Page 61 of Caveman Alien's Heat
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- Nator’ax-
I see how Riley stiffens beside me. She has no greater liking for this decision than I do.
“Keeping Riley here would seem unwise,” I state. “If you wish to find out about the flying saucer, you need us both.”
“If it’s true that the Borok tribe owns many of them,” Chief Hoker’iz says, “then surely an accomplished warrior like yourself will know all its secrets. You shall go with the men of Gar, and Riley shall stay here.” He sits down and places the hatchet beside him on the bench.
I want to protest more, but I can’t seem to care too much. I want them to think that Praxigor the dragon will soon come and burn them all for killing me, and if I seem too eager to bring Riley, that could weaken that story. And one of us going is better than none of us. So I shrug. “The chief decides.”
Riley and I return to the cave. She curls up and, in a soft voice, tells me what I need to know about the saucer and how to maybemake it fly, and I spend some time with the piece of wood and the small blade I made while I try to remember the things she tells me.
Finally, I hand it to her. “This is the main reason I spent the day at the forge.”
She takes it. “A spoon! It’s very nice. For me?”
“Only for you,” I confirm. “You don’t have a weapon, but you may soon need one.”
She weighs the wooden spoon in her hand. “It feels heavy.”
“May I?” I take the spoon back and flick out the hidden blade that turns the spoon itself into a wooden handle. “Something we boys would tinker with before we had real swords. The blade completely disappears inside the handle.” I give it back to her.
She gasps when she gets it. “It’s a switchblade! A secret knife that folds inside the spoon.”
“Asishbled,” I agree in her language. “Yes, that’s it. Use it to eat with by the campfire. Nobody will know that you are armed with a small knife. It can be used for many things. And the tribe’s spoons are too big for you.”
She gets up on her knees and embraces me. “Thank you. I do need one. It’s perfect.”
We lie back down and chat softly before Riley’s answers become so strange and so far apart that she’s clearly about to fall asleep.
I kiss her on her soft, cool cheek. “I love you.”
“I love you, too,” she mumbles before her breath goes deep and steady.
- - -
I get up before sunrise. The men are gathering by the fire. They are experienced hunters, eating a lot of food for their breakfast so that they have to carry less with them. I join them, but I keep silent while we eat.
When the sun first kisses the tips of the tallest mountain, we start on the walk. The men carry their spears, and I keep my sword by my side. The risk of them really wanting me to come along so they can kill me is less than before, but still present.
“You’re keeping quiet,” a man says when we’ve walked for a while. “Are you worried about what we’ll find?”
“I’m worried,” I admit. “But not about myself. It’s only the Gar tribe and its honorable men that worry me, as well as its innocent boys. I didn’t know you before. Now I do, and the thought of you all burning bothers me.”
“You really think the dragon is coming?”
“He will come as long as Riley and I are being kept as prisoners,” I state heavily. “And if he were to come after your tribe murders me, then it is the end for you all. I fear he will not let you die quickly and easily, but just burn you enough to give you terrible pain for hours before you all succumb, screaming, your scorched skin falling off you in black flakes. That would be his way.”
“He would do this to the boys, too?” another man asks. “Such a shameful deed, to kill the innocent! Does this dragon have no honor?”
“He is a dragon,” I explain, “and honor is beneath him. When you see him, you will know what I mean. For a little while, you will understand, before the end.”
“We shall fight that dragon,” a man says, holding out his spear. “He will regret attacking the Gar tribe!”
I shake my head sadly. “He will burn you from the air. Your spear will bounce off him like a leaf off the back of a stoka. Have you never seen anirox?Have you never seen how they come down on you with their claws first? How many of you have killed an irox?”
The men all look away. “We have seen them,” one mutters. “But only a fool fights them.”
