Page 42 of Caveman Alien's Heat
“I’m sure you know that not everyone wants you to be condemned,” Prak’ox says. “The council is too easily swayed by certain of its members. Chief Hoker’iz spoke for your complete acquittal, it is said.”
“It is a rare tribe that has its shaman run it,” Nator’ax says coldly. “Perhaps someone should do something about that. But who am I to talk? Is there any work that a condemned man may carry out in the village or outside it? For I’m not used to sitting still.”
Prak’ox lifts his eyebrows. “Nobody has said that you have to work, jungle warrior.”
“I’m saying it now,” Nator’ax rumbles. “No man can wait for orders before he does something useful. Or is that perhaps the way of the Gar?”
“Sometimes,” Prak’ox replies. “But we mostly do what we must.” He gestures toward the outer edge of the village. “Hunters leave soon. The herds have moved farther out onto the plain. Snow is deeper. Tracks are harder to read.”
Nator’ax nods once. “I will go with them. With the chief’s permission.”
A few of the nearby men react to that. Not loudly, but enough that I catch it. It could be interest, or even approval.
Nator’ax keeps surprising me with his initiative. Now he will try to become obviously too valuable to casually execute. I reach out and grab his hand in my own sign of approval.
The touch makes me confident. Actually, I should try the same thing. “And what about me?”
Prak’ox studies me again, longer this time. “Whataboutyou, Dame Riley? You are not a hunter.”
I frown. “Ice man, did you not see that stoka down in that crevasse? Did you not see my tracks? I lured that stoka and ran in front of it until it fell. Is that not hunting?”
That earns a few looks, one of the men huffing something that might be a laugh. “She has you there, Prak’ox.”
But I don’t want to talk myself into a dangerous and exhausting hunting trip. “Hunter or not, I can still help. Show me your village. All of it. Maybe I can help, if only by making torches.”
“Perhaps,” Prak’ox says slowly. “It would be interesting to see what a woman may do. A woman from the jungle, and from an alien planet before that.”
“Then we are agreed,” I state. “Give me a guide to the village. An old man, perhaps. A council member.”
He glances at one of the older men nearby, who has been listening while pretending not to. He snorts and says something sharp in their language. I don’t quite catch it.
Prak’ox’s mouth twitches. “He says if you can make meat dry faster without spoiling it, he will listen to you.”
I shrug. “That sounds like a challenge.”
“It does. Take it on if you want. Or do something else that’s useful. Or, better yet, don’t do anything except look for that dragon. If he comes, I want him to see you first.”
“He’ll see me if I’m still here. Then he’ll ask for Nator’ax. But that will be more of a challenge for you.”
Before he can respond, another voice cuts in. “Challenges are useful. They reveal truth.”
It’s shaman Crelt’ax.
He moves like he has all the time in the world, his one arm tucked into his heavy wrappings. His gaze lands on me first, then slides to Nator’ax, then back again.
“You speak of improving what is already known,” he says to me. “That suggests you believe your knowledge is greater.”
“I believe my knowledge is different,” I say. “Sometimes that’s enough.”
“And sometimes it is false.”
“Is it?” I ask. “How?”
His attention sharpens. I don’t think he likes to be questioned. Well, maybe it’s about time someone did. “What you described yesterday,” he continues, voice lowering just enough to draw people in, “the dragon, the power you claimed for your chief. Those are also different.”
Nator’ax steps forward half a pace, not blocking me, but making his presence very clear. “We did not claim power. We described a danger to your tribe.”
“A danger you know,” Crelt’ax says. “That makes you part of it.”
