Fear fluttered in the eyes of Caribou Antler. “Has that witch whose hair is like straw said otherwise?” he mumbled. “Too many whispers blow on these winds.”
“Why must you think she has powers?” Red Wolf challenged. “She and the shaggy man went away from us. That was three days ago. Wait and hear what news Running Fox brings.”
With such words he kept the band steady until their scout rejoined them. Running Fox told of a deep bog not far off. Thereupon Red Wolf harangued them and they agreed to try.
First everybody went about gathering twigs, dead reeds, and other dry stuff, which they bound into faggots. Red Wolf then took the fire drill. While he worked he sang the Raven Song, and his comrades danced the slow measures of it around him. Night had fallen, but it was the short light night of summer, a dusk through which ponds glimmered and earth reached gray to horizons still visible. The sky was like a shadow overhead, wherein a few stars dimly flickered. Cold deepened.
Red Wolf brought up the rear as they approached the mammoths, lest the burning torch he carried alarm the quarry too soon. Twigs crackled, herbs rustled, ground squelched underfoot. A breeze carried rankness and, he thought, a touch of warmth off the bulks ahead. It made him a little dizzy; he had eaten scantily of late. Noises from throats, trunks, shuffling huge feet quickened his heart and cleared his head. The animals were uneasy after being annoyed throughout these past days. They were ready to stampede.
When he deemed the moment ripe, he whistled. The men heard and dashed back to him. They kindled their brands at his. Now he took the lead. In a broad arc, his band leaped forward. They whirled their fires on high; flames flared, sparks streamed. They sounded forth the wolf’s howl, the lion’s roar, the bear’s growl, and that terrible, sharp-edged, endlessly rising and falling scream which is man’s alone.
A mammoth squealed. Another trumpeted. The herd fled. Earth quaked beneath. “Ya-a-ah, ya-a-ah!” Red Wolf shrieked. “This way! Yonder one—drive him—To me, brothers, to me, right and left, drive him! Yee-i-i-i-ya!”
The chosen prey was a young bull that happened to bolt straight toward the bog. Though his companions did not spread widely, they went separate ways, blundering and bleating through the dark. Men saw better than they did. Men overtook him, bounded along his flanks. As the faggots burned short, the hunters threw them. He bawled his terror. Red Wolf sprang close. The tail brushed his shoulders. He drove his spear in underneath, left it to waggle and rip, himself fell back. More weapons whirred from throwing-sticks. When they struck, they hurt almost as much. The mammoth pounded faster. His breath gusted hoarse.
Soil came apart, muck spurted and gulped, he sank to his belly and stood mired. His kin boomed past him, on into the night.
Left in peace, he could have worked free. The hunters gave him none. They darted yelping around the morass and cast spears. They waded out to thrust. Blood blackened starlit water. The bull bellowed in his agony. Trunk lashed, tusks swung to and fro, blindly, uselessly. The stars walked their silent paths above him.
His struggles weakened. His voice sank to a rasping pant. The men crowded close. Lighter in weight and helping each other, they did not sink deep in the mire. Their knives slashed, their axes chopped. Snowstrider lanced him in the eye. Even so, his other eye saw the sun rise, dulled and chilled by mist that had drifted in while he was being killed.
“Enough,” said Red Wolf. The men withdrew to firm ground.
He led them in the Ghost Song. On behalf of everyone, he spoke aloud, northward, telling the Father of Mammoths why this deed was needful. Then: “Go, Running Fox, and fetch the people. Let the rest of us recover what spears we can.” Though a point was easily made, nobody knew yet where the right kinds of stone were in these parts, and wooden shafts were always precious.
Having taken care of that, the band rested. They ate the last of the dried meat and berries in their pouches. Some spread blankets, which they had no reason to roll up in after air had warmed, and slept. Some talked, japed, watched the bull’s death throes. Those went on until midmorning, when the vast body shuddered, filled the bog with dung, and slumped into stillness.
Thereupon the men stripped off their clothes and brought their knives to it. They sucked blood while it was fresh and hacked off pieces of tongue and hump fat such as were hunters’ right. Afterward they washed themselves in a clean pool, to which they gave the unpierced eyeball as a thank offering. They hastened to get dressed again, for mosquitoes blackened the surroundings. Then they feasted. Shooing and throwing rocks, they defended the carcass against carrion birds. Drawn by the stenches, a wolf pack hovered in the offing but did not venture close.
“They know somewhat about men, these namesakes of mine do,” Red Wolf said.
The tribe arrived late next day. They had had no great way to go after breaking camp, for the mammoth hunt went slowly and zigzag; but they were burdened with hides, tent poles, and other gear, as well as having small children and aged persons among them. Weariness weighted their cries of joy. Just the same, they were quickly settled; and Red Wolf went in that evening to Little Willow, his wife.
In the morning folk began butchering the catch, a task that would take days. Red Wolf sought Answerer in the shaman’s tent. They sat silent while they breathed the smoke of a sacred peat fire into which herbs of power had been cast. It made the dimness stir with half-seen presences; noise outside reached them as if from across the world. Yet Red Wolf’s thoughts flowed strong.
“We have come long and far,” he said, “Enough?”
“The Horned Men walk no more in my dreams,” replied the shaman cautiously.
Red Wolf moved a hand up and down, showing he understood. The folk who drove the Cloud People from their ancestral country had had no cause to pursue them, but the flight eastward had hitherto been through lands held by tribes much like their enemies, a threat that soon forced them onward. “Ill is homelessness,” he said.
Answerer’s face drew together till the wrinkles and furrows met the painted lines. He fingered his necklace of claws. “Often at night I hear those we buried as we traveled, wailing in the wind. If we could tend our dead as we ought, they would have the strength to help us, or even to go join the Winter Hunters.”
“We seem at last to have reached territory where nobody else lives, save for a very few weaklings.”
“Are you sure they lack might? Also, your followers complain of how hard the mammoth drive was.”
“Will we ever find a place where it is easier? I wonder if we do not remember Skyhome as better than it truly was. Or else mammoth are everywhere becoming rare. Well, hereabouts I have found ample trace of bison, horse, caribou, and more. Also, when we were on this hunt we met something wonderful, and this is what I want to ask you about. Did it mean welcome or did it mean danger?”
Red Wolf told of the encounter with the strange pair. He went on to other things he and his fellows had noticed—stone chips, firesites, rabbit bones cracked for the marrow—that meant humans. Those must be feeble, unlike the tribes westward, for the big game of the region showed no special fear of man; and the one who accompanied the woman had been naked, carrying merely a rough-hewn rock for weapon. She was different, big, bright-pale of hair and eyes, peculiarly outfitted. She had shown anger when the hunters gibe-tested her companion. But she did nothing worse than depart. Might her kind be willing to deal with the Cloud People, with real men?
“Unless she is some sort of troll, and we should again move on,” Red Wolf finished.