Orion in the Dying Time (7 page)

"It's fishing, not searching for us," said Chron.

I lifted an eyebrow. "Even a scout needs to eat."

The pterosaur spread its great wings again and took off, flapping hard and running on the water's surface with its webbed feet, then wobbled into the air and headed away from us, to the north.

"Come on," I said. "The dragons were here two or three days ago. If we're clever enough, maybe we can trap them while they're waiting to trap us."

CHAPTER 9

The dragons had left a clearly visible trail through the forest, trampling down bushes and even young trees as they headed back toward the savannah to the north. I saw that their immense three-clawed footprints headed only in the northerly direction. They had come down to the village more stealthily, along the riverbank or perhaps wading in the stream itself.

Yes, they were making it easy for us to follow them. I knew that they were waiting up ahead somewhere, waiting to spring their trap on us.

I made my tiny band of scouts stay well away from their trail. We moved through the deep forest as silently as wraiths, slipping through the dense foliage and thickly clustered trees, barely leaving a footprint. We struck for the high ground, the rocky hills that paralleled the river's course. We clambered up the bare rocks, and once at the top we could easily see the broad trail that the dragons had pounded out down among the trees.

Keeping down below the skyline on the far slope of the ridge, we soon found ourselves above the bowl of rock where we had made our camp months earlier.

And the dragons were there, an even dozen of them, eating.

The five of us flattened ourselves on the rim of the rock bowl and looked down at the giant lizards that had wiped out Kraal's village.

These monsters were considerably different from the beast I had slain so many months earlier. They were slightly bigger, bulkier, more than twenty feet from snout to tail. They walked on their two hind legs only, so that their fearsome heads could rise as much as fifteen feet above the ground. The forelegs were short and relatively slim, used for grasping. Their necks were short and thick, supporting massive heads that seemed to be almost entirely made of teeth the size and shape—and sharpness—of steak knives. Their tails were also shorter and much thicker than I had seen before.

Their colors varied from light dun brown to a mottled green, almost like camouflage. Then, as I watched them I realized that their coloration was camouflage; it changed like the coloring of a chameleon as the giant beasts moved slowly from one place on the canyon floor to another.

I recognized the stench wafting toward us; it was from the food they were eating. It took several moments for Chron and the others to understand. I felt his body go rigid beside me. I clamped my hand over his mouth, tightly. The others stirred but did not speak.

The dragons were eating dead human bodies. They must have carried the corpses with them from the village. As we watched in horrified silence I saw that they used the vicious claws on their forelegs to hold their prey and tore off huge chunks of meat with those serrated butcher's knives they had for teeth.

Despite their bulk I thought that they could run quite fast, faster than a human. Those short, thick tails might be useful for clubbing a victim at close quarters, and with those grasping talons and ripping teeth they were fearsomely armed.

At my signal we slithered backward down below the ridge line and crawled, then walked in utter silence for nearly half an hour before any of us said a word. Our copper-edged spears and knives seemed pitifully puny compared to the dragons' teeth and claws.

Even Chron seemed cowed. "How can the five of us kill those monsters?"

"Even if we had all the men from all the tribes, we wouldn't dare to attack them," said one of the others.

"They are fearsome beasts, true enough," I said. "But we have a weapon that they don't."

"Spears won't stop them."

"Their claws are bigger than our knives."

"The weapon we have is not held in our hands," I said. "It's up here." I tapped at my temple.

Coming down off the hillside, we made a wide circle northward and crossed the river at a shallow point where it frothed and babbled noisily white among broken rocks and flat-topped boulders. I kept a wary eye on the sky, but saw no pterosaurs.

Once under the trees on the far bank, I squatted on the sandy ground and drew a map with my finger. "Here is the bowl of the god who speaks, where the dragons are waiting for us, expecting us to walk into their trap. Here is the river. And here we are."

I explained what I wanted them to do. They were doubtful at first, but after a couple of repetitions they saw that my plan could work. If everything went off just the way I wanted it to.

We had another weapon that the dragons did not: fire. The dragons had used the cooking fires of the huts to help destroy the village by the lake. Now I intended to use fire and the element of surprise to destroy them.

We worked all night gathering dry brush for tinder. The floor of the canyon was strewn with bushes and clumps of trees that would burn nicely once ignited. The dragons would either be asleep or torpid, I reasoned, during the cool of the night. Reptiles become sluggish when the thermometer goes down. The time to strike would be just before dawn, the lowest temperature of the night.

My one fear was that they might have some sort of sentries. Perhaps heat-sensitive snakes such as the ones who had attacked us in our caves. My hope was that Set was arrogant enough to think that a band of five little humans would camp for the night and resume their journey only after the sun came up.

We made dozens of trips across the slippery wet rocks, carrying armloads of brush and dead branches from windfalls. The moon rose, a slim crescent that barely shed light, and close enough almost to touch its edge, that glowering red star rose with it. Swiftly, silently, we began to carry our cache of tinder toward the canyon.

I saw the looming dark shadow of a dragon at the canyon's mouth. It was sitting on its hind legs and thick tail, not moving. But I saw the ruddy light of the strange star glint off its eyes. It was awake.

A guard. A sentry. Devilish Set was not so arrogant after all.

I stopped the men behind me with an outstretched arm. They dropped their bundles and gasped at the monster looming in the night. It slowly swung its massive head in our direction. We backed away, hugging the wall of rock and its protective shadows.

The giant lizard did not come after us. To me it seemed half-asleep, languid.

"We can't get past it!" Chron whispered urgently.

"We'll have to kill it," I said. "And quietly, so that it doesn't rouse the others."

"How can—"

I silenced him with a finger raised to my lips. Then I commanded, "Wait here. Absolutely silent. Don't speak, don't move. But if you hear that monster roar, then run for your lives and don't look back for me."

I could sense the questions he wanted to ask, but there was no time for explanations or discussion. Without another word, I reached up for handholds on the steep cliff face and began climbing straight up.

The rock was crumbly, and more than once I thought I would plunge back to the bottom and break my neck. But after many sweaty minutes I found a ledge that ran roughly parallel to the ground. It was narrow, barely enough for me to edge along, one bare foot after the other. Flattened along the cliff, the rock still warm from the day's sunlight, I made my way slowly, stealthily, to a spot just above the dragon.

The soft hoot of an owl floated through the darkness. Crickets played their eternal scratchy melody while frogs from the riverbank peeped higher notes. Nothing in the forest realized that death was about to strike.

I nearly lost my footing and tumbled off as I turned myself around and pressed my back against the bare rock. Silently I drew my dagger from its sheath on my thigh. I would have one chance and one chance only to kill this monster. If I missed, I would be its next meal.

Taking only enough time to draw in a deep breath and gauge the distance to the dragon's back, I stepped off the ledge and into the empty air.

I dropped onto the monster's back with a thud that almost knocked the wind out of me. Before the dragon realized what had happened I rammed my dagger's blade into the base of his skull. I felt bone, or thick cartilage.

With every ounce of strength in me I pushed the blade in deeper.

I felt the beast die. One instant it was tense, vital, its monstrous head turning, jaws agape. The next it was collapsing like a pricked balloon, as inert as a stone. It fell face-first into the dirt, landing with a jarring crash that sounded to me like the result of an elephant falling off a cliff.

I lay clinging to the dragon's dead hide. For a few heartbeats the noises of the night ceased. Then the crickets and frogs took up their harmony again. Something canine bayed at the rising moon. And none of the other dragons seemed to stir.

I made my way back to the waiting men. Even in the darkness I could see their wide grins. Without wasting a moment, we began piling up our brushwood across the mouth of the canyon.

The sky was beginning to turn gray as we finished the last piece of it. The barrier we had erected looked pitifully thin. Still, it was the best we could do.

Chron and I crawled the length of the brushwood barrier. Through the tangle dry branches I could see the dragons sitting as stolid as huge statues near the cliff wall, tall enough for their snouts to reach the lowest of the caves in the rock face. Their eyes seemed to be open, but they were not moving at all, except for the slow rhythmic pulsing of their flanks as they breathed the deep, regular breath of sleep.

It took several moments for Chron to start a fire from a pair of dry sticks. But at last a tendril of smoke rose from his busy hands and then a flicker of flame broke out. I touched a stick to the flame as Chron plunged his burning brand into the brush. Then we scrambled to our feet and raced back along the length of the barrier, starting new fires every few yards.

The others had their own fire going nicely by the time we reached them. The whole barrier was in flames, the dry brush crackling nicely, bright tongues of hot fire leaping into the air.

Still the dragons did not stir. I feared that our fire would go out before it could ignite the bushes and trees of the canyon, so I got up and grabbed a burning branch. With this improvised torch I lit several clumps of bush and started a small batch of trees alight. Then the grass caught. Smoke and flames rose high and the wind carried them both deeper into the canyon.

The dragons began to stir. First one of them awoke and seemed to shake itself. It rose on its hind legs, tail held straight out above the ground, head tilting high, nose in the air. A second dragon came to life and hissed loudly enough for us to hear it over the crackle of the flames. Then all the others seemed to awaken at once, shaking and bobbing up and down on their two legs, hissing wildly.

I had thought that they would be sluggish, torpid, in the cool of early dawn. I was wrong. They were quickly alert, pacing nervously along the hollow bowl of the rock wall as the flames rose before them and the wind carried the fire toward them.

For several minutes they merely milled around, hissing, snarling, their hides turning livid red with fear and anger. They were too big to climb the curving wall of rock and escape the way a man would have. They were trapped against the rocky bowl, the trees and grass and bushes in front of them turning into a sea of flame and thickly billowing smoke. I could feel the heat curling the hair on my arms, singeing my face.

We backed away. The dragons, as if in mental contact with one another, all seemed to make the same decision at the same instant. They charged into the crackling flames.

In a ragged column of twos the dragons plunged into the holocaust we had made for them. Hissing and whistling like giant steam engines, they waded into the sea of fire, tossing their immense heads to keep them above the flames and smoke. Those in front crashed through the fiery brush and stands of trees, flattening them out for those behind. One of them went down, screaming terribly. Then another. But the others came rushing forward, trampling over the roasting carcasses of their brethren.

Six of them died in the flames, deliberately giving their lives so that the others could get through. I watched stunned, astounded at this display of intelligence and sacrifice. Reptiles, dinosaurs, could not have that level of intelligence. Their brains were too small; their heads were mostly bone.

Something intelligent was directing them. I had no time to puzzle out the mystery, though, because the five remaining monsters were breaking through our fiery barrier.

And bearing down on us.

I could see steaming swaths of raw meat where they had been burned on their legs and flanks. And they could see the five of us, huddled against the cliff face with our copper-tipped spears in our hands.

"Run!" someone screamed.

"No," I yelled. "Face them. . . ."

But it was too late. They broke and ran from the fearsome hissing monsters. All but young Chron. He stayed at my side as three of the giant beasts bore down on us and the remaining pair chased after my fleeing men.

I cursed myself for not having thought to prepare an avenue of retreat. Now we were trapped with the enraged monsters pinning Chron and me against the cliff wall.

The dragons were terribly burned, screeching furiously. We planted our backs against the rock wall and gripped our spears with both hands.

The world slowed down as my body went into hyperdrive. I saw the first of the dragons looming before me, jaws wide, arms reaching for me. Those taloned claws could have ripped a rhinoceros apart.

I ducked beneath its outstretched arms and jammed my spear into its belly, tearing the lizard open from breastbone to crotch. It screamed like all the devils of hell and tottered a few steps sideways, then went down. Turning, I saw Chron with his spear butted against the rock, desperately trying to stave off the dragon that was clawing at him.

Pulling my bloody spear from the beast's gut, I clambered over its whitening body and rammed the metal spear point into the dragon's thigh. It stumbled, turned toward me. Again I rammed my spear into the undefended belly of the beast while Chron stabbed higher, nearer the heart.

Before the dragon could fall, the third of the monsters was on me. My spear was jammed inside the second beast. As I tried to work it loose, to the screams and shrieks of the dying monster, its partner slashed at me with a three-taloned hand. I saw it coming in slow motion and started to duck beneath the blow, but my foot slipped in the thick stream of blood covering the ground and I fell sideways.