Tamer_King of Dinosaurs 2

by Michael-Scott Earle

  “Slip your leg through the loop and then jump when I say!” she shouted, and I glanced down to see that the end of the rope tied into a noose-like knot.

  “I’m in!” I shouted as I kicked my leg through the loop and thrust my spear at the alpha. I was a good two feet too far away though, and the animal didn’t even flinch when my spear missed him.

  “Jump!” she shouted, and I coiled my legs before I jumped up and grabbed as high as I could on the rope with my left hand.

  I slingshotted off the ground as if a giant had flicked me.

  The rope tightened around my groin like a vice, and I let out a scream of agony as my nuts got squeezed. I almost dropped the spear I carried in my right hand when the shock spread through my groin, but I somehow kept hold of it, and then found myself face to face with Sheela.

  “Hello,” she said with a half smile. She was dangling from the other end of the rope, and I realized that she had thrown herself off the tree branch and used the momentum of her fall to lift me off the ground. We were both hanging some fifteen feet in the air, and I glanced down to see the angry group of raptors circling below us.

  “Hi,” I gasped as another wave of agony coursed through my stomach and legs. My vision was spinning a bit, and I felt like I had to throw up.

  But at least I was alive.

  “Give me your spear,” Sheela asked, and I handed it to her without question. The cat-woman grabbed it with her right hand, and then I watched her use her left hand to climb up the rope. Her movements looked effortless, but I could see the long muscles in her arm, shoulder, and back tense a bit each time she pulled herself up on the rope. She used her feet to hold onto the rope when she had to reach up, and I couldn’t imagine the amount of muscle control she must have possessed.

  She really was amazing.

  “I will coil the rope around the branch to keep it from unraveling,” Sheela said once she reached the branch, and I watched her wind her length of rope around under mine so that it wouldn’t slip loose. “Can you climb? If not, I will pull you up.”

  “I’ll… try…” I gasped through clenched teeth as I reached my right arm up to join my left. The agony in my nuts was now making my lower body numb, and I knew I couldn’t do a pull-up to save my life. Still, I wanted to give it a try before I had to tell Sheela that she needed to haul me up like a bucket of bricks.

  I pulled my elbows down toward my hips and let out a gasp of surprise when my body easily rose up the length of rope.

  Now that the tension was out of the cord, the pressure on my groin was a lot less. A bit of relief flooded through my stomach, and I reached with my left arm to grab higher on the rope. Then I did it again with my right hand and was soon pulling myself up on the tree branch with Sheela’s help.

  “What is wrong? Are you injured?” her hands rested on my shoulder while her golden eyes stared at me with obvious concern.

  “I’ll be okay,” I whispered as I carefully pulled the rope from between my legs.

  The raptors were now far below us, and I saw a few of them attempt to climb the tree. Their claws couldn’t find purchase on the bark, and they kept tumbling away from the trunk. The scene might have been a bit comical if we hadn’t almost died and my body wasn’t in agonizing pain.

  “You do not look okay,” Sheela whispered.

  “The rope just got me,” I said as I gestured down to my belt, and I saw her gold eyes open wide with understanding.

  “Ahh. I see.”

  “Thanks for the save,” I said as I forced myself to stand up on the branch. It was surprisingly wide, maybe two feet in diameter, but I still kept one hand on the tree trunk to steady myself. Then I pumped my feet up and down in an attempt to force blood back down my legs.

  “It was the only solution I could think of. I am sorry for your pain.”

  “It’s fine,” I said. “I’ll be alright. We are alive, that’s what is important, but now we have bigger problems.”

  “Agreed,” Sheela said. “We are still running distance from our camp, but I am afraid that the raptors will wait for us.”

  “I feel like these guys have been stalking us,” I said as I looked at the large alpha raptor. He was standing back from the group and looking up at me with angry eyes. “The biggest one that you already put two arrows in seems to be the leader.”

  “He is larger than the others,” Sheela agreed.

  “Do you have any arrows left?” I asked as I glanced at the bow lying on the branch.

  “I have one,” she said as she held it up. “It is a far shot, though. I do not think I will make it.”

  “You hit one of the fuckers jumping over the door in mid-leap.”

  “Yes, but that was only from twenty feet. He is at least fifty.”

  “Is your Critical Strike skill ready?” I asked.

  “Do you think I should use it?” She raised a blonde eyebrow slightly.

  “I’m just wondering what will happen if we take the head guy out. Will the rest still stay to bother us? Or will they leave us alone?”

  “I can try,” she said as bent over to grab her bow. She turned her ass to me when she leaned over, and even though my groin was feeling all sorts of agony, I couldn’t help but stare at the place where her bikini bottom barely hid her vagina.

  Sheela stood up with her bow nocked, blinked her eyes twice, and then adjusted her aim a bit lower. She held there for half a moment frozen like some sort of Greek Goddess statue, and then the arrow left her weapon with an angry twang.

  I watched the shaft arch through the air before it plummeted below the line of our branch. It seemed to gain speed as it dropped, and then it sank into the head of the massive alpha raptor with a wet thud that echoed through the redwood grove.

  The alpha raptor dropped to the ground instantly, and its body didn’t even spasm.

  “Yes!” I shouted as the other raptors turned toward their boss. One of them took a few steps closer and bent its neck down to touch the corpse. It seemed to realize that its leader was dead after a few seconds of investigation, and it let out a guttural growl.

  The remaining raptors seemed confused by the alpha’s death, and they spent the next few minutes milling around the base of our tree. Before they were either trying to climb it, or were glancing up in our direction, but now they wandered like dogs trying to pick up a scent, and they weren’t even bothering to look up at Sheela and me.

  A few minutes later, they all dispersed in different directions.

  “Wow, that was weird,” I said. “It’s like they suddenly all got stupid after you killed him.”

  “Interesting,” Sheela said. “It is understandable though. The leader is the most important part of a group. Without them, order and tactics are often forgotten.”

  “Maybe with animals,” I said with a shrug. “But it just seems odd that they were so much smarter with the big guy around.”

  “Try to recall how Trel, Galmine, and I were surviving without you,” Sheela said. “We were not faring so well. It would be difficult if we lost you. The three of us are friends, but you give us a purpose and keep us united.”

  “Awww, thanks, Sheela,” I said as I turned to her. “You are pretty damn awesome yourself. You were shooting arrows at those raptors while holding onto me with your legs, and you scaled this tree, tied the rope, and hauled my ass up in less than half a minute. I’d be all sorts of dead without you.”

  “I am happy to help,” she said with a wide grin that showed her sharp cat-like teeth. “I…” she started to say, but then her voice trailed off and her eyes stared into mine.

  “Hmmm?” I asked as I shook my leg to get more feeling back into my crotch.

  “It is nothing,” she said quickly as she looked down at her feet. “I do not know if the danger has passed. How long do you think we should wait?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “I don’t even know if Hope made it back to camp. I’m actually kind of worried about her returning without us. Trel and Galmine will be concerned.�
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  “Trel will come looking for us,” Sheela said.

  “You think?” I asked with a snicker. “The farthest she ever came out of the cave was to the fort. She doesn’t seem interested in exploring the wilderness.”

  “She will for you,” Sheela said. “She has developed deep feelings for you.”

  “Well, it’s dangerous for her or Galmine to leave the camp. Hell, it is dangerous for you and me to leave the camp.”

  “I agree,” Sheela said as she gestured down to the corpse of the raptor. “After seeing how the group responded to his death, I believe that you are too valuable to risk on these missions. If you can tame a dinosaur to carry me, I believe a natural evolution of our progress will involve you staying in the camp where it is safer.”

  “Nope,” I replied. “I’m not sending you out alone if I don’t have to.”

  “It makes sense,” Sheela said. “I am the most suited to this dangerous role, and my loss will not impact the efficiency of the camp. Especially when you have fish traps, water capturing, and farming figured out.”

  “No, Sheela,” I said. “You are more than just someone who gets our food and water. You are my friend, and I need you. Also not to mention, that I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing half the time, I’m still learning from you every day.” Her eyes opened a bit at my words, and she crossed her arms.

  “I understand, but your needs are just emotional. It is not--”

  “Don’t give me that bullshit,” I interrupted her. “You were depressed on your home world because you needed to feel like you had a place. Now you do. Your place is by my side. I need you, so don’t talk anymore about how expendable you are. That’s an order.”

  “Yes, Victor,” she said as she closed her eyes and bowed her head.

  “I’m going to see if I can get Hope to come back to us,” I said. “She might already be back at the fort, but maybe she is still roaming, and she’ll return.”

  “What if the raptors are still around?” Sheela asked.

  “Then I’ll tell her to run,” I said. “Hope is faster than them with me on her back, so she’s gotta be way faster without me. The only reason they caught up to us is because she carried both you and me, and they laid an ambush for us. Hold on, let me try to focus on this for a few minutes.”

  I thought about Hope, and then kind of imagined her running down around the bottom of our tree. It was similar to the instructions I’d mentally give her when I was close, but I always did those when I had a line of sight on her. I had no idea how it would work when I didn’t know how far away she was from me.

  I thought about Hope, and our tree and Hope coming to the foot of our tree for what felt like fifteen minutes. My head actually started to hurt from my extended bout of concentration, and I finally let out a sigh and decided to take a bit of a break.

  “Looks like she’s not com--”

  “Hey! Victor! Sheela!” I heard a voice cry out from behind us, and we both spun to see Trel riding on Hope’s back. The obsidian-haired woman had her spider-legs curled up behind her like wings, and she was scanning the forest with her clawed hand over her brow.

  “Trel!” Sheela and I shouted, and our friend immediately looked up to see us.

  “There you are!” Trel said with an exasperated sigh. “What are you doing? You were supposed to be getting water, not sitting up in a tree.”

  “Uhhh, we were attacked by raptors,” I said.

  “So?” Hope continued her trek toward the tree and then stopped right where I had imagined she would and began to munch on some ferns.

  “There were many of them,” Sheela said.

  “So?” Trel repeated. “You should have just killed them instead of climbing a tree.”

  “Ugh,” I groaned as I tried to control my anger. “We tried. There were just too many of them and we had to--”

  “I’m playing with you!” Trel laughed. “Can’t you take a joke?”

  “Oh,” both Sheela and I said.

  “Yeah, we all got scared when Hope came back alone. Galmine, Kacerie, and I were arguing about what to do, but then Hope started scratching at the gate and honking. I wondered if she knew where you were, so I got on her back.

  “Damn, good job, Trel,” I said.

  I gestured for Sheela to climb down the rope as Trel dismounted, and the cat-woman did so. My palms got sweaty when I looked at the distance down to the ground, but I remembered how easily it had been for me to climb the rope up, and I leaned over the branch to grasp the rope. A few dozen seconds later and I was standing on the ground and Trel’s lips were pressed against mine.

  “I was worried,” she whispered in my ear after our passionate kiss ended.

  “Me too,” I replied. “We are going to lose this rope, and you’ll need to make a new saddle, and we’ll need to make another trip back with our spare pots for water.”

  “I can get the rope,” Trel said as her spider legs extended from her back.

  I watched her scale the tree like some sort of Doctor Octopus from the Spiderman comics. Her arachnid legs did all the work of clinging to the wall, and her human body just floated in the air. It took her less than five seconds to reach the branch and untangle the rope, and she descended even faster.

  “Easy,” Trel said as she handed the coiled rope to Sheela. “You know, I’ve never been this far out of the camp before.” She looked up to the trees, and I saw her wink her eyes a few times.

  “What are you thinking?” I asked as I turned an eye toward Hope. The parasaur didn’t seem worried about anything, so I guessed that the raptors were long gone.

  “We could build in the trees,” she said as she blinked her eyes to use her Eye-Q. “They are very strong and we would be safe high off the ground.”

  “Hmm,” I said as I looked up at the tall trunks of the massive redwoods. “What about a farm or stable for our tamed dinos?”

  “Might be useful as a backup fort,” Trel said with a shrug of her shoulders. “Besides, you have only tamed two dinosaurs so far, so I’m not thinking our stables need to be that big.”

  “Hey, I’m working on it!” I said with a laugh. Damn, it felt good to be alive. It felt great to kiss Trel, and it felt wonderful to know there was going to be a tomorrow. For a few minutes, I was sure I was going to die, and I’d been okay with it because I knew Sheela might live.

  “Well, you need to work on getting water, and then clay, and then inseminating me,” Trel said with a coy smile. “So let’s get back on Hope, return to the fort, and complete our tasks.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said with a mock salute.

  Then the two beautiful women and I climbed onto Hope’s back and rode back to our fort.

  Chapter 5

  Sheela and I went right back out as soon as we returned Trel to the fort. Galmine and Kacerie didn’t want us to leave again, especially after we told them about the organized raptor attack, but we really didn’t have a choice, we had no water left, and we had broken two of our jugs. We did have four more that we could use for water, but I hadn’t planned on breaking two of them, and now we really needed clay.

  The ride back to the stream was uneventful, but Sheela and I were on high alert and knew that we would be in big trouble if we got attacked again. We didn’t have a saddle to help us stay on Hope, and we could only really carry one spear and two jugs between us. The trip was tense, and we both breathed a long sigh of relief once we had returned safely with the water.

  “Victor, I believe we should skip the trip to the lake for clay,” Sheela said as she gestured to the sun. There was only a sliver left of light, and the air was beginning to fill with the sound of frogs and crickets.

  “Damn,” I sighed and tried to rearrange my plans so that we all wouldn’t waste too much time. I intended to have Galmine show Kacerie her clay handling techniques while Sheela, Trel, and I worked on baskets. Then, when the clay was drying, Galmine and Kacerie could continue with either baskets or cordage.

  “Trel,” I called o
ut to the spider-woman as Sheela and I slid off Hope’s back.

  “Yes?” the obsidian-haired woman answered without looking over to me. She had laid out some of our thinner poles on the ground in a trapezoid shape, and I saw her blink her eyes a few times as she tapped her lips with one of her black fingers.

  “Can you work on the saddle tonight and tomorrow? That is the priority now.”

  “Victor.” She sighed and finally looked over to me. “Priority is my pregnancy; everything else is secondary.”

  “If we don’t have the saddle, it will be hard for us to get a lot of clay,” I said. “If we don’t get enough clay, we’ll have to keep making runs for water every day, which will take time away from working on the improved fort.”

  “Not a big deal,” she said. “It only takes you a few minutes to get water every day.” The woman turned her black eyes away from me and looked up to the branches of the massive redwood tree we had built our fort walls against. Then she looked down at the trapezoid shaped array of wood poles on the ground.

  “Except today Sheela and I were almost killed by raptors,” I said as I tried to control my voice. She was suddenly being difficult, but I remembered who I was talking to. Trel was brilliant, but also selfish. I was going to have to show her what was in it for her.

  “But you weren’t,” Trel said as she glanced back up to the tree again.

  “If if I had, what would that mean for your babies?” My question caught her attention, and she turned down from the tree so she could see me.

  “Hmm, I see your point, Victor. I will work on the saddle tonight.” Trel turned her black eyes to Sheela and cleared her throat. “You are both going to be astounded by what I am about to say.”

  “Astounded?” Sheela asked as her cat-eyes opened.

  “Yes,” Trel sighed. “I’m afraid I have made a mistake.”

  Sheela and I both looked at each other and then turned back to Trel.

  “I was thinking of the trees in the forest, and I realized that we could easily occupy this one.” Trel pointed up above her to our tree, and I cranked my neck back so I could see it. The massive redwood was probably a good sixty feet in diameter, and the nearest branches were probably that high off the ground.