Orion in the Dying Time by Ben Bova Read Free Book Online Page A

Pirk. "Your arm will be all right in time."
    He nodded, his face drained white from the pain, his lips a thin bloodless line.
    The others fell to skinning the bear. Noch wanted its skull and pelt to bring back to the women, to show that we had been successful.
    "No beast will dare to threaten us once we mount this ferocious skull before our caves," he said.
    Twilight was falling when I sensed that we were not alone. The men were half-finished with their skinning. Chron and I had gathered wood and started a fire. Deep in the shadows around us other presences had gathered, I realized. Not animals. Men.
    I got to my feet and moved slightly away from the fire to peer into the shadows flickering among the thick foliage. Without conscious thought I reached down and drew my dagger from its sheath on my thigh.
    Chron was watching me. "What is it, Orion?"
    I silenced him with a finger to my lips. The other seven men looked up at me, then uneasily out toward the shadows.
    A man stepped out from the foliage and regarded us solemnly, our firelight making his bearded face seem ruddy, his eyes aglow. He wore a rough tunic of hide and carried a long spear in one hand, which he butted on the ground. In height he was no taller than Noch or any of the others, although he seemed more solid in build and much more assured of himself. Broad in the shoulders. Older too: his long hair and beard were grizzled gray. His eyes took in every detail of our makeshift camp at a glance.
    "Who are you?" I asked.
    "Who are you?" he countered. "And why have you killed our bear?"
    "Your bear?"
    He raised his free hand and swept it around in a half circle. "All this land around the lake is our territory. Our fathers have hunted here, and so have their fathers and their fathers before them."
    A dozen more men stepped out of the shadows, each of them armed with spears. Several dogs were with them, silent, ears laid back, wolflike green eyes staring at us menacingly.
    "We are newcomers here," I said. "We did not know any other men hunted in this area."
    "Why did you kill our bear? It was doing you no harm."
    "We tracked it from our home, far up the river. We feared it might attack us in the night, as we slept."
    The man made a heavy sigh, almost a snort. This was as new a situation for him, I realized, as it was for us. What to do? Fight or flee? Or something else?
    "My name is Orion," I told him.
    "I am called Kraal."
    "Our home is up the river a day's walk, in the vale of the god who speaks."
    His brow wrinkled at that.
    Before he had time to ask a question I went on, "We have come to this place only recently, a few days ago. We are fleeing the slave masters from the garden."
    "Fleeing from the dragons?" Kraal blurted.
    "And the seekers who fly in the air," Noch added.
    "Orion killed one of the dragons," said Chron, proudly. "And set us free of the masters."
    Kraal's whole body seemed to relax. The others behind him stirred, too. Even the dogs seemed to ease their tension.
    "Many times I have seen men taken by the slave masters to serve their dragons. Never have I heard of any man escaping from them. Or killing a dragon! You must tell us of this."
    They all stepped closer to our fire, lay down their spears, and sat among us to hear our story.

CHAPTER 6

    I spoke hardly a word. Noch, Chron, and even broken-armed Pirk related a wondrous tale of how I had single-handedly slain the dragon guarding them and brought them to freedom in Paradise. As the night wore on we shared the dried scraps of meat and nuts that each man had carried with him and the stories continued.
    We talked as we ate, sharing stories of bravery and danger. The dogs that accompanied Kraal's band went off by themselves for a good part of the night, but eventually they returned to the fire and the men still gathered around it, still talking.
    Kraal told of how his own daughter and her husband had been abducted by dragons who had raided their village by the lakeshore many years earlier in search of