Slave in the City of Dragons (Dinosaurs and Gladiators Book 1)
Page 3
Pashera’s breath came in great gasps as she gulped for air. The fall to the ground winded her badly. Still, she couldn’t believe her good luck. Was it really over?
Pashera tested one of the big horns with her knife. The flint bit into it. Still, cutting it off would be slow going.
Again, she wondered how would she get even one of these giant horns back to the tribe?
Her puzzling was interrupted by a noise behind her. A snuffling, grunting, angry noise.
Pashera’s stomach clenched in horror. She turned. There, across the short stretch of open space, was another three-horned beast. Its eyes filled with brute violence.
Lowering its head, it charged.
Desperate, Pashera dodged to her left. She scrambled backward, weaponless. She tried to rise, but she was still winded, and she stumbled badly. Her ankle caught in tree roots and she fell into a tangle of branches. Still, Pashera wouldn’t give up. She struggled back to her feet, the branches clawing at her. Her skirt, snagged in the roots, ripped from her body.
Pashera fell back again, naked, cowering as the giant three-horned beast bore down on her. Her entire body broke out in cold sweat, the dread of imminent death.
Suddenly, a sound like the sky ripping apart tore through the air. A whirl of striped fur, fangs and claws soared into her vision and landed right on the back of the three-horned leatherback. A dagger-toothed cat!
The big three-horn bawled in sudden terror and thrashed under the claws of the merciless predator. The animals whirled in combat. The giant wall of the three-horn’s flesh passed within inches of Pashera. The cat shifted and attacked again, sinking its fearsome long, curved canine teeth deep into the flesh of the three-horn’s back. Its claws raked the big beast’s sides mercilessly.
The pair of animals, locked in a death embrace, careened around the clearing like a fur-topped cyclone of flesh, smashing into one tree after another.
In less than a minute, the battle was over. The three-horned beast fell over, shuddering.
Pashera sat, mesmerized, naked and defenseless. The big cat made its kill, ripping out the three-horn’s throat with gusto. The beast’s great sides heaved, then stilled. Great gouts of red blood drenched the cat’s brown fur, then slowed to a trickle.
The dagger-toothed cat picked its head up from the three-horned beast’s throat and stared at Pashera like a bug. Never had she seen a look of such menace. She started to drag herself away on her bare bottom, whimpering.
But the cat wasn’t done. It stepped away from its kill, and crouched down low. Then it leaped – straight at Pashera!
Just as it hit mid-flight, it cried out. This was another ripping sound, but one that ended in a mewling whimper. The cat fell beside Pashera. Its fierce eyes glowed, staring at her hatefully. Then, the inner fire went out.
A spear extended from the cat’s chest. Judging from how the cat reacted, Pashera guessed the spear had gone right through its heart.
Another figure stepped out of the forest.
It was a warrior. This one was tall, at least a head taller than any man she’d ever seen. Black skin. And while black men, including Magwalra’s father, had visited the Long Spear tribe, this one’s skin had a texture and sheen she’d never seen before. The figure was smooth-skinned, while the grown men she’d met were all hairy.
But then there was the face. No beard – she’d never seen a man without a beard. The hair was close-cropped and whitish … and odd. But it was the eyes. Oversized, golden eyes set in a large skull, and a prominent nose. A face like that was not quite human.
He also had no nipples, emphasizing his alien-ness. But the strangest thing about him was his feet. Four long toes stretched out from a shortened foot, while an unnaturally thick toe, ending in a wicked looking hook, stretched out behind. It was a bird’s foot!
Otherwise, his body was well-muscled, lean and man-like.
The creature wore a kilt made of no hide she’d ever seen. Over one shoulder was a sash with pockets. Bright bits of something that glittered in the sparse rays of the jungle sun dotted the sash. Some bright material ornamented its neck and wrists, and red-and-yellow paint adorned the creature’s cheeks and arms. In one hand, it held a knife that gleamed like nothing in Pashera’s world.
The alien figure stepped toward her. And Pashera fainted.
Chapter 2. The Abandoned Tower
Pashera woke in an uncomfortable position, bent over something, as her body moved with regular but soft jolts. She realized she was slung over the shoulder of the warrior as he strode through the jungle. Frightened, Pashera tried to stand up, but her wrists and ankles were securely tied.
The warrior stopped. Her struggles attracted his attention. He put her down, somewhat gently. He reached out his hands.
Pashera flinched, but there was nowhere to go. The warrior turned her head and lifted her arms. He examined her. He stared at her face for a long time.
She examined him back. His hair wasn’t just weird, it was feathers! Finely clipped feathers. Pashera guessed that went with the bird feet.
Did that make him a bird?
Finally, apparently satisfied, the strange warrior tinkered with her restraints. A gap developed between her wrists and ankles. The restraints – which were a dull mineral color, not like any rope of her tribe – spread out on tethers.
The inhuman warrior pulled Pashera to her feet. She found she had enough room to walk, but not enough to run.
Satisfied, the warrior indicated to her to follow and walked off.
Pashera didn’t move. The warrior stopped, looked at her, and sighed. He reached into a pocket of the sash and produced another “rope.” This he fastened around one of her wrists. As his fingers twisted it, the restraint lengthened until it was a leash twice as long as Pashera was tall.
The warrior wrapped one end of the leash around his left hand. Holding his spear in the other hand, he indicated that she should follow again, tugged on the leash, and led her down the straight rip in the swampy jungle.
Pashera wanted to resist, but the strange warrior was very strong. She felt herself dragged along, then started walking with as much dignity as she could muster. The rank swamp water squished under their feet with each step.
The warrior walked in silence. Pashera got a good look at his spear, which he carried with the tip over his shoulder. It was a kind of flint she’d never seen before – very shiny. There were rocks in the river that had that kind of inner shine, but this was a different material entirely. Pashera knew it must be deadly sharp to pierce the hide of the dagger-toothed cat so easily.
They passed a break in the trees – kindling scattered around the opening. At once, Pashera saw her opportunity. She picked up a stout stick and swung it at the warrior’s head, all in one motion. She swung hard!
The stick stopped short of the warrior’s head. That’s because his hand grasped it securely. The warrior stared at her – she hadn’t even seen him move, he was so fast – with a look that, if it translated across the species, was somewhere between bemusement and exasperation.
The warrior stuck his spear in the ground, took the stick in both hands, and broke it in two. He flung the pieces away contemptuously, picked up his spear again, and tugged on her leash. He led on.
Anger and fear washed over Pashera. She’d had triumph in her grasp. She’d killed a three-horned beast. Now that victory was snatched away. Now she was being led off to an unknown fate by a bizarre man with feathers for hair and bird feet! How could the Devouring God toy with her so?
“Devouring God,” she prayed aloud. “Do not abandon me!” The warrior glanced at her as she spoke, then turned forward and tugged at her tether again.
But the Devouring God did not answer. Bitter tears ran down her cheeks as the strange warrior led her off into the forest.
The great rip in the trees led straight – unnaturally so. More than once, they passed the remains of great beasts, walking through or around the bones of behemoths that Pashera was unfamiliar with.
But it made her shudder to think of meeting them.
They walked for hours. The swamp changed around them. The water that sucked at every step went away, replaced by thick green moss that ringed the trees, and then by thick grass. The trees grew further apart. Pashera noticed that the claw marks of animals marking their territory went far up the trees now, and the droppings piles were sometimes huge. Some BIG animals lurked in this jungle.
Once, an axe-beak stomped into the rip in the green – and it eyed the two people trespassing through its territory malevolently. The axe-beak stood a head taller than the warrior. But the warrior stared it down, his spear giving the predatory flightless bird enough second thoughts that it moved along.
Most of the wildlife they saw was of the manageable, tasty variety. Lizards, monkeys, rabbits and birds in abundance, with larger animals – deer, pigs, and others – appearing briefly at the edge of Pashera’s vision before vanishing into the green again.
Exhaustion and hunger swept over Pashera. She stumbled as she walked, falling, tripping and cursing. The warrior paid her no mind. Finally, with the sun fading behind the trees, the warrior halted. Pashera was so tired, she stumbled into him. His skin was cooler than it should be, and rough against her cheek.
He smelled like a lizard.
She could see they were beside a watering hole that bubbled up into a cradle of rocks. The water looked clean. She fell to her knees and drank greedily.
Then the warrior led her up a tree to a natural perch. He secured her leash there. She dozed almost immediately. She woke to the smell of roasting meat. The warrior was below, cooking meat over a fire. Pashera’s stomach woke up, too. She was ravenous. She cried out to the warrior, and he clambered up the tree holding a haunch of meat, which he gave to her freely. She ripped into it with her teeth. It was excellent. She’d felt that she’d never tasted anything so good in her life.
The warrior looked at her seriously and got her attention. He put his hand over his lips. She nodded, showing she understood. Be silent.
He swung down from the tree and put out the fire. Then he climbed back up with his spear and took a nest in a fork of the tree near her own. He ate his own haunch of cooked meat and looked off into the forest thoughtfully.
Pashera finished her food. A tremendous feeling of loss and abandonment swept over her.
“Devouring God,” she whispered. “You have forsaken me.”
She wept bitter tears until she fell asleep, exhausted.
Pashera woke to a tug on her tether and cried out. It was the warrior. He freed the tether from the tree and helped her down. Pashera’s muscles were stiff and sore after yesterday’s exertions, and she moaned so pitifully that the warrior helped her rub out some of the stiffness in her limbs.
He had a fire going in the dawn light, and was cooking the remains of his unidentifiable kill. They breakfasted on seared flesh. It was delicious, and despite her misgivings, Pashera gulped it down. Then, after the food was gone, the strange warrior led her off again, trudging into the jungle, following the great rip in the greenery.
The swamp was all gone – it was a real jungle now. The cacophony of animal noises – parrots and other birds, monkeys, and animals – made it a noisy place, sometimes so loud that at times she nearly put hands to her ears.
For the most part, the warrior ignored her, unless she lagged too much. But try as Pashera might, she could not keep up with his pace all day. In early afternoon, she stumbled, sat down and wept.
The warrior frowned, then came over to her, reached down with one arm, picked her up and heaved her over his shoulder in one smooth motion. She squeaked in surprise. He turned and continued down the strange road. If anything, he picked up speed. Pashera tried not to be sick as he carried her like a kill.
The sun dipped low, in the late afternoon, when the warrior stopped again. The great rip had broadened in a wide jungle clearing. The warrior put her down, and turned her to face the direction he’d been walking.
And then she saw the strangest sight of her young life.
Pashera’s people had no word for “tower.” But she and the warrior had arrived at a 6-story tower in the jungle clearing. It was a tall structure leaning about 10 degrees from vertical to one side. Its exterior was originally – probably – bone-white but now vine-covered and mildewed in large patches. There were windows on the upper floor that she could see, but she had no words for these either. A hole gaped open on the second floor.
An enclosure taller than a man surrounded one side of the tower. A gate, left ajar, broke the wall of the enclosure. Outside this enclosure, bones – the remains of large beasts – littered the clearing.
The tower emitted a low, thrumming sound that sent waves of fear up Pashera’s spine. It was the most alien thing Pashera had ever seen, and it terrified her. She thrashed in an effort to escape and cried out to the Devouring God, the Great Mother, the Trickster, all the gods and demigods of her people. But the inhuman warrior led her relentlessly onward, dragging her by her leash, into the walled enclosure.
Now that she was inside it, Pashera could see that the enclosure, the smooth-walled palisade – for that’s how she thought of it – was twice the height of the warrior. There was a shiny, slatted gate that the warrior tried to close. One side worked, but the other was stuck firmly in greenery that had grown up around it. After tugging and straining on it, the warrior gave up and left the gate open.
Inside the enclosure, water burbled out of a grotesque stone head into a pool half as wide as Pashera was tall. As frightened as she was, Pashera was SO thirsty. She fell to drinking noisily. She looked at the stone head – it was a stylized leatherback, but of a type she was unfamiliar with.
The warrior secured her tether to the side of the pool and went to the building. As he touched the wall of the tower, a door opened up with a grinding, scraping noise. He walked inside. The door closed behind him.
Pashera tried to seize the moment, her first chance to escape. Frantically, she worked at the tether, but could find no way to undo it or even loosen it. What strange magic was this?
But then she had other things to worry about. Barking noises came over the wall of the enclosure. Immediately thereafter, the largest hog Pashera had ever seen bolted through the open gate. And four snarling, grinning wolves followed it in, baying for blood!
Pashera acted on instinct. She heaved herself up over the lip of the pool and sank into it. The water was warm, like all water in the jungle. Still, the sudden slap of wetness was a shock. She tried not to make a noise.
She couldn’t hide completely, because her wrist was still tethered to a stone loop on the side of the pool.
Pashera peeked over the lip of the pool. In the courtyard, it was pandemonium. The hog was frantic, trapped and in a frenzy of fear. Its black, bristly fur dripped with sweat, its eyes were wide with terror. The wolves, all grey with white chests, circled the hog, backing it up to the rear of the enclosure. The wolves were thick-bodied in a way that spoke to incredible strength. They bared their teeth, overlarge canine teeth wickedly sharp. They yipped and barked, either to intimidate the hog or coordinate their attack.
The terrified hog tried to crawl over the enclosure but it wasn’t tall enough. It lunged at any individual wolf that came near it. Its tusks looked murderous.
But the wolves had a plan. Closer and closer they came, dodging in and then falling back. The boar tried to keep up with their bobbing and weaving, but eventually it charged one wolf in frustration.
That wolf danced out of the way. The other wolves chomped on any part of the hog they could reach. One bit down hard on the throat, another closed its jaws on the hog’s spine, and a third, one of the hog’s back legs. The boar squealed and squealed, a horrifying, nightmarish sound that went on far too long.
In a minute, it was over. And then a very bad thing happened.
One of the wolves lifted its head from the still-twitching carcass and turned to look at the fountain where Pashera was hiding.
Pashera looked for something, anything, she could hold them off with. She sank as low as she could in the pool. But she could not move her wrist from where it was tethered.
Suddenly, there was a blur at the second story hole in the side of the building. The strange warrior jumped out and landed among the wolves, and his spear lashed out at once, striking deep in the back of the nearest beast.
The stricken wolf howled in pain. The other wolves scattered, then circled back. The warrior already yanked his spear out of the dying wolf and advanced toward the next one. He didn’t give it time to react; he stabbed like lightning, and his spear went right through the wolf’s skull. It dropped noiselessly.
The warrior yanked his spear out of the wolf’s skull and whirled again.
The other two wolves turned and ran like their tails were on fire. They bolted through the open gate and were gone before the first wolf stopped twitching.
The warrior was at Pashera’s side. He undid her tether, and pulled her out of the pool. Then, with a touch of his finger to her wrists and ankles, her bonds fell away. She threw herself at him, hugging him in sheer terror.
He pushed her away, but not too roughly. Then he pointed at her. He pointed at the wolves. He pointed at the gate. Then he beckoned for her to follow.
Together, they dragged the dead wolves outside. The warrior took them further from the gate than Pashera thought necessary, and she drew every breath in terror of the other wolves coming back. But the beasts had disappeared into the gathering gloom of twilight.
Back in the enclosure, the warrior pointed to stray pieces of wood, then to Pashera. He wanted her to gather them up. Then he used his magic to make the wall of the tower open again, and he disappeared back inside.
Pashera followed him. She was deathly scared of the tower and its constant thrum-thrum-thrum, but even more frightened to be outside alone. The warrior saw she followed him, and sighed. Then he went back to looking at a bunch of rods and incomprehensible (to Pashera) objects racked near the entrance to the tower.