Mammoth Hunters (66 page)

“But who would become leader instead, if Talut didn’t have respect?” Ayla asked. “And how?”

“Well … ah …” Deegie began. Then the young people turned to Mamut to answer her question.

“If it is the old former leaders turning over active leadership to a younger brother and sister, who have been selected—usually relatives—there is a period of learning, then a ceremony, then the older leaders become advisers,” the shaman and teacher said.

“Yes. That’s what Brun did. When he was younger, he respected old Zoug and paid attention to his advice, and when he got older, he turned the leadership over to Broud, the son of his mate. But what happens if a Camp loses respect for a leader? A young leader?” Ayla asked, very interested.

“The change would not happen quickly,” Mamut said, “but people just would not turn to him after a while. They would go to someone else, someone who could lead a more successful hunt, or handle problems better. Sometimes the leadership is relinquished, sometimes a Camp just breaks up, with some going with the new leader, and some staying with the old. But leaders don’t usually give up their positions or authority easily, and that can cause problems, even fights. Then the decision would get turned over to the Councils. The headman or headwoman who has shared leadership with someone who causes trouble, or is held responsible for a problem, is seldom able to start up a new Camp, though it may not be her”—Mamut hesitated, and Ayla noticed that his eyes darted toward the old woman of the Crane Hearth, who was talking to Nezzie—“that person’s fault. People want leaders they can depend on, and distrust those who have had problems … or tragedies.”

Ayla nodded, and Mamut knew she understood, both what he had said and what he had implied. The conversation continued, but Ayla’s mind had wandered back to the Clan. Brun had been a good leader, but what would his clan do if Broud was not? She wondered if they would turn to a new leader, and who it might be. It would be a long time before
the son of Broud’s mate was old enough. A persistent worry that had been nagging for her attention suddenly broke through.

“Where’s Wolf?” she said.

She hadn’t seen him since the argument, and no one else had either. Everyone started looking. Ayla searched her bed platform, and then every other corner of the hearth, even the curtained-off area with the basket of ashes and horse dung, which she had shown the pup. She was beginning to feel the same panic that a mother feels when her child is missing.

“Here he is, Ayla!” she heard Tornec say, with relief, but she felt her stomach churn when he added, “Frebec has him.” Her surprise bordered on shock as she watched him approach. She was not the only one who stared in amazed disbelief.

Frebec, who never overlooked an opportunity to derogate Ayla’s animals, or her, for her association with them, was cradling the wolf puppy gently in his arms. He handed the wolf over to her, but she noticed a moment of hesitation, as though he gave up the small creature reluctantly, and she saw a softer look in his eyes than she had ever seen there before.

“He must have gotten scared,” Frebec explained. “Fralie said suddenly he was there, at the hearth, whining. She didn’t know where he came from. Most of the children were there, too, and Crisavec picked him up and put him on a storage platform, near the head of his bed. But there’s a deep niche in the wall there. It goes quite a way into the hillside. The wolf found it, and crawled all the way to the back, and then he wouldn’t come out.”

“It must have reminded him of his den,” Ayla said.

“That’s what Fralie said. It was too hard for her to go and get him, as big as she is, and I think she was afraid after hearing Deegie tell about you going into a wolf den. She didn’t want Crisavec to go in after him, either. When I got there, I had to go in and get him out.” Frebec paused then, and when he continued, Ayla heard a note of wonder in his voice. “When I reached him, he was so glad to see me, he licked me all over the face. I tried to get him to stop.”

Frebec assumed a more detached and unconcerned manner to cover up the fact that he was obviously moved by the naturally winning ways of the frightened baby wolf. “But when I put him down, he cried and cried until I picked him
up again.” Several people had gathered around by then. “I don’t know why he picked the Crane Hearth, or me, to run to when he was looking for a safe place.”

“He thinks of the Camp as his pack now, and he knows you are a member of the Camp, especially after you brought him out of the den he found,” Ayla replied, trying to reconstruct the circumstances.

Frebec had been feeling the flush of victory when he returned to his hearth, and something deeper that made him feel an unaccustomed warmth; a sense of belonging as an equal. They hadn’t just ignored him or made fun of him. Talut always listened to him, just as though he had the status to warrant it, and Tulie, the headwoman herself, had offered to give him some of her space. Crozie had even sided with him.

A lump came in his throat when he saw Fralie, his very own, treasured, high-status woman who had made it all possible; his beautiful pregnant woman who would soon give birth to the first child of his own hearth, the hearth Crozie had given him, the Crane Hearth. He’d been annoyed when she told him the wolf was hiding in the niche, but the pup’s eager acceptance of him, in spite of all his harsh words, surprised him. Even the new baby wolf welcomed him, and then would only be soothed by him. And Ayla said it was because the wolf knew he was a member of the Lion Camp. Even a wolf knew he belonged.

“Well, you better keep him here from now on,” Frebec cautioned as he turned to go. “And watch out for him. If you don’t, he could get stepped on.”

After Frebec left, several of the people who had been standing around looked at each other in complete bewilderment.

“That was a change. I wonder what got into him?” Deegie said. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say he actually likes Wolf!”

“I didn’t think he had it in him,” Ranec said, feeling more respect than he ever had for the man of the Crane Hearth.

The four-legged creatures of the Mother’s domain had always been either food, fur, or the personification of spirits to the Lion Camp. They knew animals in their natural environment, knew their movements and migration patterns, knew where to look for them and how to hunt them. But the people of the Camp had never known individual animals before Ayla came with the mare and the young stallion.

The interaction of the horses with Ayla and, as time passed, with other people in varying degrees, was a constant source of surprise. It had never occurred to anyone before that such animals would respond to a human, or that they could be trained to come at a whistle or to carry a rider. But even the horses with all their interest and appeal did not hold the fascination to the Camp of the baby wolf. They respected wolves as hunters, and on occasion, adversaries. Sometimes a wolf was hunted for a winter pelt, and though it was rare, an occasional human fell to a pack of wolves. Most often wolves and humans tended to respect and avoid each other.

But the very young always exert a special appeal; it is the innate source of their survival. Babies, including baby animals, touch some inner chord that resonates in response, but Wolf—the name by which he came to be known—held a special charm. From the first day that the fuzzy little dark gray pup waddled on unsteady legs on the floor of the earthlodge, he entranced the human population. His eager puppy ways were hard to resist, and he quickly became a favorite of the Camp.

It helped, although the people of the Camp didn’t realize it, that human ways and wolf ways were not so different. Both were intelligent, social animals who organized themselves within an overall pattern of complex and changing relationships, which benefited the group while accommodating individual
differences. Because of the similarities of social structures and certain characteristics which had evolved independently in both canines and humans, a unique relationship was possible between them.

Wolf’s life began under unusual and difficult circumstances. As the only surviving pup of a litter born to a lone wolf who had lost her mate, he never knew the security of a wolf pack. Rather than the comfort of litter mates or a solicitous aunt or uncle who would have stayed close by in the event that his mother left for a short time, he had experienced loneliness unusual for a wolf pup. The only other wolf he had known was his mother, and his memory of her was blurring as Ayla took her place.

But Ayla was something more. By deciding to keep and raise the wolf puppy, she became the human half of an extraordinary bond that developed between two entirely different species—canines and humans—a bond that would have profound and lasting effects.

Even if there had been other wolves around, Wolf was too young when he was found to have properly bonded with them. At his age of a month or so, he would have just begun coming out of the den to meet his relatives, the wolves that he would have identified with for the rest of his life. He imprinted instead on the people, and horses, of the Lion Camp.

It was the first, but it would not be the last time. By accident or design, as the idea spread, it would happen again, many times in many places. The ancestors of all the domestic canine breeds were wolves, and in the beginning they retained their essential wolf characteristics. But as time went on, the generations of wolves born and raised within a human environment began to differ from the original wild canines.

Animals born with normal genetic variations in color, shape, and size—a dark coat, a white spot, a curved-up tail, a smaller or larger size—which would have pushed them to the periphery or out of the pack, were often favored by humans. Even genetic aberrations in the form of midgets or dwarfs or heavy-boned giants that would not have survived to reproduce in the wild were kept, and thrived. Eventually unusual or aberrant canines were bred to preserve and strengthen certain traits that were desirable to humans, until the outward similarity of many dogs to the ancestral wolf was remote
indeed. Yet the wolf traits of intelligence, protectiveness, loyalty, and playfulness remained.

Wolf was quick to pick up cues of relative rank within the Camp, as he would have been within a wolf pack, though his interpretation of status might not have matched the notions of the humans. Though Tulie was headwoman of the Lion Camp, to Wolf, Ayla was the ranking female; in a wolf pack the mother of the litter was the female leader and she seldom allowed any other females to bear young.

No one in the Camp knew precisely what the animal thought or felt, or if he even had thoughts and feelings that could be understood by humans, but it didn’t matter. The people of the Camp judged by behavior, and from Wolf’s actions no One doubted that he loved and worshiped Ayla beyond measure. Wherever she was, he was always aware of her, and at a whistle, a snap of the fingers, a beckoning gesture, even a nod, he was at her feet, looking up with adoration in his eyes eagerly anticipating her least wish. He was totally unself-conscious in his responses, and entirely forgiving. He whined in abject despair when she scolded him, and wriggled with ecstasies of delight when she relented. He lived for her attention. His greatest joy was when she played or romped with him, but even a word or a pat was sufficient to elicit excited licking and other obvious signs of devotion.

With no one else was Wolf quite so effusive. With most he displayed varying degrees of friendliness or acceptance, which caused some surprise that the animal could show such a range of feeling. His reaction to Ayla strengthened the Camp’s perception that she had a magical ability to control animals, and it increased her stature.

The young wolf had a little more difficulty determining who the male leader in his human pack was. The one who held that position in the wolf pack was the object of the most solicitous attention of all the other wolves. A greeting ceremony in which the male leader was mobbed by the rest of the pack eager to lick his face, sniff his fur, and crowd in close, often ending with a wonderful communal howling ceremony, commonly affirmed his leadership. But the human pack offered no such deference to any particular male.

Wolf did notice, however, that the two large four-legged members of his unconventional pack greeted the tall blond man with more enthusiasm than any other person, except Ayla. In addition, his scent lingered strongly around Ayla’s
bed and the nearby area, which included Wolf’s basket. In the absence of other cues, Wolf leaned toward ascribing pack leadership to Jondalar. His inclination was strengthened when his friendly advances were rewarded with warm and playful attention.

The half-dozen children who played together were his litter mates and Wolf could often be found with them, frequently at the Mammoth Hearth. Once they developed a proper respect for his sharp little teeth, and learned not to provoke a defensive snap, the children found Wolf liked to be handled, petted, and fondled. He was tolerant of unintentional excess, and seemed to know the difference between Nuvie squeezing him a bit too hard when she carried him and Brinan pulling his tail just to hear him yelp. The former was suffered with forbearance, the latter rewarded with a nip of retribution. Wolf loved to play and always managed to get in the middle of wrestling, and the children quickly learned that he loved to retrieve things that were thrown. When they all crumpled in a tired heap, falling asleep wherever they happened to be, the wolf pup was often among them.

After the first night when she had promised never to let the wolf harm anyone, Ayla made a decision to train him with purpose and thought. Her training of Whinney, in the beginning, had been accidental. She had acted on impulse the first time she climbed on the mare’s back, and hadn’t known she was intuitively learning to control the horse the more she rode. Though she was now aware of the signals she had developed and used them consciously, her means of control were still largely intuitive, and Ayla believed that Whinney obeyed her commands because she wanted to.

Training the cave lion had been somewhat more purposeful. By the time she found the injured cub, she knew an animal could be encouraged to follow her wishes. Her first efforts at training had been directed at controlling the lion kitten’s rambunctious affection. She trained by love, the way children were raised by the Clan. She rewarded his gentle behavior with her affection, and firmly pushed him aside, or got up and walked away when he forgot to sheath his claws or played too rough. When, out of excitement, he bounded toward her with unchecked enthusiasm, he learned to stop when she put up her hand and said “Stop!” in a firm voice. The lesson was so well learned that even when he became a full-grown male cave lion nearly as tall but heavier than
Whinney, he would stop at Ayla’s command. She invariably responded with affectionate rubs and scratches, and occasionally a full-length hug rolling with him on the ground. As he grew older, he learned many things, even to hunt with her.