“Chasing off that dirty pack of hyenas,” she said, her face screwed up in an expression of disgust and the sound of loathing in her voice.
“I know you hate hyenas, but you don’t have to kill every one you see. They’re just animals like any other, and have their place among the Mother’s children. If we drag the leader off, the rest will likely follow,” Jondalar said.
Ayla stopped and looked at him, then felt her tension leave. “You are right, Jondalar. They are just animals.”
With spear-throwers armed, Jondalar picked up one hind foot and Ayla the other and started dragging. She noticed the hyena was still nursing, but she knew that hyenas often nursed for a year until the young were nearly full grown and the only way to tell the difference was in coat color. Young ones were darker. The snuffling, snorting, laughing pack followed; the other one she had hit was limping badly. They dumped the animal far away from the camp and as they walked back, they noticed that some of the other carnivores had followed them.
“Good!” Ayla said. “Maybe that will keep some of them away. I’m going to wash my hands. Those animals smell bad.”
Most of the time Ayla’s Zelandonii friends and relatives thought of her as an ordinary woman and mother, and didn’t even notice her accent, but when she did something like walking into a pack of hungry hyenas and killing their leader with a stone from her sling without seeming to give it a second thought, then they suddenly became aware of her differences. She was not born to the Zelandonii, her upbringing had been totally unlike any of theirs, and her unusual way of speaking became noticeable.
“We need to cut down some small trees for a new pole-drag. It was Zelandoni’s suggestion. I don’t think she wants blood on hers. She does consider it hers, you know,” Ayla said.
“It is hers. No one else would think of using it,” Jondalar said.
It took two trips to haul all the meat from the auspicious hunt away, most of it dragged by the horns and pushed by the neighboring people. By the time the travelers had packed up their campsite, the sun was working its way down to meet the horizon, with shades of orange and red blazoned across the sky. They took the meat they were keeping for themselves and headed for the Cave. Ayla and Jondalar lingered for a while—with the horses they could catch up easily enough. They were making a final tour of the abandoned camp to see if anyone had left anything important behind.
It was obvious that people had been there. Trails between tents had worn paths that now led to flattened and yellow patches of grass; fireplaces were black circles of charcoal; some trees had raw scars of light-colored wood where branches had been torn off and pointed stumps that looked as though they had been chewed down by a beaver showed where trees had once grown. There was some trash around, a shredded and torn basket near one of the fireplaces, and a small and well-used sleeping roll that Jonlevar had outgrown was open and discarded in the middle of a flattened patch where a tent had been. Scattered chips of flint and broken points, and some piles of bone and vegetable peelings were lying around, but they would soon degrade back into the soil. Yet the vast stretches of cattails and reeds, though well harvested, showed little change, the yellowed grass and the black lenses of firepits would soon be covered with new green, and the trees that were removed made room for new ones to sprout. The people lived lightly on the land.
Ayla and Jondalar checked their waterbags and took a drink; then Ayla felt the urge to pass her water before they started back, and walked around the perimeter of the trees. If they were snowbound in the middle of winter, Ayla wouldn’t hesitate to relieve herself in a night basket no matter who was there watching, but if it was possible, she preferred privacy, especially since she had to take down her leggings and not just move aside a loose dress.
She untied the waist thong and squatted down, but when she stood up to pull her leggings back on, she was surprised to see four strange men staring at her. She was more offended than anything. Even if they had come upon her accidentally, they should not have stood there and stared at her. It was very rude. Then she noticed details: a certain griminess in their clothing, rather unkempt beards, stringy long hair, and mostly, lewd expressions. The last made her angry, though they expected her to be frightened.
Perhaps she should have been.
“Don’t you have the courtesy to look away when a woman needs to pass her water?” Ayla said, giving them a look of disdain as she retied her waist thong.
Her disparaging remarks surprised the men. First because they expected fear, then because they heard her accent. They drew their own conclusions.
One looked at the others with a deriding grin. “She’s a stranger. Probably visiting. Won’t be many of her kind around.”
“Even if there are, I don’t see any around here,” another man said, then turned to leer at her, as he started toward her.
Ayla suddenly remembered the time they stopped to visit the Losadunai on their Journey here; there had been a band of hoodlums who had been harassing women. She slipped her sling off her head and reached in her pouch for a stone, then whistled loud for Wolf, and followed it by the whistles for both horses.
The whistles startled the men, but the stones did more than startle. The man who was moving toward her yelped with pain as a stone landed soundly on his thigh; another stone hit
the upper arm of a second man with a similar response. Both men grabbed their bodies at the points of impact.
“How in Mother’s Underworld did she do that?” the first man said angrily. Then looking at the men he said, “Don’t let her get away. I want to give her something back for that.”
In the meantime Ayla had reached for her spear-thrower and armed it with a spear that was aimed at the first man. A voice came from the other side of the stand of trees.
“Just be glad she didn’t aim for your head, or you’d be walking the next world now. She just killed a hyena with one of her stones.”
The men turned to face a tall blond man who had a spear in another one of those strange devices aimed at them. He had spoken Zelandonii, but he too had an accent, not the same as the woman’s but as though he came from some distance.
“Let’s get away from here,” another man said, and started running.
“Stop him, Wolf!” Ayla commanded.
Suddenly a large wolf they hadn’t seen raced after the man. He grabbed an ankle with his teeth and brought him down, then stood over him snarling.
“Anyone else feel like running away?” Jondalar said. He looked the four men over and quickly summed up the situation. “I have a feeling you’ve been causing lots of trouble around here. I think we need to bring you to the nearest Cave and see what they think.”
With Wolf nearby, he took away the few spears they had among them, and their knives. They weren’t used to being compelled to doing anything they didn’t want to, but when they resisted, Ayla set Wolf on them again. None of them felt like going against the snarling beast. As they started walking, Wolf herded them, nipping at their heels and snarling. With Ayla on the back of her dun-yellow mare on one side of them and Jondalar on his dark brown stallion on the other, they had little chance to go anyplace but where they were led.
At one point along the way, two of the men decided to make a break for it running in different directions. Jondalar’s spear whizzed just past the ear of the man who appeared to be the leader and stopped him short. Ayla’s caught a flap of loose clothing of the other man and the momentum unbalanced him and brought him down to the ground.