by Simon Archer
Then it was pretty much over except for some very satisfying stabbing and bashing, Thera working on one gravely wounded Troodon and me on the other, until the life finally drained from the pair, and at long last, the messages I’d waited for flashed in the corner of my vision.
You have killed creature: Elder Troodon.
Pattern: Elder Troodon has been learned. Would you like to create an Elder Troodon?
I admit, the idea of riding back to the village on a fucking Troodon was appealing. But I needed to let my Aura replenish before I thought about summoning anything I didn’t actively need.
Thera was looking around the edges of the clearing. Apparently satisfied that these had been the only two big guys, she set her club down and inspected the scratched on her upper arm where the Troodon had gotten through. She plucked a half-dozen bent feathers from the area and seemed satisfied.
“You fight well, Garrett Andrews.” She smiled at me. “And your magic has let us escape the battle relatively unscathed.”
“Yeah, I guess I’m okay in a brawl.” I looked at the assorted dinosaur corpses around us. “So, I guess the feast is still on for tonight, after all.”
“I need to return to the village and bring a party to help butcher and carry the meat.” She looked toward the sun and frowned. “Light will be fading sooner than I would like. I don’t think we will have time for all the spoils, which is disappointing.
I rubbed the back of my neck and said, “I, uh, might have another trick up my sleeve.”
“What do you mean?” She arched an eyebrow.
“It’s better if I show you.” I summoned several ants and waited as they appeared in the clearing. Then I put my sword back in inventory and pulled out a machete-cleaver and filet dagger I’d gotten at the Bazaar.
“If you show me what to do real quick,” I gestured at one of the corpses before pointing at my summoned ants, “I’ll tell my little helpers here to copy us, and they go to town on the carcasses.”
“That will certainly help with the butchering…” She nodded appreciatively “Are they strong enough to carry all the meat?”
I waved my hand toward the invisible opening to my Inventory pocket. “Let’s just say I can carry more than my sword.”
Her eyes widened. “How much more?”
“How’s ‘a couple of Hadrosaurs’ sound? I mean, not while they’re whole, but…” I held my hands about a foot apart. “Once we break them down to slabs that wide, it’ll work.”
She stared at me in wonder before a smile crossed her lips. She rubbed her hands together. “Let’s get to work!”
The task went even more quickly than I’d expected. The club turned out to be good for more than just killing, at least in Thera’s hands. The stegosaurus scales made excellent cleavers, and she knew just where to cut to separate the joints. I worked on the hindquarters of one Hadrosaur with my own tools while she took on the shoulders and ribs. My ant minions followed suit quickly because it wasn’t actually that different from any other animal I’d had them butcher. Thera watched out of the corner of her eye as I shoved pieces of Hadrosaur and Troodon into Inventory, occasionally shaking her head in bewildered amazement before going back to her work.
After a while, the light started to take on an eerie, greenish cast. It reminded me of the lighting after an afternoon thunderstorm back on Earth, so even though I knew that here it was just the sun filtered through the trees, the association added a sense of urgency for me. I also didn’t know how low the sun needed to go here before it got dark enough for nocturnal creatures to start prowling.
As I was about to ask Thera how much time we had, she straightened up, cracked her back, and nodded her head.
“That’s everything of value. We should go now, so we are behind the gates before nightfall.” She looked me over for a moment, head to toe, and smiled appreciatively. “You are a good hunting companion, Garrett Andrews.”
Then she started back toward camp before I could say, “Thanks.”
21
As we walked back to camp with the spoils of our hunt safely packed away in my inventory, the sun got lower, causing the greenish cast to the light to intensify. At the same time, with every step closer that we got to camp, the unsettling feeling I’d had before started to build again. The weird thing was, I realized that the sense of being observed by an unknown presence didn’t bother me. It just didn’t feel malevolent, and something about it was familiar, though I couldn’t figure out why.
No, what bothered me was, well, that it didn’t bother me. The logical part of my brain was telling me that whatever it was could be casting a spell to lull me into a false sense of safety, and I should be on my guard against Thera, or the villagers, or some forest monster. Maybe those lizard people Kanil had told me about had shamans, and one of them was messing with me.
So, yeah, I was freaking out because I wasn’t freaking out, and when the foghorn-tuba blatted as we got close to the village, I just about jumped out of my skin. Fortunately, Thera was ahead of me and didn’t see. When we walked through the gate, and it swung closed behind me, part of me was sure it was a trap, but that suspicious part was drowned out by the feeling that I’d come home.
A teenage boy approached Thera. She handed him her gore-crusted club without a word, and then she started walking toward a hut set off by itself at the edge of the main village.
Once she’d gone, all eyes were on me, and there was a long, awkward silence as everyone tried to hide their disappointment. One of the guards cleared her throat and said sympathetically, “So, the hunt was not successful.”
That’s when I pulled the first, smallest Troodon out of my Inventory, in a neat stack of haunches and ribs with the head balanced on top. Before they had stopped boggling at a dinosaur appearing out of thin air, I pulled out a couple of leg-o-Hadrosaur, then a second Troodon, followed by various cuts of Hadrosaur meat, and more Troodon, and more Hadrosaur, piece after piece after piece. It took a good five minutes to bring everything out, while my audience went from whispers of amazement at my little magic trick, to raucous cheers. Everyone grabbed what they could carry and headed toward the village square.
As we passed the storehouse I’d been in with Denno earlier in the day, he came out the door with two other guys, each carrying an armload of stuff. Two paces behind them were Queenie and Scout, also loaded down with an assortment of fruits and leaf-wrapped parcels.
“Queenie,” I eyed her suspiciously, “you stayed away from the tahn, right?”
“Of course, master,” she replied with a bewildered look. “You commanded me to not have another tahn, and I would never disobey my master.”
Relieved, I said, “I should know I can always count on you.”
She flushed and smiled at me in her adoring way. “Your trust in me gives me more pleasure than eight tahn fruits.” She swallowed. “Perhaps even nine.”
I might have teased her a bit about that, but we’d fallen behind the rest of the troop, and Denno bellowed out, “C’mon, ya lolly-gaggers!”
Even though I wasn’t carrying jack, I fell in line next to Queenie. After everyone had left their cargo in the village square, she and I slipped away to an area that my Auric Sense told me was deserted.
“So,” I asked quietly, “did you find anything I should know about?”
Queenie shook her head regretfully. “I failed to find an explanation for your troubling feeling, and the villagers did not give me the impression that they were hiding anything.” She frowned as if she was confused. “They do not seem afraid of me, and they were nice to me.”
“Is that so?” I laughed gently. “Maybe they just think you’re cool.”
“The children were playing a game, involving kicking a ball, and… they asked me to play with them.” She mimicked the motion with her foot.
“Well, did you?” I asked curiously
“I did.” She nodded.
“Did you have fun?” I asked.
“I,” she frowned again, “I
’m not sure. I did not know what I was doing. They explained the rules, but I think I kicked the ball in the wrong direction. They didn’t seem to mind, though. It was all very strange.” She shook her head to clear it. “I did not play for long, master, and Scout was exploring while I was with the children.”
I hid my smile. “I approve of your course of action, Queenie.”
She flushed and ducked her head. “I only wish I’d been successful in finding the source of my master’s distress.”
I tried to sound unconcerned as I replied, “Oh, it’s probably all in my head. Anyway,” I waved my arm toward the gate where people were still ferrying dinosaur chunks to the feast area, “Let’s go help clean up the mess I made.”
“It is an impressive mess, indeed,” Queenie commented as we made our way toward the pile. We each grabbed an armload and started walking toward the feast area. “It must have been quite… fun to have spent the day hunting with Thera.”
“Well, the hunting part was cool. And I guess she doesn’t actively hate my guts now that I’ve proven useful.” Queenie laughed, which was rare for her. “What’s so funny?”
“I’m sorry, master, I thought you were making a joke.” She smiled bashfully.
“I guess it is funny in a pathetic kind of way.” I shrugged and sighed. “I’ve gotten too used to hot chicks throwing themselves adoringly at me, and now I’m getting some comeuppance.”
“I am confused, master.” She looked at me for a long moment. “Are you truly under the impression that Thera does not care for you?”
“Uhm, yeah.” We’d reached the feast area, and I looked for an empty spot and set my cargo down. “It’s pretty obvious.”
Queenie gave me a worried look. “The unknown presence you feel is clearly preventing you from smelling Thera’s pheromones.”
“Uh, humans don’t really, um, smell, pheromones.” I shrugged
“Then how do you tell when someone wants to mate with you?” She looked horrified at the prospect.
“It’s more about how they act toward you.” I waved a hand dismissively. “You know…”
“That seems terrible.” Queenie swallowed hard. “But people’s actions can be deceiving.”
“True, but you learn to look for subtle…” I paused as her words finally registered. “Wait, what are Thera’s pheromones telling you?”
“That she wants to mate with you, of course,” Queenie replied matter-of-factly.
“Are we talking, ‘I must have him tonight,’ or just, ‘He’ll do in a pinch’?” I inquired.
“I had anticipated that you would have mated before returning from the hunt.” She shrugged.
“Oh.” I didn’t know what else to say to that. I was contemplating whether or not there might be a sub-skill of Aura Examine that would let me, say, pick willing partners out of a crowded bar, and if so, what level I needed to reach to unlock that fucking goldmine when I saw Thera herself walking toward us.
Her feathers were now clean and slightly damp, hiding even less of her toned curves than they had before. Unfortunately, there were a half-dozen other people with her, so I figured this wasn’t the time to test Queenie’s theory.
“Garrett, my friend!” Denno exclaimed as he broke from the group and strode up to me. “Us bigwigs thought we’d show you the sights before we chow down.”
The gate was their pride and joy, designed by Thera’s great-grandmother, the same one who had created her club.
“We shared the original plans with our allied clans, and now, there are gates like this protecting every village in the forest,” Suli, the other woman in the group besides Thera, noted.
“How many other villages are there?” I inquired.
“Let’s see.” Suli started counting on her fingers. “For Blues, there are Makil’s village, Duron’s, Buzar’s. Then the two Turquoise, they just have councils instead of leaders, makes it confusing to keep them straight.”
“There are three Turquoise villages now,” Jorna, the tall, muscular guy who was supposed to have gone hunting with Thera today, interrupted. “The southern village has grown too large to fit comfortably in one settlement.”
“Oh, dear,” Suli murmured. “Now, I’ll never be able to keep track. Well, no worries, Kanil has it all written down in his scrolls.” She lowered her voice to add, “Even the Orange clan.”
An uneasy hush fell heavily over the group. I broke the silence by asking the obvious, “So, the Orange guys aren’t allies, huh?”
Denno spat on the ground. “They’re worse than the Saurians. Mark my words, one day, the gods will strip them of their feathers and cast them into the desert with the other vermin.”
“They have the entire ocean to themselves,” Jorna growled, “and yet they covet our land, too.”
“They don’t care about the land, they covet our trees,” Thera added, and then she saw my confusion. “They have cut down the ones near the ocean to build their boats, so now they have turned their greedy eyes inland.”
“How the hell big is this clan that they need the whole fucking forest?” I asked as I mentally made a note to have Queenie do a flyover later.
“Exactly!” Denno snapped as he smacked his open palm with his fist. “They are never satisfied, and they always have a justification. Many years ago, when they first began seafaring, they said they only needed the tallest and straightest of the Knarl Pine. They were our brothers back then, so, of course, we allowed it. Then they needed ‘a few’ sun-palms because those were best for the hulls. We agreed. Now, their villages were growing, and they needed more food, more wood for more huts, more space to put the huts. Huge expanses! Ten times the size of this village, a new one every year. So we put our foot down, and they declared war!” He spat again. “From brothers to enemies, overnight.”
I pictured the land as Queenie had described it after her aerial survey. “So the Orange assholes are to the northeast, and the Saurians are southwest, and here you are, stuck in the middle.”
Jorna grunted assent. “That sums it up.”
“Well, that sucks.” I’m Mister Eloquent sometimes, what can I say? “Okay, what about the Saurians? I take it they were never your brothers in, uh, not-arms.”
“The scrolls tell of a time long ago,” Thera recounted, “when the Saurians were a clan like any other. But they angered the gods, who took their feathers and their humanity before casting them out of the forest to the Barren. They envy us greatly and raid our settlements, burning all that they cannot steal.”
It was weird how that was almost word for word what Kanil had said this morning. “What did they do to piss off the gods?”
“They disrespected them,” Jorna said.
“Okayyy, but how exactly?” I looked around the group. “Like, did they desecrate an altar, or refuse to give an offering, or what?”
There was a long silence before Suli replied, “The scrolls do not say.”
“Hrm. You’d think the people who wrote stuff down about the punishment would’ve mentioned the crime.” I sighed. “I mean, otherwise, how do you guys know what to not do, to keep from joining them in the Barren?”
The silence returned, and this time, nobody had an answer. I got the distinct feeling that none of them had even really thought about it, and now that I’d put the question in their heads, they were worried that, yeah, how do we know we aren’t fucking something up?
I really wanted to know the whole story behind the Saurians’ fall from grace or whatever it was, but this wasn’t the time, or the place, or the people to find out about it. Instead, I decided I’d ask Kanil about it when I saw him. He seemed like the kind of guy who, even if he hadn’t read anything in his scrolls, would have at least pondered the question.
I tried to lighten the mood I’d caused by saying, “Well, hey, if you haven’t hit the gods’ sore spot in the last umpteen generations, so you must be doing okay.”
Denno, clearly relieved at a chance to lighten to mood, nodded emphatically, “There ya go! Tahn’s
cool with the gods. Bashing Saurians is cool with the gods. We’re cool with the gods.” He paused and sniffed the air. “But somebody’s burning the Hadrosaur tongue, and that is not cool with the gods.” He jogged toward the feast area faster than I’d seen him move since I met him out in the forest. “Meltono! What are you doin’?”
“He’s not wrong.” Thera shook her head and smiled fondly after him, and I thought I saw a little dimple under the soft down of her cheek. “And if Meltono’s burning the tongue, that means the feast is nearly ready. We can continue our weighty discussions tomorrow. Now it is time to fill our bellies and sing.”
I gladly followed them toward the village square which was now a mouth-watering swirl of smells, like a Fourth of July barbecue times thirty. Grilled meat, plus a scent like authentic minestrone soup but earthier, something else that reminded me of falafel with plenty of cumin, pineapple upside-down cake, and the unmistakable aroma of alcohol, of course.
On the edge of the square, a group of little kids sat crossed-legged in a half-circle around Scout, feeding him bits of who-knows-what, giggling as the ant’s mandibles brushed their palms. Apparently, it wasn’t just Queenie they’d taken a fancy to.
Speaking of which, I looked around for her and finally spotted her on the far side of the square, bent over a circle of hot coals with pieces of meat on top of a bed of leaves on top of the coals. Her head was tilted as she listened intently to a middle-aged woman next to her, who was simultaneously giving Queenie instructions while also stirring the contents of a huge stone bowl over a different set of coals.
Suli led me to a high table with stacks of what I first thought were just palm leaves. When I picked one up, though, it was actually three or four leaves, glued together with the veins running in different directions, with a thin, hard, brownish coating like varnish. These plate-bowls were about fifteen inches in diameter. The rims had been carefully scalloped, with tiny holes punched along the very edges. Clearly, they’d brought out the good china for their guests.
