Dinotopia - Dinotopia Lost by Alan Dean Foster (epub)

Author:Alan Dean Foster (epub)
Format: epub
Published: 2013-08-22T04:00:00+00:00

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.

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