Suddenly bright yellow frills snapped open on both sides of its neck, making its head appear twice as large; a trick for frightening enemies, but I knew it for what it was.
I ran straight at the big lizard and saw its long tail whipping toward my left. Like a slow-motion dream I watched its tip swinging toward me. I gauged its speed and jumped over it as it snapped harmlessly beneath my feet. My impetus carried me straight toward the lizard’s scaled underside and I sank my dagger blade into its belly with every ounce of my strength.
It screeched like a steam whistle and reached to grab me. I ducked under the clutching claws and plunged my dagger into its hide again.
In the heat of battle I had forgotten about its tail. It caught me this time, knocking me off my feet. I hit the ground with a thud that made me grunt with pain and surprise. The lizard reached for me again, but with my senses in hyperdrive I could see its every move easily and rolled away from those clutching claws.
The tail slashed at me again. I stepped inside its arc and carved a bloody slice down the lizard’s thigh. My blade caught bone and I worked it in deeper, hoping to disable its knee joint and cripple it. Instead I felt its claws circle around me, cutting into my midsection as it yanked me high into the air. The dagger was wrenched from my grasp, still stuck in its knee.
It carried me up above its head and I saw those narrow yellow reptilian eyes staring coldly at me, first one and then the other. Its teeth were not made for rending flesh but those jaws could crush my body quite easily, I knew. That was just what the beast was going to do. Its yellow collar frills relaxed slightly; the monster no longer felt threatened.
I strained to break free of the demon’s claws, but I was just as helpless as the baby had been moments before.
“Orion! Here!”
Anya’s voice made me glance down while I struggled in the lizard’s powerful grip. She had come up behind me and was pulling my knife out of the lizard’s knee. Before the beast understood what was happening, she threw the dagger as expertly as any assassin. It pierced the soft folds beneath the lizard’s jaw with a satisfying thunk.
With its free hand the dragon started to reach for the steel in its throat. But I was closer and faster. I grabbed the projecting hilt of the dagger and began working the blade across the lizard’s jawline, back toward the frills that had snapped fully erect once again. It shrieked and released me, but I clutched at its neck and swung up behind its head, pulling the dagger free and jamming it in beneath the base of the skull.
It collapsed as suddenly as a light being switched off. I had severed its spinal cord. The two of us came crashing down to the grassy ground. I felt myself bounce and then everything went blank.
Chapter 3
I opened my eyes and focused blearily on Anya’s beautiful face. She was kneeling over me, deep concern etched across her classic features. Then she smiled.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
I ached in every part of my body. My chest and thighs were slashed from the lizard’s claws. But I consciously clamped down on the capillaries to stop the bleeding and closed off the pain centers in my brain. I made myself grin up at her.
“I’m alive.”
She helped me to my feet. I saw that only a few moments had passed. The big lizard was now nothing more than a huge mound of brightly colored scales stretched out across the grass.
The crew of slaves, however, was something else. The slaves were terrified. And instead of being grateful, they were angry.
“You have slain one of the guardians!” said a scrawny bearded man, his eyes wide with terror.
“The masters will blame us!” one of the women wailed.
“We will be punished!”
I felt something close to contempt for them. They had the mentality of true slaves. Instead of thanking me for helping them, they were fearful of their master’s wrath. Without a word I went to the dead beast and pulled my dagger from the back of its neck.
Anya said to them, “We could not stand idly and watch the monster kill the baby.”
The baby, I saw, was alive. The mother was sitting silently on the grass, holding the child to her emaciated breast, her huge brown eyes staring at me blankly. If she was grateful for what I had done, she was hiding it well. Two long red weals scarred her ribs and back. The baby also had a livid welt across its naked flesh.
But the scrawny man was tugging at his tangled gray beard and moaning, “The masters will descend upon us and kill us all with great pain. They will put us in the fire that never dies. All of us!”
“It would have been better to let the baby die,” said another man, equally gaunt, his hair and beard also filthy and matted. “Better that one dies than all of us are tortured to death. We can always make more babies.”
“If your masters do not find you, they cannot punish you,” I said. “If the two of us can kill one of these overgrown lizards, then all of us can work together to protect ourselves against them.”
“Impossible!”
“Where could we hide that they will not find us?”
“They have eyes that see in the night.”
“They can fly through the air and even cross the great river.”
“Their claws are sharp. And they have the eternal fire.”
As they spoke they clustered around Anya and me, as if seeking protection. And they constantly looked up into the sky and scanned the horizon, as if seeking the first sign of avenging dragons. Or worse.
Anya asked them in a gentle voice, “What will happen to you if the two of us go away and leave you alone?”
“The masters will see what has happened here and punish us,” said the beard tugger. He seemed to be their leader, perhaps merely by the fact that he was their eldest.
“How will they punish you?” I asked.
He shrugged his bony shoulders. “That is for them to decide.”
“They will flay the skin from our bodies,” said one of the teenagers, “and then cast us into the eternal fire.”
The others shuddered. Their eyes were wide and pleading.
“Suppose we stayed here with you until your masters find us,” I asked. “Will they punish you if we tell them that we killed the beast and you had nothing to do with it?”
They gaped at us as if we were stupid children. “Of course they will punish us! They will punish every one of us. That is the law.”
I turned to Anya. “Then we’ve got to get away.”
“And bring them with us,” she agreed.
I scanned the area where we stood. The Nile had cut a broad, deep valley through the limestone cliffs that rose like jagged walls on either side of the river. Atop the cliffs, according to Anya, was a wide grassy plain. If this region would truly become the Sahara one day, then it must stretch for hundreds of miles southward, thousands of miles to the west. A flat open savannah, with only an occasional hill or river-carved valley to break the plain’s flat monotony. Not good country to hide in, especially from creatures that can fly through the air and see in the dark. But better than being penned between the river and the cliffs.
I had no doubt that the slaves were telling the truth about their reptilian masters. The beast Anya and I had just slain was a dinosaur, that seemed certain. Why not winged pterosaurs, then, or other reptiles that can sense heat the way a pit viper does?
“Are there trees nearby?” Anya was asking them. “Not like the garden, but wild trees, a natural forest.”
“Oh,” said the scrawny elder. “You mean Paradise.”