Page 27 of Caveman Alien’s Horn (Caveman Aliens #26)

27

- Sprisk -

The center mushroom gives off a light so strong that I can’t look straight at it. Whenever I’m facing it, I have to shield my eyes with one hand.

But it makes my work easy. The loom clacks and bangs, creaks and rattles. I have replaced many parts and all the strings that tie it together. I think Cora’s way was lighter than mine, but I am half Big and I can’t limit my strength. I can either be gentle or focused, not both at the same time. Except when I’m with Cora. For some reason, she makes me be better than I ever can be on my own. With her, I’m not wild, just happy. I don’t even kill outcasts, just because she asks me not to!

The hours pass without me noticing. I don’t know if it’s night or day, I just keep working.

I can’t help noticing that the mushrooms around the clearing are still growing, getting fatter and bigger. But I make sure the portal can still be used. I don’t want to get trapped here, to the point where I’d have to attack the mushrooms with the rusty blade I took from the outcasts just to get out.

Of course I have no way of knowing what Cora will think about this. Or if I will ever see her again. Or, worst of all, if I will sometimes see her in the jungle or in the Borok village, happy with some striped tribesman.

The very thought makes me irate.

“She’s mine,” I seethe, sitting at the loom and furiously working the shuttle and the treadles. “She’s mine. She’s mine! ”

“Who’s yours?” comes a creaky voice behind me.

I spin around so fast I lose my balance and fall off the narrow bench.

“Because we can’t see her,” the outcast continues. “Did you eat her, Foundling?”

It’s the two outcasts that Cora made me not kill. But this time they’re not alone. There are eleven other men in the clearing, all with different colored stripes, none with swords. All outcasts.

My skin changes color and the horn comes out of my forehead as I try to control my fury. “What do you want, outcasts? ”

“What does any man want?” Cret’ax asks. “A full belly, a sharp blade, a pot of frit. And a woman, now that they have come to Xren. Where is she?”

“I sent her away,” I tell them. “She’s not here.”

Most of the outcasts come towards me, holding various kinds of blades, most of them rusty. A couple of them approach the hollow tree.

“You sent her away?” Cret’ax repeats, a strange smile on his face. “You sent that small, soft woman away? ”

“Look around you,” I suggest, planning how to kill them all, one by one. “What woman could stand staying in a place like this?”

“It’s a strange place, to be sure,” Cret’ax creaks. “But what man would allow a woman to leave? But don’t worry. If she’s here, hidden away, we shall find her and take her away from this curious place. She will know to appreciate actual tribesmen, when she’s been forced to deal with a shamefully broken Foundling.”

My skin tries to make me invisible, but in the blinding light from the mushroom, it doesn’t work. The light is too bright, the skin can’t change in a way that makes me hard to see. And of course I cast a big shadow in the light from the mushroom, making it easy to see where I am.

“Nobody here,” someone yells from over at the hollow tree. “He’s alone.”

“I wonder,” Cret’ax says as he comes ever closer. Both he and Gulu’oz have new blades, I notice. Still rusty and single-edged, but for an outcast, that must count as being well armed. “He may have just hidden her. And if so, we must find out where.”

“She’s not here. You might as well leave.” I deliberately let them come closer to the loom. I can use it to put an obstacle between them and me. But I am only one, and they are many. With the mushrooms growing all around, I have no way to escape from the clearing. I have no illusions about what a gang like this may do to a Foundling, especially one who has beat them up and humiliated them before. It will be a long, painful death. And then they will feast on my remains.

“No, I don’t think we’ll leave,” Cret’ax says as his friends slowly try to encircle me. “We want to know where the woman is. And we want to know what all these things are. What do they have to do with that woman? Is she perhaps inside one?” He gestures to the thousands of giant mushrooms.

This is not looking good. I have to get out of here before they surround me with their blades. I know that I can’t let them take me alive, and that gives me a grim determination. I must attack them first, take them by surprise, and then fight my way out of the clearing.

“Yes, she’s inside that one.” I point past the outcasts. Some of them fall for it and turn to look. I aim for the closest of them, bow my head, and lunge at him, horn first.

I don’t get far. Only four outcasts are on the ground behind me when I get six rusty blades jabbing into my skin from various angles, including two at my throat. The outcasts had anticipated my move. I can either die here and now or wait and see if I get a chance to escape.

“Is she?” Cret’ax asks. “Then we shall find her. And then…” He comes close and whacks the blunt side of his blade against my head, making me almost black out.

“And then,” he goes on, “I think your head will look good stuck on a spear.”

One of the others walks to the mushroom I pointed to and rams his blade into it.

The central mushroom flashes once, making a light so bright it makes spots dance in front of my eyes.

The stabbed mushroom’s fat cap tears apart, releasing a hard spray of a silvery fluid that shines in the blue light. The fluid hits the outcast. He turns, arms out to his sides, grinning and soaked in the fluid. Then his face contorts and he screams, a piercing howl of pain and fear that makes everyone freeze and stare.

He tries to run, but the flesh melts off him and his legs break like rotten twigs. His scream increases in pitch until it becomes a death rattle that only lasts for a heartbeat before the outcast goes still on the ground. A couple of heartbeats later, he’s become a liquid too, a pink spot in the silvery fluid that killed him.

“Don’t cut into those,” Cret’ax commands unnecessarily. “The woman is obviously not inside them.”

He turns to me and gives me another whack. “I like that horn, Foundling. I’ll cut it off and keep it as decoration in my hut.”

“You’ll never have a hut,” I tell him as I try to recover my balance. “None of you will ever leave this ring of light.”

“Oh, we will,” Cret’ax says without conviction. “But you won’t.” He gives me another slash, this time with the sharp side.