The Mammoth Hunters (Earth's Children 3)

“Where are the bison now?” Wymez asked the daughter of his sister, ignoring Frebec and blunting his snide remark.

Latie marched to the basket pannier on Whinney’s left side and took out the piece of marked ivory. Then taking the flint knife from the sheath at her waist, she sat on the ground and began scratching some additional marks on the map.

‘The south fork goes between two outcrops, here,” she said. Wymez and Talut sat down beside her and nodded agreement, while Ayla and several others stood behind and around her. “The bison were on the other side of the outcrops, where the floodplain opens out and there is still some green feed near the water. I saw four little ones …” She cut four short parallel marks as she spoke.

“I think, five,” Ayla corrected.

Latie looked up at Ayla, and nodded, then added one more short mark. “You were right, Danug, about the twins. And they’re young ones. And seven cows …” She looked up at Ayla again for confirmation. The woman nodded agreement, and Latie added seven more parallel lines, slightly longer than the first ones. “ … only four with young, I think.” She pondered a moment. “There were more, farther off.”

“Five young males,” Ayla added. “And two, three others. Not sure. Maybe more we not see.”

Latie made five slightly larger lines, somewhat apart from the first ones, then added three more lines, between the two sets, making them a bit smaller again. She cut a little Y tick in the last mark in the line to indicate she was done, that that was the full number of bison they had counted. Her counting marks had cut over some of the other marks that had been etched into the ivory earlier, but it didn’t matter. They had already served their purpose.

Talut took the ivory flake from Latie and studied it. Then he looked at Ayla. “You didn’t happen to notice which way they were heading, did you?”

“Upstream, I think. We go around herd, careful, not disturb. No tracks other side, grass not chewed,” Ayla said.

Talut nodded and paused, obviously thinking. “You said you went around them. Did you go far upstream?”

“Yes.”

“The way I remember it, the floodplain narrows until it disappears, and high rocks close in the stream, and there is no way out. Is that right?”

“Yes … but, maybe way out.”

“A way out?”

“Before high rocks, side is steep, trees, thick brush with thorns, but near rocks is dry streambed. Like steep path. Is way out, I think,” she said.

Talut frowned, looked at Wymez, and Tulie, then laughed out loud. “The way out is also the way in! That’s what Mamut said!”

Wymez looked puzzled for only a moment, then he slowly grinned his understanding. Tulie looked at both of them. Then a dawning look of comprehension appeared on her face.

“Of course! We can go in that way, build a surround to trap them, then go around the other way and drive them into it,” Tulie said, making it clear to everyone else as well. “Someone will have to watch and make sure they don’t get wind of us and go back downstream while we’re building it.”

“That sounds like a good job for Danug and Latie,” Talut said.

“I think Druwez can help them,” Barzec added, “and if you think more help is needed, I’ll go.”

“Good!” Talut said. “Why don’t you go with them, Barzec, and follow the river upstream. I know a faster way to get to the back end. We’ll cut across from here. You keep them hemmed in, and as soon as we get the trap built, we’ll come back around to help chase them in it.”

7

The dry streambed was a swath of dried mud and rock cutting through a steep, wooded, brush-entangled hillside. It led to a level but narrow floodplain beside a rushing stream that gushed out between constraining rock in a series of rapids and low waterfalls. Once Ayla had gone down on foot, she went back for the horses. Both Whinney and Racer were accustomed to the steep path that had led to her cave in the valley, and made their way down with little trouble.

She removed the basket harness from Whinney so she could graze freely. But Jondalar worried about removing Racer’s halter since neither he nor Ayla had much control over him without it, and he was getting old enough to be fractious when the mood struck him. Since it didn’t keep him from grazing, she agreed to keep it on him, though she would have preferred to have given him complete freedom. It made her realize the difference between Racer and his dam. Whinney had always come and gone as she wished, but Ayla had spent all her time with the horse—she’d had no one else. Racer had Whinney, but less contact with her. Perhaps she, or Jondalar, ought to spend more time with him, and try to teach him, she thought.

The corrallike surround was already under construction by the time Ayla went to help. The fence was made of whatever materials they could find, boulders, bones, trees and branches, which were built up and intertwined together. The rich and varied animal life of the cold plains constantly renewed itself, and the old bones scattered across the landscape were often swept away by vagrant streams into jumbled piles. A quick search downstream had revealed a pile of bones a short distance away, and the hunters were hauling large leg bones and rib cages toward the focus of activity: an area near the bottom of the dry stream which they were fencing in. The fence needed to be sturdy enough to contain the herd of bison, but was not intended to be a permanent structure. It would only be used once, and in any case, was not likely to last beyond spring when the rushing stream bloated into a raging torrent.

Ayla watched Talut swinging an enormous axe with a gigantic stone head, as though it were a toy. He had doffed his shirt and was sweating profusely as he chopped his way through a stand of straight young saplings, felling each tree with two or three blows. Tornec and Frebec, who were carrying them away, couldn’t keep up with him. Tulie was supervising their placement. She had an axe nearly as large as her brother’s, and handled it with as much ease, breaking a tree in half, or shattering a bone to make it fit. Few men could match the strength of the headwoman.

“Talut!” Deegie called. She was carrying the front end of a whole curved mammoth tusk that was over fifteen feet in length. Wymez and Ranec supported the middle and back. “We found some mammoth bones. Will you break this tusk?”

The huge red-haired giant grinned. “This old behemoth must have lived a good long life!” he said, straddling the tusk when they put it down.

Talut’s enormous muscles bunched as he lifted the sledgehammer-sized axe, and the air resounded with the blows as splinters and flakes of ivory flew in all directions. Ayla was fascinated just watching the powerful man wield the massive tool with such skillful ease. But the feat was even more astounding to Jondalar, for a reason he never considered. Ayla was more accustomed to seeing men execute pr

odigious feats of muscular strength. Though she had exceeded them in height, the men of the Clan were massively muscled and extraordinarily robust. Even the women had a pronounced rugged strength, and the life Ayla had led as she grew up, expected to perform the tasks of a Clan woman, had caused her to develop unusually strong muscles for her thinner bones.