The Mammoth Hunters (Earth's Children 3)

“Yes. I would!” Jondalar said with a big smile.

“I asked Mamut to feel the weather and Search for the herd. He says the signs are good, and the herd hasn’t wandered far. He said something else, too, which I don’t understand. He said, ‘The way out is also the way in.’ Can you make anything of that?”

“No, but that’s not unusual. Those Who Serve the Mother often say things I don’t understand.” Jondalar smiled. “They speak with shadows on their tongues.”

“Sometimes I wonder if they know what they mean,” Talut said.

“If we are going to hunt, I’d like to show you something that could be helpful.” Jondalar led them to their sleeping platform in the Mammoth Hearth. He picked up a handful of lightweight spears and an implement that was unfamiliar to Talut. “I worked this out in Ayla’s valley, and we’ve been hunting with it ever since.”

Ayla stood back, watching, feeling an awful tension building up inside. She wanted desperately to be included, but she was not sure how these people felt about women hunting. Hunting had been the cause of great anguish for her in the past. Women of the Clan were forbidden to hunt or even to touch hunting weapons, but she had taught herself to use a sling in spite of the taboo and the punishment had been severe when she was found out. After she had lived through it, she had even been allowed to hunt on a limited basis to appease her powerful totem who had protected her. But her hunting had been just one more reason for Broud to hate her and, ultimately, it contributed to her banishment.

Yet, hunting with her sling had increased her chances when she lived alone in the valley, and gave her the incentive and encouragement to expand on her ability. Ayla had survived because the skills she had learned as a woman of the Clan, and her own intelligence and courage, gave her the ability to take care of herself. But hunting had come to symbolize for her more than the security of depending on and being responsible for herself; it stood for the independence and freedom that were the natural result. She would not easily give it up.

“Ayla, why don’t you get your spear-thrower, too,” Jondalar said, then turned back to Talut. “I’ve got more power, but Ayla is more accurate than I am, she can show you what this can do better than I can. In fact, if you want to see a demonstration of accuracy, you ought to see her with a sling. I think her skill with it gives her an advantage with these.”

Ayla let out her breath—she didn’t know she had been holding it—and went to get her spear-thrower and spears while Jondal

ar was talking to Talut. It was still hard to believe how easily this man of the Others had accepted her desire and ability to hunt, and how naturally he spoke in praise of her skill. He seemed to assume that Talut and the Lion Camp would accept her hunting, too. She glanced at Deegie, wondering how a woman would feel.

“You ought to let Mother know if you are going to try a new weapon on the hunt, Talut. You know she’ll want to see it, too,” Deegie said. “I might as well get my spears and packboards out now. And a tent, we’ll probably be gone overnight.”

After breakfast, Talut motioned to Wymez and squatted down by an area of soft dirt near one of the smaller fireplaces in the cooking hearth, well lit by light coming in through the smoke hole. Stuck in the ground near the edge was an implement made from a leg bone of a deer. It was shaped like a knife or a tapered dagger, with a straight dull edge leading from the knee joint to a point. Holding it by the knob of the joint, Talut smoothed the dirt with the flat edge, then, shifting it, began to draw marks and lines on the level surface with the point. Several people gathered around.

“Wymez said he saw the bison not far from the three large outcrops to the northeast, near the tributary of the small river that empties upstream,” the headman began, explaining as he drew a rough map of the region with the drawing knife.

Talut’s map wasn’t so much an approximate visual reproduction as a schematic drawing. It wasn’t necessary to accurately depict the location. The people of the Lion Camp were familiar with their region and his drawing was no more than a mnemonic aid to remind them of a place they knew. It consisted of conventionalized marks and lines that represented landmarks or ideas that were understood.

His map did not show the route which the water took across the land; their perspective was not from-such a bird’s-eye view. He drew herringbone zigzag lines to indicate the river, and attached them to both sides of a straight line, to show a tributary. At the ground level of their open flat landscape, rivers were bodies of water, which sometimes joined.

They knew where the rivers came from and where they led, and that rivers could be followed to certain destinations, but so could other landmarks, and a rock outcrop was less likely to change. In a land that was so close to a glacier, yet subject to the seasonal changes of lower latitudes, ice and permafrost—ground that was permanently frozen—caused drastic alterations of the landscape. Except for the largest of them, the deluge of glacial runoff could change the course of a river from one season to the next as easily as the ice hill pingos of winter melted into the bogs of summer. The mammoth hunters conceived of their physical terrain as an interrelated whole in which rivers were only an element.

Neither did Talut conceive of drawing lines to scale to show the length of a river or trail in miles or paces. Such linear measures had little meaning. They understood distance not in terms of how far away a place was but how long it would take to get there, and that was better shown by a series of lines telling the number of days, or some other markings of number or time. Even then, a place might be more distant for some people than for others, or the same place might be farther away at one season than another because it took longer to travel to it. The distance traveled by the entire Camp was measured by the length of time it took the slowest. Talut’s map was perfectly clear to the members of the Lion Camp, but Ayla watched with puzzled fascination.

“Wymez, tell me where they were,” Talut said.

“On the south side of the tributary,” Wymez replied, taking the bone drawing knife and adding some additional lines. “It’s rocky, with steep outcrops, but the floodplain is wide.”

“If they keep going upstream, there are not many outlets along that side,” Tulie said.

“Mamut, what do you think?” Talut asked. “You said they haven’t wandered far off.”

The old shaman picked up the drawing knife, and paused for a moment with his eyes closed. “There is a stream that comes in, between the second and last outcrop,” he said as he drew. “They will likely move that way, thinking it will lead out.”

“I know the place!” Talut said. “If you follow it upstream, the floodplain narrows and then is hemmed in by steep rock. It’s a good place to trap them. How many are there?”

Wymez took the drawing tool and drew several lines along the edge, hesitated, then added one more. “I saw that many, that I can say for certain,” he said, stabbing the bone drawing knife in the dirt.

Tulie picked up the marking bone and added three more. “I saw those straggling behind, one seemed quite young, or perhaps it was weak.”

Danug picked up the marker and added one more line. “It was a twin, I think. I saw another straggling. Did you see two, Deegie?”

“I don’t recall.”

“She only had eyes for Branag,” Wymez said, with a gentle smile.

“That place is about half a day from here, isn’t it?” Talut asked.

Wymez nodded. “Half a day, at a good pace.”