The Shelters of Stone (Earth's Children 5)

They were approaching the campsite, perhaps a few miles away, when they heard shouts amid clouds of dust rising from the dry earth of the plains. Riding closer, they saw several young men who probably shared one of the bachelor fa’lodges, and from the glimpse of decoration on their clothing, Jondalar thought they were mostly from the Fifth Cave. Each one held a spear, and they were spaced out in a rough circle, in the middle of which was a beast with a long shaggy coat and two huge horns protruding from his snout.

It was a woolly rhinoceros, a massive creature, eleven and a half feet in length and five feet high. He was a ponderous beast, with short, thick, stubby legs to support his immense bulk. He ate huge quantities of the grasses, herbs, and brush of the steppes, as well as the twigs and branches of evergreens and willows that lined the banks of the rivers. His nostrils were partitioned, and his eyes were on the sides of his head. He could not see well, especially in front, but his senses of smell and hearing were particularly acute and discerning to make up for his poor eyesight.

The front one of his two horns was more than a yard long, heavy and vicious looking as it swept the ground in an arc from side to side. In winter he could use it to sweep snow away and expose the dried, recumbent steppe grasses that lay underneath. A thick, woolly, light grayish-brown fleece covered his body, with longer outer hair hanging down, nearly brushing the ground. A wide distinctive band of fur around the middle of the rhino was a shade darker and looked, Ayla thought, as though someone had covered him with a saddle blanket, not that anyone would dream of riding such a tremendously powerful, unpredictable, sometimes malicious, and very dangerous animal.

The woolly rhinoceros pawed the ground, turning his head from side to side, trying to see the young man that his sensitive nose told him was there. Suddenly he charged. The man stood his ground until, at the very last moment, he dodged aside, and the long, forward-pointing horn of the rhinoceros barely missed him.

“That looks dangerous,” Ayla said as they pulled up the horses a safe distance away.

“That’s why they’re doing it,” Jondalar said. “Woolly rhinos are difficult to hunt under any circumstances. They are mean tempered and unpredictable.”

“Like Broud,” Ayla said. “The woolly rhino was his totem. The Clan men hunted them, but I never watched them. What are they doing?”

“They’re baiting him, see? Each man tries to get his attention to make him charge, then they dodge away when he comes near. They are making a sport of wearing him down, trying to see who can let the rhino come closest before they jump aside. The bravest is the one who can feel the beast brush past as he charges. It’s usually young men who like to hunt rhinoceros like that,” Jondalar explained.

“If they kill one, they give the meat to the Cave, and get lots of praise for it. Then they share the other parts, but the one who gets credited with the kill gets first choice. He will usually take the horn. The horns are prized, they say, for making tools, knife handles, and such, but more likely it’s for other reasons. Probably because its shape resembles a man in heat for Pleasures, there are rumors that grinding up the horn and secretly giving it to a woman will make her more passionate for the man who gave it to her,” Jondalar said with a smile.

“The meat is not bad, and there’s a lot of fat under that heavy coat,” Ayla said. “It’s rare to see one, though.”

“Especially this time of year,” Jondalar said. “Woolly rhinos are solitary animals most of the time, and usually scarce around here in summer. They like it colder, even though they shed the soft fur under the long outer hair every spring. It gets caught in bushes before they leaf out, and people like to go out and collect it, particularly weavers and basket-makers. I used to go

with my mother. We did it several times a year. She knows when all the animals shed, ibex and mouflon, musk-ox, even horses and lions, and of course, mammoths and woolly rhinos.”

“Have you ever baited a rhinoceros, Jondalar?”

The man laughed. “Yes, most men do, especially when they are young. They bait lots of animals like that, aurochs bulls and bison, but they like to bait rhinos best. Some women do, too. Jetamio did, the time I showed them how to hunt a rhino. She was the Sharamudoi woman who became Thonolan’s mate. She was good at it. They didn’t usually hunt rhinos. They hunted the huge sturgeon of the Great Mother River from those boats they showed you, and ibex and chamois up high in the mountains, which are very hard to hunt, but they didn’t know the techniques to hunt woolly rhinos.” He paused and looked sad. “It was because of a rhino that we met the Sharamudoi. Thonolan had gotten gored by one, and they saved his life.”

They watched as the young men played their dangerous game. One man, standing out in the open shouting and waving his arms, was trying to make the rhino charge. The animal’s usually keen sense of smell was confused by so many men arrayed around him. When he finally detected movement with his small, nearsighted eyes, he started in that direction, gaining speed as he drew closer to his antagonist. For all his short legs, the animal could move remarkably fast. He lowered his head a bit as he neared, preparing to ram his massive horn into a resistive mass. It encountered air instead as the man deftly spun around and moved aside. It took a moment for the beast to realize his charge had been in vain and slow to a halt.

The rhino was baffled and getting tired and angry. He pawed the ground as the men quickly deployed in a new circle around him. Another man stepped out, snouting and waving to draw the huge brute’s attention. The rhino turned and charged again, and the man darted away. The next time it took longer to entice him to charge. They seemed to be succeeding in tiring the rhino. The exhausting, infuriating bursts of energy were taking their toll.

The great beast stood still, head drooping, breathing heavily. The men tightened the circle, closing in for the kill. The man whose turn it was to draw the beast out moved in cautiously, spear held in readiness. The rhino appeared not to notice. As the man drew near, the unpredictable beast caught the movement with his weak eyes. His flagging strength, revived by the short rest, was goaded by the fury that filled his primordial brain.

Without warning, the rhino charged again. It happened so fast that the man was unprepared. The huge woolly beast finally succeeded in thrusting his massive horn into something more solid than air. They heard an agonized scream and the man was down. When Ayla heard it, without thinking she urged her horse forward.

“Ayla! Wait! It’s too dangerous!” Jondalar called after her, prodding his own mount as he readied his spear-thrower.

The other men were hurling their spears even as Jondalar spoke. When Ayla jumped off her still-moving horse and ran toward the wounded man. the huge beast lay crumpled in a heap; several spears, a couple from a spear-thrower, were sticking out of his body in every direction, like the quills of some enormous grotesque porcupine. But the kill was too late. The enraged beast had had his satisfaction.

Several young men, looking scared and lost, were ranged around the fallen man, who was crumpled, unconscious where he dropped. As Ayla approached them with Jondalar close behind, they appeared surprised to see her, and it seemed for a moment that one was going to bar her way or ask who she was, but she ignored him. She turned him over and checked his breathing, and pulled out her knife to cut away blood-soaked leggings from his leg, her hands already colored from the task. There was a smear of red on her face where she had unconsciously pushed aside a strand of hair. She didn’t have any Zelandoni marks on her face, yet she seemed to know what she was doing. The young man backed away.

When she exposed the leg, the damage was obvious. The calf of his right leg was bent backward where there was no knee. The huge pointed horn had gored the man in the calf and broken both bones. The muscle was torn open, the jagged end of a bone was showing, and blood was pouring out of the gash and pooling on the ground.

She looked up at Jondalar. “Help me straighten him out while he’s unconscious, it’s going to hurt to move him when he wakes up. Then get me some soft hides, our toweling hides will work. I need to apply pressure to stop the bleeding, then I’ll need help to splint the leg.” The tall man hurried off, and she turned to one of the young men who were standing around, gaping.

“He’ll need to be carried back. Do you know how to make a stretcher?” He looked blank, as though he hadn’t heard or understood her. “We need something for him to lie on while he’s carried.”

He nodded. “A stretcher,” he said.

He was really only a boy, she realized. “Jondalar will help you,” she said as the man returned with the hides.

They laid him out on his back. He moaned from the movement, but didn’t wake up. She checked him again; he might have sustained a head injury from the fall, but she didn’t see anything obvious. Then, leaning hard on his leg above the knee, she tried to slow the bleeding. She thought about a tourniquet, but if she could get the bone straightened and wrap the leg, she might not need it. Pressure on the wound itself should be enough. He was still bleeding, but she had seen worse.

She turned to Jondalar. “We need splints, some straight wood about the length of his leg, break some of those spears if you need to.”

Jondalar brought her two splints, broken lengths of spears. She quickly cut strips out of one of the hides, and other pieces to wrap around the splints for padding, to get them ready. Then, grasping the foot of the broken leg by holding the toes with one hand and his heel with her other hand, she gently pulled it straight, feeling where it resisted and easing it through. He spasmed a few times, and noises escaped his mouth; he’d been close to waking. She reached into the bleeding gash and tried to feel if the bones were aligned.

“Jondalar, hold his thigh for me,” she said. “I need to set this leg before he wakes up, and while he’s still bleeding. The blood will help keep the wound clean.” Then she looked up at the young men—boys—who were standing around watching with looks of horror and amazement on their faces. “You, and you,” she said, looking directly at two of them. “I’m going to lift his leg and pull to align the bones so they will heal straight. If I don’t, he’ll never walk on that leg again. I want you to get those splints and put them underneath his leg, so when I lower it, the leg will be right between them. Can you do that?”