Dino Riders, page 2
I didn’t have enough energy to keep up the fight, but it didn’t sound like the reenactors were going to come to my rescue, and there was no way for me to look over my shoulder and check without giving the Compy in front of me an opening. It was just me, the dinosaurs, and the bat that had already started to crack like a bamboo sparring staff. I’d fought bigger animals before, and even a pack of monkeys one time, but that was always with my crew as backup, along with tranquilizer guns that could knock out a charging rhino.
“Give up yet?” I asked the new leader as it hopped forward.
Half of the sixteen that had originally attacked me were too wounded to actually do anything, but that still left eight toddler-sized dinosaurs with sharp teeth and even sharper claws. I pulled my shoulders back and waited to feel the shift in the sand that would give away a strike from behind, but the new leader just let out one long chirp, and the little bastards turned on their wounded. They sprang on them like a pack of ravenous wolves, and I watched in horror as tissue and muscle flew across the beach in a mad frenzy.
“What… the… fuck?” I whispered after what felt like seconds.
The Compies had torn out major organs and left the corpses of their fallen for scavengers before they rushed back into the forest. The only sign that they’d been there were the broken bodies scattered around the fallen tree trunk, and the blood that flowed like a river into the ocean. The little dinosaurs must have had their fill, because they didn’t bother with me again, but I kept a tight grip on my makeshift bat just in case.
“That is officially the scariest thing that I’ve ever seen in my entire life,” I said and took a step away from the gore.
Another horn blast came from the colony, and I finally risked a glance behind me to see that loading dock doors had been opened. I hadn’t had enough time to realize just how many of the reenactors had gone inside, but there had been at least five out with their ancient rifles in hand. The sailors had even taken up the ramp so that the Compy wouldn’t be able to board, but now they lowered it again and went about unloading like it was back to business as usual.
Every inch of my body stung from the sand and saltwater, and I was keenly aware of every cut that the Compy had managed to make. My shirt was completely shredded from the little dinosaurs’ claws, but only my right pant leg had taken damage. I would need to clean up soon if I didn’t want anything to get infected, but nothing seemed deep enough to need serious attention, and the toddler-sized bastards had been just tall enough that they could’ve ripped open my stomach if they’d gotten close enough.
I took a deep breath, ran my free hand through my hair, and then dropped the makeshift bat into the sand. There was nothing that it could do against bullets, even ones with the less-than-perfect design that the arquebus used. I also didn’t want the colonists to think that I held a grudge for their complete lack of help, though admittedly I kind of did.
They’d just watched the Compy attack me without lifting a finger, and I was sure that one gun blast would’ve scared the little bastards away. Of course, they wouldn’t be the first civilians to stand by and watch as someone came after me, and they probably wouldn’t be the last. That was the life that I’d signed up for when I decided to go after poachers for a living, though dinosaurs had never been anything more than a joke after a night filled with drinking.
No one came out to greet me from the colony, so I forced my tired legs to walk across the shifting sand toward the settlement. They were the only people that I’d seen so far, and there was a ship that could take me back to the mainland. I just needed to convince them to let me join their crew for the journey back.
“Hol’ ‘ight there!” a young man in a dark brown tunic and wool hose shouted.
His accent reminded me of my Welsh friend Johnny, like the colonist had stepped right out of the Welsh countryside, though my buddy had usually followed anything he said with a string of curse words that no one else could understand. There were also traces of the dealer I’d met in London, and maybe even a little American South. Either way, the guy pointed an arquebus right at my chest, and I’d understood enough to know he wanted me to stop where I was.
“I don’t want any trouble,” I said and put my hands in the air to show that I didn’t have a weapon. “I just need to get back home.”
The guard looked over his shoulder and hissed something at a teenage kid that took off like a bat out of hell toward the colony, and I slowly dropped my hands. It was too hard to keep them up in the air as exhaustion washed over me, and I wanted to save whatever energy I had left for any possible fights. The young man in front of me looked like he was one wrong move away from firing at me, and we were close enough that even the inaccurate arquebus wouldn’t miss.
“Who ar’ ye?” an older man asked as he strolled over.
The salt-and-pepper-haired man had an arquebus in hand too, but he didn’t look nearly as spooked as the other guy. Their commitment to the reenactment was better than any play that I’d ever seen, and a creeping sensation filled my mind that maybe, just maybe, they weren’t actors. The older colonist stared at me hard with bright blue eyes that matched the canopy above us, and it felt like he could see all the way into my soul. At least whatever he found there didn’t make him want to shoot me, because his grip loosened on the butt of his arquebus.
“My name is Kevin Owens,” I said with as genuine a smile as I could muster at the moment. “Most people just call me K.O.”
“Ye Anglish?” he asked in an accent so thick I swear the word English had an A at the beginning instead of an E.
“American,” I shrugged.
The two men looked at each other like they’d never heard of America before, and a cold shiver ran down my spine. If they’d never heard of the United States of America, then maybe I really hadn’t washed up on some deserted island filled with crazy reenactors. The colonists did have on medieval clothing as if they’d stepped right off the Santa Maria, not to mention the dinosaurs, and a thousand different impossible scenarios flitted across my mind at once.
“Ar’ ye a spy from the Spurya?” the salt-and-pepper-haired man asked and tilted his head like the Compy had earlier. “Ha-blas Spuryol?”
“Never heard of them,” I said. “I was on a ship that got hit by a storm. Everyone went overboard when it capsized. And I woke up here.”
“There was a right nasty piece o’ work last night,” one of the passing sailors said in my favor. “Coulda taken an’one out.”
“Nobody asked ye,” the younger man snapped, but his grip loosened a little on his own arquebus. “Ye mean to tell me that ye just happened ta wash up on our shores? An’ you fought off the little demons?”
“Might be a warlock,” the older man added with a serious nod despite the ludicrous statement that he’d just made.
Years of time around tribal elders and jackasses with too many guns and not enough brains had taught me to school my expression, but it was hard to keep a straight face when someone accused me of being a warlock. It was like something out of a fantasy novel, or maybe sci-fi since there were literal dinosaur corpses on the beach behind me.
“‘E didn’t use magic ta fight,” the younger man pointed out. “Jus’ a branch. If ‘e was one o’ them warlock basta’ds from Spurya, then ‘e’d have used a spell.”
“I’m not a warlock,” I said, though it felt ridiculous to actually say it out loud.
A man in black and red robes like a cardinal priest came out from the colony, and the sailors dropped to their knees as if God himself had descended to walk among them. The colonists all bowed so deeply that they could’ve kissed their navels, and I watched with apprehension as the peacock-like man strolled across the sand toward me. He didn’t have any of the dirt on him that the guards had, or a weapon, but there was something threatening in the man’s smile.
I’d seen enough movies to know that the guys that ran the Catholic Church in the medieval era had been more power-hungry than reverent, and the man that stopped a few feet away from me didn’t have a single crucifix or embroidered cross anywhere on his expensive outfit.
“Hello,” he said in the most posh English accent that I’d ever heard. “My name is Reverend Michaels. It’s so nice to meet another Anglishman. Tell me, child, how did you come to our little island?”
His words were nice enough, but he’d been followed out by more guards.
And all of them had an arquebus pointed straight at me.
Chapter 2
“A ship,” I said with a small shrug. “We capsized in the storm last night.”
I was almost positive that wherever we were, it wasn’t in my world, or at least, not in any part that would make sense. It had been easy enough to believe that the guards had just mispronounced the word ‘English’ earlier, but the priest didn’t seem like he’d ever mispronounced a word in his entire life. I had to just bite the bullet and accept that maybe, just maybe, that bright light that I’d seen had actually transported me somewhere that couldn’t be found on a map.
“And where were you headed?” Reverend Michaels asked with that same emotionless smile that made chills run down my spine.
“We were coming back from the horn of Africa,” I forced a chuckle and ran my hand over the back of my neck.
“What what were you doing in this so-called ‘Africa’?” he asked.
“I was a game tracker, following the animals to stop illegal poachers,” I answered.
“Tracker?” he asked with genuine interest and then muttered to himself. “Like the warden who protects the king’s forest…”
“Yeah, I guess,” I nodded. “I’m pretty good at it.”
There had been enough opportunistic assholes like Reverend Michaels to greet my crew and I over the years that it was easy to see how interested he was in my being a tracker. They’d all wanted the same thing from me, and it usually involved killing endangered animals. At least, it did before they realized that I hunted poachers, not game, and then it usually turned into a gunfight.
If the colony was real, and they weren’t reenactors, then I needed to make nice with them, because I definitely wasn’t in Kansas anymore. The Compy had been enough to convince me of that, along with the fact that no one in their right mind would choose arquebuses over more modern guns, especially with a threat like the Compy so close to where they lived. I needed to operate with the idea that I’d somehow ended up in a completely different world until a way back home presented itself.
“You have a very interesting choice in clothing,” the priest said and brought my mind back to the beach and the armed men around me.
“It’s a new design,” I said and motioned to all the pockets. “Helps me to hold anything that I find along the way. Never know when I might find something that can help track a new animal.”
“I understand that you’ve met some of the beasts that we have on our little island,” he said and clasped his hands together like a concerned principal. “And you survived quite well with only a… what was it? A stick?”
“I broke a branch off a fallen tree,” I said and risked a glance back at the corpses.
No one had moved when I turned back around, but the guards that had followed Reverend Michaels out of the colony all looked shocked. None of them had any modern tech on them and could’ve easily stepped out of an European History textbook with their thick tunics and heavy wool hose. The men dropped their arquebuses a little like they’d officially decided I was too cool to shoot, and I breathed a little easier when the priest didn’t motion for them to keep the gun barrels aimed at me.
“That’s quite impressive,” the reverend nodded and then motioned to the colony behind him.
The sailors had already finished unloading their cargo and filed inside the log walls, but the guards that had greeted me first were still present. If the priest decided that I needed to be disposed of, then there was no way for me to escape. At least, not with ten armed men watching me, even if they did have terrible weapons.
“I do the best I can,” I shrugged and then winced as one of my wounds send a jolt of pain through me.
Dried blood cracked and fell to the golden sand, but at least the wounds didn’t bleed enough to draw more attention. The priest seemed to realize for the first time that I’d actually been injured, and he grimaced at the small wounds that covered my forearms like paper cuts. It wouldn’t be long before some other dinosaur caught my scent, and I could almost see the calculations in the reverend’s eyes as he decided whether or not to keep me alive.
“There are no less than eight dead lizard-beasts behind you,” Reverend Michaels said with a more genuine smile. “It seems your best is quite good. Come. We don’t have much to offer in the way of accommodations, but I believe there is a small cabin that you might be welcome to use. And I’ll send someone with dry clothes and something to clean your wounds.”
“Thanks,” I said as the peacock-like man turned and started back toward the colony.
“Of course,” Michaels said and motioned for the guards to lead the way.
I just needed to get the reverend to treat my wounds, feed me, and tell me more about the strange island that I’d been washed up on. After that, I could get the heck out of here and get home.
“Did you find anyone else?” I asked as we walked up the ramp into the colony.
“No,” the priest said with a glance over his shoulder. “I’m sorry, but I do believe that you’re the only survivor from your shipwreck. May the Lord God be with those who perished in the watery abyss.”
He said the words with about as much sympathy as a computer program reading out a financial document, and it took everything in me not to punch the guy in the back of the head. Those were my friends that he’d so flippantly said he’d pray for, though something told me that his prayers wouldn’t reach God even if Reverend Michaels shouted them from a rooftop. For that matter, I wasn’t even convinced we were talking about the same god.
I forced myself to tear my eyes away from the irritating priest and focus on the village around me. The interior was just as medieval as the exterior had been, complete with log cabins with thatched roofs that looked as if they’d been made from drying the massive ferns at the treeline. I didn’t spot a single computer or satellite dish anywhere, and my hopes that they were just reenactors officially flew out of the window.
Wherever I was, it wasn’t the world that I’d been in the night before. That strange light that had flashed in the ocean when the ship was sinking must have been what transported me to the new world, and every conspiracy theory the guys had ever told me about the Bermuda Triangle flashed across my mind. I still didn’t want to believe that something like that was possible, but it was impossible to deny that the colonists were stuck in the medieval times or that dinosaurs had attacked me on the beach.
The weather also didn’t make any sense if I was still off the coast of Africa, because it was way too arid even as the temperature climbed. We’d been right next to the equator when we’d been capsized, and usually the humidity was strong enough that it felt like being smothered with a wet blanket. No. I was somewhere completely different, and the sooner I learned about my surroundings, the sooner I could figure out how to survive.
“Right this way,” Reverend Michaels said as we crossed the camp.
Everyone dodged out of his way, and the sailors from earlier all put down their tankards to bow in respect as he passed. The little building that the men had gone to was attached to what looked like an inn, and I assumed it was a bar, but the reverend walked right past it without even acknowledging the seafaring men. They went back to their drinks the second that Michaels had passed, and I could’ve sworn that I heard one of them mutter a curse at the haughty man.
At least some things never changed.
It would be easier to make friends if not everyone worshiped the reverend, though it was clear that the black-and-red-clad man had enough power in the colony to evoke fear. For the moment, it would be best to play along and find out why he’d saved me and what the priest wanted with me. And then I could try to find friends that would help me break free of his control and maybe even find a way back to my own world.
“It looks like you’re well established here,” I said as the reverend slowed his pace. “There’s even a chapel and an inn.”
“We’re still relatively new to the island,” he shook his head and motioned to a building under construction. “And it’s been quite difficult to expand into the interior of the island. What with the savages and the beasts attacking us at any given moment.”
“Of course,” I nodded.
I fought back the urge to intervene as a grimy man with yellowed teeth brought out an old man with skin as dark as night. He tossed him to the ground, spit, and then went back into what smelled like a bakery. I definitely wasn’t in Kansas anymore, and rage filled my veins at the thin slave’s shackled feet.
It wasn’t the first time that I’d seen slaves, though in the modern era they were branded with tattoos and GPS trackers instead of chained like dogs. There was no period in time where people weren’t complete assholes to each other, but at least in my own world, I’d been able to turn the trafficking ring over to the proper authorities. I had no idea how to help the older man at the moment, and if I went over to pick him up, then the reverend might mark me as a bleeding heart and toss me out of camp, so it would have to wait for a little while longer.
“You’re very lucky that you ended up on the Anglish side of the island. If you’d floated up on a beach near Spurya or Frax, then you wouldn’t have been able to understand a thing that they were saying,” the reverend laughed and then followed my gaze to the slave. “Ah, yes. The savages on this island are quite pitiful. But don’t let them deceive you. They’ll stab you in the back before you’ve even turned.”
“Of course,” I said again and turned back to the priest. “Savages are the same everywhere.”
The words tasted bitter in my mouth, and I swallowed hard against the hatred that welled up when the priest nodded and smiled in approval. I told myself it was for the greater good, and one day, I’d free not just myself, but people like the old man. I just needed to learn more about this world before making a move, and for all I knew the slaves had been captured after a war, though that didn’t make it right for them to treat them so terribly, or to starve an old man.
