Page 69 of Caveman Alien's Touch

I can tell from the rancid stench what it is: dinosaur oil. They’re going to set fire to the trees holding the clan’s platforms.

“Do you see this, misfits?” he yells up to the Foundlings. “I’ll burn your whole camp to the ground unless you all come down! We will let you live and simply use you as servants!”

“And lunch;” the scrawny outcast mutters with a toothless grin.

A spear thrown from a platform hits the ground at Unin’iz’s feet and buries its whole spearhead in the ground as it hits.

He swears and retreats a couple of steps, dragging me with him. “This is your last chance, Foundlings! It doesn’t matter to us what you pick! Light that one, men.” He points to the furthest tree.

An outcast goes over with a flaming branch and throws it on the oil. It catches immediately and creates a big blaze that engulfs the lower twenty feet of the trunk. Other outcasts gather firewood that they throw on the flames. Smoke rises from the fire, thick and unusually black.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Unin’iz mutters to me. “That tree is far too thick to burn. But wait and see.”

As the heavy smoke slowly rises, it only reaches the treetops and gathers under the dense canopy of leaves, just where the platforms are hanging. It’s a thick, noxious smoke that smells like burned rubber and has an oily quality to it.

“Aperenditree,” Unin’iz says with satisfaction. “I knew there were many of them here. Trust the Foundlings to not know that it burns unclean. If Shaman Melr’ax were still here, he would never have allowed them to hang their platforms from one. But who’s to tell them these things now?” He chuckles evilly, then glances at me, puts his sword at the back of my head, and cuts the gag off. “This hid your face from me. And you can’t warn them now.”

The smoke gathers fast under the treetops, obscuring them in black swirls. There’s a good amount of coughing from the platforms.

“Some of those platforms have babies on them,” I try, my voice weak. “You’re killing them!”

“They were supposed to die,” Unin’iz says with the casual iciness of a psychopath. “That’s why their tribes set them out in the jungle in the first place! They were never supposed tolive. This is simply completing that which should have happened a long time ago.”

“Noker will kill you for this.”

“Oh? Where is he?” Unin’iz pretends to look around.

“He’ll be back.”

“Back from the hole?”

Ice fills my veins, and I go limp. Noker in a hole somewhere in the jungle?

“But now I think my outcasts can do the rest without me. They will enjoy this, but I have no desire to eat Foundlings, no matter how well they have been cooked!” Unin’iz chuckles and grabs me by the hair, dragging me along. “So it’s time for you and me to get to know each other better. Much, much better?—”

He stops short. A thin, wooden shaft is suddenly sticking out of his thigh.

We both stare at it for a second before Unin’iz roars in pain. “What in the damned— oh, I see you!”

I see him too, a small shape running among the bushes.

“Trat, duck!” I yell as Unin’iz draws his sword and throws it at the boy. It spins through the air and buries itself in a tree trunk. But before that, it just grazes Trat’s arm and cuts it open.

There’s a thin scream as he falls.

With Unin’iz’s attention on Trat, I manage to wrest myself out of his grip. I sprint over to Trat and kneel by his side. “It will be all right.”

The boy looks up at me with scared eyes. “The sword hit me!”

Unin’iz comes over and pulls his sword out of the tree trunk. “Now it will hit you better.”

24

- Noker-

I sprint through the jungle, not caring how much noise I make. I have no spear, but at least I will surprise the outcasts.

Starting to sense the smell of acrid smoke, I speed up. A fire under the camp is one of the few things the clan fears. The trees at the new campsite should be too tall and their trunks too thick to take much damage from a regular forest fire, but Unin’iz is a wily warrior, and he may have some other plan. But we have thought about some things an attacker might do. If he recognizes that one of the trees is a perendi tree, he may set fire to it.

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