The Tiber Runs Red: An Alternate Reality Novel: Survival in Prehistoric Wilderness (Back to the Stone Age Book 2) by R Magnusholm

Author:R Magnusholm [Magnusholm, R]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HappySnail Media
Published: 2022-06-23T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 53

Eye of the Fox

Scout was too young and too frightened for John to simply nudge forward. He’d have to assume complete control. He leaned on his pike and closed his eyes. When he opened them again, he looked at the monochrome gray world. He saw himself, tall as a mountain, immovable, invulnerable like a god. Liz was gazing down at him, smiling beatifically, an only slightly smaller giantess. Even George looked huge.

He peered at the sky, but the young fox’s vision wasn’t as sharp as a human’s, and he couldn’t spot the eagle.

“Clear,” Liz said, gesturing at the sky with her bow.

Out of the shadow of the cabin, he scooted on tiny fox legs and rushed for the shelter of the willows lining the Tiber. Once safely beneath their protective branches, he made his way downstream to the south gate. After fifty yards, however, the stream vanished into the briar, and there were no more tall trees to give him cover. Being so low to the ground, he couldn’t see Liz and George and himself by the house. Undulating ryegrass towered over him like bamboo.

He sniffed the air currents. Yes, the sabertooth was here, its pungent odor intermingled with the floral fragrance of brambles still coming from the spot beyond the cloying stench of the dead rabbit bait.

Which meant the fiend wasn’t about to break into their clearing. But what in hell was it doing? Just admiring the bait? John needed Scout to get closer.

The eagle shrieked far away, above the western ridge, but John knew that birds of prey often hunted in pairs, so he stayed in the shade of the last willow tree, looking for a safe way forward.

Ah, there! Up ahead, a patch of burdocks spread their huge umbrella-like leaves far and wide, and beyond them lay the brambles.

The fox pup took shelter under a monstrous plant and waited there for a while. Sunlight filtered through a veined leaf. Somewhere high above, the eagle still circled. Well, let it.

He darted into the briar, hiding amid the barbed strands. Slowly and purposefully, he crept closer to the target.

But the pup wasn’t alone. Incensed by this incursion into their thorny domain, rabbits stared at him menacingly. From the fox pup’s perspective, they appeared to be as big as moose. A couple of the largest and bravest specimens began advancing on him, thumping the ground with their hind paws in an aggressive display. The angry bunnies looked so comical, John might have laughed, except the creatures were twice as big as the pup whose body he now inhabited.

He wondered what a rabbit could actually do to him. Clout him with a paw?

John reached out to grab the nearest bunny by the scruff to give it a good shake when he realized that instead of a brawny hand he had a tiny black-socked paw. Still, the fox was a hunter and the rabbit its prey, so he bared his teeth and took a step toward it, growling like a miniature wolf.

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