Then she noticed a disturbance in the fast-moving herd, and thought she saw a pair of antlers drop, while others bobbed and eddied around the space. Ayla yanked the spears out of their holders and slid off the horse, running as soon as her feet touched the ground. A wild-eyed reindeer was mired in the oozing mud at the bottom of the hole, trying to jump out. This time her aim was true. She plunged the heavy spear into the deer's neck and severed an artery. The magnificent stag slumped to the bottom of the pit, his struggles at an end.
It was over. Done. So quickly, and so much more easily than she had imagined. She was breathing hard, but she was not out of breath from exertion. So much thought, worry, and nervous energy had gone into the planning that the easy execution of the hunt hadn't drained it off. She was still keyed up and had no way to spend her excess – and no one with whom to share her success.
"Whinney! We did it! We did it!" Her yelling and gesticulating startled the young horse. Then she leaped on the mare's back and took off in a dead run across the plains.
Braids flying behind her, eyes feverish with excitement, a maniacal smile on her face, she was a wild woman. And all the more frightening – if there had been anyone around to be frightened – for sitting astride a wild animal, whose frantic eyes and laid-back ears betokened a frenzy of a somewhat different nature.
They made a wide circle, and, on the way back, she pulled the horse to a halt, slid down, and finished the circuit with a sprint on her own two legs. This time when she looked down into the muddy hole at the dead reindeer, she panted heavily with good reason.
After she caught her breath, she pulled the spear out of the deer's neck and whistled for the horse. Whinney was skittish, and Ayla tried to calm her with encouragement and affection before putting the harness on her. She walked the horse to the pit trap. With neither bridle nor halter for control, Ayla had to coax and urge the nervous horse. When Whinney finally settled down, the woman tied the trailing ropes of the harness to the antlers of the deer.
"Pull now, Whinney," she encouraged, "just like the log." The horse moved forward, felt the drag, and backed up. Then, in response to more urging, she moved forward again, leaning into the harness as the ropes became taut. Slowly, with Ayla helping in every way she could, Whinney dragged the reindeer out of the hole.
Ayla was elated. At the least, it meant she would not have to dress the meat in the bottom of a mucky pit. She wasn't sure how much more Whinney would be willing to do; she hoped the horse would lend her strength to get the deer back to the valley, but she would only take one step at a time. Ayla led the young mare to the water's edge, untangling the reindeer's antlers from the brush. Then she repacked the baskets so that one nested inside the other and strapped them to her back. It was an unwieldy load with the two spears sticking upright, but with the help of a large rock, she straddled the horse. Her feet were bare, but she hiked up her fur wrap to keep it out of the water and urged Whinney into the river.
It was normally a shallow, wide, fordable part of the river – one of the reasons the reindeer had instinctively chosen the place to cross – but the rain had raised the water level. Whinney managed to keep her footing in the swift current, and, once the deer was in the water, it floated easily. Pulling the animal across the water had one benefit Ayla hadn't thought of. It washed away the mud and blood, and by the time they reached the other side, the reindeer was clean.
Whinney balked a little when she felt the drag again, but Ayla was down by then and helped haul the deer a short distance up the beach. Then she untied the ropes. The deer was one step closer to the valley, but before they went any farther, Ayla had a few tasks yet to do. She slit the deer's throat with her sharp flint knife, then made a straight cut from the anus up the belly, chest, and neck, to the throat. She held the knife in her hand with her index finger along the back and the cutting edge up, inserted just under the skin. If the first cut was made cleanly, not cutting into the meat, skinning would be much easier later.
The next cut went deeper, to remove the entrails. She cleaned the usable parts – stomach, intestines, bladder – and put them back into the abdominal cavity along with the edible parts.
Curled around the inside of one of the baskets was a large grass mat. She opened it out on the ground, then, pushing and grunting, she moved the deer onto it. She folded the mat over the carcass and wrapped it securely with ropes, then attached the ropes from Whinney's harness. She repacked the baskets, putting a spear in each one, and fastened the long shafts firmly in place. Then, feeling rather pleased with herself, she climbed on the horse's back.
About the third time she had to get down to free the load from hindering obstructions – grass tussocks, rocks, brush – she was no longer feeling so pleased. Finally she just walked beside the horse, coaxing her along until the trussed-up deer snagged on something, then going back to extricate it. It wasn't until she stopped to put her footwear back on that she noticed the pack of hyenas following her. The first stones from her sling only showed the wily scavengers her range, which they stayed just beyond.
Stinking ugly animals, she thought, wrinkling her nose and shuddering in disgust. She knew they also hunted – only too well. Ayla had killed one such scavenger with her sling – and given her secret away. The clan knew she hunted, and she had to be punished for it. Brun had no choice; it was the Clan way.
Hyenas bothered Whinney, too. It was more than her instinctual fear of predators. She never forgot the pack of hyenas that attacked her after Ayla killed her dam. And Whinney was edgy enough. Getting the deer back to the cave was turning out to be more of a problem than Ayla had anticipated. She hoped they would make it before nightfall.
She stopped to rest at a place where the river wound back on itself. All the stops and starts were wearing. She filled her waterbag and a large waterproof basket with water, then took the basket to Whinney, who was still attached to the dusty bundle of deer. She took out a traveling cake and sat down on a rock to eat it. She was staring at the ground, not really seeing it, trying to think of an easier way to get her kill back to the valley. It took a while before the disturbance of the dust penetrated her consciousness, but when it did, it aroused her curiosity. The earth was trampled, the grass bent down, and the tracks were fresh. Some great commotion had occurred here recently. She got up to examine the tracks closer, and gradually pieced together the story.
From the spoor in the dried mud near the river, she could tell they were in a long-established territory of cave lions. She thought there must be a small valley nearby, with sheer rocky walls and a snug cave where a lioness had given birth to a pair of healthy cubs earlier in the year. This had been a favorite resting place. The cubs had been playfully fighting over a bloody piece of meat, worrying loose small pieces with milk teeth, while the sated males lolled in the morning sun, and sleek females indulgently watched the babes at play.
The huge predators were lords of their domain. They had nothing to fear, no reason to anticipate an assault by their prey. Reindeer, under normal circumstances, would never have strayed so close to their natural predators, but the whooping, screaming horse-riding human had whipped them into a panic. The swift river had not stopped the stampeding herd. They had plunged across, and, before they knew it, they were in the midst of a pride of lions. Both were caught unawares. The fleeing deer, realizing too late that they had run from one danger into another far worse, scattered in all directions.
Ayla followed the tracks and came upon the conclusion of the story. Too late to dodge the flying hooves, one cub had been trampled by the frightened deer.