slid off Hope’s back and walked toward her. I intended to show her the circular piece of metal, but before I could hold it out to her, Trel wrapped her hands around my shoulder and neck before she passionately kissed me.
“Your clothes are wet,” she murmured after our lips parted.
“I fell in the river,” I said. “Second time today, actually.”
“You should take them off,” she purred.
“I’ll be fine,” I said, and then I pulled her mouth to mine for another taste of her lips.
“You need to be careful,” she whispered after we enjoyed each other’s mouths again. “I would be lost without you. We all would.”
“As I recall, you wanted to kill me and feed me to your children just a week ago.”
“Pft!” she raspberried. “A week ago is a long time. Everything has changed. You know how I feel about you, Victor. You are the best of men, intelligent, handsome, driven, and a wonderful lover. I would not be happy if you died. If we were on my world, I would want your seed spread throughout all the duchesses so that we could create a stronger species.”
“Uhhh,” I stammered a bit since her words caught me off guard. “Did you just say you’d want me to have sex with a whole bunch of other women so that I would get them pregnant?”
“Yes, why do you look so confused?” She ran her long fingers through my hair and then gently began to scratch my scalp. The sensation was heavenly, and I felt my tense muscles began to relax.
“Ahh, well, the females of my species don’t really want their mate making babies with other women. A man and a woman often get married, and then they are committed to each other for life with no other lovers.”
“Sounds foolish,” Trel purred.
“But your kind normally kills their mates,” I pointed out.
“Our men are useless,” she said. “You are not. Of course, I am your wife, and your primary lover, but my kind is committed to creating a more powerful and successful race with each brood batch. You are better than all other men, so you should impregnate as many females as possible so we collectively grow stronger. I would not be worried that you would prefer another woman to me since I am the best.”
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