by Inmon, Shawn
“And that includes me,” Senta-eh said, bristling. “I will gladly go against any of these younger brothers and sisters in whatever contest you would like.”
Sekun-ak held his hands in front of him in apparent surrender. “Maybe I started that the wrong way.”
“Maybe you did,” Senta-eh agreed. Her posture did not relax.
Behind her, Alex smiled broadly, although he did his best to hide it when she turned to look at him as well.
Senta-eh fixed him with a glare, turned on her heel, and left the room.
“What I was going to say,” Sekun-ak continued, slightly abashed, “was that you two never need to volunteer for anything. You have done more for us than anyone else. You deserve to stay and rest for a time.”
“Staying and resting feels like a punishment to us. We will never be happy just staying here in the cliffside and going on hunting expeditions.”
Sekun-ak laid a hand on Alex’s shoulder. “I understand. I felt the same, until Ganku-eh chose me as her replacement.” His eyes looked out the mouth of the cave at the forest that lay beyond. “But now, I am needed here.”
Alex put two fingers against his forehead, then touched Sekun-ak’s shoulder lightly, a gesture of understanding and commiseration. “And now, I’m going to go where no man has ever voluntarily gone—to see if I can make peace with Senta-eh.”
“A more dangerous mission than fleeing any karak-ta,” Sekun-ak agreed.
Alex found Senta-eh sitting on the edge of the very top of the cliff. It was a difficult climb to reach the top, so it took Alex a few stumbles and missteps to sit beside her. When he did, the view was more than worth it. The view encompassed the fields below, the thin ring of forest, then onto the plains that lay beyond.
“I saw you agreeing with Sekun-ak.”
Alex’s head fell to his chest, but he couldn’t hide his smile.
“Yes. That look right there.” She extended her long, finely muscled arms, then did the same for her shapely legs. “I am not old and ready to be put out to pasture with the magdas.”
Alex couldn’t help himself. He laughed at the ludicrousness of that idea.
“You are definitely not old,” Alex agreed. “And I have yet to meet the man who could put you out to pasture.”
Alex met her eyes and was surprised to see some actual pain in them.
“But,” she sighed, “I know I am not as young as I once was.”
Alex unconsciously rotated his left arm, which was almost always stiff after being shot with an arrow in Denta-ah and sliced to the bone by Draka-ak. “Can I tell you something?”
“Why would you ask me that? Of course you can, and I hope you tell me everything. There is nothing you need to hold back from me.”
“You’re the best person I know.”
Another woman might have looked away, or blushed. Senta-eh held his gaze for three heartbeats, then said, “Thank you. I’m glad you think so.”
A twenty-first century woman might have felt pressured to say, ‘So are you,” but Senta-eh did not. Instead, she looked out over the scenery and let a satisfied smile settle on her face.
THINGS HAD NOT GONE precisely to plan on the karak-ta egg-gathering mission, which led to the predicament they now found themselves in.
The plan had been to set Alex, Senta-eh, Monda-ak, and four of the tribe’s best bowmen at the beach where the door to the twenty-first century had once stood. They were to wait there until the group they called the disruptors came running toward them. Then, the bowmen were supposed to cut down the leading karak-tas as they approached, hoping that the other birds would stop to feed on the corpses.
That was the plan.
Alex grew antsy as the six of them and Monda-ak waited at the appointed spot. He thought it was taking them too long to come running past. He had become increasingly certain that something had gone wrong. Slowly, he had started to walk up the path that led to the rocks where the karak-ta laid their eggs.
Senta-eh let him get ten paces away, then turned to the four bowmen she had chosen. “Stay with him. We don’t want to get separated.”
Finally, almost halfway to the rocks, they saw the first of the disruptors running toward them. Immediately, Alex knew something was wrong. They were not running smoothly. The young man in the lead was uninjured, but behind him were three more who were limping to varying degrees.
Behind the four of them, trailing by perhaps a hundred yards, was a swarm of the ugliest birds to grace either world Alex had lived in. They were huge, with twelve-foot wingspans, leathery wings that ended in tiny sharp claws, and huge heads that were so heavy they looked constantly off balance in flight. Each massive head came to a point in a huge, hooked beak that could tear ribbons of flesh off a human in seconds.
“Where are the others?” Alex screamed at the lead runner.
“They’ve fallen! Karak-ta!” he screamed back.
“Keep going!” Alex slowed long enough to do an instant triage on the other three. They had scrapes and were bleeding, but their injuries didn’t look serious.
The four young men were doing exactly what they were supposed to do. If someone fell, they were considered lost, as no one could realistically fight off a pack of karak-tas. The wisdom of the tribe was that it was better to let one or two warriors fall than have others try to rescue them and lose everyone.
That was the wisdom of the tribe, but not the mindset of Alex Hawk.
Carrying his two-bladed axe in one hand and a long cudgel in the other, he ran toward the rocks, Monda-ak on his heels. Alex didn’t charge into battle without him. He turned around a bend in the path and a horrifying sight spread out in front of him.
Two young Winten-ah warriors were standing back to back, circling, moving. Both had obviously slipped and fallen getting off the rocks. One had a nasty, jagged wound on his left side. The other had scrapes, cuts, and bruises over his entire body.
There were a dozen karak-tas on the ground, surrounding them, hopping in their weird fashion, closing in. Overhead another flock of the leathery beasts circled.
Just as Alex turned the corner, the dozen birds on the ground all lurched forward at once. The young boys were armed with long cudgels, but they were almost immediately buried under the flapping wings, scratching claws, and jabbing beaks.
Their cries of pain and sheer horror were terrible.
Alex redoubled his speed and launched himself at the writhing, skittering heap of prehistoric birds. Both his weapons were attached to his wrists with leather thongs and he didn’t dare swing them with abandon for fear of further injuring his brother warriors.
Instead, he grabbed the long necks of the first two birds he found and flung them away. For as terrifying as they looked, they were, like most birds, relatively lightweight. Alex continued on, grabbing any part of the heap of birds he could and tossing them as far away as possible.
Monda-ak bared his teeth and grabbed a leathery wing, pulling it off the pile and then closing his jaws on its neck. He flung his head back and forth until it stopped squealing.
From past experience, Alex knew that the birds were most dangerous when dive-bombing from above. Once they were on the ground, they were still potentially lethal, but they were awkward.
Alex and Monda-ak had tossed half the birds away when the two young warriors were able to grab hold of the slashing beaks attacking them and do the same.
Alex fell into a back-to-back-to-back formation with the injured warriors. He looked up and saw that the karak-ta in the sky and those on the ground chose the same moment to press the attack.
All we can do is all we can do.
At that moment, Senta-eh’s warning—Manta-ak, they are circling behind you!—rang out.
Arrows sizzled through the air, finding a home in the wings and bodies of the karak-ta diving at Alex’s back. Out of the corner of his eye, Alex saw Senta-eh and her four bowmen firing again and again.
Monda-ak timed a leap to meet one of the birds just before it crashed into Alex. They tumbled to th
e ground, the bird scratching with its talons, which were no match for Monda-ak’s teeth and the sheer force of his weight.
The arrows were not enough to kill the karak-ta—their hides were too thick to allow a killing blow. But each arrow that struck home knocked one of the winged beasts off its intended target and sent it plummeting to the beach in a heap.
Alex was never one to wait for the battle to be brought to him, so he charged forward, swinging his axe at the mid-section of the first bird, then whirling and slashing with the cudgel at a second. Both blows struck home.
He lifted the first bird, who was quivering and shaking at the end of his axe. He whirled it over his head with a primordial battle cry and flung it dead to the ground. The second karak-ta was stunned but tried to find its balance. Alex kicked it in its oversized head and delivered a second, killing blow with the cudgel.
Seeing Alex kill two of the birds at once brought renewed vigor to the injured warriors and they stepped toward the birds that were stalking them, swinging their heavy clubs in a deadly arc.
Senta-eh saw that their arrows were of limited effectiveness and shouted, “Swords and clubs! Attack them, but watch the sky for more,” then ran forward, lifting her stabbing sword over her head and sprinting toward the melee. She announced her arrival with a clean beheading of one of the karak-ta that was preparing to leap on Alex’s back.
All seven of the Winten-ah warriors had been part of Alex’s Army when they had invaded Denta-ah years earlier. They had trained together, learned to trust each other, and act as one.
The karak-ta had miniscule brains, but savage killing instincts. They slashed with their sharp beaks and did their best to hop up onto the shoulders of the invading humans, mostly to no effect.
The humans did not escape uninjured, but they did escape.
The beach resembled a karak-ta graveyard, with severed heads, wings, and torsos scattered everywhere.
When the last squawking beast had been put down, Alex, Senta-eh, and the others kneeled and caught their breath.
“This is not a place to rest,” Senta-eh said almost instantly. “We need to move on.”
Alex agreed and pushed to his feet. He took in the injuries of the warriors and helped the most-injured man to his feet. “Put your arm around my shoulder.” He glanced around and saw that everyone who was too hurt to walk unaided had a guide to help them.
He called Monda-ak to him and looked for wounds, but there were only superficial scratches.
They limped off the beach and away from the karak-ta.
At the beach where Alex had first stepped through the door, they found the other young men who had fled the karak-ta. Their heads hung low and Alex could see their shame at having run from the battle. He handed off the injured man he had been helping to one of them—Alex was really too short to serve as a crutch for the native Winten-ah.
“Do not look ashamed. You did not do anything wrong. You kept to the plan, which was the right thing to do. I am the one who lost my head and charged into battle without thinking. If anyone should be ashamed, it is me.”
The four warriors looked shocked at that idea. One spoke up. “You are Manta-ak and you saved their lives.”
“We saved their lives,” Alex said, including Senta-eh and her bowmen. “And by acting without thinking, I endangered their lives too. It turned out well, but it was foolish.”
Basically, do as I say, not as I do.
The three boys who had been assigned to gather the karak-ta eggs after the disruptors had attracted the birds’ attention came running up a different path, laughing and celebrating. They quickly fell silent when they saw the injured men.
“Do you have the eggs?” Alex asked.
“Det,” they answered as one, holding up the sacks full of large eggs as proof.
“We killed too many,” Alex said. “We’ll need to delay the next trip to give them time to replenish the population. That’s a decision for Sekun-ak and the council, though.”
Alex took a mental inventory of their condition. Senta-eh, her bowmen, and the three egg runners were all uninjured. The four distractors who Alex had passed on his rescue mission had minor injuries, but nothing that would slow them too much.
The two men who had fallen off the rocks in an attempt to get away were the worst off. They would need help to make it back to the cliffside.
Alex hadn’t felt any injury while he fought, but now Senta-eh stepped forward, knelt, and examined a long gash that started at his collarbone and extended almost to his waist.
“Bring me the bag,” she said over her shoulder, and one of her bowmen stepped forward with the medical supplies, such as they were. She took the bag and said, “We will likely not have an easy journey home. We may need all our arrows to cross the plain. Run back and retrieve the unbroken arrows from the bodies of the birds.”
One of the four men who had run from the karak-ta gestured to his group and said, “Let us go.”
Senta-eh put two fingers against her forehead and settled in to wrap Alex’s chest. As soon as she finished with that job, she and Alex worked together to bandage the wounds of the two who had fallen.
By the time they had done what they could, the runners returned with the arrows that could be salvaged.
When they hit the forested area, Alex used his axe to chop several saplings and cut them into the proper lengths to help the injured walk.
By the time they had walked through the valley and reached the plain of the dire wolves, the sun was already low in the sky. They hiked up the hill and camped in the same spot where Alex had spent his first night as a captive.
When he went into the forest to relieve himself, he remembered not to urinate on the tree, which he now knew would disturb the giant cockroaches that lived in the treetops.
They had not planned on stopping on the return trip, but the battle with the karak-ta and ensuing injuries had slowed them so they knew they wouldn’t make it across the plain until after dark. They were already concerned with their ability to fight off the dire wolves. Attempting to do so in the dark was unthinkable.
They next morning, they stepped onto the waving grass of the plain just as full light blossomed.
Their one advantage was that so early in the spring, the grass hadn’t grown to its full height. Typically, the prairie grass grew until it was above the waist of even the tallest warrior. The dire wolves used it as camouflage, walking with their bellies close to the ground until they were ready to strike at their prey.
On this trip, though, where the grass was only knee-high, the Winten-ah knew they would be able to see the wolves coming at a distance. Or so they hoped.
Spending the night sleeping on the hard ground had done nothing to improve the ability of those injured to make good time. Alex knew they would make an inviting target.
Still, as they limped across the plain, they were undisturbed by the wolves or any other predator.
We might get lucky on this trip.
That was the moment that Senta-eh’s sharp eyes caught movement off to her right.
Typically, the wolves tried to encircle the humans before attacking. With the grass not offering as much camouflage, the prowling wolves abandoned that strategy.
Instead, they came charging directly at the humans, sprinting, gobbling up the distance between them at a frightening rate. They didn’t howl before they attacked, but snarls and snapping jaws still erupted from them as they ran.
The Winten-ah collapsed together, forming a circle with the most-injured in the middle.
Alex had his axe and cudgel, but for the initial charge he wanted a different weapon. He reached back and grabbed a heavy spear from one of the injured men. Instead of waiting for the pack to reach them, he charged straight toward the huge animals.
The lead wolf leapt when it was still twenty feet from Alex, aiming directly at his head and neck. Much as he had once done when fighting the dandra-tas, Alex knelt at the last moment and planted the butt of the spear in the ground.
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br /> The wolf tried to twist away, but its momentum was too much, and the tip of the spear ran through its throat and out through the top of its head.
Alex didn’t bother to look at the wolf flopping about in its death throes, but instead gripped his two-bladed axe and loosed a primordial scream as he lunged at the next wolf. He sidestepped the charge and swung the axe in an overhand arc. The sharp blade bit deep behind the wolf’s head and stuck firm. The beast was incapacitated, but its hurtling velocity pulled Alex along behind, as the axe was tied to his wrist.
Alex worked to free the axe but looked up in time to see a third wolf charging directly at him.
And then Monda-ak and all the warriors of Winten-ah stepped between him and the rest of the wolves, brandishing teeth, spears, swords, and stone hammers.
Alex finally wedged his axe loose and looked up to see that the rest of the pack had turned and run.
They had survived another encounter with the dire wolves intact.
Chapter Three
Traders
When the hunting party returned to Winten-ah with the eggs, they turned them over to the men and women who processed them. The processing allowed the eggs to retain their psychotropic qualities for several weeks without spoiling.
Sekun-ak immediately sent runners to the nearest villages to let them know that there were eggs available for trade.
That gave Alex an idea, so he approached Sekun-ak.
“How long will the eggs stay good?”
“Once we’ve processed them, if we keep them cool and dry, they retain their dream quality for as much as a moon cycle. They don’t taste as fresh and lovely by then, but they still have the same impact. Some say it is even greater.”
“It is a lot to ask, but would you give me one of the prepared eggs?”
Sekun-ak smiled. “I know you do not want to eat an entire egg. We would likely never wake you up again. What do you want to do with it?”
“I want to take it to Rinta-ah. They have something that will be valuable to us. They have said they will just give it to us, but I prefer to take something of value to them. A karak-ta egg would be perfect.”
