Page 47 of Caveman Alien's Heat
“I say it as if you don’t understand what you are asking,” I reply.
The scarred man watches me carefully. “Then explain it,” he says.
I step forward again, closing the distance I created. I lower my voice to make them lean in to hear. “Where I come from,” I say, “women aren’t taken. They most certainly aren’t shared.”
The younger man’s smile fades. “Everything can be taken,” he says.
“Not everything.”
He opens his mouth to argue, but I continue before he can speak. “You think of her as something you can possess. You’re shamefully wrong. A woman like her will not live that way. No woman will.”
The bearded hunter frowns. “What does that mean?”
“It means she will die,” I tell them. “She’s an alien. She can make herself die, and there’s nothing anyone can do. I have seen it, hunters. Twice a woman has died because someone wanted to force her to do things she didn’t want. The first one simply fell over because a man joked he would make her his. She believed he meant it. He wasn’t even touching her. The other… well, a man from a different tribe came to visit our village. We knew him, and he often had news about the jungle and the Bigs. He saw the woman, and one dark night he went to her cave. Shescreamed and alerted us. But when we came to help her, she was dead in her bunk.”
“What happened to the man?”
“He was given to Praxigor. The dragon took him in his claws and flew. Not far away, you understand. Just out of sight, in among the trees. For four days and nights, we heard the man’s screams. Then Praxigor returned with his earless, noseless head. We put it on a stake. It’s still there.”
The wind seems to pause around us.
I’m happy with the stories I’m making up, although no man should enjoy lying. But my purpose isn’t just to deceive, but to get Riley to safety. The Ancestors will forgive my dishonor in telling lies.
The younger man shifts his weight, uneasy now. He swallows visibly. “You are trying to scare us.”
“I am telling you the truth,” I reply. “You have never seen a woman. You don’t know how they think. Nor do you know dragons. I do. Hunters, I am only trying to help you!”
The scarred man studies me, searching for weakness in what I am saying. “And if you are lying?” he asks.
“The Gar tribe must be the least honorable tribe on Xren,” I marvel. “Twice now I’ve been accused of lying, while that has never happened in my own tribe even once. Do Gar men really lie so much that whenever a man tells you something new, you think he must be lying? Perhaps dying in the dragon’s fire is exactly what you deserve.”
They go quiet. I let the silence stretch just long enough to settle into them before I continue walking. After a moment, they follow.
The conversation doesn’t end, but it changes. There is less certainty in it now, less casual assumption. They still look at me, but now they think more than they talk. The silence should mean that their minds are working for me. And for Riley.
We move into broken terrain, where the ice rises into ridges and dips into shallow troughs. The wind has carved patterns into the surface, hardening some areas and softening others. This is where the land becomes useful.
I note the narrow passes between ridges, the places where a large body would be forced to slow or turn. I note the slopes, the angles, the way the ice has compacted under repeated wind. I note where a man could hide something small and find it again later.
At one point, I adjust the strap of my pack and let myself fall a few steps behind. My hand moves quickly, efficiently, pressing a small, wrapped bundle into a shallow depression beneath a lip of ice. I cover it with loose snow, smoothing the surface with the side of my hand as I take note of the place.
When I straighten, no one is watching me closely enough to question it. I move forward again, rejoining the group as if nothing has happened.
The tracks ahead deepen. The dondar is close. We slow as a group now, the shift unspoken but immediate. Voices drop, and movements become more deliberate. Each man knows what comes next.
I see it before they do. The bulk of the dondar moves between two low ridges ahead of us, its massive body outlined against the pale horizon. Its hide is thick and ridged, its head low, its tail dragging a shallow line through the snow. One of its rear legs favors the ground less than the others. That makes things easier, but also more dangerous.
“It’s injured,” I observe.
The scarred man nods. “We see it.”
“Then you know it will fight harder. It will be wilder.”
I study the terrain around us, the shape of the ridges, and the angle of the slope beyond them. There is a narrow path ahead, where the ice dips and then rises again. The surface there is hard, polished by wind and time.
“Don’t approach it here,” I say, kneeling and examining the snow.
The younger man glances at me. “We have hunted these before.”
