She just hoped that they could take top position in that food chain.
She was contemplating calling a rest break when one of the men, Seth, she discovered when she glanced at him, abruptly closed a hand around her upper arm. She looked at him questioningly as he pulled on her arm in a silent signal to crouch and then followed the direction he indicated with a nod of his head toward the limbs of the trees.
At first, she didn't see anything at all--because she was expecting to see the outline of warriors in the branches, or a predator of a different kind. What she finally discerned among the branches, however, was regular shapes that weren't nature made.
There was some sort of structure nestled among the foliage! When she'd finally figured out what it was that she was looking at, she discovered others--many others. And vines woven into what looked like swinging walkways or bridges.
Feeling her heart leap with the threat of danger, she settled lower, straining to discern any movement that couldn't be dismissed as the result of air currents. Maybe twenty minutes passed. Danika discovered she was holding her breath and her heart was beating so loudly in her ears that she couldn't hear anything else.
She couldn't believe they'd walked smack into the middle of a fucking village without any idea they were so close to it!
She didn't think they were more than a few miles from the base perimeter they'd marked!
No wonder the damned savages had attacked them so ferociously! They'd settled in their backyard!
She felt like kicking herself that it hadn't occurred to her that there might be a settlement nearby--because she would've realized that if there was, they would settle close to a water source!
Her muscles were beginning to cramp from the strain when Seth signaled that he and the others were going up for a closer look.
Danika instantly wanted to veto that plan, but there was no getting around the fact that the village seemed to be abandoned. They shouldn't have been able to walk right up to it at all. As fierce as the primitives were, she felt sure they would have had guards posted.
Finally, she nodded. She was the only one that had a 'real' weapon anyway. It would be better for her to stay put and watch for any sign of a surprise attack.
Seth, Dane, and Niles 'melted' into the brush with surprising ease. It surprised the hell out of Danika anyway. They were a force to be reckoned with on the battlefield, but they were like assault tanks--or she'd always pictured them that way. She hadn't had the opportunity to discover they actually had stealth capabilities.
Shaking the random thoughts, she focused on scanning the trees for movement. In a few minutes, the men reached the trunks of the trees and scaled them. Struggling with the urge to merely watch them, she made another careful sweep while the men moved silently along the overhead branches and ducked into first one hut and then another.
Instead of feeling the tension begin to ease after they'd checked the first few, it mounted the longer they searched, the sense growing that the savages were waiting in one or more of the huts to attack when the men stumbled upon just the right one.
A faint rustle of sound behind her was the only warning she got of an approach. The hair on the back of her neck rose even as she swung into action. A hand clamped down on the barrel of her rifle as she swung to shoot.
"Damn it, Basil!" she growled under her breath. "You scared the fuck out of me!"
His lips tightened, but he didn't say anything.
Shaking her fear and anger with an effort, Danika returned her attention to the search in progress just as the men emerged from the last of the huts and climbed down.
"Deserted," Seth reported when he reached her again, glaring at Basil balefully. "I see you found your way. You are a difficult man to lose."
"Don't be provoking!" Danika said tightly. "You expected him to catch up."
Dane shrugged. "But we had hope that he would not. This place looks as if it has been abandoned for some time--days, at least. I am thinking that they left after we did the sweep."
Niles appeared. "That seems likely. I found a trail leading northward. They had made a very good attempt to cover their back trail, but they were burdened with belongings, very likely their young, as well. There is a good bit of broken foliage that has had time to die and dry up."
Danika frowned, studying the huts above them speculatively. "You think they're gone for good?"
Seth shrugged. "There is no way to determine that. We do not know their habits. But they have left nothing that appears to be of any use or value."
"I think I'll go up and check it out," Danika said decisively.
The men looked surprised but they followed her. She discovered they had climbed up by using vines that lay against the trunks. Shrugging inwardly with the thought that they should be able to hold her weight if they'd held for the men, she shouldered her weapon, grasped the vine, and basically walked up the vertical climb.
Not that it was easy by any stretch of the imagination. She didn't have the upper body strength the men had, even though she was extremely fit, and her arms, shoulders, and legs were screaming with the strain by the time she'd made the twenty to thirty foot climb.
Stopping to rest and massage the ache when she got to the top, she studied the drop and finally concluded that the females were either much stronger than human women, or there was some other way the women and children got up and down.
She didn't see anything to dispute that first conclusion after exploring the village from end to end. Clearly the savages were something like primates--not just roughly humanoid--and the females rarely left the safety of the trees and the young less often than that. It wasn't just accidental that the village could hardly be detected from the ground. Every effort had been made to insure that it blended with nature. There were still vines carefully arranged in a number of areas that looked like their purpose was as a safety line for younger, or at least smaller, tribe members.
