The Mammoth Hunters ec-3 Read online

  As Ayla checked the large waterbag, she smiled again at the sleeping children, who had been up until late the night before. She enjoyed having children around again. "I should get snow before we leave. We are low on water, and it hasn't snowed for a while. Clean snow nearby is getting hard to find."

  "Let's not take the time," Deegie said. "We have water at our hearth, and so does Nezzie. We can get more when we come back." She was putting on her warm winter outdoor clothes while Ayla was dressing. "I have a waterbag, and some food to take with us, so if you're not hungry, we can just go."

  "I can wait for the food, but I need to make some hot tea," Ayla said. Deegie's eagerness to leave was infecting her. They were still just beginning to stir around outside the lodge, and spending some time alone just with Deegie seemed like fun.

  "I think Nezzie has some hot tea, and I don't think she'd mind if we had a cup."

  "She makes mint in the morning; I will just get something to add to it… something I like to drink in the morning. I think I will get my sling, too."

  Nezzie insisted that the two young women eat some hot cooked grains as well, and gave them slices of meat from her roast of the night before to take along. Talut wanted to know which way they planned to go, and the general location of Deegie's snares. When they stepped outside the main entrance, the day had begun; the sun had risen above a bank of clouds on the horizon, and begun its journey across a clear sky. Ayla noticed the horses were already out. She didn't blame them.

  Deegie showed Ayla the quick twist of the foot that turned the leather loop, attached to the elongated circular frame woven across with sturdy willow withes, into a convenient snowshoe hitch. With a little practice, Ayla was soon striding across the top of the snow alongside Deegie.

  Jondalar watched them leaving from the entrance to the annex. With a frown, he looked at the sky and considered following them, then changed his mind. He saw a few clouds, but nothing to portend danger. Why was he always so worried about Ayla whenever she left the earthlodge? It was ridiculous for him to follow her around. She wasn't going out alone, Deegie was with her, and the two young women were perfectly able to take care of themselves… even if it did snow… or worse. They'd notice him following after a while, and then he'd just be in the way when they wanted to be off by themselves. He let the drape fall, and turned back inside, but he couldn't shake his feeling that Ayla might be in danger.

  "Oh, look, Ayla!" Deegie cried, on her knees examining the frozen solid white-furred carcass dangling from a noose pulled tight around its neck. "I set other traps. Let's hurry and check them."

  Ayla wanted to stay and examine the snare, but she followed after Deegie. "What are you going to do with it?" she asked when she caught up.

  "It depends on how many I get. I wanted to make a fringe on a fur parka for Branag, but I'm making him a tunic, too, a red one – not as bright as your red. It will have long sleeves and take two hides, and I'm trying to match the color of the second skin to the first. I think I'd like to decorate it with the fur and teeth of a winter fox. What do you think?"

  "I think it will be beautiful." They shussed through the snow for a while, then Ayla said, "What do you think would be best for a white tunic?"

  "It depends. Do you want other colors or do you want to keep it all white?"

  "I think I want it to be white, but I'm not sure."

  "White fox fur would be nice."

  "I thought about that, but… I don't think it would be quite right," Ayla said. It wasn't so much the color that was bothering her. She remembered that she had selected white fox furs to give to Ranec at her adoption ceremony, and didn't want any reminders about that time.

  The second snare had been sprung, but it was empty. The sinew noose had been bitten through, and there were wolf tracks. The third had also caught a fox, and it had apparently frozen hard in the snare, but it had been gnawed at, most of it was eaten, in fact, and the fur was useless. Again Ayla pointed out wolf tracks.

  "I seem to be trapping foxes for wolves," Deegie said.

  "It looks like only one, Deegie," Ayla said.

  Deegie was beginning to fear she would not get another good fur, even if one had been caught in her fourth snare. They hurried to the place where she had set it.

  "It should be over there, near those bushes," she said as they approached a small wooded copse, "but I don't see…"

  "There it is, Deegie!" Ayla shouted, hurrying ahead. "It looks good, too. And look at that tail!"

  "Perfect!" Deegie sighed with relief. "I wanted at least two." She untangled the frozen fox from the noose, tied it together with the first fox, and slung them over the branch of a tree. She was feeling more relaxed now that she had trapped her two foxes. "I'm hungry. Why don't we stop and have something to eat here?"

  "I do feel hungry, now that you say it."

  They were in a sparsely wooded glen, more brush than trees, formed by a creek that had cut through thick deposits of bess soil. A sense of bleak and weary exhaustion pervaded the small vale in the waning days of the long harsh winter. It was a drab place of blacks and whites and dreary grays. The snow cover, broken by the woody underbrush, was old and compacted, disturbed by many tracks, and seemed used and grimy. Broken branches exposing raw wood showed the ravages of wind, snow, and hungry animals. Willow and alder clung close to the earth, bent by the weight of climate and season to prostrate shrubs. A few scrawny birch trees stood tall and thin, scraping bare branches noisily together in the wind, as though clamoring for the fulfilling touch of green. Even the conifers had lost their color. The twisted pines, bark scabbed with patches of gray lichen, were faded, and the tall larches were dark and sagged heavily from their burden of snow.

  Dominating one shallow slope was a mound of snow armed with long canes spiked with sharp thorns – the dry, woody stems of runners which had been sent out the previous summer to claim new territory. Ayla noted it in her mind, not as an impenetrable thicket of thorny briars, but as a place to look for berries and healing leaves in their proper season. She saw beyond the bleak, tired scene to the hope it held, and after the long confinement, even a winter-weary landscape looked promising, especially with the sun shining.

  The two young women piled snow together to make seats on what would be the bank of a little stream if it were summer. Deegie opened her haversack and took out the food she had packed, and even more important, the water. She opened a birchbark packet and gave Ayla a compact cake of traveling food – the nutritious mixture of dried fruits and meat and energy-giving essential fat, shaped into a round patty.

  "Mother made some of her steamed loaves with pine nuts last night and gave me one," Deegie said, opening another packet and breaking off a piece for Ayla. They had become a favorite of hers.

  "I will have to ask Tulie how to make these," Ayla said, taking a bite before she unwrapped the slices of Nezzie's roast, and put some down beside each of them. "I think we are having a feast out here. All we need are some fresh spring greens."

  "That would make it perfect. I can hardly wait for spring. Once we have the Back Breaking Celebration, it seems to get harder and harder to wait," Deegie replied.

  Ayla was enjoying the companionable outing with just herself and Deegie, and was even beginning to feel warm in the shallow depression, protected from winds. She untied the thong at her throat and pushed back her hood, then straightened her sling around her head. She closed her eyes and tipped her face up to the sun. She saw the circular afterimage of the dazzling orb against the red background of her lowered eyelids, and felt the welcoming warmth. After she opened her eyes again, she seemed to see with greater clarity.

  "Do people always wrestle at Back Breaking Celebrations?" Ayla asked. "I have never seen anyone wrestle without moving his feet before."

  "Yes, it's to honor…"

  "Look, Deegie! It is spring!" Ayla interrupted, jumping up and rushing toward a willow shrub nearby. When the other woman joined her, she pointed to the hint of swelling buds along a slender twig
, and one, coming into season too early to survive, that had burst forth in bright spring green. The women smiled at each other in wonder, full of the discovery, as though they had invented spring themselves.

  The sinew snare loop still dangled not far from the willow. Ayla held it up. "I think this is a very good way to hunt. You do not have to look for animals. You make a trap and come back later to get them, but how do you make it, and how do you know that you will catch a fox?"

  "It's not hard to make. You know how sinew gets hard if you wet it and let it dry, just like leather that is not treated?"

  Ayla nodded.

  "You make a little loop at the end," Deegie continued, showing her the loop. "Then you take the other end and put it through to make another loop, just big enough for a fox's head to go through. Then you wet it, and let it dry with the loop open so it will stay open. Then you have to go where the foxes are, usually where you've seen them or caught them before. My mother showed me this place. Usually there are foxes here every year, you can tell if there are tracks. They often follow the same paths when they are near their dens. To set the snare, you find a fox trail, and where it goes through bushes or near trees, you set the loop right across the trail, at about the height of their heads, and fasten it, like this, here and here," Deegie demonstrated as she explained. Ayla watched, her forehead furrowed in concentration.

  "When the fox runs along the trail, the head goes through the loop, and as he runs, it tightens the noose around his neck. The more the fox struggles, the tighter the noose gets. It doesn't take long. Then the only problem is finding the fox before something else does. Danug was telling me about the way people to the north have started setting snares. He says they bend down a young sapling and tie it to the noose so that it comes loose as soon as the animal is caught, and jerks it up when the tree springs back. That keeps the fox off the ground until you get back."

  "I think that's a good idea," Ayla said, walking back toward their seats. She looked up, then suddenly, to Deegie's surprise, she whipped her sling off her head and was scanning the ground. "Where is a stone?" she whispered. "There!"

  With a movement so swift Deegie could hardly follow, Ayla picked up the stone, set it in her sling, whipped it around and let fly. Deegie heard the stone land, but only when she got back to the seats did she see the object of Ayla's missile. It was a white ermine, a small weasel about fourteen inches long overall, but five of the inches was a white furry tail with a black tip. In summer the elongated, soft-furred animal would have a rich brown coat with a white underbelly, but in winter the sinuous little stoat turned pure silky white, except for its black nose, sharp little eyes, and the very tip of its tail.

  "It was stealing our roast meat!" Ayla said.

  "I didn't even see it next to that snow. You've got good eyes," Deegie said. "And you're so quick with that sling, I don't know why you need to worry about snares, Ayla."

  "A sling is good for hunting when you see what you want to hunt, but a snare can hunt for you when you are not even there. Both are useful to know," Ayla replied, taking the question seriously.

  They sat down to finish their meal. Ayla's hand kept returning to rub the soft thick fur of the little weasel as they talked. "Ermines have the nicest fur," she said.

  "Most of those long weasels do," Deegie said. "Minks, sables, even wolverines have good fur. Not so soft, but the best for hoods, if you don't want frost clinging around your face. But it's hard to snare them, and you can't really hunt them with a spear. They're quick and vicious. Your sling seemed to work, though I still don't know how you did it."

  "I learned to use the sling hunting those kinds of animals. I only hunted meat eaters in the beginning and learned their ways first."

  "Why?" Deegie asked.

  "I was not supposed to hunt at all, so I did not hunt any animals that were food, only those that stole food from us." She snorted a wry chuckle of realization. "I thought that would make it all right."

  "Why didn't they want you to hunt?"

  "Women of the Clan are forbidden to hunt… but they finally allowed me to use my sling." Ayla paused for an instant, remembering. "Do you know, I killed a wolverine long before I killed a rabbit?" She smiled at the irony.

  Deegie shook her head in amazement. What a strange childhood Ayla must have had, she thought.

  They got up to leave, and as Deegie went to get her foxes, Ayla picked up the soft, white little ermine. She rubbed her hand along the body all the way to the tip of the tail.

  "That is what I want!" Ayla said, suddenly. "Ermine!"

  "But that's what you have," Deegie said.

  "No. I mean for the white tunic. I want to trim it with white ermine fur, and the tails. I like those tails with the little black tips."

  "Where are you going to get enough ermine to decorate a tunic?" Deegie asked. "Spring is coming, they will be changing color again soon."

  "I do not need very many, and where there is one, there are usually more nearby. I will hunt them. Now," Ayla said. "I need to find some good stones." She started pushing snow out of the way, looking for stones near the bank of the frozen creek.

  "Now?" Deegie said.

  Ayla stopped and looked up. She had almost forgotten Deegie's presence in her excitement. She could make tracking and stalking more difficult. "You do not have to wait for me, Deegie. Go back. I will find my way."

  "Go back? I wouldn't miss this for anything."

  "You can be very quiet?"

  Deegie smiled. "I have hunted before, Ayla."

  Ayla blushed, feeling she said the wrong thing. "I did not mean…"

  "I know you didn't," Deegie said, then smiled. "I think I could learn some things from someone who killed a wolverine before she killed a rabbit. Wolverines are more vicious, mean, fearless, and spiteful than any animal alive, including hyenas. I've seen them drive leopards away from their own kills, they'll even stand up to a cave lion. I'll try to stay out of your way. If you think I'm scaring the ermine off, tell me, and I'll wait for you here. But don't ask me to go back."

  Ayla smiled with relief, thinking how wonderful it was to have a friend who understood her so quickly. "Ermine are as bad as wolverines. They are just smaller, Deegie."

  "Is there anything I can do to help?"

  "We still have roast meat left. It might be useful, but first we must find tracks… after I get a good supply of stones."

  When Ayla had accumulated a pile of satisfactory missiles and put them in a pouch, which was attached to her belt, she picked up her haversack, and slung it over her left shoulder. Then she stopped and studied the landscape, looking for the best place to begin. Deegie stood beside her and just a step behind, waiting for her to take the lead. Almost as though she was thinking out loud, Ayla began speaking to her in a quiet voice.

  "Weasels do not make dens. They use whatever they find, even a rabbit's burrow – after they kill the rabbits. Sometimes I think they would not need a den, if they did not have young. They are always moving: hunting, running, climbing, standing up and looking, and they are always killing, day and night, even after they have just eaten, though they might leave it. They eat everything, squirrels, rabbits, birds, eggs, insects, even dead and rotten meat, but most meat they kill and eat fresh. They make stinky musk when they are cornered, not to squirt like a skunk, but smells as bad, and they make sound like this…" Ayla uttered a cry that was half-strangled scream and half-grunt. "In the season of their Pleasures, they whistle."

  Deegie was utterly astonished. She had just learned more about weasels and ermine than she had learned in her entire life. She didn't even know they made a sound at all.

  "They are good mothers, have many babies, two hands…"

  Ayla stopped to think of the name of the counting word. "Ten, more sometimes. Other times, only few. Young stay with mother until almost grown." She stopped again to eye the landscape critically. "This time of year, litter might still be with mother. We look for track… I think near cane-brake." She started toward the
mound of snow that covered, more or less, the tangled mass of stems and runners that had been growing from the same place for many years.

  Deegie followed her, wondering how she could have learned so much, when Ayla wasn't much older than she was. Deegie had noticed that Ayla's speech had lapsed just slightly – it was the only sign of her excitement – but it made her realize how well Ayla did speak now. She seldom spoke fast, but her Mamutoi was close to perfect, except for the way she said certain sounds. Deegie thought she might never lose that speech mannerism, and rather hoped she wouldn't. It made her distinctive… and more human.

  "Look for small tracks with five toes, sometimes only four show, they make the smallest tracks of any meat eater, and the back paws go in the same tracks that front feet paws were in."

  Deegie hung back, not wanting to trample delicate spoor, watching. Ayla slowly and carefully scanned each area of the space around her with every step she took, the snow-covered ground and each fallen log, each twig on each bush, the slender boles of bare birches and the weighted boughs of dark-needled pines. Suddenly her eyes stopped their constant vigilance, stilled by a sight that caught her breath. She lowered her foot slowly while reaching into the haversack for a large piece of rare roast bison, and laid it on the ground in front of her. Then she backed off carefully, and reached into the pouch of stones.

  Deegie looked beyond Ayla without moving, trying to see what she saw. Finally she noticed movement, and then focused on several small white shapes sinuously moving toward them. They raced with surprising speed though they were climbing over deadfall, up and down trees, through brush, in and around small pockets and cracks, and devouring everything they found in their path. Deegie had never taken the time to notice the small voracious carnivores before, and she watched in rapt fascination. They stood up occasionally, shiny black eyes alert, ears cocked for every sound, but drawn unerringly by scent to their hapless prey.

  Squirming through nests of voles and mice, under tree roots for hibernating newts and frogs, and darting after small birds too chilled and hungry to flee, the ravaging horde of eight or ten small white weasels closed in. Heads weaving back and forth, black little beads of eyes eager, they pounced with deadly accuracy at the brain, the nape of the neck, the jugular vein. Striking without compunction, they were the most efficient, bloodthirsty killers of the animal world, and Deegie was suddenly very glad they were small. There seemed no reason for such wanton destruction but a lust to kill – except the need to keep a continuously active body fueled in the way they were intended and ordained by nature to do.