The shooter mulled this a moment, then nodded grudging approval. Save for Smiggens, the seamen were not an educated bunch. Neither were they stupid. Stupid pirates didn’t live very long. The party moved on.
Anbaya found not snakes, but a grove of papayas. The men lingered there, eating their fill, until the Malay Treggang came running back into the grove, his face frozen not in fear, but in amazement.
“Come quick, Captain, Mr. Smiggens, you all come quick now! ”
“Settle down, man.” Blackstrap wiped juice and seeds from his mouth. They lingered in his mustache. “What’s the trouble?”
The Malay was fairly hopping back the way he’d come, beckoning frantically. “ You come see, Captain sir, come see now! ”
“What the devil is he on about?” Irritated, Blackstrap drew his cutlass. “Speak up, man, or I’ll cut out your tongue!”
“We not only ones gathering fruit! ”
“Natives?” Rising from where they’d been sitting or leaning, the other men were instantly alert.
“No natives, no natives. You come see quick!” With that the Malay whirled and vanished back into the brush that filled the gaps between the trees.
“Can’t be all that bad if Treggang’s going back for another look.” Johanssen brushed papaya pulp from his trousers. “Might as well see if he’s found something or just gone mad.”
When they caught up with the excited crewman, he was crouching low within the brush and pointing. As soon as they discerned the nature of the other fruit gatherers, their eyes grew no less wide than the Malay’s, quite irrespective of individual ancestry.
Not only were the creatures methodically gathering fallen papaya not natives, they were not even human. Nor were they the monkeys Smiggens had hoped to encounter.
“What in the name of all that’s sanctified be those?” Blackstrap strained for a better view.
Alone among the landing party, only Chin-lee, an escaped thief from Canton, was confident he knew.
“There dragons here, Captain!”
Blackstrap turned a dubious gaze on the smaller man. “Dragons?”
Chin-lee nodded energetically. “Yessee, sir! Dragons.”
Smiggens was as stunned by the sight as any of them, but of one thing he was certain: there were no such things as dragons. They were medieval superstitions, though the source of such legends was now plain to see. These creatures weren’t even especially impressive. Dragons were monstrous beasts armed with fang and claw, who breathed fire and left devastation in their wake.
These beasts, for all their self-evident uniqueness, had not a fang among them and ate fruit, and all they left in their wake were papaya seeds.
But if not dragons, then what were they?
Altogether they were five: two adults (or at least two larger specimens) and three smaller ones. Their undersides varied from beige to a pale yellow in color, while intricate rose-colored mottling decorated their necks, backs, and tail. They had long, slim necks held erect in a flexible S curve; narrow, birdlike snouts; slim tails that extended stiffly out behind them like rudders; and wide, active eyes. The mature specimens stood six and seven feet tall, while the smaller trio varied in height between five and six. Lissome of build, even the adults did not appear to weigh more than a couple of hundred pounds.
“See there, see!” Mkuse gestured at the browsing wonders. “Keep your voice down, man!” Blackstrap growled, even as he saw what the Zulu was pointing at. A leather pouch of some kind was slung over the shoulder of the tallest specimen.
Blackstrap turned to his first mate. “See the pouch. But how did this beast get hold of it?”
Smiggens considered. “Probably it was hanging on a tree where it had come to rest and these creatures came running past. Or it floated in from a wreck. That big one caught it on its neck and it’s hung there ever since. They’re probably used to it, since it doesn’t seem to be bothering them. See how they use their front paws to pull down the branches.”
“The Chinaman thinks they be dragons. What about you, Preister? Have you ever seen the like?”
“No, Captain.” Smiggens’s brow furrowed. “They have the aspect of lizards, but they walk on two legs. It seems to me I should know what they are, but the identification escapes me.”
“I have seen like them.” The Zulu had moved up alongside Blackstrap. “In my homeland, but with feathers.” Both men turned to the warrior. “The Dutch have a word for them, too, but the English say ‘ostrich.’ ”
“Ostrich,” Smiggens murmured. Indeed, the wondrous creatures looked very much like that famous flightless bird.
To be more exact, like one whose feathers had been blown off in a storm. Perhaps these were near relatives who molted completely at certain times of the year. But looking at them, that explanation didn’t seem to fit, either. For one thing, no ostrich or any other bird had long, dexterous, clawed forearms. Those aside, the similarities were astonishing. “Dragons.” Chin-lee was insistent. “But little ones.” “They’re not much bigger than we are,” pointed out Samuel, the black American. “Tall, but not heavy.”
As the men watched from cover, the creatures continued their foraging, seeking out the ripest papayas and varying this diet with large, fat white grubs dug from the trunk of a fallen tree. Occasional thorns slid harmlessly off their tough hides. The colorful patterns visible on several of the sensitive faces seemed almost to have been painted on. Occasionally they chirped and whistled at one another. The smaller individuals were especially vocal.
The pirates had no way of knowing, and would not have believed in any case, that these intricate whistlings constituted complex communication, that they were in fact a highly evolved language. It never occurred to them that the family of Struthiomimuses they were so avidly spying upon was anything other than a clutch of dumb animals. As far as they were concerned, the leather pouch worn by the adult male was present as the result of blind accident, nothing more.
Relaxing near the end of their extended camping and foraging trip, the struthie family was assured of their solitude. Certainly they felt in no danger. It was impossible for the carnosaurs of the Rainy Basin to reach the Northern Plains; therefore there wasn’t anything to threaten them except the occasional poisonous snake. Even the children knew enough to keep a wary eye out for those. So their attention was focused on the trees and the ground and little in between.
When not picking fruit or eating, the three siblings chased each other around trees and through bushes, playing an elaborate game of tag in which tails were off limits. Mother and father lingered nearby, letting the children romp. They would be back at studies soon enough. All three were fleet of foot, agile and graceful in their leaps and sudden changes of direction. The fruit-gathering expedition was in the nature of a reward for their eldest, Keelk, who had performed exceptionally well in the most recent Junior Olympics at Pooktook.
Unlike humans on a campout, the Struthiomimuses needed little in the way of gear, being quite able and even eager to live off the land. The Northern Plains were a bountiful place and there’d been no trouble finding adequate food. Normally they would have stayed with different farm families along the way, but the humans and dinosaurs who usually worked the land had recently been compelled to move to higher, drier ground.
So they had slept out in the open, beneath the canopy of stars. Humans did the same, when the climate was sufficiently salubrious. But this was a family outing, and they had come alone.
Shremaza looked over at her mate, half a papaya held loosely in one limber, clawed hand. “We should be starting back toward Bent Root,” she whistled eloquently, not seeing the men crouched low in the dense brush.
Hisaulk’s body did not move, but with his long, flexible neck he had no difficulty looking directly back over his body. “I know. Probably we shouldn’t even have come here. It’s depressing to see all the abandoned farms. But the children would have been 50 disappointed. They’ve been looking forward to this for a long time. Just the family, alone
in the countryside, away from civilization, living off the land in the manner of the ancient ones.”
Her head bobbed with precision. All the ornithomimosaurs had evolved an intricate language of neck and body gestures to emphasize their whistling speech. It was mirrored, to a lesser extent, by the equally long-necked but much less flexible sauropods. Privately the ornithomimosaurs thought their much larger relatives clumsy body speakers, though they did not make a point of saying so. It would have been discourteous.
Besides, it was impolitic to laugh at someone several hundred times your weight.
Together they turned to watch the children. Content, they entwined their necks, looking for all the world like a pair of oversized naked swans.
“Interesting behavior.” Smiggens kept low. “I’ve never heard of ostriches doing that.”
“And what do you know of ostrich behavior, Smiggens?”
Blackstrap turned to the attentive Zulu. “What say you, Mkuse?”
“Ostrich are not common where I come from, Captain.”
“It doesn’t matter” Smiggens insisted. “These aren’t ostriches. I don’t think they’re even close relatives. They just look alike.” “Then what the blazes are they?” snapped another member of the crew from behind.
“I don’t know.” The first mate strained to remember something from long ago, but without success. “It strikes me that I’ve seen something very different and yet like them once before, many years ago.”
“Many years ago, indeed.” Blackstrap eyed his mate. “I wasn’t aware that you’d been to Africa, Mr. Smiggens.”
“Haven’t, Captain. No, the things I saw that were like these I saw ... in London.”
“London!” Blackstrap nearly burst out laughing but remembered to keep his voice down. They didn’t want to send the creatures fleeing in panic. “I thought John Bull rode horses for his amusement, not naked birds.” A couple of the men chuckled Softly, the wind camouflaging their amusement. “What I saw wasn’t alive,” the first mate replied, undeterred. “What you saw was the bottom of a grog tankard, most likely.” Blackstrap’s eyes glittered as they tracked the delicately prancing creatures. “Has it occurred to you, Mr. Smiggens, what such marvelous beasts might be worth to a circus or zoological society?”
“Worth?” Smiggens blinked. “No, Captain, I hadn’t thought on it.”
“Then do so.” Blackstrap clutched the first mate’s shoulder. “What would you say, then? How much am I bid for the world’s only bird-dragon?”
“There’s no way to say. I’m sure no one’s ever seen anything like them anywhere before. They’re absolutely unprecedented. If I could only remember ...” His voice trailed off in frustration.
Blackstrap looked back at Chin-lee. “How much one of the Hongs pay for a live dragon, eh?”
“Anything, Captain. Gold, slaves, silks, whatever you ask for, they pay.”
“I thought as much. A thousand gold sovereigns?”
“Anything! You ask, they pay.”
The big man turned back to the struthies. “We’ll have the bloody Hongs bidding against each other, and the English against the Americans. We’ll sell one beast per country and up the price as our stock diminishes. And we won’t have to kill anyone. Think of it, man!” He shook Smiggens. “’Tis a prize greater than any bloated merchantman!”
“Yes,” Smiggens murmured, sounding oddly detached, “a great prize.”
“Come on, then.” Blackstrap directed a silent retreat back through the brush, leaving only Anbaya and Mkuse to keep watch on their intended victims.
“You two!” He gave the order to O’Connor and Chumash as soon as it was safe to talk. “Get yourselves back to the ship. Bring back all the ropes and nets you can carry, and another dozen men.”
“But the repairs, Captain—” someone started to argue.
“Hang the repairs! They can wait. We don’t know how many of these things there be, and if we hesitate we may lose our chance.”
“The boarding nets,” Smiggens suggested.
“Aye, to be sure, the boarding nets!” Blackstrap agreed enthusiastically. “Sound thinking, Mr. Smiggens.” There were several of these, large fishing nets acquired in Manila. Stronger than was needed for simple fishing, weighted on the outside, they were dropped when boarding a prize vessel from that ship’s own rigging, to entangle and confuse her defenders. Properly employed, they would make an ideal and inescapable trap.
If the crew could take the creatures by surprise, Smiggens decided, they could indeed make them captives. The creatures had powerful hind legs, but the forearms seemed weaker. And they had no teeth, only sharp but in no way formidable beaks. The thing was doable.
“Like as not we’ll only have one chance.” He was now fully caught up in the spirit of the enterprise. “You’ve all seen their hind legs. I’ll wager they can outrun any man, and without strain.”
“Let’s see them outrun a net.” Blackstrap waved at his designated runners. “Be off with you, then, and there’s an extra
gold piece for the man what reaches the ship first.” At that the two seamen whirled and vanished into the brush, the sound of their departure quickly fading behind them.
It wasn’t an easy thing to keep an eye on the Struthio-mimuses without alarming them, but among the crew of the Condor were men who had spent much of their lives evading pursuit. In addition, individuals like Anbaya and Mkuse knew the ways of many animals and were themselves experienced trackers. Though their quarry gradually began to wander southward, the tense pirates managed to keep them in sight. It helped that the creatures paused frequently to eat or to gather around unremarkable rocks and logs to chitter and whistle mysteriously at one another.
Throughout it all the creatures remained quite unaware that while they were studying the land, others were studying them.
V
hisaulk rose with the sun. Opening his jaws a full hundred and eighty degrees, he yawned prodigiously before clapping them shut with a snap. Remaining in his sleeping position, his legs folded neatly beneath him, he reached out with a hand to caress the back of his slumbering mate. Shremaza was still asleep, her neck coiled to allow her to rest her head on her
back.
At his touch her neck straightened. She whistled softly at him and they touched beaks, opening and closing them in a series of rapid jawing movements, clicking affectionately against one another in an intricate and meaningful duet. Then she rose, her legs straightening beneath her, the long narrow tail thrust out stiffly behind. The children slept soundly nearby, three rose-hued lumps in a pile of moss and soft green leaves.
Hisaulk turned to the sunrise, which was enhanced rather than muted by the storm clouds that seemed to hover just offshore.
“A beautiful morning, though if those clouds come onshore we’ll get wet.” A quiver ran down his spine as he stretched. “I’ll wake the children.”
Striding over to the makeshift mattress of leaves and moss, he gently drew the back of two fingers along each slender neck in turn. The youngsters woke slowly, rising and expanding like flowers under his caress.
“Must we go, Father?” The youngest of the three, Tryll, rose and stretched, kicking out first one leg and then the other as she shook off the clinging vestiges of sleep.
“It is time. We are due back in Bent Root, and there’s no telling when the storm will finally strike.” He gestured seaward. “The signs are not good. If it’s as bad as they have been saying, we don’t want to be caught out here on the plains. Not after everyone else has already left. By this evening I want us to be on higher ground.”
She nodded as her brother and sister performed their morning exercises around her. Struthiomimuses as well as their close cousins the dromaeosaurs, oviraptorosaurs, and others were very fond of an introduced human exercise called tai chi, and had made it a part of their morning ritual. Their intricate and precise execution was not noticed by the group of pirates nearby, most of whom were resting at a distance. The pair on watch listened o
nly for rustling in the bushes and looked only for flashes of color, and in so doing missed a demonstration that might well have changed their opinion of the intelligence of their intended quarry.
After a breakfast of fruit and bugs, and a last look at the comfortable temporary bower in which they’d spent the night, they departed on a course intended to take them up into the higher foothills. A day’s walk would bring them to the trail that ran into a major road linking the mountain towns with the farms of the Northern Plains.
The youngsters darted in and out of bushes, exercising their growing legs. Energetic, excited whistles and clicks filled the air, counterpoint to the bird song that drifted down from the trees. The two adults maintained an easy, measured pace, keeping their strides short. This was, after all, their final day of vacation and they saw no reason not to make it last.
There was no need to keep a lookout. Save for the threatening storm, the Northern Plains were devoid of danger. A nice place to live, Hisaulk mused, if one didn’t mind picking up and leaving every six years. Completely at ease, he let the children set the pace.
The botanical blend through which they walked was unusual even for Dinotopia. Tree ferns and cecropias grew side by side with pines, small firs, and palm trees. Mango, papaya, starfruit, and rambutan shared fruiting space with the ancestors of modern berries.
There being no farms or other habitations in this section of the foothills, the path they followed was thickly overgrown from long disuse. As the vegetation closed in around them, the youngsters‘fell in behind their parents, who with their larger bodies could more easily make a path through the verdure. Shremaza would be glad when they finally picked up the farm path. From there it would be a short walk to the Galinga road.
She smiled as she remembered how Arimat had argued for remaining still another day or two. “I'm not afraid of any storm!” the youth had declared. Patiently she and Hisaulk had explained that a six-year storm was no ordinary northeaster, and that the absolute worst place for a sensible dinosaur to be caught out in one happened to be the Northern Plains. He was mildly rebellious, Arimat was, and needed strong schooling.
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