The Valley of Horses Read online

  “Tell me something,” Thonolan asked, serious again. “How would you feel if she decided to mate someone else while we’re gone? It’s likely, you know.”

  Jondalar tied the belt on while he was thinking. “I’d be hurt, or my pride would—I’m not sure which. But I wouldn’t blame her. I think she deserves someone better than me, someone who wouldn’t leave her to go off on a Journey at the last moment. And if she’s happy, I’d be happy for her.”

  “That’s what I thought,” the younger brother said. Then he broke into a grin. “Well, Big Brother, if we’re going to keep ahead of that donii that’s coming after you, we’d better get moving.” Thonolan finished loading his backframe, then lifted his fur parka and slipped an arm out of the sleeve to hang the waterbag over his shoulder underneath it.

  The parkas were cut from a simple pattern. Front and back were more or less rectangular pieces laced together at the sides and shoulders, with two smaller rectangles folded and sewn into tubes and attached as sleeves. Hoods, also attached, had a fringe of wolverine fur around the face since ice from moisture in the breath would not cling to it. The parkas were richly decorated with beadwork of bone, ivory, shell, animal teeth, and black-tipped white ermine tails. They slipped on over the head and hung loosely like tunics to about midway down the thigh, and were cinched around the waist with a belt.

  Under the parkas were soft buckskin shirts made from a similar pattern, and trousers of fur, flapped over in front and held on with a drawstring around the waist. Fur-lined mittens were attached to a long cord that went through a loop at the back of the parka so they could be quickly removed without dropping or losing them. Their boots had heavy soles that, like moccasins, went up around the foot, and were fastened to softer leather that conformed to the leg and was folded over and wrapped with thongs. Inside was a loose-fitting liner of felt, made from the wool of mouflon that was wetted and pounded together until it matted. When it was especially wet, waterproof animal intestines, made to fit, were worn over the boot, but they were thin, wore out quickly, and were used only when necessary.

  “Thonolan, how far do you really plan to go? You didn’t mean it when you said all the way to the end of the Great Mother River, did you?” Jondalar asked, picking up a flint axe hafted to a short, sturdy, shaped handle and putting it through a loop on his belt next to the bone-handled flint knife.

  Thonolan stopped in the process of fitting on a snowshoe and stood up. “Jondalar, I meant it,” he said, without a hint of his usual joking.

  “We may not even make it back for next year’s Summer Meeting!”

  “Are you having second thoughts? You don’t have to come with me, Brother. I’m serious. I won’t be angry if you turn back—it was a last-moment decision for you anyway. You know as well as I do, we may never get back home again. But if you want to go, you’d better do it now or you’ll never make it back across that glacier until next winter.”

  “No, it wasn’t a last-moment decision, Thonolan. I’ve been thinking about making a Journey for a long time, and this is the right time for it,” Jondalar said with a tone of finality, and, Thonolan thought, a shade of unaccountable bitterness in his voice. Then, as though he were trying to shrug it off, Jondalar shifted to a lighter tone. “I never have made much of a Journey, and if I don’t now, I never will. I made my choice, Little Brother, you’re stuck with me.”

  The sky was clear, and the sun reflecting the white expanse of virgin snow before them was blinding. It was spring, but at their elevation the landscape showed no sign of it. Jondalar reached into a pouch hanging from his belt and pulled out a pair of snow goggles. They were made of wood, shaped to cover the eyes completely except for a thin horizontal slit, and tied around the head. Then, with a quick twist of the foot to wrap the thong loop into a snowshoe hitch around toe and ankle, he stepped into his snowshoes and reached for his backframe.

  Thonolan had made the snowshoes. Spearmaking was his craft, and he carried with him his favorite shaft straightener, an implement made of an antler with the branching tines removed and a hole at one end. It was intricately carved with animals and plants of spring, partly to honor the Great Earth Mother and persuade Her to allow the spirits of the animals to be drawn to the spears made from the tool, but also because Thonolan enjoyed the carving for its own sake. It was inevitable that they would lose spears while hunting, and new ones would have to be made along the way. The straightener was used particularly at the end of the shaft where a hand grip was not possible, and by inserting the shaft through the hole, additional leverage was obtained. Thonolan knew how to apply stress to wood, heated with hot stones or steam, to straighten a shaft or to bend one around to make a snowshoe. They were different aspects of the same skill.

  Jondalar turned to see if his brother was ready. With a nod, they both started out, and tramped down the gradual slope toward the timberline below. On their right, across forested lowland, they saw the snow-covered alpine foreland and, in the distance, the jagged icy peaks of the northernmost ridge of the massive mountain range. Toward the southeast, one tall peak was shining high above its brethren.

  The highland they had crossed was hardly more than a hill by comparison, a massif that was the stump of eroded mountains far more ancient than the soaring peaks to the south. But it was just high enough and just close enough to the rugged range with its massive glaciers—that not only crowned but mantled the mountains down to moderate elevations—to maintain a year-round ice cover on its relatively level top. Someday, when the continental glacier receded back to its polar home, that highland would be black with forest. Now, it was a plateau glacier, a miniature version of the immense globe-spanning ice sheets to the north.

  When the two brothers reached the treeline, they removed their goggles, which protected the eyes but limited visibility. Somewhat farther down the slope, they found a small stream that had begun as glacial melt seeping through fissures in the rock, flowed underground, then emerged filtered and cleared of silt in a sparkling spring. It trickled between snowy banks like many other small glacial runoffs.

  “What do you think?” Thonolan asked, gesturing toward the stream. “It’s about where Dalanar said she would be.”

  “If that’s Donau, we should know soon enough. We’ll know we are following the Great Mother River when we reach three small rivers that come together and flow east; that’s what he said. I’d guess almost any of these runoffs should lead us to her eventually.”

  “Well, let’s keep to the left now. Later she won’t be so easy to cross.”

  “That’s true, but the Losadunai live on the right, and we can stop at one of their Caves. The left side is supposed to be flathead country.”

  “Jondalar, let’s not stop at the Losadunai,” Thonolan said with an earnest smile. “You know they’ll want us to stay, and we stayed too long already with the Lanzadonii. If we’d left much later, we wouldn’t have been able to cross the glacier at all. We would have had to go around, and north of it is really flathead country. I want to get moving, and there won’t be many flatheads this far south. And so what if there are? You’re not afraid of a few flatheads, are you? You know what they say, killing a flathead is like killing a bear.”

  “I don’t know,” the tall man said, his worry lines puckered. “I’m not sure I’d want to tangle with a bear. I’ve heard flatheads are clever. Some people say they are almost human.”

  “Clever, maybe, but they can’t talk. They’re just animals.”

  “It’s not the flatheads I’m worried about, Thonolan. The Losadunai know this country. They can get us started right. We don’t have to stay long, just long enough to get our bearings. They can give us some landmarks, some idea of what to expect. And we can talk to them. Dalanar said some of them speak Zelandonii. I’ll tell you what, if you agree to stop now, I’ll agree to pass the next Caves by until the way back.”

  “All right. If you really want to.”

  The two men looked for a place to cross the ice-banked stream, alread
y too wide to jump. They saw a tree that had fallen across, making a natural bridge, and headed for it. Jondalar led the way, and, reaching for a handhold, he put a foot on one of the exposed roots. Thonolan glanced around, waiting his turn

  “Jondalar! Look out!” he cried suddenly.

  A stone whizzed past the tall man’s head. As he dropped to the ground at the warning cry, his hand reached for a spear. Thonolan already had one in his hand and was crouching low, looking in the direction from which the stone had come. He saw movement behind the tangled branches of a leafless bush and let fly. He was reaching for another spear when six figures stepped out from the nearby brush. They were surrounded.

  “Flatheads!” Thonolan cried, pulling back and taking aim.

  “Wait, Thonolan!” Jondalar shouted. “They’ve got us outnumbered.”

  “The big one looks like the leader of the pack. If I get him, the rest may run.” He pulled back his arm again.

  “No! They may rush us before we can reach for a second spear. Right now I think we’re holding them off—they’re not making a move.” Jondalar slowly got to his feet, keeping his weapon ready. “Don’t move, Thonolan Let them make the next move. But keep your eye on the big one. He can see you’re aiming for him.”

  Jondalar studied the big flathead and had the disconcerting feeling that the large brown eyes staring back were studying him. He had never been so close to one before, and he was surprised. These flatheads did not quite fit his preconceived ideas of them. The big one’s eyes were shaded by overhanging brow ridges that were accentuated by bushy eyebrows. His nose was large, narrow, rather like a beak, and contributed to making his eyes seem more deep-set. His beard, thick and tending to curl, hid his face. It was on a younger one, whose beard was just beginning, that he saw they had no chins, just protruding jaws. Their hair was brown and bushy, like their beards, and they tended to have more body hair especially around the upper back.

  He could tell they had more hair because their fur wraps covered mainly their torsos, leaving shoulders and arms bare despite the nearly freezing temperature. But their scantier covering didn’t surprise him nearly as much as the fact that they wore clothing at all. No animals he’d ever seen wore clothes, and none ever carried weapons. Yet each one of these had a long wooden spear—obviously meant to be jabbed, not thrown, though the sharpened points looked wicked enough—and some carried heavy bone clubs, the forelegs of large grazing animals.

  Their jaws aren’t really like an animal’s, Jondalar thought. They just come forward more, and their noses are just large noses. It’s their heads. That’s the real difference.

  Rather than full high foreheads, like his and Thonolan’s, their foreheads were low and sloped back above their heavy brow ridges to a large fullness at the rear. It seemed as though the tops of their heads, which he could easily see, had been flattened down and pushed back. When Jondalar stood up to his full six feet six inches, he towered over the biggest one by more than a foot. Even Thonolan’s mere six feet made him seem a giant beside the one who was, apparently, their leader, but only in height.

  Jondalar and his brother were both well-built men, but they felt scrawny beside the powerfully muscled flatheads. They had large barrel chests and thick, muscular arms and legs, both bowed somewhat in an outward curvature, but they walked as straight and comfortably upright as any man. The more he looked, the more they seemed like men, just not like any men he’d seen before.

  For a long tense moment, no one moved. Thonolan crouched with his spear, ready to throw; Jondalar was standing, but with his spear firmly gripped so it could follow his brother’s the next instant. The six flatheads surrounding them were as unmoving as stones, but Jondalar had no doubts about how quickly they could spring into action. It was an impasse, a stand-off, and Jondalar’s mind raced trying to think of a way out of it.

  Suddenly, the big flathead made a grunting sound and waved his arm. Thonolan almost threw his spear, but he caught Jondalar’s gesture waving him back just in time. Only the young flathead had moved, and he ran back into the bushes they had just stepped out of. He returned quickly, carrying the spear Thonolan had thrown, and, to his amazement, brought it to him. Then the young one went to the river near the log bridge and fished out a stone. He returned to the big one with it and seemed to bow his head, looking contrite. The next instant, all six melted back into the brush without a sound.

  Thonolan breathed a sigh of relief when he realized they were gone. “I didn’t think we were going to get out of that one! But I was sure going to take one of them down with me. I wonder what that was all about?”

  “I’m not sure,” Jondalar replied, “but it could be that young one started something the big one didn’t want to finish, and I don’t think it was because he was afraid. It took nerve to stand there and face your spear, and then make the move he did.”

  “Maybe he just didn’t know any better.”

  “He knew. He saw you throw that first spear. Why else would he tell that youngster to go get it and give it back to you?”

  “You really think he told him to do it? How? They can’t talk.”

  “I don’t know, but somehow that big one told the young one to give you back your spear and get his stone. Like that would make everything even. No one was hurt, so I guess it did. You know, I’m not so sure flatheads are just animals. That was smart. And I didn’t know they wore furs and carried weapons, and walked just like we do.”

  “Well, I know why they’re called flatheads! And they were a mean-looking bunch. I would not want to tangle with one of them hand to hand.”

  “I know—they look like they could break your arm like a piece of kindling. I always thought they were small.”

  “Short, maybe, but not small. Definitely not small. Big Brother, I’ve got to admit, you were right. Let’s go visit the Losadunai. They live so close, they must know more about flatheads. Besides, the Great Mother River seems to be a boundary, and I don’t think flatheads want us on their side.”

  The two men hiked for several days looking for landmarks given them by Dalanar, following the stream that was no different in character at this stage from the other streamlets, rills, and creeks flowing down the slope. It was only convention that selected this particular one as the source of the Great Mother River. Most of them came together to form the beginning of the great river that would rush down hills and meander through plains for eighteen hundred miles before she emptied her load of water and silt into the inland sea far to the southeast.

  The crystalline rocks of the massif that gave rise to the mighty river were among the most ancient on the earth, and its broad depression was formed by the extravagant pressures that had heaved up and folded the rugged mountains glistening in prodigal splendor. More than three hundred tributaries, many of them large rivers, draining the slopes of the ranges all along her course, would be gathered into her voluminous swells. And one day her fame would spread to the far reaches of the globe, and her muddy, silty waters would be called blue.

  Modified by mountains and massifs, the influence of both the oceanic west and the continental east was felt. Vegetable and animal life were a mixture of the western tundra-taiga and the eastern steppes. The upper slopes saw ibex, chamois, and mouflon; in the woodlands deer were more common. Tarpan, a wild horse that would one day be tame, grazed the sheltered lowlands and river terraces. Wolves, lynxes, and snow leopards slunk noiselessly through shadows. Lumbering out of hibernation were omnivorous brown bears; the huge vegetarian cave bears would make a later appearance. And many small mammals were poking noses out of winter nests.

  The slopes were forested mostly with pine, though spruce, silver fir, and larch were seen. Alder was more prevalent near the river, often with willow and poplar, and rarely, dwarfed to little more than prostrate shrubs, pubescent oak and beech.

  The left bank ascended from the river in a gradual grade. Jondalar and Thonolan climbed it until they reached the summit of a high hill. Looking out over the landscape, the tw
o men saw rugged, wild, beautiful country, softened by the layer of white that filled hollows and smoothed outcrops. But the deception made traveling difficult.

  They had not seen any of the several groups of people—such groups were thought of as Caves whether they lived in one or not—who referred to themselves as Losadunai. Jondalar was beginning to think they had missed them.

  “Look!” Thonolan pointed.

  Jondalar followed the direction of his outstretched arm and saw a wisp of smoke rising out of a wooded copse. They hurried ahead and soon came upon a small band of people clustered around a fire. The brothers strode into their midst raising both hands in front of them, palms up, in the understood greeting of openness and friendship.

  “I am Thonolan of the Zelandonii. This is my brother, Jondalar. We are on our Journey. Does anyone here speak our tongue?”

  A middle-aged man stepped forward, holding his hands out in the same manner. “I am Laduni of the Losadunai. In the name of Duna, the Great Earth Mother, you are welcome.” He gripped both of Thonolan’s hands with his and then greeted Jondalar in the same manner. “Come, sit by the fire. We will eat soon. Will you join us?”

  “You are most generous,” Jondalar replied formally.

  “I traveled west on my Journey, stayed with a Cave of Zelandonii. It’s been some years, but Zelandonii are always welcome.” He led them to a large log near the fire. A lean-to had been constructed over it as protection from wind and weather. “Here, rest, take your pack off. You must have just come off the glacier.”

  “A few days ago,” Thonolan said, shrugging off his backframe.

  “You are late for crossing. The foehn will come any time now.”

  “The foehn?” Thonolan asked.

  “The spring wind. Warm and dry, out of the southwest. It blows so hard trees are uprooted, limbs torn off. But it melts the snow very quickly. Within days, all this can be gone and buds starting,” Laduni explained, moving his arm in a broad sweep to indicate the snow. “If it catches you on the glacier, it can be fatal. The ice melts so quickly, crevasses open up. Snow bridges and cornices give way beneath your feet. Streams, even rivers, start flowing across the ice.”