The Valley of Horses (Earth's Children 2)

“I wouldn’t mind a nice friendly cave full of beautiful women right now,” Thonolan said with a grin.

“I’d settle for a nice friendly Cave.”

“Big Brother, you wouldn’t want to spend a winter without women any more than I would.”

The bigger man smiled. “Well, the winter would be a lot colder without a woman, beautiful or not.”

Thonolan looked at his brother speculatively. “I’ve often wondered about that,” he said.

“What?”

“Sometimes there’s a real beauty with half the men trying for her, but she looks only at you. I know you aren’t stupid; you know it—yet you pass her by and go pick out some little mouse sitting in a corner. Why?”

“I don’t know. Sometimes the ‘mouse’ just thinks she’s not beautiful, because she has a mole on her cheek or thinks her nose is too long. When you talk to her, there’s often more to her than the one everybody is after. Sometimes women who aren’t perfect are more interesting; they’ve done more, or learned something.”

“Maybe you’re right. Some of those shy ones blossom out, after you’ve paid attention to them.”

Jondalar shrugged and stood up. “We’re not going to find women, or a Cave, this way. Let’s break camp.”

“Right!” Thonolan said eagerly, then turned his back to the fire—and froze! “Jondalar!” he gasped, then strained to sound casual. “Don’t do anything to attract his attention, but if you look over the tent, you’ll see your friend from this morning, or one just like him.”

Jondalar peered over the top of the tent. Just on the other side, swaying from side to side as he shifted his massive tonnage from one foot to the other, was a huge, double-horned, woolly rhinoceros. With his head turned to the side, he was eying Thonolan. He was nearly blind directly ahead; his small eyes were set far back and his vision was poor to begin with. Acute hearing and a sharp sense of smell more than made up for his eyesight.

He was obviously a creature of the cold. He had two coats, a soft undercoat of thick downy fur and a shaggy outer one of reddish brown hair, and beneath his tough hide was a three-inch layer of fat. He carried his head low, downward from his shoulders, and his long front horn sloped forward at an angle that barely cleared the ground as he swayed. He used it for sweeping snow away from pasturage—if it wasn’t too deep. And his short thick legs were easily mired in deep snow. He visited the grasslands of the south only briefly—to graze on their richer harvest and store additional fat—in late fall and early winter after it became cold enough for him, but before the heavy snows. He could not stand heat, with his heavy coats, any more than he could survive in deep snow. His home was the bitter-cold, crackling dry tundra and steppes near the glacier.

The long, tapering, anterior horn could be put to a far more dangerous use than sweeping snow, however, and there was nothing between the rhino and Thonolan but a short distance.

“Don’t move!” Jondalar hissed. He ducked down behind the tent and reached for his pack with the spears.

“Those light spears won’t do much good,” Thonolan said, though his back was toward him. The comment stayed Jondalar’s hand for a moment; he wondered how Thonolan knew. “You’d have to hit him in a vulnerable place like an eye, and that’s too small a target. You need a heavy lance for rhino,” Thonolan continued, and his brother realized he was guessing.

“Don’t talk so much, you’ll draw his attention,” Jondalar cautioned. “I may not have a lance, but you don’t have a weapon at all. I’m going around the back of the tent and try for him.”

“Wait, Jondalar! Don’t! You’ll just make him angry with that spear; you won’t even hurt him. Remember when we were boys, how we used to bait rhinos? Someone would run, get the rhino chasing him, then dodge away while someone else got his attention. Keep him running until he was too tired to move. You get ready to draw his attention—I’m going to run and try to make him charge.”

“No! Thonolan,” Jondalar yelled, but it was too late. Thonolan was sprinting.

It was always impossible to outguess the unpredictable beast. Rather than charging after the man, the rhino made a rush for the tent billowing in the wind. He rammed it, gouged a hole in it, snapped thongs and got snared in them. When he disentangled himself, he decided he didn’t like the men or their camp and left, trotting off harmlessly. Thonolan, glancing over his shoulder, noticed the rhino was gone and came loping back.

“That was stupid!” Jondalar yelled, slamming his spear into the ground with a force that broke the wooden shaft just below the bone point. “Were you trying to get yourself killed? Great Doni, Thonolan! Two people can’t bait a rhino. You have to surround him. What if he had gone after, you? What in Great Mother’s underworld am I supposed to do if you get hurt?”

Surprise, then anger flashed across Thonolan’s face. Then he broke into a grin. “You were really worried about me! Yell all you want, you can’t bluff me. Maybe I shouldn’t have tried it, but I wasn’t going to let you make some stupid move, like going for a rhino with such a light spear. What in Great Mother’s underworld am I supposed to do if you get hurt?” His smile grew, and his eyes lit up with the delight of a small boy who had succeeded in

pulling off a trick. “Besides, he didn’t come after me.”

Jondalar looked blank in the face of his brother’s grin. His outburst had been more relief than anger, but it took him a while to grasp that Thonolan was safe.

“You were lucky. I guess we both were,” he said, expelling a long breath. “But we’d better make a couple of lances, even if we just sharpen points for now.”

“I haven’t seen any yew, but we can watch for ash or alder on the way,” Thonolan remarked as he began to take down the tent. “They should work.”

“Anything will work, even willow. We should make them before we go.”

“Jondalar, let’s get away from this place. We need to reach those mountains, don’t we?”

“I don’t like traveling without lances, not with rhinos around.”

“We can stop early. We need to fix the tent anyway. If we go, we can look for some good wood, find a better place to camp. That rhino might come back.”

“And he might follow us, too.” Thonolan was always eager to start in the morning, and restless about delays, Jondalar knew. “Maybe we should try to reach those mountains. All right, Thonolan, but we stop early, right?”

“Right, Big Brother.”

The two brothers strode along the edge of the river at a steady, ground-covering pace, long since adjusted to each other’s step and comfortable with each other’s silences. They had grown closer, talked out each other’s heart and mind, tested each other’s strengths and weaknesses. Each assumed certain tasks by habit, and each depended on the other when danger threatened. They were young and strong and healthy, and unselfconsciously confident that they could face whatever lay ahead.

They were so attuned to their environment that perception was on a subliminal level. Any disturbance that posed a threat would have found them instantly on guard. But they were only vaguely aware of the warmth of the distant sun, challenged by the cold wind soughing through leafless limbs; black-bottomed clouds embracing the white-walled breastworks of the mountains before them; and the deep, swift river.