The Mammoth Hunters (Earth's Children 3)

“You can be very quiet?”

Deegie smiled. “I have hunted before, Ayla.”

Ayla blushed, feeling she said the wrong thing. “I did not mean …”

“I know you didn’t,” Deegie said, then smiled. “I think I could learn some things from someone who killed a wolverine before she killed a rabbit. Wolverines are more vicious, mean, fearless, and spiteful than any animal alive, including hyenas. I’ve seen them drive leopards away from their own kills, they’ll even stand up to a cave lion. I’ll try to stay out of your way. If you think I’m scaring the ermine off, tell me, and I’ll wait for you here. But don’t ask me to go back.”

Ayla smiled with relief, thinking how wonderful it was to have a friend who understood her so quickly. “Ermine are as bad as wolverines. They are just smaller, Deegie.”

“Is there anything I can do to help?”

“We still have roast meat left. It might be useful, but first we must find tracks … after I get a good supply of stones.”

When Ayla had accumulated a pile of satisfactory missiles and put them in a pouch, which was attached to her belt, she picked up her haversack, and slung it over her left shoulder. Then she stopped and studied the landscape, looking for the best place to begin. Deegie stood beside her and just a step behind, waiting for her to take the lead. Almost as though she was thinking out loud, Ayla began speaking to her in a quiet voice.

“Weasels do not make dens. They use whatever they find, even a rabbit’s burrow—after they kill the rabbits. Sometimes I think they would not need a den, if they did not have young. They are always moving: hunting, running, climbing, standing up and looking, and they are always killing, day and night, even after they have just eaten, though they might leave it. They eat everything, squirrels, rabbits, birds, eggs, insects, even dead and rotten meat, but most meat they kill and eat fresh. They make stinky musk when they are cornered, not to squirt like a skunk, but smells as bad, and they make sound like this …” Ayla uttered a cry that was half-strangled scream and half-grunt. “In the season of their Pleasures, they whistle.”

Deegie was utterly astonished. She had just learned more about weasels and ermine than she had learned in her entire life. She didn’t even know they made a sound at all.

“They are good mothers, have many babies, two hands …” Ayla stopped to think of the name of the counting word. “Ten, more sometimes. Other times, only few. Young stay with mother until almost grown.” She stopped again to eye the landscape critically. “This time of year, litter might still be with mother. We look for track … I think near cane-brake.” She started toward the mound of snow that covered, more or less, the tangled mass of stems and runners that had been growing from the same place for many years.

Deegie followed her, wondering how she could have learned so much, when Ayla wasn’t much older than she was. Deegie had noticed that Ayla’s speech had lapsed just slightly—it was the only sign of her excitement—but it made her realize how well Ayla did speak now. She seldom spoke fast, but her Mamutoi was close to perfect, except for the way she said certain sounds. Deegie thought she might never lose that speech mannerism, and rather hoped she wouldn’t. It made her distinctive … and more human.

“Look for small tracks with five toes, sometimes only four show, they make the smallest tracks of any meat eater, and the back paws go in the same tracks that front feet paws were in.”

Deegie hung back, not wanting to trample delicate spoor, watching. Ayla slowly and carefully scanned each area of the space around her with every step she took, the snow-covered ground and each fallen log, each twig on each bush, the slender boles of bare birches and the weighted boughs of dark-needled pines. Suddenly her eyes stopped their constant vigilance, stilled by a sight that caught her breath. She lowered her foot slowly while reaching into the haversack for a large piece of rare roast bison, and laid it on the ground in front of her. Then she backed off carefully, and reached into the pouch of stones.

Deegie looked beyond Ayla without moving, trying to see what she saw. Finally she noticed movement, and then focused on several small white shapes sinuously moving toward them. They raced with surprising speed though they were climbing over deadfall, up and down trees, through brush, in and around small pockets and cracks, and devouring everything they found in their path. Deegie had never taken the time to notice the small voracious carnivores before, and she watched in rapt fascination. They stood up occasionally, shiny black eyes alert, ears cocked for every sound, but drawn unerringly by scent to their hapless prey.

Squirming through nests of voles and mice, under tree roots for hibernating newts and frogs, and darting after small birds too chilled and hungry to flee, the ravaging horde of eight or ten small white weasels closed in. Heads weaving back and forth, black little beads of eyes eager, they pounced with deadly accuracy at the brain, the nape of the neck, the jugular vein. Striking without compunction, they were the most efficient, bloodthirsty killers of the animal world, and Deegie was suddenly very glad they were small. There seemed no reason for such wanton destruction but a lust to kill—except the need to keep a continuously active body fueled in the way they were intended and ordained by nature to do.

The ermine were drawn to the slab of rare meat, and without hesitation began to make short work of it. Suddenly there was confusion, hard-flung stones landed among the feeding weasels, striking some down, and the unmistakable scent of weasel musk choked the air. Deegie had been so absorbed in watching the animals she had missed Ayla’s carefully controlled preparations and swift casts.

Then, out of nowhere, a large black animal bounded among the white weasels, and Ayla was stunned to hear a menacing growl. The wolf went after the slab of bison, but was held off by two bold and fearless ermine. Backing off only a bit, the black carnivore spied an ermine recently made harmless, and grabbed for it instead.

But Ayla was not about to let the black wolf steal her ermine; she had put in too much effort to get them. They were her kills and she wanted them for the white tunic. As the wolf was trotting away with the small white weasel in its mouth, Ayla went after it. Wolves were also meat eaters. She had studied them just as closely as weasels when she was teaching herself to use a sling. She understood them, too. She picked up a fallen branch as she ran after the animal. A single wolf usually gave way in the face of a determined charge and might drop the ermine.

If it had been a pack, or even just two wolves, she would not have tried such a reckless assault, but when the black wolf paused to reposition the ermine in its mouth, Ayla went after it with the branch, hauling back to give it a solid blow. She didn’t think of the branch as much of a weapon, but she planned only to scare the wolf off, and startle it into dropping the small furry animal it held. But Ayla was the one who was startled. The wolf dropped the ermine at its feet, and with a mean and ugly snarl, sprang straight for her.

Her instant reaction was to throw the branch across her as a defense, to hold off the attacking wolf, and her quick surge of energy said run. But in the wooded copse, the cold and brittle branch broke as she pulled it around and hit a tree. She was left holding a rotten stump, but the broken end flew into the wolf’s face. It was enough to hold it off. The wolf had been bluffing, too, and wasn’t very eager to attack. Stopping to pick up the dead ermine, the wolf climbed out of the wooded glen.

Ayla was frightened, but angry, and in shock, too. She couldn’t just let that ermine go like that. She chased after the wolf once more.

“Let it go!” Deegie shouted. “You’ve got enough! Let the wolf have it.”

But Ayla didn’t hear; she wasn’t paying attention. The wolf was heading for open ground and she was close behind. Reaching for another stone, and finding only two left, Ayla ran after the wolf. Though she expected that the large carnivore would soon outdistance her, she had to give it one more try. She loaded a stone in her sling and hurled it after the fleeing canine. The second stone that followed soon afterward finished what the first had begun. Both found their mark.

She felt a sense of satisfaction when the wolf dropped. That was one animal that would not be stealing anything from her again. As she ran to get the ermine, she decided she might as well take the wolf pelt, too, but when Deegie found her, Ayla was sitting beside the dead black wolf, and the white ermine, and hadn’t moved. The expression on her face gave Deegie cause for concern.

“What’s wrong, Ayla?”

“I should have let her have it. I should have known she had a reason for going after that roast meat, even though the ermine wanted it. Wolves know how vicious weasels are, and usually a lone wolf will back down without attacking in an unfamiliar place. I should have let her have that ermine.”

“I don’t understand. You got your ermine back, and a black wolf pelt besides. What do you mean you should have let her have it?”

“Look,” Ayla said, pointing to the black wolf’s underbelly. “She’s nursing. She’s got pups.”

“Isn’t it early for wolves to whelp?” D