Part 13 (2/2)
She ignored my question. Eating the other egg was out of the question now, even though it never opened that evening and was still not open the following morning. Our dinner consisted of a single rat-sized reptile that I managed to run down before darkness fell, and a clutch of melons that I picked from a bush, the first recognizable fruit I had seen.
In the morning Anya made it clear that she had no intention of leaving our baby duckbill behind.
”We'll have to feed it,” I complained.
”It eats plants,” she countered. ”It's not like a mammal that needs its mother's milk.”
I was anxious to get away from this hilltop ma.s.sacre site and leave it to the scavenging pterosaurs. Our best defense against whoever had directed the attack on the duckbills was to keep moving. Anya agreed, but our pace that morning was terribly slow because the little duckbill could not trot along with any real speed. It seemed to show no curiosity about the world around it, as a puppy would. It merely followed Anya the way ducklings fixate on the first moving object they see, believing it to be their mother.
Anya seemed quite content with motherhood. She picked soft pulpy leaves for her baby and even chewed some of them herself before feeding the little beast.
I had brought something quite different from the duckbill boneyard: a forearm bone that fit my hand nicely and had the proper size and heft to be an effective club. We had to make tools and weapons if we were to survive.
Why we had to survive, what our goal might be beyond mere physical survival, was a total blank to me. Oh, I knew we were supposed to be battling against Set and whatever plans he had for this period in time. But how the two of us, alone and practically defenseless, were supposed to overcome Set and his people-that was beyond my reckoning. we had to survive, what our goal might be beyond mere physical survival, was a total blank to me. Oh, I knew we were supposed to be battling against Set and whatever plans he had for this period in time. But how the two of us, alone and practically defenseless, were supposed to overcome Set and his people-that was beyond my reckoning.
Despite my misgivings, Anya set us out on the tracks of the tyrannosaurs.
”The humanoids went with them,” she said, pointing at the smaller tracks set in between the giant prints of the tyrants.
”Some distance behind them,” I guessed.
”I suppose so. We must find those humanoids, Orion, and learn from them what Set is doing.”
”That won't be easy.”
She smiled at me. ”If it were easy, it would have already been done. You and I are not meant for easy tasks, Orion.”
I could not make myself smile back at her. ”If they can truly control the tyrannosaurs, we haven't a chance in h.e.l.l.”
Anya's smile wilted.
We quickly saw that the tyrannosaur tracks led back toward the swamps we had quit only a few days earlier. I felt miserably disheartened to be returning to that fetid, humid, steaming gloom. I wanted to run as far away from there as possible. For the first time in my lives I was feeling real fear, a terror that was dangerously close to panic.
Anya overlooked my brooding silence. ”It makes sense that Set's headquarters here would be very close to the place where we entered this s.p.a.cetime. Maybe we can use his warping device in reverse and return to the Neolithic when we're finished here.”
”Return to his fortress?”
She ignored my question. ”Orion, do you realize that the tyrannosaurs left their usual habitat there in the lowlands, marched up to the duckbills' nesting area to slaughter them, and then returned immediately back to the swamps? They must must have been under Set's control.” have been under Set's control.”
I agreed that it did not seem likely that the giant carnivores would trek all the way to the nesting site and back without some form of outside stimulus.
We camped that evening by a large, placid lake, on a long curving beach of clean white sand so fine it almost felt like powder beneath our feet. The beach was some twenty to thirty yards wide, then gave way to a line of gnarled, twisted cypresses festooned with hanging moss and, behind them, tall coconut palms and feathery fringe-leafed ferns that rose like gigantic swaying fans.
The sand was far from smooth, though. It was crisscrossed with the prints of innumerable dinosaurs: blunt deep hooves of ma.s.sive sauropods, birdlike claws of smaller reptiles, and the powerful talons of carnosaurs. They all came to this sh.o.r.e to drink-and, some of them, to kill.
As the sun dropped toward the horizon, turning sky and water both into lovely pastel pinks and blue greens, I saw a streak of brilliant red and orange drop out of the sky and plunge into the lake. In half a moment it popped to the surface with a fish flapping in its toothy jaws.
The thing looked more like a lizard than a bird, with its long, toothed snout and longer tail. But it was feathered, and its forelimbs were definitely wings. Instead of taking off again, though, it paddled to the water's edge and waddled up onto the sh.o.r.e, then turned to face the setting sun and spread its wings wide, as if in wors.h.i.+p.
”It can't fly again until it dries its wings,” Anya surmised.
”I wonder how it tastes,” I muttered back to her.
If the lizard-bird heard our voices or felt threatened by them, it gave no indication. It simply stood there on the sh.o.r.e of the gently lapping wavelets, drying its feathers and digesting its fish dinner.
Suddenly I realized that we could do the same. ”How would you like to eat fish tonight?” I asked Anya.
She was sitting by a clump of bushes, feeding the little duckbill again. It seemed to eat all day long.
Without waiting for her to reply, I waded out into the shallow calm water, turning hot pink in the last rays of the dying sun. The lizard-bird clacked its beak at me and waddled a few paces away. It took only a few minutes for me to spear two fish. I felt happy with the change in our diet.
Anya had spent the time gathering more shrubs for our baby duckbill to nibble. And a handful of berries. The dinosaur ate them with seeming relish.
”If they don't hurt him, perhaps we can eat them, too,” she said as I started the fire.
”Maybe,” I acknowledged. ”I'll sample one and see how it affects-”
The duckbill suddenly emitted a high-pitched whistle and scooted to Anya's side. I scrambled to my feet and stared into the gathering darkness of the woods that lined the lakesh.o.r.e. Sure enough, I heard a cras.h.i.+ng, crunching sound.
”Something heading our way,” I whispered urgently to Anya. ”Something big.”
There was no time to douse the fire. We were too far from the edge of the trees to get to them safely. Besides, that was where the danger seemed to be coming from.
”Into the water,” I said, starting for the lake.
Anya stopped to pick up the duckbill. It was as motionless as a statue, yet still a heavy armful. I grabbed it from her and, tucking its inert body under one arm, led Anya out splas.h.i.+ng into the lake.
We dove into the water as soon as we could, me holding the duckbill up so it could breathe. It wiggled slightly, but apparently had no fear of the water. Or perhaps it was more terrified of whatever was heading our way from the woods. The lake water was tepid, too warm to be refres.h.i.+ng, almost like swimming in lukewarm bouillon.
We went out deep enough so that only our heads showed above the surface. The duckbill crawled onto my shoulder with only a little coaxing and I held him there with one arm, treading water with Anya beside me, close enough to grasp if I had to.
The woods were deeply shadowed now. The trees seemed to part like a curtain and a towering, terrifying tyrannosaur stepped out, his scaly hide a lurid red in the waning sunset.
The tyrant took a few ponderous steps toward our campfire, seemed to look around, then gazed out onto the water of the lake. I realized with a sinking heart that if it saw us and wanted to reach us, it had merely to wade out and grab us in those monstrous serrated teeth. The water that was deep enough for us to swim in would hardly come up to its hocks.
Sure enough, the tyrannosaur marched straight to the water's edge. Then it hesitated, looking ridiculously like a wrinkled old lady afraid of getting her feet wet.
I held my breath. The tyrannosaur seemed to look straight at me. The trembling package of frightened duckbill on my shoulder made no sound. The world seemed to stand still for an eternally long moment. Not even the lapping waves seemed to make a noise.
Then the tyrannosaur gave an enormous huffing sigh, like a blast from a blacksmith's forge, and turned away from the lake. It stamped back into the woods and disappeared.
Almost overcome with relief, we swam sh.o.r.eward and then staggered out of the water and threw ourselves onto the sandy ground.
Only to hear an eerie hooting whistle coming out of the twilight on the lake.
Looking around, I saw the enormous snaky neck of an aquatic dinosaur rising, rising up from the depths of the lake, higher and higher like an enormous escalator of living flesh silhouetted against the glowing pastel sunset. Our duckbill wriggled free of my arms and ran to worm his body as close to Anya as he could.
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