Tamer_King of Dinosaurs 2

by Michael-Scott Earle

  “Alright guys,” I said, “Let’s head back. I gotta think of names for you three on the way. Just follow Bob’s lead and we’ll take you to your new home.”

  The three trikes let out snorts of agreement, and we began our trip back toward the fort. It was obvious that the trikes couldn’t run as fast as Bob could, so I slowed his speed down to about half so they could keep up with him. As we made our way up and out of the lake valley, I glanced back over my shoulders to check on their progress. One of the times I looked, I saw the male slam into the side of a tree with his shoulder. The tree was probably four feet in diameter, so a bit smaller than the ones we were currently working on, but the tree snapped off at the base as if it was a toothpick.

  Holy shit. These guys were going to make fort building so much easier.

  Trel, Sheela, and Kacerie looked up from the logs when I approached our work site, and I stopped my new trikes right at the edge of the clearing.

  “Well? What do you think?” I said as I gestured back over my shoulder. “The big male in the middle is named Tom. The one on his left with the red marks on her crest is named Nicole, and the one with the brown streaks on her face is named Katie.” I laughed as I said their names, but there was no way my friends would know the actors I was referencing.

  “They are impressive,” Sheela said as her eyes glanced at the new dinos. “They will really help us build.”

  “Victor, you know I love you,” Trel started, “but I think you might have an addiction to collecting dinosaurs.”

  “Hey babe, if collecting dinosaurs is wrong, then I don’t want to be right.”

  “Babe?” Trel asked with confusion.

  “Uhh. It’s another word for a significant other.”

  “Not a child then?” she asked.

  “No, it can be used both ways, but I have all the clay we need. Let’s get to work on burning these logs. The sun is going to set soon, and we’ll have to start working on the ones inside the fort. I’m going to go take the parasaurs to the river for a drink, since they haven’t had any water today. I’ll leave the trikes here to protect you all.”

  They helped me unload the baskets from Bob’s back, and I issued the protection order to Tom, Katie, and Nicole. The trikes seemed to follow my commands just like the group of parasaurs did, and I was again struck by the possibilities of what my ability could do. Would I really be able to command them like an army? Part of me was afraid to find out, since I didn’t want us to get attacked anytime soon, but a darker part of me wondered if I could command some sort of massive dinosaur army.

  It was a weird thought, especially considering that I was just a dog catcher back home.

  Memories of my job, parents, shitty apartment, and the party with Lacey occupied my brain on the way to the river. Since my parents had died, I hadn’t really mattered to anyone, even myself. Now my life was filled with danger, but I had two beautiful women who were my lovers, and another woman who admitted that she had feelings for me. These women needed me to protect them, and I had been given a powerful ability to control the animals on this dangerous planet. I recalled Lacey’s pool party and let out a slight laugh. I’d cared so much about what all those women there thought about me, but now I didn’t care about anything in my old life.

  Just yesterday I’d talked to Sheela about coming back with me, but now I realized that I was like the beautiful cat-woman: I didn’t want to return home. I didn’t want to go back to my job, or my shitty apartment. I didn’t want to go back to being the man I was. Here I could control my own destiny. Maybe I had that power back on Earth, but it had seemed impossible to change my fate. Yeah, if I went back now, I’d push to go back to school and become a vet, and I’d ask out every single pretty girl I saw and be fine with rejection, but I didn’t want that anymore. I just wanted Trel, Galmine, and Sheela to be happy.

  I wanted to be King of Dinosaurland.

  Bob wasn’t that thirsty since he drank at the lake, but the other three parasaurs were parched, and they pushed their faces into the river for what felt like ten minutes. I decided that we needed more water breaks tomorrow, and I wondered again about building some sort of aqueduct to get water from the river to our camp so we didn’t have to make daily trips. We’d just made a bunch of water jugs to avoid this problem, but the dinos were still going to need to rehydrate every day, so I wasn’t really saving that much time.

  The water problem spun around inside of my brain while we rode back to the camp. I figured there must have been a way to pump the water out of the river and get it across land. The Romans did it, so there must have been a method. We hadn’t figured out how to smelt metal yet, but I had a bunch of dinosaurs I could use for tasks, so there had to be a way I could either harness their power, or figure out some sort of pump that could push the water to us.

  Trel, Sheela, and Kacerie were almost done setting the fires on the logs I’d pushed down today. I helped them finish up, and we all made it back inside of the camp walls as the sun finally set. Galmine had dinner ready for us, and we all ate in an exhausted silence. There was still more work to do though, so after we scarfed down our meal, we exited the hut and used the clay to prep the hole marks that Trel had made in the logs.

  I figured it was close to midnight by the time we finished setting up all the fires, and I could tell that the women were beyond exhausted. No one complained about the work, and I felt my chest swell with pride when I thought about how much we had accomplished today, and how much more we’d get done in the next week.

  “I’ll take first watch,” I said. “You can all get some rest. We’ll just do two shifts tonight. I’ll ask Galmine to take the second one.”

  “Victor, you need your rest as well,” Sheela said with concern.

  “Naw. I just commanded the dinosaurs all day, you all did way more chopping and hauling. I’ll be fine.”

  “You still did plenty of work,” Kacerie commented, but then the pink-haired woman covered her mouth up with a yawn and shrugged. “Yeah. Sleep sounds good. I’ll see you all in the morning.”

  “You’ll keep an eye on the logs?” Trel asked as she gestured to the thirty smoldering posts.

  “Of course,” I said. “When Galmine comes to relieve me, I’ll show her what to look for. You did a good job teaching us how to set up the clay walls, so I’m confident we won’t have a problem.”

  “Alright, Victor. Come lie next to me when you finally do rest.” The dark-haired beauty gave me a brief kiss, and then she walked into the hut.

  That just left Sheela and I alone, and the cat-woman studied me for a few moments before she spoke. “You are taking too much on your shoulders.”

  “We all are,” I said with a shrug. “I’d ask you to spend a few moments teaching me some fighting moves, but I saw you trying to keep your eyes open while we set the clay up.”

  “You are mistaken,” she said, but her mouth upturned into a grin.

  “Will you train me tomorrow?” I asked. “I want you to be mine, Sheela.”

  Her golden eyes glowed in the firelight, and she bit her lower lip slightly.

  “Yes, Victor,” she whispered.

  “Good, now go sleep. I’m not going to go easy on you with the work tomorrow, and I don’t think you’ll go easy on my training.”

  “Thank you,” she whispered, and then she walked into the hut.

  I inspected the logs again, but found the clay to be holding back the small fires we had started. I added a few wood flakes to one that seemed to be burning slow, but there wasn’t much else to do but walk about the small space inside our hut. My team of dinos all slept right outside of our wall, and I realized that we might not really need to keep watch anymore. I’d used Sonny and Cher to guard my friends when I went to get clay, and then I’d used Tom, Nicole, and Katie to guard later. Would the dinosaurs be able to do the job while I slept? The idea was intriguing, so I commanded Katie to wake up. I sensed her rise from her slumber, and I gave her an order to protect our walls from any enemy din
osaurs and give out a shout if she saw something large and dangerous.

  I used our ladder to climb up the interior of the wall, and I saw Katie glancing around the clearing while she lay next to Tom and Nicole. It would probably be a bad idea to keep her awake the whole night, but I could easily cycle between the dinos so that they shared the duty. My head soon filled with the vision of a massive fortress with an army of raptors running around the perimeter. It would be impossible for another tribe to attack us if I had a bunch of dinosaurs guarding our walls.

  “Victor,” Galmine asked from below, and I climbed down the ladder.

  “Hey, beautiful,” I said before I gave her a kiss.

  “You should rest. I can watch all through the night. I was just sitting inside the hut all day making cordage. You were all working so hard.”

  “Naw, I’m fine,” I said. “I have plenty of energy.”

  “Oh, you do?” she asked, and her emerald eyes glowed from the firelight.

  “Yeah, I do,” I whispered, and then I turned my head around toward the camp.

  “There is a spot over there,” she whispered as she pointed to the far wall. “We will be closer to the fires, but I don’t mind their heat, or yours.”

  “Let’s go,” I said as I took her hand and led her over to the grass.

  A few moments later I was naked, and we were making deep relaxing movements against each other. Love making with Galmine pushed all my other thoughts and worries out of my brain, and any tension I held in my muscles faded away. After we orgasmed, I held her in my arms and traced her smooth skin with my fingers. My eyelids had actually grown heavy, and she told me to go back to the hut and sleep for the rest of the morning. I regretfully parted from her and then put back on my clothes before sneaking into the hut.

  Trel was asleep near the door, but her arms were opened, and I was able to crawl into her embrace. My movement disturbed her sleep slightly, and she muttered my name before her arms wrapped around me. My eyes drifted closed almost instantly, but I had a few seconds to review all the bad ass shit I’d gotten done today.

  Things were moving in the right direction, and we just needed to stay the course. As long as we didn’t get attacked for the next five days, we’d be good.

  Sleep took me, and my consciousness faded into a pool of blackness.

  But then I was startled awake by the roar of what sounded like a carnotaurus.

  Chapter 13

  I gasped and rolled out of Trel’s arms as the spider-woman was also waking.

  “Wha?” she started to ask, but the deafening roar sounded again, and her black eyes opened wide.

  Kacerie and Sheela shot to their feet, and they ran behind me as I rushed out the hut door. It was dawn outside, but the sun had just crested the mountains in the east and was spraying a fire-like light across our fort walls.

  Galmine was trying to walk quickly toward us, and her green eyes told me everything I needed to know.

  “Sheela! Get your arrows!” I shouted as I ran to the ladder.

  A second roar sounded, slightly off-center from where the first one had, and I heard Katie give out a loud bark of alarm. This was the first one I’d heard out of her, and I guessed that it meant she had just gotten visual on our attackers.

  I dashed up the ladder and prepared myself for the worst.

  It was still worse than I expected.

  Two carnos were at the northeast side of the clearing. They had just stepped out of the forest, and the morning sun caused their eyes to glow a malevolent red. Another pair of carnos was more to our direct east, where we had our log clearing area set up. These two were a few lengths out of the woods, and it looked as if they were trying to skirt around to the south side of our fort so that they could flank my crew of dinosaurs.

  I didn’t like these odds one bit. The carnos were just a hair smaller than Tom, but that meant they were the size of Bob and larger than Hope and Cher. They were still smaller than my triceratops, but there were four of them.

  Then I heard another set of roars, and I turned around to look west. Three carnos were at the edge of the trees there, and I felt terror descend from my heart and chill my stomach.

  “Fuck,” I growled as my brain tried to come up with a plan. Now this was seven against seven, and I had to worry about protecting our base. The walls were high enough to keep the carnos from just stepping over, but they’d be able to lean in a bit and maybe make a half-assed chomp at us if we hid inside. It would be dangerous if we just had one attacking, but I figured we’d be able to fall back against the adjacent wall and shoot arrows at anything this size that tried to invade. Seven of them meant that they could circle the fort, and we’d have nowhere to retreat.

  I needed a way to take these fuckers out before they even got to our walls, but they were coming at us from three sides, and I realized I was going to have to split my team up to engage the enemy. The trikes were my only real offense. Their horns would easily rip through the bodies of these carnos, but I worried that their horns would get stuck. If that happened, then the carno they had impaled, or the second carno in the group could get a bite on them. As soon as I lost one of my trikes, I’d be out a third of my offense, and it would be easy for the carnos to overwhelm us. The parasaurs could kind of fight, but all they had going for them was size, strength which came from that size, and speed. Hope didn’t even have the size and strength when compared to the carnos, but I knew from experience that my faithful mount could outrun one.

  Then I got an idea, and my strategy fell into place around it.

  I paired Hope and Nicole together and sent them toward the two carnos in the northeast. I paired Cher and Katie together and sent them charging toward the two carnos advancing from our worksite. The three big boys, Sonny, Bob, and Tom, ran around the north side of the fort and sprinted toward the three carnos approaching from that direction. My first orders were simple, and I mentally tried to push them to each of the groups as quickly as I could.

  The parasaurs were to run around the carnos and distract them while the trikes kept them from advancing toward our fort.

  I didn’t know how well each group would follow my instructions, so I focused my attention on Hope and Nicole first. The parasaur was galloping toward the two massive carnivores, and they actually seemed to look a bit surprised that their prey was charging. I imagined Hope darting to the side of them at the last second, and my heart jumped into my chest when the closest carno shot forward to bite her.

  Hope dodged to the side as if she was a pro football player and then twisted to the left of the carno. The beast tried to jerk its massive maw around so that it could bite her again, but its teeth closed on empty air.

  I still heard the snap of its jaws from almost two hundred yards away.

  “Go Hope! Go!” I hissed under my breath as the parasaur kept running toward the forest, she turned right at the tree line and angled back up north toward the cave where the orange birds were.

  The carnos turned around to follow her, and I almost let out a shout of joy. Their backs were to the fort and Nicole, so I knew that my strategy could work.

  As long as Hope could keep up her speed.

  I turned back to the east and commanded Cher to dodge out of the way of the carnos just like Hope had. The bigger parasaur female was a bit less graceful than Hope, but she still twisted her massive body away from the carnos a moment before one bit at her. Cher’s dodge took her to the left of the leftmost carno that faced me, and it tried to turn around just as the one who attacked Hope did. However, the second carno also made a lunge for Cher as she sprinted by, and the two carnos ended up slamming their heads and upper bodies together. The giant predators growled at each other, and I saw a perfect opportunity to try the second part of my plan.

  While the carnos were distracted by each other and were turning to chase after Hope, Katie the triceratops charged up behind the one on the left and rammed her horns into the carno’s ass.

  The massive predator let out a screech tha
t I was sure dinos all the way by the lake could hear. It tried to turn around and bite at Katie, but the trike’s horns were buried all the way into the carno, and it couldn’t twist its body around.

  The second carno had sprinted after Cher, but then stopped and turned around to look at its friend. It seemed confused as to what it should do, but then it turned back toward the trike. The carno began to jog back toward its struggling friend and my trike, so I quickly adjusted my commands. This carno wasn’t even looking at Cher. It was focusing completely on the trike, so when the female parasaur shoulder checked it, the carnotaurus went down like a skinny referee getting tackled by a two hundred and fifty-pound linebacker.

  As the second carno went down, I turned my eyes quickly to the boy squad, they were still sprinting around the fort, so I glanced over to Hope. She’d outpaced both of the carnos, and Nicole was holding her ground between them and our fort. I wanted to have the red-crested trike get in there and do some damage like Katie, but I knew that Hope wasn’t big enough to pull off a play like Cher just did, so I needed to drive off the east group of carnos. Then I could send Cher and Katie to help out Hope and Nicole.

  I shifted my focus back to Katie. The trike still had the first carno impaled with her horns, but she couldn’t really pull free without risking a bite. The other carno was rolling on the ground trying to squirm to its feet, so I knew I had a few seconds of freedom to mount an offensive. I commanded Cher to run back a bit, and then I told her to sprint forward and slam her shoulder into the carno that Katie impaled.

  The maneuver worked way better than I had planned. The carno was occupied with its attempt to free itself from Katie’s horns, so it didn’t even notice Cher until the parasaur was right next to her. The hit knocked the carnotaurus free of the trike with a tidal wave of blood, bone, and screams. The big predator obviously had a mortal wound, and it crumbled to the ground as if it had lost muscle control in one of its legs.

  The other carno had gotten to its feet, and it snarled at Cher. I commanded the parasaur to run away before the carno could snap at it, but their enemy didn’t give chase. Instead, it turned back to Katie and dipped its head down a bit so it could bite her face.