Something snapped a heavy branch. They all froze, staring intently in the direction of the sound, hardly daring to breathe. Standing utterly motionless, Keelk resembled one of the smaller trees while Will, slim and straight, could slip easily behind one. Only the rose-yellow bulk of Chaz stood out distinctively amid the sea of green.
“Nothing,” whispered Keelk, resuming her stride. Chaz shuffled along close to Will.
“Tell me again,” the translator murmured quietly, “about my bravery. Just so I won’t forget.”
XIV
BY THE FOLLOWING MORNING THEY HAD TRAVELED A respectable distance. It was early midday when they paused to make a lunch. Intending to ask Keelk’s opinion on a matter of direction, Will was startled to see the struthie standing motionless, a cluster of small green fruit dangling absently from one hand. Pupils dilated, her stance indicative of the utmost alertness, she was staring fixedly into the forest.
“What is it?” Looking around sharply, he saw nothing out of the ordinary, heard nothing save the usual bird and insect calls. Perspiration dotted his forehead. It was close to noon, the hottest part of the day in the Rainy Basin, and very little ought to be stirring.
He looked at her again. Certainly she heard or saw something.
“Is it the intruders?”
Without turning, she drew the back of her right hand across her beak, unmistakably signaling him to silence.
Then he heard it.
A heavy, deep breathing, like a bass-pedal counterpoint to the twittering of the rain forest birds. It was accompanied by what could only be described as a muffled crashing in the woods. Chaz retreated on all four legs until his backside was pressed up against the nearest large tree. A vine dropped across his spine, and Will thought the little Protoceratops was going to jump out of his frill, but to his credit he made not a sound.
Keeping his voice to a whisper, Will leaned in the translator’s direction. “Ask her what’s going on. Ask her what’s—” Before he could finish, Keelk responded with a series of sharp, rigidly modulated chirps.
“She says we have to move.” Chaz listened intently. “No, not move: run. She says we have to run.” Even as Chaz translated, the Struthiomimus was edging sideways, stepping carefully over a fallen log.
“Run? Run where?” Strain as he might, Will still couldn’t see anything.
“Deeper into the forest.” Chaz reluctantly abandoned the bulwark of the tree while Will scrambled to pack up the remnants of his lunch. The two of them did their best to follow their agitated guide.
Chaz had a hard time keeping up, especially after Will broke into a trot. Furthermore, unlike his two companions, the Protoceratops could not look back over his shoulder to see if anything except nervous suspicion was gaining on them.
“Ask her if anything’s chasing us.” The struthie was continually urging them to greater speed.
“She’s not sure.” Chaz was puffing like a little steam engine. The forest kept deliberately placing obstacles in his path: roots, tree stumps, fallen logs, termite mounds. “She says that—”
Skidding to a halt, Keelk let out a squeal unlike anything Will had heard before, not even when she’d lain delirious on the infirmary bed. This time it wasn’t necessary for Chaz to translate.
By then his eyes had grown almost as wide as hers.
It stepped out from behind a huge cecropia, having concealed itself with a stealthiness wholly unexpected in so formidable a creature. Nearly fifteen feet tall, the Albertosaurus weighed several tons. Not all of that was teeth, though at the moment those seemed to hold all of Will’s attention. He focused on them as completely as he did the buckles on his safety harness when he was doing acrobatics with Cirrus.
A thickly articulated growl emerged from deep within the muscular throat. Will took a step backward, only to find his retreat blocked by Chaz. The Protoceratops didn’t need to explain his intent. Flight would only be likely to precipitate an attack, and at such close range they had no chance of escaping or avoiding the huge, agile carnivore.
It wouldn’t have mattered anyway. Will sucked in his breath as two more of the giants emerged from the forest behind them. They were slightly smaller than their predecessor, each being no larger than your average couple of elephants. Any kind of retreat was now impossible.
There was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. Which left only one small and very unencouraging possibility.
Will whispered urgently to his protoceratopsian companion. “Talk to them!”
“I’ll try.”
“You’ll have to do more than try, or we’re canapes.”
Nodding nervously, the translator took a shaky step forward, shifted his weight to his back legs, and put one foreleg in the air, waving it in the universally accepted manner. He then ventured a reasonable facsimile of the meat-eater’s tongue. As a respectable growl it bordered on the comical, but it was enough to make the big theropod hesitate. Querulous rumbles rose from the equally intimidating pair behind them. Will was quietly impressed.
Not that he felt their chances much improved. There were three of the carnivores and three of them. The albertosaurs might be trying to communicate ... or they might be arguing over the sharing out of prey.
Whose snack will I be? he wondered. Just their bad luck to encounter a trio of theropods wandering about in the heat of midday. The fact that they had lost out to long odds was small comfort.
The largest of the meat-eaters rumbled something low in its throat. Will moved to stand alongside the translator.
“What is it saying?”
“Be quiet,” Chaz snapped. “I want to be sure I understand perfectly. Inflection is very important to carnosaurs.” Will obediently subsided.
“It asks . . . what the three of us are doing out in the heat of sunhigh.” The Protoceratops gaped at him. “What are you smiling at, Will Denison? Do you find our situation amusing?”
“No. It’s only that I was wondering exactly the same thing about them.”
“I do not think the commonality of curiosity will help us, since this one professes itself delighted by our choice. And not because it and its friends are in dire need of refined conversation.”
A quick lunch, Will found himself thinking. So that’s how I’m going to end up. After all he and his father had survived—the storm at sea, the shipwreck on the shores of Dinotopia, the mastering of the ways of this strange land—he was fated to end his days as food. It seemed a terrible waste of accumulated knowledge.
“Tell them what we’re doing here. Tell them our purpose in coming this way.”
“Do you really think that will have any effect on them?”
“You have a better idea?”
“No,” replied Chaz morosely, “I don’t.” Returning his attention to the albertosaur, he resumed his elegant growling.
Will fought not to look back over his shoulder. He fancied he could feel warm, fetid breath on his neck. One bite, he knew. It would all be over in one bite.
Chaz was speaking to him again. “It’s as I feared. They’re not interested in our reasons. Their only interest is in sating their hunger, which at present appears substantial.”
“Surely you can do something!” Will declared. “Reason with them, tell them that if they let us go we’ll return with fish. A whole convoy full of fish!”
The terrified Keelk chirped in with comments of her own, forcing the stressed Protoceratops to listen to two simultaneous sets of suggestions in two very different languages.
“You can’t reason with a carnosaur.”
“Yes, you can! You can reason with any creature that thinks. I know, I’ve seen it done. Translator Bix—”
“Oh, Bix. Who do you think I am, Will? I’m only an apprentice, like yourself. I don’t have the redoubtable Bix’s experience or linguistic skills. I do well enough to make sense of Struthine. Not that it matters. I don’t think even the famous Bix could talk three carnosaurs out of an easy meal. Why should they hesitate? We have no armor, no sauropod-ian support, and it’s
obvious we’re out here by ourselves.”
“Then you’ve nothing to lose by trying, do you?” Will replied firmly.
The lead albertosaur snorted impatiently and took a step forward. It was a considerable step, but the three travelers could not back away. There was nowhere for them to go but into waiting maws.
Will saw the bright, hungry eyes flicking between himself and Keelk, as if trying to decide which would make the more respectable mouthful. A single lunge and it would all be over. At the last instant he would close his eyes, he decided. His only regret was that he wouldn’t have the chance to say goodbye to Sylvia or his father.
Give Chaz tredit: the little translator was doing his best, grunting and growling strenuously in the albertosaur’s tongue. The theropod didn’t hesitate to reply.
“I told this one that we’re on a mission of mercy and that there are many strange humans prowling their territory. They find this news pleasing. It offers the promise of easy hunting. As for our mission, it means nothing to them. Any last clever ideas?”
Now Will was certain he could feel a decaying breath hot on his back. He tried desperately to think of something, anything else for Chaz to say. It’s hard to stall when you’re given no time to think, much less when your prospective audience consists of such poor listeners.
A thunderous roar echoed through the forest, sending birds streaking from their perches and obliterating the normal buzz of background sound. The head of the lead albertosaur, now less than an arm’s length from Chaz’s snout, immediately rose to its full height and spun southward, as did those of its two companions. A startled Will turned in the same direction. So did Keelk and Chaz.
A second, even more awesome bellow reverberated through the rain forest before the echoes of the first had faded away, followed by a thrashing of the trees and bushes off to their left. The ground trembled as if a highly localized earthquake had been summoned forth and sent crashing toward them.
Abruptly disregarding their imminent prey, the three alber-tosaurs whirled as one and ran off in the opposite direction, their thick, powerful legs carrying them rapidly into the dense verdure. They fled in single file, the two smaller specimens trailing the larger.
Keelk mustered a querulous hoot. It sounded incredibly lonely in the ensuing, unnatural silence. There was no need for Chaz to translate. The struthie was saying “Now what?” in no uncertain terms.
Whatever it was, Will told himself, it couldn’t be any worse than what they’d just faced. He was wrong, of course.
The pair of full-grown adult tyrannosaurs came straight toward them, massive jaws half agape, yellow eyes burning with anger. Their tiny, muscular forearms were turned toward one another, the tips of the heavy claws nearly touching. Between the two of them they massed more than fourteen tons. Compared to them, the absent albertosaurs were as jackals fleeing the unexpected arrival of lions.
No time now even to argue, Will thought wildly. He tried to prepare himself for the inevitable first bite. He couldn’t close his eyes, though. There is little in nature more majestically terrifying than a tyrannosaur on the attack. Will felt very much like a man caught in the middle of a high train trestle with a locomotive bearing down on him at full speed.
The male tyrannosaur was advancing straight as an arrow, the great skull dropping down, its weight counterbalanced by the heavy tail, which stretched out in back of the animal like the rudder of a ship. Fully five feet in length and lined with six-inch-long serrated teeth, the head did not so much dip as plunge toward him. Frozen to the spot, Will had a glimpse of flashing yellow eye and a dark, black pupil. The gaping maw blotted out everything else. He closed his eyes and tensed.
Nothing happened.
What was it waiting for? He was barely a mouthful, hardly even worth chewing. Certainly nothing worth pausing to think about.
A rippling snarl, deeper and more impressive even than that of the albertosaurs, formed words of a kind. It reminded Will of an idling steam engine. His ears twitched. Slowly he opened his eyes.
He almost wished he hadn’t. The nightmare head was still there, less than a yard from his face. A part of him became aware that Chaz was speaking, albeit in an uncharacteristically unsteady voice. Thoroughly terrified, the little Protocer-atops was somehow still doing his job.
“It says ... it says that you’re human.”
Will saw no need to respond to this. He would have had difficulty forming words in any case. The tyrannosaur snarled at him anew. Its breath was unimaginably vile, pure essence of carrion.
I will not faint, Will told himself shakily. I will go out like a man and not like a meal.
Ongoing existence lent strength to the Protoceratops’s voice. “I can hardly believe it. The male tyrannosaur, whose name is Crookeye, demands to know what you’ve done with their offspring. Their daughter, to be precise.”
Will blinked. As curiosity overcame fear, his lower limbs stopped quivering. He was face-to-face with the fiercest, most imposing carnivore nature had ever put on the face of the land, and instead of swallowing him down in a single gulp, it was asking him a question.
Clearly, it behooved him to come up with a reply.
“Their daughter? I haven’t done anything with their daughter.”
As Chaz translated, the second tyrannosaur came near. If the presence of one was terrifying, proximity to a pair, both equally attentive, left no room for emotion of any kind. It growled steadily at him for several minutes.
“That’s Shethorn, the mother.” Chaz went on to clarify this for Keelk. It had to be a strain on him, Will knew, shifting between so many languages, and under such difficult circumstances.
“I don’t understand,” he said. “Ask them for an explanation, for more details.”
Clearing his throat, Chaz resumed his comical mimicry of the tyrannosaurs’ dialect. The rumbling response his inquiry engendered was immediate and undercut with an almost painful urgency.
“They had left their daughter Prettykill to sleep after feeding on a carcass. It seems she overate and did not want to go with them. When they returned for her, she’d disappeared. She would not do this voluntarily. Tyrannosaur offspring do not disobey their parents.”
Who would? Will thought uneasily as he stared back at the seven-ton meat-eater.
Chaz continued. “To their astonishment, they found signs of a brief struggle. There was also evidence of the presence of many humans, in the form of strong smells, localized spoor, and footprints. These were integrated with those of their daughter as well as those of several struthies. All vanished together into the forest.
“Since then they have been desperately trying to track their daughter and these humans. The added presence of struthies only confuses them further.”
Will deliberated. “Ask them if the human scents they detected were tainted with the smell of the sea.”
Chaz complied. The two tyrannosaurs actually exchanged a look before the male responded.
“He says that they were, though the connection was very faint. They recognize the sea smell because of the fish they have been given by the convoys passing through the basin. They have never before had reason to connect it with humans traveling on foot.” A barely controlled growl punctuated his last words.
“He would like very much to know,” the Protoceratops went on, “how you happen to be aware of this connection.” Chaz added more softly. “Couch your reply carefully, Will. These two are very edgy.”
“I can see that.” With a five-foot-long skull eyeing him intently on either side, he knew there was no room for linguistic error. How much longer would the tyrannosaurs’ curiosity continue to override their fury and frustration?
Putting hands on hips, he boldly returned their attention, wondering as he did so if his confident stance looked as futile as it felt. He tried to see them as individuals, as concerned parents, instead of as gigantic, two-legged eating machines.
Fortunately, he was possessed of an excellent imagination.
“
Tell them that our friend here is also someone’s daughter.” He gestured in Keelk’s direction, and the young Struthio-mimus gazed back at him hopefully. “The struthie prints they found belong to her family, which has been taken prisoner by these humans, who are not residents of Dinotopia but who come from far across the sea. She managed to escape and go for help.” He shrugged modestly. “Right now, we’re all the help she’s been able to muster. But others will follow.” As soon as Chaz had finished translating this, Will continued.
“These humans are not civilized. They know nothing of Dinotopian ways. They seem to be lacking in morals of any kind. I know that those who live in the Rainy Basin think and act differently from those of us who live in the developed regions, but at least we understand each other. These new arrivals know nothing of our conventions, compacts, or agreements. They act solely out of unenlightened self-interest.
“I think that since they’ve shown themselves eager and able to capture and hold an entire family of struthies, they are also capable of capturing and holding a young tyrannosaur. I think that may be what’s happened to their daughter. How old was she, anyway? How big?”
Chaz translated first for Keelk, then for their audience. When the Protoceratops had finished, the female tyrannosaur leaned toward Will. He forced himself to stand still as the enormous skull passed over him. A stubby but powerful two-clawed hand reached toward his head and stopped, the claws level with his hairline. Then Shethorn withdrew.
“Not very big, then,” he observed sympathetically. It was hard to imagine any group of humans restraining a tyrannosaur of any size, but somehow these intruders had managed the feat. This Prettykill was no taller than Keelk, though certainly more muscular.
With the two tyrannosaurs hovering so close, the stench that emanated from their mouths was doubled. He tried to breathe only through his mouth.
“Tell them we want the same thing they do: to find these humans and free their prisoners. They want their daughter returned; Keelk wants her family back. Tell them ... tell them that we’ll help them rescue their daughter.”