Slave in the City of Dragons (Dinosaurs and Gladiators Book 1)

by Angela Angelwolf

  Klonak would have none of it. “You will marry Terrik,” he said. “At the first new moon.”

  Three days. Pashera’s heart sank even deeper. Her jaws worked as she tried to find an objection.

  “You are speechless? Not surprising,” Klonak smiled through trance berry-stained teeth. “It is a great honor for you, I know.” He shrugged. “We would do it sooner, but the women need time to prepare. Your mother will be very happy. I know she worries.”

  “Your son …” Pashera started, struggling to find breath, “I would marry …”

  And before she could gasp out, “… an axe-beak bird before I’d marry your son,” screaming exploded behind the shaman.

  Klonak whirled to see what the trouble was.

  The village of the Long Spears nestled up against a cliff. On one side, a palisade ringed the village, running all the way down to the water’s edge by the lake. The lake was a big one, and it came right to the cliffs on the other side. A stream came in from the west and poured over the cliff; it tumbled down the rocky face and crashed to earth in a waterfall that ended in a series of ponds. These ponds opened up to the lake. There were also hidden, cool caves by the waterfall – and the grotto where Magwalra had opened Pashera’s eyes to a world of forbidden delights this morning.

  The wailing came from the eastern side of the village, near the gate in the palisade. So many people were yelling that the raw noise was shocking. Klonak hustled toward the outcry as fast as he could wobble; the girls followed close behind.

  The crisis was revealed in outraged shouts. A dagger-toothed cat had grabbed one of the younger children – a girl – while she dawdled near the apple trees a stone’s throw outside the palisade. A hunter – not her father, but Gimletak, son of Trobojak the Fierce – ran to her aid.

  Now the tribe was missing both a young girl and one of its best hunters.

  Worse, there was at least one dagger-toothed cat that had developed a taste for human blood.

  The Chief was trying to calm the calamitous circus of terrified people milling around the palisade gates. The girl’s mother screeched, calling on the Devouring God to be merciful. Relatives, male and female alike, joined in the noisy lament. In groups away from the lamentation, hunters shouted at each other, arguing.

  Klonak left the girls and waded into the fray.

  Suddenly, a plan hit Pashera like a bolt of lightning. She knew it was either the smartest or the stupidest plan she’d ever had in her life, and she wasn’t going to waste time thinking about which one it might be. She turned to Magwalra and took her friend’s hand.

  “You must distract them,” she said. “If they look for me.”

  “What do you mean?” Magwalra asked.

  “No time to explain. But it’s important they not find me until I’m ready,” she told Magwalra. Otherwise they might come looking for me, she thought to herself. Then she leaned over and kissed her friend on the mouth, hot and passionate, stirring memories of their earlier embrace. “For luck.”

  Then she turned on her heel and ran back toward the cliff at the back of the village.

  On the way to the cliff, Pashera stopped by the boys’ ludus, now deserted in the hullaballoo.

  The younger boys trained using spears with flame-sharpened wooden tips – they weren’t trusted with flint-topped spears, by the hells, no! But a flame-sharpened wooden spear was all Pashera needed, and the boys’ spears were just that, as well as smaller and lighter than the long spears that gave the tribe its name. She looked over the spears scattered in the dust, and picked through until she found one that looked the right size, straight, and sharp enough.

  She also picked up a flint knife – large and deadly, its hilt wrapped in dry grass for a better grip. She tucked into the twisted grass belt around her waist.

  A spear, knife, her skirt, fetish necklace and ornamental headband were all she wore and carried. It was all she needed. Or rather, it better be.

  She dashed for the cliff. Her plan depended on her not being stopped by a warrior before she got there, and she mouthed prayers to the Devouring God, even though she told herself she didn’t really believe in him.

  Hard running carried her to the cliff very swiftly. Pashera knew there was a trail that led up the cliff. It went right beside the water. Sure enough, she found it.

  Calling it a path was a stretch. Goats would have trouble on this trail, which is why the tribe didn’t bother to guard it. Pashera climbed. She climbed furiously. Twice she nearly slipped off, and the second time would have been a drop to her doom. Finally, streaming sweat out of every pore on her body, panting great heaves of breath, she stood at the top of the cliff.

  The village stretched away in front of her like an anthill. Small figures still clustered around the gate, though Pashera could see that two parties of hunters had exited the gate, heading toward the plains and the trees beyond.

  Pashera turned away from the village. It was her first time outside it. She felt frightened, and yet also, oddly free. She dropped to her knees and drank deeply from the stream. The water was deliciously wet.

  Pashera stood again. She was already tired, but there was no time to waste.

  Here was her plan: Go to the swamp and find the carcass of one of the three-horned leatherbacks, and salvage its horns.

  That was something no hunter had done in a long, long time. The last horns had been salvaged by hunters who had ventured close to the swamps and found leatherback skeletons near edge of that primeval marshland. But go into the swamp? No!

  The tribe still sung stories about Dorthiak the Bold, and his adventures in the swamps. How he had slain many monsters, and returned with horns and other strange trophies.

  The songs also celebrated Dorthiak’s three brave companions who died in the swamp, but Pashera didn’t want to dwell on those unfortunates at the moment.

  If she came back with the trophies off a three-horned beast, she wouldn’t have to marry Terrik. She’d have the pick of the boys.

  Of course, what she was doing was strictly forbidden for any girl. But if she came back with the horns off a leatherback, there wouldn’t be any questions. At least, Pashera believed it to be so.

  Pashera knew what she had to do. She knew where she had to go. Following the stream, sticking to the short grass growing on its banks, she ran toward the trees of the forest, and beyond that the swamp. The short, tough grass felt soft under her bare, calloused feet.

  Lifting her eyes, she saw that she also ran toward the Holy Mountain. The Home of the Devouring God.

  “May he bless my journey,” she prayed, and picked up her speed.

  She stretched out her legs as she ran. Pashera won all the distance races with the other girls in the village; but being the fastest girl wasn’t much. The girls weren’t allowed to race against the boys, or mix with them much once they entered the trials of man- and womanhood.

  But Pashera had never run up here, away from the village. Rabbits and deer startled at her passage and bolted from her path. A herd of horses whirled out of the way; the tallest of them came up to her shoulder. Pashera laughed at the ruckus she was raising among the wildlife. Then a thought occurred to her: If she caught the attention of some of the more-deadly wildlife – like one of the thunder birds, giant bears or even, Devouring God help her, a dagger-toothed cat – her adventure would end before it started.

  So Pashera slowed down to a trot. She made sure to raise no dust and kept her footfalls as light as possible. What did the hunters call it? “The run of shadows.” That was it. Not being a boy, she’d never been trained in it. But she saw them practice it all the time. Anyway, she’d be able to keep up this pace all day if she had to.

  The grasslands beside the river grew narrower as trees crowded closer. Then Pashera was among the trees, but she could still keep a brisk pace close to the river. She was about to jump over a log when it shifted – a “river smiler,” the hunters called it. Sure enough, it opened its huge mouth and displayed rows of wicked-looking teeth. T
here was another one! Pashera realized that running next to the water was going to be impossible.

  So, she trekked into the forest. She kept the babble of the stream to her left, and followed a deer trail through the trees.

  Hours passed. The trees grew thicker. She passed spoor that she knew had to be from a bear, one of the big ones. Pashera tightened her grip on her spear and headed deeper into the forest, resolute.

  The babble of the stream had quieted to a whisper – and the afternoon was getting long -- when suddenly the forest ended. She was at a large pond. “Her” stream flowed out of it. And looking across the pond, Pashera could see the trees changed. Brown-black, wet roots rose out of the water into a tangle of dark, twisted branches that stretched up murky, lofty and somehow menacing. A riot of multi-colored birds swarmed the green tops of the trees. Insects swarmed, buzzing loudly. Something hooted, and was answered with a distant roar.

  She had reached the swamp. Now how to get there.

  To her left, across “her stream,” the shore curved around the pond. The pond narrowed, but not much – the water on that side stretched away into a turgid river that fed into the pond.

  To the right looked more promising. She could see another, broader stream led off that way, but there were rocks above the surface. Could she hop across?

  Her grip tightened on her spear. Of course she could.

  That hooting noise again. Wait, that wasn’t an owl …

  Pashera didn’t dare complete the thought.

  Something moved on the far bank of the pond, pushing its way out of the trees to a clearing on the side of the pond. Something big and brown and leathery and primeval, out of place in the Paleocene world. It was a throwback to an earlier age, even in such a dismal swamp.

  Pashera’s tribe saw very few of the leather-skinned beasts; they didn’t live long outside the swamp. It was as if some power deep in the swamp sustained them.

  There was more than one type of the primordial beasts. None of them had fur, which is why, as a group, the Long Spears called the creatures “leatherbacks.” The three-horned beasts were just the most common. But not nearly the most deadly.

  That would be the giant that wandered out of the swamp in great-great-grandfather’s time, a monster twice as tall as a man, with a mouth lined with more teeth than could be counted. That leatherback took down dozens of warriors before it died.

  But the three-horned beast was the kind the Devouring God, her tribe and the shamans favored.

  And this creature in front of her was a three-horned beast. The large bony plate or frill projecting from the back of its skull made this obvious. One short horn above its parrot-like beak and two longer horns confirmed it. Its head was huge! Its larger horns were half again as long as she was tall!

  Where there was one, there are more. That’s what the hunters always said about animals. Maybe an old one had died near its nest. She just had to follow this one back to its lair.

  But even if she did find the horns – they were gigantic! How would she ever get them home?

  First things first.

  The three-horned beast stumped up to the edge of the pond and honked again. The noise was loud and guttural, and something about it was so strange it raised the hairs on the back of Pashera’s neck. The beast nosed down to the water and drank deeply.

  “Praise you, Devouring God,” Pashera whispered. “I will never doubt you again.”

  She melted back into the trees as quietly as possible, then made her way stealthily for the other stream, where the pond narrowed. She moved as fast as she dared. She couldn’t let the leatherback get away.

  Soon she was at the stream. She mapped out a path across the rocks. While she could swim, she didn’t want to think what else might be swimming in that water, and she didn’t know if she could swim with her spear.

  She jumped to the first rock. Then the other. Then the third. And then disaster struck.

  The rock moved.

  Pashera knew she was in trouble as soon as her foot landed. The “rock” was slippery, wet and rubbery. It wasn’t rock at all. She was so surprised when her foot touched down that she almost fell into the water. She only regained her balance with great effort.

  The “rock” shifted. A head came up from the black water and turned to the side, a baleful eye glared at her. The rock began to sink slowly into the water.

  Pashera leaped to the safety of a rock further across the stream. She could see water rippling around it. This stream wasn’t shallow, she realized. It was very deep, and the water from the big turgid river channeled through this stream with great force. If she fell in, she’d likely drown.

  Her next leap brought her to a real rock. Behind her, the angry creature lifted a massive mouth out of the water and roared with fury. It moved closer.

  Pashera leaped again. Again the rock was wet and slippery beneath her feet – another water monster! This one sank as soon as she touched down. Pashera’s heart leapt, but she didn’t lose her wits. She planted her spear on the creature’s back and vaulted to the next rock.

  More of the creatures moved. Why they weren’t swept away in the current, Pashera couldn’t guess. But they were all staring at her accusingly, bellowing to each other with gusto.

  One more leap – Pashera was on the far side of the stream. She turned to see the flotilla of water monsters moving toward her. Could they come out of the water? The closest one chugged ashore, revealing the enormity of its bulk as it chased her into the trees. That answered her question.

  Pashera fled. But in only a minute, she was in trees so deep that she had trouble moving. How did the three-horn move through this nearly impenetrable thicket of undergrowth?

  There was only one way for Pashera to go – up. She climbed a tree one-handed, holding her spear at the ready. Insects swarmed around her, tasting to see if she was delicious. When Pashera made her way to upper, broader branches of the tree, she ran across them like a path in the sky. She trusted to the Devouring God and turned, hopefully, in the direction of the three-horn.

  She arrived at the water’s edge to find the beast gone. But how the three-horn made its way through the swamp became obvious. There was a great rip through the trees that extended from nearly the water’s edge back in a straight line for as far as she could see. Large trees had been blasted or torn out by the roots and flung to either side. This must have happened years ago, because the toppled trees were falling apart in rot, and bushes, young trees and other undergrowth crowded the floor of the rip. Caused by some disaster that Pashera couldn’t guess at, it was a natural highway for larger animals.

  Sticking to her trail up in the trees, Pashera followed the great rip in the greenery. She heard honking noises up ahead. She smiled.

  She nearly missed the three-horn. It was nestled in a hollow off to one side of the great rip, an empty space formed by the broken body of one of the great swamp trees. The three-horn chewed on some greenery contentedly, quietly.

  Pashera leaped from tree to tree. She moved with all the stealth she could muster. Despite the rustles of the branches, the three-horn didn’t notice her – the swamp was a noisy place. Nearby, a troop of monkeys engaged in a raucous argument with a family of leering lizards over insults real or imagined.

  She looked around. Did the three-horns shed their horns like a deer shed antlers? She had to investigate the nest. But that was tough to do with the great beast right in it.

  Slowly, quietly, Pashera maneuvered over the beast. She looked down.

  It was only a short drop to the leatherback’s back. Well, maybe not that short a drop. But she could see its shoulder blades right below her.

  Another idea occurred to her. An idea even more bold than her first one. She didn’t have to search for a leatherback carcass. She could make her own carcass right here, right now. She could take the horns from THIS leatherback.

  A small part of her brain sounded an alarm bell. No member of her tribe had killed a three-horned beast in living memory. Not sin
ce Dorthiak the Bold had anyone faced one of these strange animals while it was still breathing. And she was just a slip of a girl. The tribe had spent 16 summers hammering it into her head that women were worth much less than men. Except as mothers of warriors, they were insignificant. How could she dare to tackle such a task? It was impossible! It was outrageous to even think of it!

  Then something inside her boiled up, took those fears, and slapped them down hard. She’d spent the first 16 years of her life frightened of things that could happen, things that might happen … and things that might not happen. She spent countless hours fretting over who she would be married to, and if he would be a good husband. Her fate had never been in her hands.

  But now – yes, now, her fate was hers to hold. She just had to dare to reach out and grasp it.

  She’d show them. She’d show them all. She was a woman worthy of the highest rank. She was the daughter of Pasheak. She was a true member of the Long Spears tribe. She could do this and more. She would prove just how worthy she was.

  She poised her spear and tightened her grip on the flame-hardened wood. Then, swallowing her fear, she dropped down straight on the three-horned beast, thrusting with all her might at the beast’s back. She aimed for its heart.

  The spear went true, straight in, and deep. Blood spurted, red and hot, splashing Pashera.

  “Gaaaaiyi-ya!” Pashera screamed the war-cry of her people.

  The beast screamed and thrashed, nearly knocking Pashera off its back. She hung on to the deeply embedded spear for dear life. She would be dashed to pieces if she fell under its feet.

  The three-horn bolted. It crashed out of its hollow, across the great rip and into another tree. This impact finally sent Pashera flying, and she tumbled to the ground. But the great beast was done in. It slumped to the ground, writhing in agony. Pashera knew this was her moment. She pulled out her dagger. As the beast continued to thrash, she leapt and planted her dagger in its neck. Blood gushed out over her arms and face.

  The beast thrashed once more, and groaned a piteous noise that was the most terrible thing Pashera had ever heard. And then, heaving a wet, rattling breath, it died.