Read Online Primal Estate: The Candidate Species by Samuel Franklin - Free Book Online

you too stupid to understand?” Layrd asked in French.
Now I really want to crack your skull. Yootu slowly backed away from Layrd as they circled each other, three times was the requisite before they could engage. Yootu had used this trick only twice before in the last five years. He was saving it for a special occasion and figured now would be as good as any. Layrd was special to him.

As Yootu backed, Layrd sensed apprehension in his opponent, perhaps because they were using the level twos today. Layrd inched closer as they completed their third circle. As their center shifted closer to the columns, they completed their third circle. Yootu had timed his rotation perfectly to align his back to the column. As this happened he moved slightly toward Layrd, relaxed his guard and shifted to a flatfooted stance. Layrd immediately saw the opening and with blinding speed lunged at Yootu, positioning his left gauntlet high to block anything incoming and swiped, mid-level, with his right.
Under normal circumstances, this would have been a devastating blow, but it happened to be exactly what Yootu had arranged. In a move that could only be accomplished with complete anticipation, Yootu sidestepped to his right then in toward his opponent. He hooked under Layrd’s blocking arm with his left, slashed across Layrd’s back with his right gauntlet, and used his knee and Layrd’s momentum to enhance his flight head first into the column that had been at Yootu’s back. Simultaneously, a slight sweep to Layrd’s foot had him almost air born when he hit. And, in a moment of brilliance that was in Yootu’s nature, he used the foot sweep to fake a trip and launched himself flying into the floor in the opposite direction.

He’d learned to go to the ground when besting a Provenger. It calmed their pride a little while they were recovering. Yootu would make some faces, express some pain, massage a shoulder, and think about what fools they were.
Yootu was worried for a moment when, lying on his stomach, he looked back at Layrd. First, there was no movement, then some, then a groan. Yootu had gone a little too far. Perhaps he wanted it too much? If Layrd is unconscious, I’ll just stay down so he sees me get up with him, Yootu thought.

In a moment, Layrd stirred and brought himself to a sitting position as Yootu forged a moan and rolled onto his back, feeling a bit childish with his acting. “We both got the worst of that one,” Yootu muttered, loud enough for Layrd to hear. Layrd sat up and a trickle of blood ran down the side of his head. Yootu was worried. If he was injured too badly there would be an inquest, normally restricted recordings of the fight could be reviewed and Yootu might be discovered. His fights had been reviewed in the past, and only their confidence in Yootu’s limited intelligence had saved him.
They both stood, recovered their bearing, and resumed the fight. Yootu was impressed with Layrd’s recovery. Damn he is tough, Yootu thought. Now I will get beaten, badly. I’ll have to make it look good after that stunt I just pulled.

To the Provenger, Yootu was a guest/slave on their interstellar ship, kept under tight security and continual observation by both his keepers and school children on field trips. He was a forty-five year old man who, they thought they could tell, was beginning to show the effects of his species’ age.
As a Paleolithic member of the early Homo sapiens, with a brain capacity slightly larger than the modern human, the Cro-Magnon was of a dense and powerful build. He was the progenitor of the smaller modern man, scourge of the mammoth that he would hunt to oblivion, and executioner of the Neanderthal. They were masters of the elements and the sole survivors of climactic changes and harsh environments that administered to the extinction of all their related species.

Yootu was an exceptional example of this race. To his ancient tribe, he was known to be fathered by the sun. He was keeper of the