Page 44 of Caveman Alien's Heat
The boys come over, moving shyly. “Riley, we’re supposed to show you the village.”
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They do, very thoroughly, chatting away the whole time while other boys send them envious glances and the men look on while they pretend to work.
By the end, I know how the tribe gets water by melting ice, but not snow—you need too much snow to make a useful amount of water. I know how they use every single part of a stoka, as well as the other dinosaurs and smaller animals they hunt. There are huts and caves full of bones and sinews and skins and a few things I’d prefer not to have identified. There are big stores of firewood, stacks of furs and skins, endless pots of dinosaur fat, long poles for making spears, and a big store of flint andobsidian for making blades. There’s not much metal in the tribe, almost all of it in the iron tips of the spears that the hunters use. But they have a cold forge and a store of charcoal, so they’re not strangers to iron-smithing. There are huts for drying meat, and on the ice of the glacier there are tents with huge frozen slabs of meat.
“This is being added to,” I conclude. “The tribe doesn’t need to store this much. Is the hunting season soon over?”
“Yes,” the oldest boy says. “Soon we will go to the tent camp.”
Ah. They’re nomads, just like Nator’ax guessed.
“Is that where the Lifegivers are?” I ask on a guess. I haven’t seen any here, but the tribe clearly has young boys, and they must come from somewhere.
“Yes. They don’t like it here in the cold. They must have warm ground to grow from,” the other boy says precociously. “And the ground there is very warm.”
“Is it far?” I ask. “Many days of walking?”
“Just three days,” the older boy says. “But the tent camp isn’t nice. The ground is warm, but also sometimes wet.”
We reach the highest point of the village, and I peer out on the plain, trying to spot Nator’ax. If those guys decide that they just want him dead, they are many and he is only one. I didn’t get that impression—they seemed more curious about him than murderous. But of course it only takes one bad apple and one hard stab with a spear. The tribe might celebrate something like that, not punish it.
No, Nator’ax is too smart to give them the chance. He won’t turn his back on danger. And he still has his sword.
Damn, I wish he was here now. When he’s close to me, I just know that nothing bad can happen. Even waiting for the council’s sentence, his calmness was infectious, and I only felt a slight tinge of fear.
And then he was inside me, making me forget everything else… I squeeze my thighs together, more tingles shooting through my pelvis. He’s just incredible. How will I ever live without his touch and his heat?
“Riley?”
Of course, chances are I may never have to. Five days from now there will be no dragon, as both Nator’ax and I know perfectly well. There will be no saucer full of angry Borok warriors. Nobody knows where we are, and Praxigor never showed any interest in looking for missing girls unless Astrid really wanted to. And I only met Astrid once, briefly. I can’t expect her to care that much.
“Riley?”
We have to make ourselves not just valuable, but invaluable. Irreplaceable. At least Nator’ax has to. These guys already have plans for me.
What can he do? Sure, he’s a great hunter?—
“Riley?”
I tear myself out of my reverie. “Yes? What?”
The two boys are looking at me with worry in their eyes, and a nearby man is staring with a deep frown on his face.
“Are you all right, Dame Riley?” the older boy asks.
“Yes. Sorry, yes. You were saying?” I force a smile.
“The water. It’s nice. You can take a bath.”
I’m confused. “A bath? On the ice?”
“No, in the mountain,” the boy says. “There’s water.”
Water in the mountain? Surely it has to be a frozen lake? “Sorry. Can you explain?”
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