The Mammoth Hunters (Earth's Children 3)

“You know what I meant, Talut,” Tulie said, brushing aside the rather obvious innuendos between her brother and his woman. “She couldn’t even let Rydag go. He’s so sickly, he’d have been better off.”

Ayla’s eye was drawn to the child. Tulie’s comment had bothered him. Her words had not been intentionally unkind, but Ayla knew he didn’t like being spoken of as though he wasn’t there. There wasn’t anything he could do about it, though. He couldn’t tell her how he felt, and without thinking, she assumed that because he couldn’t speak, he didn’t feel.

Ayla wanted to ask about the child, too, but felt it might be presumptuous. Jondalar did it for her, though it was to satis

fy his own curiosity.

“Nezzie, would you tell us about Rydag? I think Ayla would be particularly interested—and so would I.”

Nezzie leaned over and took the child from Latie, and held him on her lap while she gathered her thoughts.

“We were out after megaceros, you know, the giant deer with the great antlers,” she began, “and planned to build a surround to drive them into—that’s the best way to hunt the big-antlered ones. When I first noticed the woman hiding near our hunting camp, I thought it was strange. You seldom see flathead women, and never alone.”

Ayla was leaning close, listening intently.

“She didn’t run away when she saw me looking at her, either, only when I tried to get closer. Then I saw she was pregnant. I thought she might be hungry, so I left some food out near the place she was hiding. In the morning it was gone, so I left more before we broke camp.

“I thought I saw her the next day a few times, but I wasn’t sure. Then that night, when I was by the fire nursing Rugie, I saw her again. I got up and tried to get closer to her. She ran away again, but she moved like she was in pain, and I realized she was in labor. I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to help, but she kept running away, and it was getting dark. I told Talut, and he got some people together to go after her.”

“That was strange, too,” Talut said, adding his part to Nezzie’s story. “I thought we’d have to circle around and trap her, but when I yelled at her to stop, she just sat on the ground and waited. She didn’t seem too frightened of me, and when I beckoned to her to come, she got right up and followed behind me, like she knew what to do and understood I wouldn’t hurt her.”

“I don’t know how she even walked,” Nezzie continued. “She was in such pain. She was quick to understand that I wanted to help her, but I don’t know how much help I was. I wasn’t even sure she’d live to deliver her baby. She never cried out, though. Finally, near morning, her son was born. I was surprised to see he was one of mixed spirits. Even that young you could tell he was different.

“The woman was so weak I thought it might give her reason to live if I showed her that her son was alive, and she seemed eager to see him. But I guess she was too far gone, must have lost too much blood. It was as though she just gave up. She died before the sun came up.

“Everybody told me to leave him to die with his mother, but I was nursing Rugie anyway, and had a lot of milk. It wasn’t that much trouble to put him to my breast, too.” She hugged him protectively. “I know he’s weak. Maybe I should have left him, but I couldn’t love Rydag any more if he were my own. And I’m not sorry I kept him.”

Rydag looked up at Nezzie with his big, glowing brown eyes, then put thin arms around her neck and laid his head on her breast. Nezzie rocked him as she held him.

“Some people say he’s an animal because he can’t talk, but I know he understands. And he’s not an abomination’ either,” she added, with an angry look at Frebec. “Only the Mother knows why the spirits that made him were mixed.”

Ayla was fighting to hold back tears. She didn’t know how these people would react to tears; her watering eyes had always bothered people of the Clan. Watching the woman and the child, she was overwhelmed with memories. She ached to hold her son, and grieved anew for Iza, who had taken her in and mothered her, though she had been as different to the Clan as Rydag was to the Lion Camp. But more than anything, she wished there was some way she could explain to Nezzie how moved she was, how grateful she was for Rydag’s sake … and her own. Inexplicably, Ayla felt it would somehow help repay Iza if she could find a way to do something for Nezzie.

“Nezzie, he knows,” Ayla said softly. “He is not animal, not flathead. He is child of Clan, and child of Others.”

“I know he is not an animal, Ayla,” Nezzie said, “but what is Clan?”

“People, like mother of Rydag. You say flathead, they say Clan,” Ayla explained.

“What do you mean, ‘they say Clan’? They can’t talk,” Tulie interjected.

“Not say many words. But they talk. They talk with hands.”

“How do you know?” Frebec asked. “What makes you so smart?”

Jondalar took a deep breath and held it, waiting for her answer.

“I lived with Clan before. I talked like Clan. Not with words, until Jondalar came,” Ayla said. “The Clan were my people.”

There was a stunned silence as the meaning of her words became clear.

“You mean you lived with flatheads! You lived with those dirty animals!” Frebec exclaimed with disgust, jumping up and backing away. “No wonder she can’t talk right. If she lived with them she’s as bad as they are. Nothing but animals, all of them, including that mixed-up perversion of yours, Nezzie.”

The Camp was in an uproar. Even if some might have agreed with him, Frebec had gone too far. He had overstepped the bounds of courtesy to visitors, and had even insulted the headman’s mate. But it had long been an embarrassment to him that he belonged to the Camp that had taken in the “abomination of mixed spirits,” and he was still chafing under the barbs of Fralie’s mother in the most recent round of their long-standing battle. He wanted to take out his irritation on someone.

Talut roared to the defense of Nezzie, and Ayla. Tulie was quick to defend the honor of the Camp. Crozie, smiling maliciously, was alternately haranguing Frebec and browbeating Fralie, and the others were voicing their opinions loudly. Ayla looked from one to another, wanting to put her hands over her ears to shut out the noise.

Suddenly Talut boomed a shout for silence. It was loud enough to startle everyone into quiet. Then Mamut’s drum was heard. It had a settling, quieting effect.