Mammoth Hunters (83 page)

Ayla usually counted her years at the end of winter, beginning her new year with the season of new life, and the spring of her eighteenth year had been glorious with a profusion of meadow flowers and the fresh green of new growth. It was welcomed as it could be only in a place of frigid winter wastelands, but after the Spring Festival the season ripened quickly. As the bright flowers of the steppes faded, they were replaced by the fast-growing, lush crop of new grass—and the roaming grazers it brought. The seasonal migrations had begun.

Animals in great numbers and many different varieties were on the move across the open plains. Some converged until their numbers became uncountable, others assembled in smaller herds or family groups, but all derived their sustenance, their life, from the great, windswept, incredibly rich grasslands, and the glacier-fed river systems that cut through it.

Huge hordes of big-horned bison covered hills and dips with a living, bawling, restless, undulating mass that left raw, trampled earth behind. Wild cattle, aurochs, were strung out for miles in the open woodlands along the major river valleys as they traveled northward, sometimes commingled with herds of elk and massive-antlered giant deer. Shy roe deer traveled through riverine woodlands and boreal forests in small parties to spring and summer feeding grounds, along with unsociable moose who also frequented the bogs and melt lakes of the steppes. Wild goats and mouflon, usually mountain-dwelling, took to the open plains in the cold northern lands, and mingled at watering places with small family groups of saiga antelope, and larger herds of steppe horses.

The seasonal movement of woolly animals was more limited. With their thick layer of fat and heavy double coats of fur, they were adapted for life near the glacier and could not
survive too much warmth. They lived year-round in the northern periglacial regions of the steppes, where the cold was deeper but dry, and snow was slight, feeding in winter on the coarse, dry standing hay. The sheeplike musk-oxen were permanent inhabitants of the frozen north, and moved in small herds within a limited territory. Woolly rhinoceroses, who usually gathered only in family groups, and the larger herds of woolly mammoths ranged farther, but in winter they stayed north. In the slightly warmer and wetter continental steppes to the south, deep snows buried feed and caused the heavy animals to flounder. They went south in spring to fatten on the tender new grass, but as soon as it warmed, they would move north again.

The Lion Camp rejoiced to see the plains teeming with life again, and remarked upon each species as it appeared, especially the animals who thrived in deep cold. Those were the ones who most helped them to survive. A sighting of the enormous, unpredictable rhinos, with two horns, the front one long and low-slung, and two coats of reddish fur, a soft downy underwool and an outer layer of long guard hair, always brought exclamations of wonder.

Nothing, however, created such sheer excitement among the Mamutoi as the sight of mammoths. When the usual time for them to pass by drew near, someone from the Lion Camp was always on the lookout. Except from a distance, Ayla hadn’t seen a mammoth since she lived with the Clan, and she was as excited as anyone when Danug came running down the slope one afternoon shouting, “Mammoths! Mammoths!”

She was among the first to rush out of the lodge to see them. Talut, who often carried Rydag perched up on his shoulders, had been on the steppes with Danug, and she noticed Nezzie, with the boy on her hip, was straggling behind. She started back to help, then saw Jondalar take him from the woman and hoist him up to his shoulders. He received warm smiles from both. Ayla smiled, too, though he didn’t see her. The expression was still on her face when she turned to Ranec who had jogged to catch up with her. Her tender, beautiful smile evoked in him an intense feeling of warmth and a fierce wish that she was already his. She couldn’t help but respond to the love in his dark, flashing eyes and the compelling grin. Her smile remained for him.

On the steppes, the Lion Camp watched the huge shaggy
creatures with silent awe. They were the largest animals in their land—indeed, they would have been in almost any land. The herd, with several young in it, was passing close by, and the old matriarch eyed the people warily. She stood about ten feet high at the shoulders, and had a high domed head and a hump on the withers, used to store additional fat for winter. A short back that sloped down steeply to the pelvis completed the characteristic and immediately recognizable profile. Her skull was large in proportion to her size, more than half the length of her relatively short trunk, from the end of which two sensitive, mobile, finger projections extended, an upper and a lower one. Her tail was short, also, and her ears were small, to conserve heat.

Mammoths were eminently suited to their frigid domain. Their skin was very thick, insulated by three inches or more of subcutaneous fat, and closely covered with a soft, dense undercoat, about an inch long. The coarse long outer hair, up to twenty inches in length, was a dark reddish-brown, and hung in neat layers over the thick winter downy wool, as a warm, moisture-shedding cover and windbreak. With efficient rasplike grinders, they consumed a winter diet of coarse dry grass, plus twigs and bark of birches, willows, and larches with as much ease as they did their summer diet of green grasses, sedges, and herbs.

Most impressive of all, the mammoths’ immense tusks inspired amazement and awe. Originating close together out of the lower jaw, they first pointed steeply downward, then curved strongly outward, upward, and finally inward. In old males, a tusk could reach sixteen feet in length, but by then, they were crossed over in front. In young animals the tusks were effective weapons and built-in tools for uprooting trees and clearing snow from pasture and feed, but when the two points curved up and overlapped, they got in the way, and were more hindrance than help.

The sight of the enormous animals brought a flood of memories to Ayla of the first time she had seen mammoths. She recalled wishing, then, that she could go hunting with the men of the Clan, and remembered that Talut had invited her to go on the first mammoth hunt with the Mamutoi. She did like to hunt, and the idea that she might actually join the hunters this time gave her a tingle of anticipation. She began to really look forward to the Summer Meeting.

The first hunt of the season had important symbolic meaning.
As massive and majestic as woolly mammoths were, the Mamutoi feeling for them went beyond wonder at their size. They depended upon the animal for much more than food, and in their need and desire to assure the continuance of the great beasts, they conceived a special relationship with them. They held them in reverence because they based their own identity on them.

Mammoths had no real natural enemies; no carnivorous animal regularly depended on them for sustenance. The huge cave lions, twice the size of any large feline, which normally preyed on the large grazers—aurochs, bison, giant deer, elk, moose, or horse—and could kill a full-grown adult, occasionally brought down a young, sick, or very old mammoth, but no four-legged predator, singly or in groups, could kill an adult mammoth in its prime. Only the Mamutoi, the human children of the Great Earth Mother, had been given the ability to hunt the largest of Her creatures. They were the chosen ones. Among all Her creations, they were preeminent. They were the Mammoth Hunters.

After the mammoth herd passed, the people of the Lion Camp followed eagerly behind them. Not to hunt them, that would come later. They were after the soft, downy wool of their winter undercoats, which was being shed in large handfuls through the coarser outer guard hairs. The naturally colored dark red wool, which was gathered from the ground and spiny brush that caught and held it, was considered a special gift from the Spirit Mammoth.

As chance provided, the white wool of mouflon which was shed naturally by the wild sheep in spring, the unbelievably soft earthy-brown downy wool of musk-ox, and the lighter red rhinoceros underwool were also gathered with great enthusiasm. In their minds, they offered thanks and appreciation to the Great Earth Mother who gave Her children everything they needed from her abundance, vegetable products and animals, and materials like flint and clay. They only had to know where and when to look.

Though fresh vegetables—carbohydrates—were enthusiastically added to their diet, for all the rich variety available to them, the Mamutoi hunted little in spring and early summer, unless stored supplies of meat were very low. The animals were too lean. The deep, hard winter sapped them of the required concentrated sources of energy in the form of fat. Their perambulations were driven by the need to replenish.
A few male bison were picked off, if the fur at the nape of the neck was still black, indicating fat still present in some measure, and a few pregnant females of several species, for the tender fetus meat and skin which made soft baby clothes, or undergarments. The major exception was reindeer.

Vast herds of reindeer migrated north, the antlered females with the last year’s young leading the way along remembered trails to their traditional calving grounds, followed by the males. As with other herding animals, their ranks were thinned by wolves that ranged along their flanks searching out the weak and the old, and by several species of felines: large lynxes, long-bodied leopards, and an occasional massive cave lion. The large carnivores played host with their leavings to a great variety of secondary carnivores and scavengers, both four-legged and flying: foxes, hyenas, brown bears, civets, small steppe cats, wolverines, weasels, ravens, kites, hawks, and many more.

The two-legged hunters preyed on them all. The fur and feathers of their hunting competitors were not disdained, though reindeer were the primary game of the Lion Camp—not for the meat, although it did not go to waste. The tongue was considered a treat and much of the meat was dried for use in traveling food, but it was the hides they wanted. Commonly grayish-fawn, but ranging in color from creamy white to almost black, with a reddish-brown cast in the young, the coat of the most northern ranging deer was both lightweight and warm. Because their fur was naturally insulating, no finer cold-weather clothing could be found than that made from reindeer hide, and it was without equal for bedding and ground sheets. With surrounds and pit traps, the Lion Camp hunted them every year, to replenish their own supplies and for gifts to take with them when they set out on their own summer migrations.

As the Lion Camp prepared for the Summer Meeting, excitement ran high. At least once every day, someone told Ayla how much she would like meeting some relative or friend, or how much they would want to meet her. The only one who seemed to lack enthusiasm for the gathering of the Camps was Rydag. Ayla had never seen the boy in such low spirits, and she worried about his health.

She watched him carefully for several days, and one unusually
warm afternoon when he was outside watching several people stretching reindeer hides, she sat down beside him.

“I have made new medicine for you, Rydag, to take to the Summer Meeting,” Ayla said. “It is fresher, and may be stronger. You will have to tell me if you feel any differences, better or worse,” she said, using both hand signs and words, as she usually did with him. “How are you feeling now? Any changes lately?”

Rydag liked it when Ayla talked to him. Though he was profoundly grateful for his new ability to communicate with his Camp, their understanding and use of sign language was essentially simple and direct. He had understood their verbal language for years, but when they spoke to him, they tended to simplify it to match the signs they used. Her signs were closer in nuance and feeling to verbal speech, and they enhanced her words.

“No, feel same,” the boy signed.

“Not tired?”

“No … Yes. Always little tired.” He smiled. “Not as much.”

Ayla nodded, studying him carefully, checking for any visible symptoms, trying to assure herself that there was no change in his condition, at least none for the worse. She did not see any signs of physical deterioration, but he seemed dejected.

“Rydag, is something bothering you? Are you unhappy?”

He shrugged, and looked away. Then he looked back at her. “Not want to go,” he signed.

“Where don’t you want to go? I don’t understand.”

“Not want to go Meeting,” he said, looking away again.

Ayla frowned, but didn’t press. Rydag didn’t seem to want to talk about it, and soon went inside the lodge. She followed him in through the front foyer, trying not to seem conspicuous, and from the cooking hearth watched him lie down on his bed. She was worried about him. He seldom went to bed voluntarily during the day. She saw Nezzie come in and stop to tie the front drape back. Ayla hurried toward her, to help.

“Nezzie, do you know what’s wrong with Rydag? He seems so … unhappy,” Ayla said.

“I know. He gets that way this time of year. It’s the Summer Meeting. He doesn’t like it.”

“That’s what he said. Why?”

Nezzie paused and looked full at Ayla. “You really don’t
know, do you?” The young woman shook her head. Nezzie shrugged. “Don’t worry about it, Ayla. There’s nothing you can do.”

Ayla walked through the lodge along the passageway, and glanced at the boy. His eyes were closed, but she knew he wasn’t sleeping. She shook her head, wishing she could help. She guessed it was something about his difference, but he had been to Meetings before.

She hurried through the empty Fox Hearth, and into the Mammoth Hearth. Suddenly, Wolf came bounding in through the front entrance and was at her heels, playfully jumping up. She commanded him down with a signal. He obeyed, but looked so hurt she relented and threw him the well-chewed-up piece of soft leather that had once been one of her favorite stocking-shoes. She had finally given it to him when it seemed to be the only way to break him of chewing up everyone else’s shoes and boots. He quickly tired of his old toy and, getting down on his forelegs, wagged his tail and yipped at her. Ayla couldn’t help smiling, and decided it was just too nice a day to stay inside. On the spur of the moment, she picked up her sling and a pouch of round stones she had gathered, and signaled Wolf to follow her. Seeing Whinney in the annex, she decided to include the mare as well.