The Mammoth Hunters (Earth's Children 3)

“If you want to know, I will tell you. It is not a big secret!” Talut said, grinning with pleasure. He was delighted with their obvious admiration. “The rest of the lodge is made the same way, more or less, but for this addition, we started by pacing off a distance from the wall outside the Mammoth Hearth. When we reached the center of an area that we thought would be large enough, a stick was put in the ground—that’s where we would put a fireplace, if we decide we need a fire in here. Then we measured off a rope that same distance, fastened one end to the stick, and with the other end, marked a circle to show where the wall would go.” Talut acted out his explanation, striding through the paces and tying an imaginary rope to a nonexistent stick.

“Next, we cut through the sod, lifted it out carefully, to save it, and then dug down about the length of my foot.” To further clarify his remarks, Talut held up an unbelie

vably long, but surprisingly narrow and shapely foot encased in a snug-fitting soft shoe. “Then we marked off the width of the bench—the platform that can be beds or storage—and some extra for the wall. From the inside edge of the bench, we dug down deeper, about the depth of two or three of my feet, to excavate the middle for the floor. The dirt was piled up evenly all around the outside in a bank that helps support the wall.”

“That’s a lot of digging,” Jondalar said, eying the enclosure. “I’d say the distance from one wall to the one opposite is, maybe, thirty of your feet, Talut.”

The headman’s eyes opened in surprise. “You’re right! I measured it off exactly. How did you know?”

Jondalar shrugged. “Just a guess.”

It was more than a guess, it was another manifestation of his instinctive understanding of the physical world. He could accurately judge distance with his eye alone, and he measured space with the dimensions of his own body. He knew the length of his stride and the width of his hand, the reach of his arm and the span of his grasp; he could estimate a fraction against the thickness of his thumb, or the height of a tree by pacing its shadow in the sun. It was not something he learned; it was a gift he was born with and developed with use. It never occurred to him to question it.

Ayla thought it was a lot of digging, too. She had dug her share of pit-traps and understood the work involved, and she was curious. “How do you dig so much, Talut?”

“How does anyone dig? We use mattocks to break up the loam, shovels to scoop it out, except for the hard-packed sod on top. We cut that out with the sharpened edge of a flat bone.”

Her puzzled look made it plain she didn’t understand. Perhaps she didn’t know the words for the tools in his language, he thought, and stepping outside the door, returned with some implements. They all had long handles. One had a piece of mammoth rib bone attached to it, which had been ground to a sharp edge at one end. It resembled a hoe with a long curved blade. Ayla examined it carefully.

“Is like digging stick, I think,” she said, looking to Talut for confirmation.

He smiled. “Yes, it’s a mattock. We use pointed digging sticks, too, sometimes. They are easier to make in a hurry, but this is easier to use.”

Then he showed her a shovel made from the wide palmation of a giant antler of a megaceros, split lengthwise through the spongy center, then shaped and sharpened. Antlers of young animals were used; the antlers of mature giant deer could reach eleven feet in length, and were too big. The handle was attached by means of strong cord strung through three pairs of holes bored down the center. It was used, spongy side down, not to dig, but for scooping up and throwing out the fine loess soil loosened by the mattock, or, if they chose, for snow. He also had a second shovel, more scoop-shaped, made from an outer section of ivory flaked from a mammoth tusk.

“These are shovels,” Talut said, telling her the name. Ayla nodded. She had used flat pieces of bone and antler in much the same way, but her shovels had had no handles.

“I’m just glad the weather stayed nice for a while after you left,” the headman continued. “As it is, we didn’t dig down as far as we usually would. The ground is already hard underneath. Next year, we can dig down deeper and make some storage pits, too, maybe even a sweatbath, when we get back from the Summer Meeting.”

“Weren’t you going to hunt again, when the weather got nice?” Jondalar said.

“The bison hunt was very successful, and Mamut isn’t having much luck Searching. All he seems to find are the few bison we missed, and it isn’t worthwhile to go after them. We decided to make the addition instead, to make a place for the horses, since Ayla and her horse were such a help.”

“Mattock and shovel make easier, Talut, but is work … a lot of digging,” Ayla said, surprised and a little overcome.

“We had a lot of people to work at it, Ayla. Nearly everyone thought it was a good idea and wanted to help … to make you welcome.”

The young woman felt a sudden rush of emotion and closed her eyes to control tears of gratitude that threatened. Jondalar and Talut saw her, and turned aside out of consideration.

Jondalar examined the walls, still intrigued with the construction. “It looks like you dug it out between the platforms, too,” he commented.

“Yes, for the main supports,” Talut said, pointing to the six enormous mammoth tusks, wedged in at the base with smaller bones—parts of spines and phalanges—with their tips pointing toward the center. They were spaced at regular intervals around the wall on both sides of the two pairs of mammoth tusks, which were used for the arched doorways. The strong, long, curved tusks were the primary structural members of the lodge.

As Talut of the Mammoth Hunters continued describing the construction of the semisubterranean earthlodge, Ayla and Jondalar became even more impressed. It was far more complex than either had imagined. Midway between the center and the tusk wall supports were six wooden posts—tapering trees, stripped of bark and crotched on top. Around the outside of the annex, braced against the bottom of the bank, mammoth skulls stood upright in the ground, supported by shoulder blades, hipbones, spinal bones, and several strategically placed long bones, legs and ribs. The upper part of the wall, consisting mainly of shoulder blades, hipbones, and smaller tusks of mammoth, merged into the roof, which was supported by wooden beams stretched across and between the outer circle of tusks and the inner circle of posts. The mosaic of bones, all deliberately chosen and some trimmed to shape, were wedged in and lashed to the sturdy tusks, creating a curved wall that fit together like interlocking pieces of a puzzle.

Some wood was available from river valleys, but for building purposes mammoth bones were in greater supply. But the mammoths they hunted contributed only a small portion of the bones they used. The great majority of their building materials were selected from the prodigious pile of bones at the bend in the river. Some bones even came from scavenger-stripped carcasses found on the nearby steppes, but the open grasslands were more important for providing materials of another variety.

Each year the migratory herds of reindeer dropped their antlers to make way for the next year’s rack, and each year they were gathered up. To complete the dwelling, the antlers of the reindeer were bound to one another to make a strong framework of interlaced supports for a domed roof, leaving a hole in the center for smoke to escape. Then, willow boughs from the river valley were tied together into a thick mat, which was laid across and bound securely over and around the antlers, and tapered down the bone wall, to create a sturdy base over the roof and the wall. Next, an even thicker thatch of grass, overlapped to shed water, was fastened to the willows all the way to the ground. On top of the grass thatch was a layer of dense sod. Part of the sod came from the ground that had been excavated for the addition, and part from land nearby.

The walls of the entire structure were two to three feet thick, but one final layer of material remained to complete the annex.

They were standing outside admiring the new structure when Talut finished his detailed explanation of earthlodge construction. “I was hoping the weather would clear,” he said, making an expansive gesture toward the clear blue sky. “We need to finish it. Without finishing, I’m not sure how long this will last.”

“How long will a lodge last?” Jondalar asked.

“As long as I live, sometimes more. But earthlodges are winter homes. We usually leave in summer, for the Summer Meeting and the big mammoth hunt, and other trips. Summer is for traveling, to gather plants, to hunt or fish, to trade or visit. We leave most of our things here when we go, because we come back every year. The Lion Camp is our home.

“If you expect this part to be home to Ayla’s horses for very long, then we better finish it while we have the chance,” Nezzie interjected. She and Deegie set down the large, heavy skin of water they had hauled up from the partially frozen river.