There was no sign of a battle in this village. No sign even of a struggle. None of the men were wounded. As far as I could tell, all the people who had been there when I had left were still there.
“Tell me what happened,” I said to Kraal.
His face twisted into a miserably unhappy grimace.
“It was her or us,” Reeva snapped. “If we did not give her to them, they would kill us all.”
“Tell me what happened,” I repeated, anger simmering in my blood.
“The dragons came,” Kraal said, almost mumbling in his shame and regret. “And their masters. They said they wanted you and the woman. If we gave the two of you to them, they would leave us alone.”
“And you did what they asked?”
“Anya did not fight against it,” Reeva said, her tone almost angry. “She saw the wisdom of it.”
“And you let them take her without a fight?”
“They were dragons, Orion,” Kraal whined. “Big ones. Six of them. And masters riding them.”
Reeva pushed past him to confront me. “I am the priestess now. Anya’s power has passed to me.”
I wanted to grab her by her scrawny throat and crush her. This was the reward for all that Anya had taught her. My suspicions about little Reeva had been right. She had not been seeking protection; she had sought power.
Looking past her to Kraal, I said, “And you think the dragons will leave you alone now?”
He nodded dumbly.
“Of course they will,” Reeva said triumphantly. “Because we will provide them slaves. We will not be harmed. The masters will reward us!”
My anger collapsed into a sense of total defeat. All that Anya and I had taught these people would be used against other humans. Instead of building up an alliance against Set, they had caved in at the first sign of danger and agreed to collaborate with the devils.
“Where did they take Anya?”
“To the north,” Kraal answered.
The bitterness I felt was like acid burning inside me. “Then I’ll head north. You won’t see me again.”
“I’ll go with you,” Chron said.
Reeva’s dark eyes flashed. “You will go north, Orion. That is certain.”
From behind the row of mud huts strode two reptilian masters. The crowd parted silently to let them advance toward me.
They looked like smaller replicas of Set. Almost human in form. Almost. Clawed feet. Three-fingered taloned hands. Their naked bodies were covered with light red scales that glittered in the mottled sunlight filtering through the tall trees. Slim tails that almost reached the ground, twitching constantly. Reptile faces with narrow slashes for mouths and red eyes with vertical black slits for pupils. No discernable ears and only a pair of breathing holes below the eyes instead of noses.
I whipped the dagger from its sheath on my thigh and Chron leveled his spear at the two reptiles.
“No,” I said to the youngster. “Stay out of this.”
Then I saw two dozen spear points leveled at me. Most of the men in the village were staring at me grimly, their weapons in their hands.
“Please, Orion,” said Kraal in a strangled, agonized voice. “If you fight, they will destroy us all.”
The treachery was complete. I realized that Reeva had convinced Kraal to go along with the enemy. He was the tribe’s leader, but she was now its priestess and she could twist Kraal to her whims.
Then I heard the crunching sound of heavy footsteps through foliage. From beyond the miserable little huts reared the heads of two dragons, meat-eaters, fighters.
The pair of masters stepped past Kraal and Reeva to confront me. They were my own height, which put them a full head above the tallest villager. Their scaly reptilian faces showed no emotion whatever, yet their glittering serpent’s eyes stirred deep hatred within me.
Silently the one on my right extended a three-fingered hand. Reluctantly I handed him my dagger. I had won it on the plain of Ilios, before the beetling walls of Troy, a gift from Odysseus himself for battle prowess. It was useless to me now, in this time and place. Still, parting with it was painful.
The master made a hissing noise, almost a sigh, and handed my dagger to Kraal. He took it, shamefaced.
The other master turned toward the approaching dragons and raised one hand. They stopped short of the huts, their breath whooshing in and out like spurts of flame in a furnace. The monsters would have wrecked several huts if they had tried to come all the way to this meeting ground in the center of the village. Their masters were keeping their word: no harm would come to the village as long as Kraal’s people cooperated.
“You can’t let them take him!” Chron shouted at the villagers. There were tears in his eyes and his voice cracked with frustrated rage.
I made myself smile at him. “There’s nothing you can do, Chron. Accept the unavoidable.” Then I swung my gaze to Kraal and Reeva. “I’ll be back.”
Kraal looked down at his bare crusted feet but Reeva glared defiantly at me.
“I’ll be back,” I repeated.
The masters walked me past the huts. With soft whistles they got the big dragons to crouch down and we climbed up on their backs, me behind the one who had taken my dagger. If he—or she, I had no way of telling—was worried that I would grab him around the throat and strangle him, he gave no sign of it.
The dragons lumbered off past the village. I turned for one last look at it, over my shoulder. The villagers were still clustered in the central meeting ground, standing stock still, as if frozen. Chron raised his spear above his head in defiance. It was a pretty gesture, the only thing he could do.
The entire village had been cowed, all except that one teenage boy. I wondered how long he could survive if Reeva decided he was dangerous to her.
Then the trees blotted out the village and I saw it no more. The dragons jounced along at a good pace, jogging on their two legs between the trees, flattening the foliage on the ground. There was no saddle, no reins. I clung to the dragon’s hide with both arms and legs, clutching hard to hang on. We rode behind their massive heads, so there was no worry about being knocked off by tree branches. If the dragon could get through, we could easily enough.
The humanoid masters were clad only in their scaly skins, without even a belt or pouch in which to hold things. They seemed to have no tools at all, no weapons except their formidable claws and teeth. And the fearsome dragons we were riding, of course.
I began to wonder if they had language, then wondered even more deeply how a race could be intelligent without language. Clearly Set had communicated with me telepathically. Did these silent replicas of him use telepathy instead of speech?
I tried speaking to them, to no avail. No matter what I said, it made absolutely no impression on the reptilian sitting four inches in front of me. As far as I could tell he was stone deaf.
Yet they controlled the dragons without any trouble at all. It had to be some form of telepathy, I concluded. I remembered the Neanderthals, who also communicated with a form of telepathy, although they could make the sounds of speech if they had to.
We pounded through the forest without stop. Night fell but we barely slowed our pace. If the dragons had a need for sleep, they did not show it, and for all I knew, the masters riding them might have been sound asleep; I had no way of telling. Did they know that I can go without sleep for weeks at a time, if necessary? Or did they conclude that I could sleep without falling off the back of this galumphing latter-day dinosaur?
I decided to find out.
I let myself slide off the dragon’s back. Hitting the ground on the balls of my feet, I jumped out of the way of the beast pounding along behind me and dashed into the thick brush.