“Yeah,” I said.
“They all feel the same way,” Liahpa sighed.
“Who?”
“Everyone else,” she answered. “Sheela will be working, and I see her turn to look across the camp at where you are. She will stare and a slight smile will come to her lips. She’ll notice me watching and look away, but I can tell she thinks about you constantly. Trel couldn’t even function when everyone came back and said that the man with the wings had taken you. She said that she had finally found love and then this planet had taken it away from her. We couldn’t comfort her, and she spent days sobbing in the tree.”
“I heard that happened,” I said.
“That is how she is,” Liahpa said. “We can see that she hides her vulnerability behind her arrogance and haughty remarks. She is a lot like Kacerie actually, but Kacerie expresses her love for you by working. She held us all together when you were gone, and she made sure that Quwaru’s tribe had tasks to keep them busy, but we all missed you. That was when I started to realize for myself.”
“That you loved me?” I asked.
“Yep,” she laughed. “The beginnings of it were there down at the river when you let me touch you. I tossed and turned that night thinking about how much more I wanted to do with you, but I hated myself for being curious. Then, when you were gone, and we all thought you might be dead, I hated myself even more for not spending additional time with you.”
“But now that is resolved,” I said as I squeezed her hand again.
“It is,” she laughed. Then she leaned into me, and we kissed briefly. “So, that is just my worry. It is selfish really. I just want you around me all the time. I want you kissing me every minute and making love to me every chance you get. But so does everyone else, and we can just look to Galmine for inspiration. She encourages us all to enjoy you, and she doesn’t have any jealousy.”
“Yeah,” I agreed.
“Now, I’ll just have to deal with Trel asking me if I’m pregnant every day.” Liahpa laughed.
“I don’t think it will work,” I sighed. “I know she wants--”
“We are waiting for Kacerie,” Liahpa said. “She looks like the same species as you. So, if you want to sleep with her every night, I can--”
“You don’t have to worry,” I said. “I’ll spend time with you, Liahpa.”
“Thank you,” she said after she exhaled. “I guess that is just what I want. I finally have you, and I don’t want to lose you. As I said, all the women in the camp are in love with you, and once they know how wonderful it feels to have you inside of them, they will--”
“I don’t think everyone in the camp is in love with me,” I chuckled.
“You don’t notice,” Liahpa laughed. “You are too busy planning for our survival.”
“Hey, I’m paying attention to everyone!” I shrugged and gave her a wide smile.
“So, you haven’t noticed Adella and Keefaye? They can’t even keep their mouths closed when you walk by them.”
“They do kind of flirt with me,” I admitted.
“And Emerald?” Liahpa laughed. “Please tell me you notice how much she stares at you. I feel bad for her.”
“Wait, why do you feel bad for her?” I asked as I felt concern spin around in my stomach.
“There you go,” Liahpa said. “You are worried about all of us. You are a really nice man, Victor. That is why we all love you.”
“You are changing the subject,” I said as I smirked at her.
“I feel bad for Emerald because it’s obvious to everyone how much she adores you, but she has no voice to tell you.”
“Ahh, yeah,” I sighed. “I should spend some time with her when I get back.” I opened my mouth to explain that I didn’t know if I trusted the green-haired woman, but then I thought better of it and closed my lips. The only reason I felt a little worried around Emerald was because of her white, predatory looking reptile eyes. Her alien beauty was hard for me to be comfortable around, but the woman had done nothing but help me since she had been here.
“I enjoyed our time alone,” Liahpa said as we approached the crest of the hill that would lead us into the valley with the riverbed road running through the center, “but I’ll be relieved to get back. I feel safer behind the walls.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, even though I was still thinking about how the men last night had teleported to the beach right outside of Quwaru’s small canyon.
We might not be safe behind our walls.
“And now we have the malachite,” the beautiful woman continued. “We’ll have a bunch of copper, and we--”
Liahpa’s voice cut off as we reached the top of the hill. The green jungle valley spread out below us, but the hills beyond that were the ones that guarded our valley.
And a plume of smoke drifted in the air in the distance.
Something was burning in our valley, and it looked like it might have been coming from where our fort was located.
Chapter 3
“Shit,” Liahpa and I both hissed at once, and I ordered Tom to plow down the other side of the hill as fast as he could. We made it about halfway down the grassy slope on the other side before I realized that we had left the stegos far behind, and I cursed under my breath as I realized that I wasn’t really going to be able to charge ahead.
“Bruce!” I shouted up to the sky, and the big pteranodon glanced down from where he was circling and began to dive down. A moment later he had landed about ten yards away from Tom, and he hopped over so that he stood below me.
“There is that black smoke in the next valley over,” I said, but the pteranodon just tilted his head and let out a confused honk.
“What did he say?” Liahpa asked.
“He doesn’t know what smoke really is,” I sighed. “Okay, you know the campfire I light at night? The black stuff that goes into the air. That’s smoke.”
Bruce honked again, but it was a confirmation that he understood.
“It looks like our fort might be burning. Can you fly over there, look, and then fly back to us? Give me one honk if the fort isn’t burning and two if it is. Got it?”
Bruce let out another honk, hopped away from me like a frog, and then jumped into the air. A moment later he was high over the trees, and then he was gone from my sight.
“Maybe you should ride ahead,” Liahpa said as she glanced back to the stegos. Mike D, MCA, and Ad-Rock had almost caught up to us, but it was apparent that they were really starting to get tired. They probably had just enough gas in the tank to make it to our fort, but they might not make it if I tried to rush them.
“I can’t leave you alone with them,” I said. “They are carrying too much weight and won’t be able to fight well if we get attacked. I’d also need to control them. You should go ahead on Tom and--”
“If they are being attacked, I won’t be much help,” she said. “Then you’ll be alone.”
“Let’s just keep going,” I said as I commanded everyone to move north on the outskirts of the jungle. “It’s going to take us two and a half hours to get there. Even if one of us charges ahead on Tom, it will cut the travel time down to an hour. We just have to trust that everyone is okay.”
Liahpa nodded, and we rode in silence for ten minutes. It felt like there was a fifty-pound weight on my shoulders, and it got worse every minute that Bruce didn’t come back.
We finally reached the northwest corner of the jungle and bent around the top part of the trees at the base of the hills there so that we could continue eastward. It meant that we were on the opposite side of the valley from where the river, and therefore Gumpy, traveled, but this was the quickest route to get to where we needed to go without steering the three heavily loaded stegos down the waterfall stairs.
Gumpy knew where we were going, and I was confident that I’d see him at the river when I got back to the fort.
If there was still a fort to return to.
A thousand terrible scenarios played in my head, and I kept mentally kicki
ng myself for delaying our return trip. I shouldn’t have camped last night with Liahpa. We should have pushed through to our base. We should have kept moving. I had bet that the fuckers who were coming after us wouldn’t attack us today, since the man with the power bubble hadn’t bragged about it, but that now looked like a terrible judgement call.
I hadn’t returned in time, and now my friends might be dead.
“Bruce!” Liahpa shouted as she shook my shoulder, and my brief spell of self-loathing was interrupted. The pteranodon swooped down over our heads, and I expected him to let out two honks.
But then he just let out one long happy honk.
“Does that mean the fort isn’t on fire?” Liahpa asked hopefully.
“Yeah,” I answered. “But if the fort isn’t burning, what else is?”
“Maybe the forest?” she asked with a shrug.
“That also isn’t good,” I said, “but the plume of smoke looks pretty contained. What the fuck is going on?”
“Maybe Bruce can explain?” she asked as she pointed up in the sky toward him.
“He doesn’t really understand complex ideas,” I said. “Also, I don’t quite know how to phrase the qu--”
“You should just try,” Liahpa interrupted me. “You have a way with these animals. They understand you, and you understand them.”
“Okay,” I said, and then I waved up to Bruce while I mentally commanded him to come back down and land next to Tom.
A moment later, the flying dinosaur was back on the ground next to us, and I slowed Tom down to a walk partially so that we could talk, but also so that the stegos could catch up.
“The fort wasn’t burning?” I asked, and Bruce tilted his head a bit before he let out a honk.
“What was burning?” I asked as I leaned down and stared into his big brown eyes.
Bruce let out two long honks and then shook his head.
“You just said the fort wasn’t burning,” I pointed out.
Bruce let out honk and then hopped on the ground.
“It’s a fire in the fort courtyard?” I gasped, and Bruce honked again.
“He doesn’t seem too upset about it,” Liahpa pointed out.
“Huh,” I said as my flip flopping emotions began to settle. All of my dinosaurs had their own emotions, but Bruce seemed to be really in tune with me. He had expressed sorrow when he didn’t see the utahraptors, and he’d been a constant companion of mine during the long nights when I was away from my women.
If Bruce wasn’t worried, maybe I shouldn’t have been either.
“I guess we’ll see when we get there,” I said, even though I hated the idea of not knowing.
Bruce let out a happy honk, and then he took to the air again. I urged Tom, the troodons, and the stegos forward again, and we slowly made our way across the north side of the valley.
“It’s going to be okay,” Liahpa said after ten or so minutes of silent travel, and I nodded my head as I forced a smile to my lips.
We made it to the base of the hills leading up into our valley, and I ordered Tom to sprint up the slope ahead of the stegos. The troodons ran up the hillside ahead of us, and Scoob let out a nervous hoot once he made it to the top.
“The smoke is definitely coming from our camp,” I said once I got a good look down into our valley, “but it’s a bit right of the big tree. Bruce is right, it is coming from the courtyard.”
“Why are they burning something?” Liahpa asked, but I just shook my head and glanced up and down the pillar of smoke. It was a dark gray in color, but it spiraled up in thick cords that made me think that the flames were really hot.
The jungle in my valley was thick in a few spots before the area where the redwood forest started, but I was pretty familiar with the terrain, so I guided Tom around the spots he couldn’t plow through and then set us on the quickest path along the north side of the valley. Mike D, MCA, and Ad-Rock were really starting to lag behind, and I weighed the idea of leaving them so that I could get back to camp quicker.
It would still take me about twenty to thirty minutes to get back, and I didn’t want to risk my stegos getting attacked without me.
As crazy as it seemed, I had to trust in Bruce’s communication. The thought suddenly put me at ease, since the pteranodon had saved my life too many times to count by either warning me of danger or gliding my ass down to the ground when I fell from a massive height.
He had my back, and he didn’t seem worried by the smoke coming up from the camp.
“Almost there,” Liahpa sighed after we had ridden as fast as we could along the side of the jungle. It was just about to turn into redwood trees, and our view of the smoky plume rising into the sky would soon be blocked.
“It looks like the smoke is dissipating,” I said.
“Yes,” Liahpa agreed as she turned to look, but then we trotted past the first of the tall trees, and the bottom of the hillside where we ran was covered in shade.
“How are they holding up?” Liahpa asked as she turned back to the stegos.
“They are tired.” I knew she was trying to take my mind off the fire, and I appreciated the effort. I turned to smile at her, and she reached her fingers up to trace along my beard stubble.
“They are going to be okay,” she said.
“You are worried too,” I said as I exhaled.
“Yeah, but telling you it is going to be okay makes me feel better.” She shrugged her toned shoulders, and her long white hair fell down her arm and lay across my hand.
Then I turned back to where Tom was heading and saw the cave at the bottom of the cliff face.
Almost there.
Soon the redwoods parted into the clearing, and I pointed my weary band of trotting dinosaurs out onto the open pasture. The walls of the fort were still up, and none of the wood looked damaged, but there was still smoke coming from the center area.
We rode around the north side of the trench that surrounded the walls, and I saw that the gate was still closed. I felt Liahpa inhale, but before she could shout to get everyone’s attention, I grabbed her arm and shook my head.
“They might be under attack,” I whispered, and I slowed down Tom so that he walked the rest of the way across the bridge to the gate.
“I can see over the gate if I stand on Tom’s back,” she replied, so I stopped the trike as close as he could get to the two moveable doors.
The silver-skinned woman stood from Tom’s saddle, but then she crouched down and leapt up into the air. Her powerful legs propelled her high enough for her bare feet to be a good five feet over my sitting head, and then she slowly floated back down to the saddle as if she was being lowered by wires.
“It looks like the kilns are on fire!” she hissed.
“Was anyone fighting?” I asked.
“Not that I could see, but the flames were really high.”
“Help me open the gates,” I said, and we both slid off Tom’s back so that we could pull the gate poles out of the ground and pull the doors aside.
As soon as the barriers were parted, I could see what Liahpa had told me about. In the middle of fort space where the kilns had once stood was now what looked like a giant bonfire. It must have been a good thirty feet wide and some fifteen feet tall, and I could almost feel the wave of heat from across the few hundred feet of open courtyard.
Off to the side, I saw the group of women standing a safe distance away from the flames. I could easily pick Trel out of the mix because of the spider legs on her back, but Keyfee and Kacerie’s hair both seemed to reflect the fire’s light, and Quwaru’s red skin seemed to somehow magnify it.
Once the dinosaurs were all inside, Liahpa and I closed the gates, and then we jumped back on Tom and trotted across the open grass. The crowd of women were transfixed by the fire, but Sheela saw us first, Jinx let out a happy squawk, and then everyone else quickly turned to look at Trel before they glanced back to me.
“Uhhh, ohhh, hey Victor,” Kacerie said as soon as Tom skidded to a halt
and Liahpa and I slid off his saddle.
“What in the--” I started to say as Jinx jumped into my arms, but Trel waved her long black fingers at me as she shook her mane of dark hair.
“I know what this looks like,” she said quickly, “but it is all working as I intended.”
“As you intended?” Kacerie winced as she looked at the spider-woman.
“Of course!” Trel said as she let out a forced laugh.
“Uhh, Trel,” Keefaye said after she cleared her throat. “This wasn’t really what we had planned when you asked me to make a bunch of my blessed water to--”
“Yes, yes, yes,” Trel scoffed as she waved her hands at the golden-haired woman with the matching colored horn on her forehead. “I may have miscalculated it all a bit, but this is fine.”
“Why don’t you start from the beginning and tell me what happened?” I asked as I petted Jinx, glanced back at the spiraling inferno, and then turned again to Trel. “We can see the smoke from the next valley over, so I can’t believe that you actually planned this.”
“We did not,” Quwaru said, and Trel narrowed her eyes at the red-skinned woman in the skimpy bikini before she turned back to me.
“This is not a problem,” she said as she tapped her spider legs on the grass. “I wanted to process all the malachite more efficiently. Urka, Tannin, Gee, and I realized that we needed more heat, so I asked Keefaye to make us some fuel for the fire.”
“Emerald, Nomi, and Adella also made a lot of adobe bricks and roof tiles,” Kacerie said as she gestured to the other three women. “We thought we could heat them all at once.”
Emerald smiled as she stared at me, and the orange light from the fire pulsed in her white eyes. Nomi had her long hair over her face, but she nodded with Adella.
“Yes, yes, yes,” Trel sighed. “I was just getting to that part, too. We wanted to make a larger fire to do all the work at once. So that was the plan. As you can see, it worked perfectly, as my plans always do.”
“Uhhh,” I said as I glanced back at the massive flames.
Tamer- King of Dinosaurs Book 6 Page 3