We were now in the forest of Paradise, I realized, riding north by east toward the edge of the woods. The time was the early Neolithic. This was the place and the time where Set had determined to make his stand: to wipe out the human race while it was still small and weak, to wreak vengeance upon me and the Creators for destroying his home world, to seize the planet Earth and make it his own forever.
I glanced at Subotai. He rode his pony quietly, his face impassive. But his eyes were darting everywhere. He knew we were no longer in the chill, dank land of the Muscovites. The sun was warm, even under the magnificent trees. He was noting every tree, every rock, every tiny animal that darted through the underbrush. He was building up a map inside his head as we rode through this land that was completely new to him.
At last he asked me, “You say there are no other men here?”
“There are a few scattered tribes, my lord. But they are small and weak. They possess no weapons except crude wooden spears and bows that have not the range of the Mongol bow.”
“And few women, also?”
“Very few, I fear.”
He grunted. “And the monsters? How are they armed?”
“They use giant lizards to do their fighting for them—dragons bigger than ten horses, with sharp claws and ferocious teeth.”
“Animals,” Subotai muttered.
I corrected, “Animals that are controlled by the minds of their masters, so that they fight with intelligence and courage.”
He fell silent at that.
For most of the day we rode through the forest, the Mongol warriors behind us filtering through the trees as silently as wraiths. There was no pause for a meal, we chewed dried meat and drank water from our canteens while in the saddle.
It was nearly sundown when we reached the edge of the forest and saw the endless expanse of grass stretching out beyond the horizon.
Subotai actually grinned. He nosed his pony out from under the trees and rode a hundred yards or so onto the grassy plain.
“How far does this land extend?” he called back to me.
Making a quick mental calculation, I shouted back, “About the same as the distance between Baghdad and Karakorum!”
He gave a wild shout and spurred his mount into a gallop. His bodyguards, startled, went yowling and charging after him, leaving me sitting in my saddle, staring at the unusual sight of Mongols whooping like boys wild with joyful exhilaration.
Then I saw a pterosaur gliding against the bright blue sky, high above.
“I welcome your return, Orion.” Set’s cold voice rang inside my head. “You have brought more noisy monkeys to annoy me, I see. Good. Slaughtering them will please me very much.”
I clamped down on my thoughts. The less Set knew about who these men were, the better. I had to fight him in the time and place of his choosing, but whatever element of surprise I could hold on to was vital to me.
Subotai returned at a trot after nearly half an hour of hard joyriding, his normally doughty face split by a wide grin.
“You have done well, Orion. This land is like the Gobi in springtime.”
“It is like this all year round,” I said. In a few thousand years it would become the most arid desert on Earth, as the ice sheets covering Europe in this era retreated and the nourishing rains moved north with them. But for now, for as long as Subotai and his sons and his sons’ sons lived, the grass would be green and abundant.
“We must bring the rest of the army here, and our families with their yurts and herds,” Subotai said enthusiastically. “Then we can deal with these demons and dragons of yours.”
I was about to agree when I spotted the lumpy brown shape of a four-legged sauropod on the horizon.
Pointing, I said, “There is one of the beasts. It is not a fighting dragon, but it can be dangerous.”
Subotai immediately spurred his horse into a charge toward the sauropod. A dozen of his guard charged out after him. I urged my mount into a gallop, too, and we all dashed for the hump-backed brown and dun dinosaur as it plodded slowly away from us. I felt the wind in my face and the straining muscles of my pony beneath me; it was exhilarating.