Battlesaurus Read Online Free Page A

when reason and logic have prevailed. Even so it softens him, and he is on the verge of relenting.
    But a steely resolution comes over him. This is his fate, his future. Will he remain a simple baker all his life? No! Fate has great things in store for him, he knows it, and they do not involve hauling sacks of flour and delivering baguettes.
    He will not be swayed by the tears of a woman.
    He collects a leather satchel from the floor and lifts a silk pouch off the headboard of his bed. “Come, Pieter,” he says, and the tiny saur jumps up onto the bed, then scampers up his arm onto his shoulder.
    â€œWhere are you going?” she asks.
    â€œI go where I want and do as I wish,” he says. “And I will be back when I am ready.”
    He leaves her crying and goes calmly down the stairs, taking a baguette from the warming tray and walking out of the house without a word to his mother’s lover.
    It only occurs to him much later that maybe he has misunderstood the tears.

 
    THE HUNT
    Pieter goes rigid, raising himself up to his full height and balancing by placing his front feet on the side of Willem’s head. His tail curls around Willem’s neck. He makes a low clacking sound and his head flicks from side to side.
    â€œHush!” Willem says.
    Jean and Fran ç ois stop and look back at him.
    â€œPieter’s heard something,” Willem says.
    The little microsaurus perched on Willem’s shoulder is very sensitive to sounds, smells, even vibrations on the forest floor. He is a good harbinger of danger.
    Pieter repeats the clacking sound and goes very still.
    Fran ç ois lifts his ax off his shoulders and holds it in front of him. Jean unslings his crossbow and loads it. The bolt glints in a sharp rod of sunlight stabbing through a gap in the tree canopy.
    Willem does nothing. Pieter is just listening and sniffing the air. If there is danger, it is not yet close by.
    The forest soars around them, giant oaks, firs, and beeches. Birds swoop and dart. Great winged saurs glide high above them. A breeze tiptoes through the upper branches, and the leaves whisper secrets of the trees that only Pieter can understand.
    They set out from the river bridge over an hour ago and are now deep within the forest. For part of the trip they followed a stream. At a mighty oak, wider than Willem is tall, they veered off up a steep slope and along a ridgeline where new, slender trunks are evidence of a recent fire. Rain, or the geography of the forest, must have limited the fire to the ridgeline, and this section of the trail is hard going. The regrowth has brought with it dense underbrush that scratches and snaps at their legs as they push through it. Each footstep brings up the cloudy scent of damp earth and the sour perfume of rotting leaves.
    After a moment Pieter relaxes, sitting back down on his haunches and playing with Willem’s ear.
    â€œNothing?” Fran ç ois asks.
    â€œSomething,” Willem says. “But it has moved away.”
    â€œWhat was it?” Jean asks.
    â€œOnly Pieter knows,” Willem says. “Boar, wolf, deer. It could have been anything.”
    That isn’t quite true. Pieter would have reacted a little differently had it been a boar or a wolf. From the way his whole body stiffened, whatever he sensed was a saur.
    It is out of range now, but that does not mean it is not hunting them.
    Willem reaches inside his satchel, checking once again that his father’s apparatus is still there. It was when he had last checked and the time before that. But still he feels comforted by the presence of the two oval containers.
    They set off once again, Fran ç ois in front. This is his way. Jean, with nothing to prove, follows, and Willem brings up the rear.
    The cousins are alike but different in many ways. Some of that comes from their fathers. The brothers had spent too many years on the battlefields of Europe, in the service of Napol é on. Whatever they