Page 18 of Caveman Alien’s Terror (Caveman Aliens #25)
18
- Astrid -
Praxigor thinks about it. “I don’t know. The dragon wants what it wants. It’s more determined than I am now, crueler, less caring. It doesn’t need to care about anything but gold.”
I bend aside a branch to pass it. “I thought maybe… I mean, since we’re friends and since we… well, you know the things we’ve done. And you know how I feel about you. I’ve told you.”
He keeps carving his stone. “As I am now, I would not hurt you. I don’t think I will when I’m a full dragon, either. But I don’t know. The dragon is ruthless.”
I guess that’s the best I can expect. It’s not reassuring.
Our pursuers are getting closer, judging from the noises they make. The drums are really unsettling, and I think there are many of them. Still, the cavemen must be pretty desperate if they’re hunting him that way. A single kronk dinosaur attracted by the noises could kill dozens of tribesmen.
Damn it. Why did those stupid cavemen have to start hunting Praxigor this soon? I would have loved to spend more time with him in that valley, just him and me. And then I would find the right time to suggest something that I know he won’t like, but which might be our best bet. Now it may be too late. They’re catching up with us, and they have nothing good in mind.
“How will you trick them into fighting each other?” I ask, not sure if the dragon is taking this seriously enough. It’s not like he’s invulnerable — those ropes cut into his wrists and ankles, and the fall down the cliff cracked his scales so badly I don’t think they’re healing. His walk is not as easy as before. He seems heavier, his movements more sluggish. His eyes aren’t as luminous as they were. I think the lack of gold is really taking its toll on him. Which makes sense, if his need for it is as strong as my need for sleep and food and air combined.
“Oh, it’s easy,” he says. “I move faster than they can see. An insult whispered in an ear, a kick from behind, a pull of someone’s hair, a foot to stumble over... the possibilities are endless. It takes less than you think to make these slayers fight each other. Especially if they’re from different tribes, which I think these ones are. They won’t even know they’re under attack.”
“Won’t they know you’re there because they feel scared, the way I do?”
He bends a sapling out of his way. “For some reason, the slayers don’t always seem terrified when in my presence. Unless I give them a special reason to. Ah, this would be a good place to wait for them.”
It takes me a moment to see what he means. And I’m not sure I agree with him. This could be why the cavemen have been blindly driving us through the woods.
It’s a rift in the landscape, a sudden canyon a thousand feet deep but only fifty wide. It vanishes into the jungle on both sides, so it must be miles wide.
Keeping well away from the edge, I look down into it. But it only gets darker down there and I can’t see the bottom. “This could be the end of the road.”
“Not at all.” The dragon nods towards the other side.
I spot it, too. On the other edge, a hundred yards to the side from us, there’s one end of what looks a lot like a rope bridge. The jungle on this side obscures most of it. “Should we go over there?”
He shrugs. “Might as well.”
We make our way along the edge, and each step reveals another few feet of rope bridge until we’re at the nearest end of it. It’s quite a slack one, hanging down dangerously in the middle. It must be unpleasantly wobbly to walk on.
“It looks old,” I comment, trying to sound casual. Because I have no doubt we’ll be walking across that rickety old thing.
It’s three feet wide, and when it was new it was probably quite sturdy. The main ropes are as thick as my wrist. The bottom is made from eight of those thick ropes laid beside each other. Cross-ropes spaced regularly lead from them and up to the two ropes that are meant as handholds, giving the bridge a V-shaped cross-section. There’s no wood anywhere but the anchoring points. The rest is all ropework.
“ I’m old,” Praxigor says. “That bridge is as fresh as morning dew by comparison.”
The noises from the hunters are getting ever louder, and I expect to spot them at any time. “We could cross it now, before they get here.”
Praxigor looks down on me. “You can cross it. I will remain here and get the cavemen to fight each other.”
Again he gives me a less than perfect impression. His face is drawn, making him look tired. By any other standard, he is still remarkably beautiful and powerful. But I’ve been around him for a good while now, and I can see the difference. “Praxigor, maybe we should just go across and vanish in the woods. We can cut the bridge and make sure they can’t follow.”
“Again you would have me leave my pursuers, the dragon slayers, unharmed,” he snarls. “You must be so worried I’d hurt them!”
“I’m not worried about them,” I tell him firmly. “I’m worried about you . There are many of them, and they have long swords. Look at yourself, Praxigor! You’ve been bleeding from many wounds recently. Small predators have been able to draw your blood. Your scales are cracked. You’re not as indestructible as you think! There’s no dishonor in doing the smart thing and fight them at a time and place of your choosing. They chose this place. They must have.”
He raises his chin in defiance. “The greater will be their despair and powerlessness when I defeat them here.”
He may be right. He may be able to easily beat dozens of cavemen in a fight. But right now, if I were to bet, my money would be on the cavemen. Because they were made for this, and they’re not scared of dragons. And Praxigor isn’t completely wrong. I would much prefer there to not be a fight at all. Those guys could well be my friends.
The drumming behind us sounds like distant thunder, getting closer. I peer into the jungle. “They’ll be here at any moment. I notice you haven’t made them fight each other yet, the way you said you would.”
He snorts. “I’ve changed my mind. I’ll just kill them in a straight fight.”
I don’t believe him. I suspect he doesn’t have much strength left. “I don’t think you’re well. Your eyes — the light has faded. Is it the lack of gold?”
He glares with eyes that have green specks in them. “You’re getting dangerously close to saying you think I’m weak.”
“I don’t think you’re weak, Praxigor! You’re the strongest male in the jungle. But there must be many cavemen coming.” I steel myself for the next part, which I’ve been thinking about for a while. This is not the right time for it, but there may not be another time. “What if you were to make friends with them? You haven’t hurt anyone. You’ve saved my life many times, and I’m the shaman of the Borok tribe. If I tell them to not kill you, they won’t. I don’t think those that are coming are from my tribe, but even so, they may know who I am.”
“You think I need the help of a small female like you?!” he sputters.
“I know you don’t need it,” I say as soothingly as I can as I lightly put my hand on his spiky forearm. “But it would be the easiest way. And it might be possible for us to stay together. What if you had the help of the tribes to look for gold? What if hundreds or thousands of cavemen were helping you?”
Praxigor pulls his arm away from me. “You keep calling them ‘cavemen’ and ‘tribes’. I told you, they are dragon slayers . That is why they exist. They live only to kill dragons like me. I am now in the most helpless state, an easy target. An alien woman half their size is not going to stop them from doing what every fiber of their being is screaming at them to do! Listen! Can you hear them coming? Can you hear them making as much noise as they can, driving me ahead of them? Does that sound like someone who’d just give up when they finally find their prey?”
He has a point. I can’t be sure I’d be able to stop these guys from killing him. If it was the Borok tribe, I probably could. Or the Tretter tribe. Or maybe even the Krast tribe. But I don’t know who these guys are.
“Can you,” I suggest, “move faster than they can sense, run past them and see what color their stripes are? And then come back here?”
“That sounds like something a lesser creature would do,” he sneers. “Checking if the enemy is too strong to fight? And if so, tiptoe away into the pale, safe shadows of cowardice? You can just say it as it is, female. Those are your friends, and you’re worried I’ll destroy them!”
I shake my head. “That’s not it at?—”
I’m interrupted by a loud yell of triumph from the edge of the jungle. A white-striped caveman has stopped and is pointing his sword at Praxigor. “ Thereeeee! Dragooooon!”
The drums speed up and become thunderous.
Many other cavemen come into view, warriors running with shiny swords in their hands. There’s hundreds of them, from several tribes. I even spot some with yellow stripes. “Those are the Borok tribe! Come on, Praxigor! Give me a chance!”
“You want them to kill me!” he snarls, a crazy sheen in his eyes. I swear they’re going fully green. “You wanted this! You’ve been slowing me down so the slayers would have time to gather and hunt me! ‘Let’s be friends,’ you said. But those are your real friends. You will leave me to join them, and then have them try to kill me!”
“No!” I yell, turning to face him full on. “That’s not it!”
He turns on his heels and unsteadily walks onto the rope bridge. “But Praxigor isn’t the one who is left. Praxigor is the one who leaves! ”
The bridge shakes and creaks from his movements.
I grab onto the two handhold ropes as I step onto the bridge, too. “I’ll come with you.”
He stiffens, ignoring me as he spots something.
“ Praxigor the Devious!” comes a call from the other side of the canyon. “ Chief! We found the Ceremat tribe!”
It’s the three outcasts Praxigor called his lackeys. They’ve come out of the jungle on the other side and are standing by the rope bridge, eagerly waving him across.
“Is there a woman?!” the dragon yells over to them.
Outcast Tarat’ex puts his hands in front of his mouth like a trumpet so he’ll be heard over the noise of the approaching cavemen. “There is, Chief! Come and we shall take you there!”
Praxigor turns to me, making the rope bridge sway and creak. “Did you hear it? There’s a woman! Soon I shall have both her and her gold!” He has an ugly grin on his face.
I hang onto the rough ropes for dear life. “That must be Cora! I have to see her!”
His eyes are like emeralds, hard and bright green, the color of envy. “Perhaps she won’t betray me. Stay here with your real friends!”
Risking my life, I take one hand off the rope and try to grab his. “I must come with you!”
“I am leaving you,” Praxigor says as he takes hold of me and lifts me up, ripping the rope out of my clenched hand.
I scream as he lifts me higher, ready to throw me into the chasm. I still can’t see the bottom of it.
“I’m leaving you ,” he says again as he tosses me back to the edge of the canyon. “So you can’t leave me! ”
“ Oof!” I nearly get the wind knocked out of me as I land on the rock. Scrambling to my feet, I want to run after him. But he’s already on the other side of the bridge, climbing the last few feet, where the outcasts grab him and pull him up. He roughly shakes them off him and rips the anchoring ropes and sticks out of the ground, tossing his whole side of the bridge into the chasm.
The limp chaos of ropes is now only anchored on my side of the canyon. It falls until it slaps heavily against this side of the canyon, broken and useless.
The dragon turns and walks into the jungle.
“Praxigor!” I yell, because I don’t know what else to do. “I never wanted to leave you!”
His step falters and he turns his head a fraction as if thinking. Then he walks on into the jungle and is gone.
For a long moment I just stare as the light goes out of the world.
“I never wanted to leave you,” I repeat in a whisper because I know my voice won’t carry. My face scrunches up, and I try to hold back the acid at the corners of my eyes.
The drums have stopped, and now there’s only the murmur of many voices behind me.
Mustering all the energy I have left, I turn around.
There’s several hundred cavemen from many tribes coming towards me, out of the jungle. They’re putting their swords back in their scabbards, disappointed that their quarry escaped.
A warrior with stripes in both yellow and green walks over to me, radiating the air of command. “Shaman Astrid, I am happy to see you this well. Are you injured?”
I pull myself together as much as I can. “No, Chief Korr’ax. He made sure I wasn’t.”
The chief of the Borok and Tretter tribes gives me a searching look. “The dragon who abducted you?”
“He didn’t abduct me. I went with him.”
He looks past me, over to the other side of the canyon. “Ah. The ways of the shamans are mysterious indeed.”
I glare at the army of cavemen, hating them with some intensity. “I see you wasted no time in starting your hunt for him.”
His way of raising his eyebrows is crude and plain compared to the dragon. “Not so much a hunt as a search. We thought he had taken you. We tracked you through the turfs of many tribes, letting any man we met join us. We don’t want the Darkness anywhere near us. Old Shaman Melr’ax has told us all about them. Are you ready to go back to our village?”
I check that the dragon dagger is still in its place. “I’m not. I will be going on to the Ceremat tribe. You may follow if you wish.”
“May I really?” His voice is dangerously mild. Yeah, Korr’ax is the chief and I’m technically his subordinate. I probably shouldn’t forget that he’s an extremely accomplished caveman in his own right, and he’s essentially the master of life and death in his tribes.
“What I mean,” I clarify, “is that I will be going, but I’m not asking anyone to follow me. It is where Praxigor is going.”
“Praxigor is the dragon?”
“I don’t think he’ll be there when we get there, but I have another reason to go to the Ceremat.”
“A shaman reason?”
I wish he would stop raising his eyebrows. He just doesn’t know how to do it right. “No. A friendship reason.”
He nods slowly. “My wife would murder me if I let you go away on your own in the jungle. I shall give you an escort. Don’t keep them too long, please. Every warrior is needed in the tribes.”
I look away. “As I said, I’m not asking for them. If you can’t spare any, that’s fine. I’ll tell Bryar that I told you all to go home. Give me a piece of leather, and I’ll write a message for her.”
Korr’ax smiles tightly. “You shall have two Borok men and two Tretter men. And you shall have another mission: offer the Ceremat tribe the friendship of our tribes. We don’t know them, but we’d like to.”
“Yes, Chief. I will do that.”
“Oh, and my wife sent this.” He waves a Borok man over and takes a dinosaur skin pack from him. “She was sure that we’d find you. And she must have suspected that you wouldn’t be coming back with us.” He hands me the pack. “She had only a few heartbeats to put it together before I left for the hunt. She was somewhat… distraught.”
There’s a new dinosaur skin dress, a pair of gladiator sandals, a set of stiff, new underwear, another knife, jars of useful medicines, and even a small pot of frit wine. And a small leather square, where someone has scribbled ‘ Sorry I pressured you. Good luck in finding Cora!’ with charcoal. Yeah, she understood why I was suddenly missing.
“This is great,” I state. “Thank you. And thank you to Bryar. She was right.” I get the knife and carve a reply on the other side of the square. ‘ Thank you. I decided this before our talk. The dragon isn’t as bad as they say. Don’t give birth without me!’
“If she wonders about the last part, tell her it’s a joke,” I instruct Korr’ax as I hand him the square. “But I hope to be home before that. Tell her this had to happen at some point.”
He folds the square and puts it into his waistband. “I shall make sure to relay your message.”
He gets the four cavemen who’ll escort me. “It may be a long walk if their village is on the other side of the canyon.”
“It may,” I agree. “Please instruct them to not kill the dragon.”
Korr’ax frowns. “May I ask why?”
I put on the sandals. “He could be a great ally for our tribe. He’s not the enemy we thought he was.”
The chief thinks about it. “Dragons are devious. I will instruct them to only attack him if they must, but to keep their swords ready for anything.”
I stand back up and throw the pack onto my back. “Did you see the three outcasts? He calls them his lackeys. One of them is Tarat’ex, the former Krast man.”
Kor’ax stares across the canyon. “The one who tried to kill Alba? Now he’s allied with the Darkness? Somehow I’m not surprised.”
“He may be a worse enemy to Praxigor than we are.” I inch as close to the canyon as I dare and try to find out which way around it would be the right one.
An old, white-striped caveman comes over to Korr’ax. “Chief, the shortest way to the other side is to the left. After a half day’s walk, there is a part where the floor of the canyon comes almost up to the edge. It can be crossed there. Carefully. There are many irox nearby.”
“Warrior, will I find the Ceremat tribe if I go across?” I ask.
“That is their turf, Shaman Astrid,” he says. “My tribesmen never go over there, nor do the Ceremat men come over to our side.”
“What do you know about them?”
The old man puts his hands on his belt. “I’ve never met a Ceremat man. But I know they live on the other side.”
So, I’m getting close. Maybe.
I nod to Korr’ax. “Thank you. We will soon be back.”
“I know you will, Shaman,” he replies and turns to give orders to his army.
Keeping a safe distance to the edge, I turn to the left and start walking. The four cavemen soon take up their formation around me. One walks in front, one behind, and two are somewhere in the jungle to my left.
To my right, there’s only the chasm, so deep and narrow that no sunlight reaches far down.
I scan the jungle on the other side, hoping in vain to see a shimmer of electric blue. I may have inadvertently killed him, sending him on a wild goose chase for gold that doesn’t exist.
And Cora, it occurs to me in a twinge of cold despair. Because she doesn’t actually have any gold. When Praxigor finds her, he might be so angry that he hurts her or kills her. He may also die from a lack of gold, having gambled everything on Cora having some.
That will all be my fault.
“Some rescue,” I fret as I walk faster. “Everyone dies.”