Tamer_King of Dinosaurs 3

by Michael-Scott Earle

  “Yeah, but look how narrow it is. The path is easy to defend. The only problem they have is getting sieged. Unless they have another way out of that cave, they are going to be stuck in there. Let’s move a little closer on this hill so we can get a better look down this canyon.”

  “Okay,” Trel said, and we backed up from the crest of the hill so we could move to the right without being seen easily. Then we crawled back up to the top of the ridge, and I was able to see more of the canyon walls and the water below.

  “Oh shit,” I gasped. “See those weird pools on the wall of the canyon?”

  “Yes,” Trel said. “What are they? They look like white paint.”

  “They are salt pools,” I said. “The salt water must come out of rock naturally, sit in the pools, and then evaporate.”

  “If that is the case, they have way more salt than they need, and should share it with us.” Trel smiled at me, and I chuckled.

  “I wonder if it falls down into the lake below?” I turned to look back at their cave fort, but I didn’t see anyone watching us, so I risked peeking out from the top of the hill a bit more. There were six of the salt pools arranged like shelves on the canyon wall, and it didn’t look like any of the water dripped down the sides and fell into the lake below. In fact, I saw a stack of coconut buckets beside the entrance of their fort, and a long rope was tied around makeshift handles.

  “I bet they lower the coconuts to get the fresh water from the lake below,” I said.

  “You are probably right,” Trel said. “This would be a perfect place for me to test my siphon pump idea. I would still need some sort of piping, but It looks like I wouldn’t need more than fifty feet, and we will need a lot more to get water from our river to our fort.”

  “I wonder what they are using for light?” I asked as I stared at the front of the cave. “It’s probably really fucking dark in there.”

  “Maybe there is an opening somewhere?” Trel said. “You were right before, if someone cuts this bridge, and then stops them from leaving through the side pathway, they would be stuck there. The thought of it is not comforting.”

  “We really need some salt,” I said as my eyes turned to the pools again. “They probably have a few thousand pounds of it, and we could dump out the jug with the sea water and have enough salt to last us for a few months of preserving food.”

  “I might be able to climb around,” Trel said as she inched forward. “The walls are steep, but my legs should be able to find points to anchor on.”

  “Too risky,” I said. “I don’t want you over there all by yourself, and if you do slip, you’d fall into that water, and we don’t know what kind of monsters are living in it.”

  “Ugh,” Trel groaned and then looked back to the cave. “What if I traveled across the bridge, stole one of the buckets, grabbed some salt, and then came back?”

  “Hmmm,” I said as I considered the idea. It really didn’t look like there was anyone watching the front door, and that would be way quicker for her than going around the sides of the nearly vertical canyon wall. However, if someone did come out of the cave, they would easily see her, and she might get attacked.

  I couldn’t risk Trel’s life for a bucket full of salt. I’d feel a lot better about me going over there by myself and then trying to run back across. Of course, there were more than just the risks of violence. I didn’t really want to steal shit from our neighbors. It was possible they were assholes, but I didn’t want to go to war with another tribe if I didn’t have to.

  I wanted to speak with them first.

  “I’m going to see if I can get their attention and talk,” I said.

  “That seems dangerous,” Trel hissed. “What if they just attack you?”

  “I’ll call out to them from the other side of the bridge. I’ll probably be out of range.” Even as I spoke the words, I thought about Kacerie’s Lance ability or Thackgrun’s soulring. Each survivor on this world had some sort of superhero ability that could be deadly.

  “Just let me sneak across, Victor,” Trel said. “I will hurry.”

  “If I talk to them, and they are dickbags, then we’ll steal salt from them, but I want to see if we can get along first. How would you feel if someone sneaked into our camp and then took some of our wood?”

  “I would be angry,” Trel sighed. “But they have plenty of salt.”

  “We have plenty of wood,” I replied with a shrug. “I’d still be mad, but if they asked to trade, I’d feel really good about the arrangement. We need salt, it is really valuable for our health and food preservation. Yeah, we can keep making runs to the ocean, and we might be able to find a salt lick, but those salt pools they have across the canyon look really white. I’m going to guess that it is super high-quality stuff.”

  “I trust your judgement,” Trel said. “You have not been wrong yet.”

  “Let’s hope I’m not wrong now,” I said, but memories of Thackgrun spun in my mind. I pushed the negative thoughts away and focused on what I could with this new tribe. Thackgrun had obviously been a loner, but this group looked like they were cooperating, so I figured that they would be willing to talk.

  I crawled away from the ledge and prepared myself to stand up and walk down, but before I could move, I saw movement on the other side of the canyon. The same trio who threw the net in the water was coming back out of the cave again. The big man had another net over his back, and the two women carried the tail cordage over their shoulders. They stepped foot on the rope bridge, and I realized that I had the perfect opportunity to talk to them while I had leverage.

  “I’m going to try when they are in the middle of the bridge,” I whispered. “I don’t want them to see me, so back up down the hill a bit.”

  “Ugh.” Trel groaned. “There is no way I can talk you out of this, is there?”

  “No,” I laughed, even though adrenaline was coursing through my blood and I was starting to second guess my decision. “I’ve got this. Don’t let them see you.”

  “Yes, Victor,” Trel said as she crawled backward down the slope from me.

  I watched the trio walk across the long rope bridge. The bottom “floor” of it was just one thick rope, so they each had to place their feet carefully while they held onto a guard rail rope and carried their fishing net. Their going was a bit slow, but their movements were confident. They had obviously made the trip a bunch and had confidence that the rope would hold.

  After they made it about halfway, I ordered my troodons to slide down near where the bridge was staked into the grassy ground, and then I stood up and began to walk down the hill.

  The man was in front, but he spotted me as soon as I’d walked halfway down the slope of the hill. He stopped walking and then said something that I couldn’t really hear to the other women. They stopped suddenly, and the three of them turned to fix their eyes on me.

  “Hey, I come in peace,” I said as I raised a hand and tried to appear non-threatening.

  “Stop walking toward us,” the man at the front ordered, and I slowed my steps a bit.

  “I’m looking to do some trading,” I said. I was closer to them now, and I saw that the man had a bird-like face with feathers and a beak. The rest of his body looked human, but then I noticed his skin was actually dark gray feathers. He looked almost as muscular as Thackgrun had, and I wondered why every male put on this planet besides me was a beefcake. Even the monkey-faced man I’d first met when I got here was bigger than me and was a trained soldier.

  “Stop moving,” the man growled, and I saw his body tense.

  “Sure,” I replied as I stopped, I was a good ten feet from the stakes that secured the rope bridge into the top part of the cliff, and I sat down cross-legged on the ground. The three of them relaxed a bit, but they didn’t realize that my five troodons were laying in the grass only a few feet from the ropes. I still had the upper hand.

  “What do you want?” the woman with the red skin asked. She had little horns on her head, and her eyes g
lowed like glittering gold, but other than that, she looked human. Well, better than an average human, because her body was curved and full at her hips and breasts, but narrow at her waist and thighs.

  “Would you all be willing to trade me some salt?” I asked as I pointed across the canyon.

  “Trade?” the gray feathered man asked.

  “Well, I’d take some for free if you are in a giving mood, but I’d be willing to trade.”

  “You have some audacity, little man,” the woman with the lightly tanned skin growled as she leaned around the man at the front. She was also a beauty, but I realized that her hair seemed to move and shift like snakes, and she had small tusks coming up from her bottom teeth a few inches. She was muscular, not as much as Sheela or Liahpa, but she had washboard abs and arms toned from lifting.

  “Well, I wouldn’t call myself little,” I laughed a bit and shrugged. “But your pal there is definitely a lot larger than me.”

  “Will you let us cross?” The red-skinned woman asked as she shot the other woman a quick glance of annoyance.

  “Look, I don’t want to fight you guys, I just want to trade for some salt. With that said, I don’t know you, and you don’t know me. There is three against one here. Can we talk a bit more about trading?” I was surprised at how confident my words sounded, since my heart felt like it was slamming out a thousand beats a minute.

  “We could just kill you now,” the woman with the snake-hair growled, but the man at the front shook his head quickly.

  “We don’t want any trouble either,” he said. “We have plenty of salt. We’d be fine to trade or even give you some for free, but can you let us cross?”

  The man and I stared at each other for a few moments. His eyes were yellow, and it was hard to understand the expression on his bird face.

  “Like I said,” I replied. “I don’t want to fight. Will you three agree not to attack me?”

  “What would stop you from attacking us?” The olive-skinned woman growled.

  “Well, I could if I wanted,” I said with a shrug, “but I don’t want to. At the same time, I realize that I have all the leverage here, and I’m worried that the three of you will attack me once you get across.”

  “We won’t attack you,” the red-skinned woman said with a nod. “We have plenty of salt.”

  “What about you?” I asked the woman who seemed most upset at me.

  “Fine,” she growled. “Although, it doesn’t matter what I say now. I can change my mind as soon as I--”

  “Enough,” the feathered man interrupted her. “We won’t attack you…”

  “My name is Victor,” I said. “What are your names?”

  “Will-Lack,” the man said, then he nodded over his shoulder to the red-woman. “She is Quwaru, this is Emta.”

  The two women nodded at me, and I felt the tension in my chest start to relax a bit. We stared at each other for a few moments, and then Emta shook her head angrily.

  “Can we come over, or what?”

  “Let me back up a bit,” I said as I stood. The three of them tensed, and then I stepped back so I wasn’t as close to the ropes. “I’m fine to let you cross, but I don’t want to accidentally hurt you if you get too close.”

  “Accidentally?” Emta seethed. “Little man, it is not us that will get--”

  “Stop,” Will-Lack snapped. “Victor is allowing us to walk across.” The man turned to me with a feathered eyebrow raised, and I nodded to him before I sat down again.

  I was playing a risky game, since I didn’t know what their abilities were, but then again, they didn’t know what mine were either. The more relaxed I seemed, the more dangerous they might think I was.

  Or at least, that was my plan.

  The three of them reached the edge of the bridge after a half minute of careful steps, and I realized that their going was a lot slower since they all kept their eyes glued on me. Eventually, they did make it to the edge of the cliff, and they moved to set down their net.

  “Wait please,” I said, and they froze. “I’d prefer it if you would keep ahold of that net. Again, I don’t want to hurt you on accident, and I feel like it might be a possibility if your hands are free.”

  “Understood,” the gray-feathered man said, and his yellow eyes regarded me carefully. “But I will need to go back across to get you some salt.”

  “We haven’t talked about the trade terms yet,” I said.

  “We’ll give it to you for free,” Quwaru replied.

  “I’d rather trade,” I said with a shrug. “Do you all need anything?”

  “We need nothing from you,” Emta hissed, and I noticed that her hair actually looked like prehensile, snake-like extensions of her body. They twisted and wrapped around her face and shoulders with obvious distress, and the image made me think of some sort of sexy medusa orc-woman.

  “Okay,” I said with a shrug.

  “Wait,” Quwaru said quickly. “We would be interested in trading. What can you offer us? Where is your camp located?”

  “I’m a valley over,” I said, and the three of their eyes narrowed suddenly.

  “Which direction?” Will-Lack asked.

  “Does it matter?” I asked.

  “Yes, it does,” Emta growled, and I saw her grip tense on the rope she carried.

  “As I said, I don’t mean you all any trouble.”

  “Yet here you are,” Emta hissed.

  “I dunno,” I shrugged. “How would you handle this if you were me? I want to talk, and I don’t want to get attacked. I let you all get across. I’m offering to trade for the salt. You all tensed up when I said I was one valley over. Maybe you have had a bad experience with another tribe, but that isn’t me.”

  “How many people are in your tribe?” Quwaru asked, and I was beginning to suspect that she was the brains behind the operation.

  “More than four,” I said as I nodded back to her camp. “I saw your big furry companion. You all have a nice fort, but all I’m interested in is salt, and if our trade goes well, maybe more trades in the future. Shit is hard enough out there with the dinosaurs trying to eat us, I don’t want to attack any of the other survivors.”

  “You are the leader of your group, then?” Quwaru asked.

  “Does it matter?” I shrugged. “Have you all been attacked?”

  The three of them exchanged quick glances, but I couldn’t understand what they were silently communicating.

  “We are cautious,” Emta replied.

  “Yeah,” I said. “So am I. I want to avoid aggressive tribes.”

  “Says the little man that is threatening us,” Emta said.

  I shrugged. “It’s three on one.”

  “So maybe we should just kill you,” the olive-skinned woman growled.

  “Ahh,” I sighed, and did my best to remain calm as I felt my heart hammer in my chest again. “See, the thing is that you keep calling me a ‘little man.’ I’m guessing that is because all the men in your tribe are larger than me.”

  “Ye--”

  “But,” I interrupted her. “Here I am, alive, sitting before you, and not really worried about the three of you standing fifteen feet away. We all have abilities. You can trust me when I say that I don’t want to hurt the three of you, but if you try to attack, you’ll instantly regret it.”

  “We aren’t going to attack,” Will-Lack said. “Emta speaks out of turn.”

  “Okay,” I said as I smiled at the big man. “What do you want to trade some salt for?”

  “What can you offer?” Will-Lack asked.

  “We are skilled at pottery,” I said. “We can make you plates, bowls, and cups. We also are good at gardening. It looks like you have space here for vegetables, although I’m not sure how much light you get here between the canyon walls. We also have hardwood. Your bridge looks fine, but I can give you some logs you can use to build it a bit stronger.”

  The three of them glanced at each other quickly, and then Quwaru cleared her throat.

&n
bsp; “We would like the pottery.”

  “Okay,” I said. “How much?”

  “Whatever you feel is fair,” the red-skinned woman said. “We have plenty of salt.”

  “What do you need?” I asked.

  “Twenty plates, bowls, and cups,” Emta hissed as she narrowed her eyes at me.

  “Twenty?” I asked. “Are you hosting dinner parties?”

  “You don’t know how many people we have,” the olive-skinned woman hissed.

  “We don’t need twenty,” the other woman said. “Whatever you can bring us would be fine.”

  “Okay,” I replied. “I can do twenty. It won’t be a problem.”

  “For one bucket of salt?” The olive-skinned woman looked a little surprised.

  “I’d like ten of those coconut buckets,” I said as I nodded back toward their gate. “It will take me some time to make them. Can you give me one bucket of salt now? Then I’ll bring you the pottery once we have them finished. It should be about a week.”

  “I will go back and get you a bucket,” Will-Lack said as he lowered his rope.

  “No,” I said, and the man froze. “Emta will go.”

  “You do not order me around,” she seethed.

  “Do you want the pottery or not?” I asked.

  “How do we even know you will bring it back to us?”

  “You just offered me salt for free,” I said. “I want to give you something in return. Then I want our tribes to establish a friendship.”

  They were silent for a few moments, but then Quwaru nodded at the other woman, and Emta slowly set down her rope before she stepped back onto the bridge.

  “Tell me about the tribe that you are having problems with,” I said to Will-Lack and Quwaru when Emta was out of earshot.

  “Why?” the red-skinned woman asked as she raised an eyebrow. She actually had fangs somewhat like Trel, and if she had wings and a tail, I would have thought of her as a succubus. She was certainly beautiful enough to be some sort of crazy sex demon. Her bra pushed her breasts up to show her perfect cleavage, and her bikini bottom was almost more of an idea than an actual garment. If it was another half-inch lower, I probably could have seen the opening of her vagina. All three of their clothes were worn, tattered, and looked close to disintegrating, but my tribe’s clothes weren’t in much better shape.