The Valley of Horses (Earth's Children 2)

The mountain ranges of the massive continent shaped the course of the Great Mother River. She rose out of the highland north of one glacier-covered range and flowed east. Beyond the first chain of mountains was a level plain—in an earlier age the basin of an inland sea—and, farther east, a second range curved around in a great arc. Where the easternmost alpine foreland of the first range met the flysch foothills at the northwestern end of the second, the river broke through a rocky barrier and turned abruptly south.

After dropping down karst highlands, she meandered across grassy steppes, winding into oxbows, breaking into separate channels and rejoining again as she wove her way south. The sluggish, braided river, flowing through flat land, gave the illusion of changelessness. It was only an illusion. By the time the Great Mother River reached the uplands at the southern end of the plain that swung her east again and gathered her channels together, she had received into herself the waters of the northern and eastern face of the first, massive, ice-mantled range.

The great swollen Mother swept out a depression as she curled east in a broad curve toward the southern end of the second chain of peaks. The two men had been following her left bank, crossing the occasional channels and streams still rushing to meet her as they came to them. Across the river to the south the land rose in steep craggy leaps; on their side rolling hills climbed more gradually from the river’s edge.

“I don’t think we’ll find the end of Donau before winter,” Jondalar remarked. “I’m beginning to wonder if there is one.”

“There’s an end, and I think we’ll find it soon. Look how big she is.” Thonolan waved an expansive arm toward the right, “Who would have thought she’d get that big? We have to be near the end.”

“But we haven’t reached the Sister yet, at least I don’t think we have. Tamen said she is as big as the Mother.”

“That must be one of those stories that get bigger with the telling. You don’t really believe there’s another river like that flowing south along this plain?”

“Well, Tamen didn’t say he’d seen it himself, but he was right about the Mother turning east again, and about the people who took us across her main channel. He could be right about the Sister. I wish we’d known the language of that Cave with the rafts; they might have known about a tributary to the Mother as big as she is.”

“You know how easy it is to exaggerate great wonders that are far away. I think Tamen’s ‘Sister’ is just another channel of the Mother, farther east.”

“I hope you’re right, Little Brother. Because if there is a Sister, we’re going to have to cross it before we reach those mountains. And I don’t know where else we’re likely to find a place to stay for the winter.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it.”

A movement, apparently at odds with the natural way of things, which brought it to the level of consciousness, caught Jondalar’s attention. By the sound, he identified the black cloud in the distance, moving with no regard for the prevailing wind, and he stopped to watch as the V-formation of honking geese approached. They swooped lower as a single entity, darkening the sky with their numbers, then broke up into individuals as they neared the ground with lowered feet and flapping wings, braking to a rest. The river swerved around the steep rise ahead.

“Big Brother,” Thonolan said, grinning with excitement, “those geese wouldn’t have set down if there wasn’t a marsh up ahead. Maybe it’s a lake or a sea, and I’ll wager the Mother empties into it. I think we’ve reached the end of the river!”

“If we climb that hill, we should get a better view.” Jondalar’s tone was carefully neutral, but Thonolan had the impression his brother didn’t quite believe him.

They climbed quickly, breathing hard when they reached the top, then caught their breath in amazement. They were high enough to see for a considerable distance. Beyond the turn the Mother widened, and her waters became choppy, and, as she approached a vast expanse of water, she rolled and spumed. The larger body of water was cloudy with mud churned up from the bottom, and filled with debris. Broken limbs, dead animals, whole trees bobbed and spun around, caught by conflicting currents.

They had not reached the end of the Mother, They had met the Sister.

High in the mountains in front of them, the Sister had begun as rivulets and streams. The streams became rivers that raced down rapids, spilled over cataracts, and coursed straight down the western face of the second great mountain range. With no lakes or reservoirs to check the flow, the tumultuous waters gained force and momentum until they gathered together on the plain. The only check to the turbulent Sister was the glutted Mother herself.

The tributary, nearly equal in size, surged into the mother stream, fighting the controlling influence of swift current. She backed up and surged again, throwing a tantrum of crosscurrents and undertows; temporary maelstroms that sucked floating debris in a perilous spin to the bottom and spewed it up a moment later downstream. The engorged confluence expanded into a hazardous lake too large to see across.

Fall flooding had peaked and a marshland of mud sprawled over the banks where the waters had recently receded, leaving a morass of devastation: upturned trees with roots reaching for the sky, waterlogged trunks and broken branches; carcasses and dying fish stranded in drying puddles. Water birds were feasting on the easy pickings; the near shore was alive with them. Nearby, a hyena was making short work of a stag, undisturbed by the flapping wings of black storks.

“Great Mother!” Thonolan breathed.

“It must be the Sister.” Jondalar was too awed to ask his brother if he believed now.

“How are we going to get across?”

“I don’t know. We’ll have to go back upstream.”

“How far? She’s as big as the Mother.”

Jondalar could only shake his head. His forehead knotted with concern. “We should have taken Tamen’s advice. It could snow any day; we don’t have time to backtrack very far. I don’t want to be caught in the open when a big storm blows.”

A sudden gust of wind caught Thonolan’s hood and whisked it back, baring his head. He pulled it on again, closer to his face, and shivered. For the first time since they had set out, he had serious doubts about surviving the long winter ahead. “What do we do now, Jondalar?”

“We find a place to make camp.” The taller brother scanned the area from their vantage point. “Over there, just upstream, near that high bank with a stand of alder. There’s a creek that joins the Sister—the water should be good.”

“If we tie both backframes to one log, and attach a rope to both our waists, we could swim across and not get separated.”

“I know you are hardy, Little Brother, but that’s foolhardy. I’m not sure I could swim across, much less pulling a log with everything we have. That river is cold. Only the current keeps it from freezing—there was ice at the edge this morning. And what if we get tangled up in the branches of some tree? We’d get swept downstream, and maybe pulled under.”

“Remember that Cave that lives close to the Great Water? They dig out the centers of big trees and use them to cross rivers. Maybe we could …”

“Find me a tree around here big enough,” Jondalar said, flinging his arm at the grassy prairie, with only a few thin or stunted trees.

“Well … someone told me about another Cave that makes shells out of birchbark … but that seems so flimsy.”

“I’ve seen them, but I don’t know how they’re made, or what kind of glue they use so they won’t leak. And the birch trees in their region grow bigger than any I’ve seen around here.”

Thonolan glanced around, trying to think of some other idea that his brother couldn’t put down with his implacable logic. He noticed the stand of straight tall alders on the high knoll just to the south, and grinned. “How about a raft? All we’d have to do is tie a bunch of logs together, and there are more than enough alders on that hill.”

“And one long enough, and strong enough to make a pole to reach the botto

m of the river to guide it? Rafts are hard to control even on small shallow rivers.”

Thonolan’s confident grin crumpled, and Jondalar had to suppress a smile. Thonolan never could hide his feelings; Jondalar doubted that he ever tried. But it was his impetuous, candid nature that made him so likable.

“That’s really not such a bad idea, though,” Jondalar amended, noting the return of Thonolan’s smile, “once we get upstream far enough so there’s no danger of getting swept into that rough water. And find a place where the river widens and gets shallower, and not so fast, and where there are trees. I hope the weather holds.”

Thonolan was as serious as his brother by the time the weather was mentioned. “Let’s get moving then. The tent is fixed.”

“I’m going to look over those alders first. We still need a couple of sturdy spears. We should have made them last night.”