by neetha Napew
hunters had used the wind to mask their scent, they could easily have edged to within striking distance and dropped the monster while it was still wallowing within the bog. But they were out for sport as well as for meat, and from the first it had been their intention to provoke the animal. Thus they should have expected its violent charge and its sideways, head-swinging attack, as Torka had. He warned Karana to stay back, to be ready to leap for his life.
The rhinoceros thundered past them in a blur, its horned head stabbing upward with such power that, had any of them failed to leap aside, they would have been impaled and thrown over the shaggy back of the animal and into the bog.
It stood facing them on open grassland now. Blowing enraged snorts of air, it pawed the earth, sending grass and soil flying. Led by Aar, the dogs circled it, barking, snapping, charging in and out in threatening forays. The rhino’s small eyes, white with cataracts, strained to see its attackers through a fog of near blindness. It tossed its head, made high, whistling noises of threat as it trotted in circles, its tail flicking angrily. One of the older dogs, a member of Aar and Sister Dog’s first litter, lunged just as the head of the rhinoceros swept down and sideways, slicing the air and the dog with its great horn. The dog flew through the air, yipping pathetically and raining blood before it disappeared into the bog scrub without a further sound.
Torka was angry. Beside him, still on high ground, Karana stood white-lipped and trembling, the butt end of his spear notched into the barb of his spear hurler, the haft of the weapon poised across his shoulder as, like Torka, he wondered why Zinkh and the men of the Great Gathering were taking such obvious pleasure in risking themselves, and Torka’s dogs, unnecessarily.
But the death of the dog had excited them, and they howled now in appreciation but disappointment over the rhinoceros’s killing of the bold and fearless animal. Never had they seen dogs hunt with men as though they were of one pack; they had not believed that such an alliance was possible, in spite of what Zinkh had claimed. They were still howling as, with Aar ferociously leading them, the other dogs continued to menace the prey, confusing it, enraging it. With old Lorak in the lead the hunters howled, urging the brave dogs on as though they themselves were dogs, but with none of the canines’ dignity. They stamped their feet, danced sideways and back and forth, mocking the great, harried rhino with chants of deprecation, threatening with their spears, then hurling them as one.
Only two of the projectiles struck and held, neither inflicting a mortal wound, for the rhino was encased in an armor of thick, matted brownish-gray hair over a tough, virtually impenetrable hide and insulating fat. With the spears protruding from its shoulder hump, it whirled and ran.
Lorak raised a feathered arm and shrieked his whooping cry. The others, enflamed, followed him and burst into a run, also screaming. Again they were wolves. But this time their run was short. The rhino had not gone very far before it wheeled and reversed the order of the chase.
Now, pursued by the pounding-footed, slobbering-lipped, shaggy mountain with death in its half-blind eyes, dogs and men raced toward the rise where Torka and Karana still stood.
Old Lorak had been in the lead, but now he was falling behind. Looking back over his shoulder proved a serious mistake, which caused him to lose ground, trip over his own feathered garments, and fall flat. As Torka and Karana stared, the old man bravely positioned himself, spear up, ready to impale the rhinoceros as it ground him into the earth.
Still on high ground, with their spear hurlers already positioned, Torka and Karana loosed their weapons simultaneously. Their spears arced over the running hunters. With the power of a grown man behind it, Torka’s weapon struck first. Its pointed stone head tore through the skin and fat of the rhinoceros’s shoulder, carrying the shaft through the beast’s flesh as the projectile point buried itself in bone, then shattered. The animal screamed and nearly fell as it veered sharply, just as Karana’s spear found its side, ripped through hair and hide to penetrate one of the animal’s lungs. Choking on its own blood, the rhinoceros threw up its head, gasping for breath. In this moment Torka’s second spear penetrated its breast to sever veins and arteries in a mortal wounding that struck cleanly into its heart.
While Zinkh jumped up and down with pride and all of the other hunters looked back in disbelief and awe, Lorak shamed himself by crying out with relief when the rhinoceros collapsed into a heap of bleeding meat that had come only breaths away from crushing him to death.
They stood in reverence of Torka and Karana—of their magic spears and the power that they exerted over their dogs. Having learned a bitter lesson in Supnah’s band, Torka spoke no denial of the magic. Let the people of the Great Gathering think of him what they would; a man needed
status when he walked among strangers,
They opened the belly and throat of the fallen rhinoceros. Torka and Karana were honored with the prime portions because they had made the kill, which not only had brought man meat to the people at the Great Gathering, but had saved the life of Lorak, supreme elder among magic men.
They lounged by the corpse, gorging themselves on hot, sweet blood, then the ultimate delicacies: the tongue, liver, heart, and contents of the intestines, which Torka and Karana graciously insisted upon sharing. They passed around the eyes and sucked the juices from them. No man complained when Torka and Karana offered generous portions to the dogs; they had more than earned it.
When they had eaten their fill, a call went out to the women, who came with their butchering tools, carrying babies in frames or walking with children beside them. Lonit basked with pride. This was the kill of the males of her fire.
She stood tall before them, surveying the size of the great and dangerous animal they had -slain. She was happy that lana had remained behind with Demmi and Summer Moon, lana was not really Torka’s woman, not in the full sense of the word. Nor was Aliga, she thought. Torka sometimes went to ease her loneliness within the night because it was a man’s responsibility to keep his women content. But once Aliga was pregnant, Torka lay only with Lonit. She was his first and only woman again, and she was glad!
But her mood darkened as she thought of Aliga at Sondahr’s fire. Torka had gone with her. He had admitted to Karana that he thought her to be the most beautiful woman in the world. Sondahr, with no man of her own, truly was worthy of Torka.
But if anyone could help Aliga, Sondahr could do it; her healing powers were all that the women had spoken of when the men had gone off to hunt. If Aliga gave birth to a son, Torka would never let her go. A woman’s value was measured by her strength and her skills and, ultimately, by her ability to bring strong hunters into the world. And Lonit had borne only daughters.
Her shame deepened because her preoccupation had caused her to neglect her own responsibilities. Torka had called her to partake of the meat, so she must praise him with song, in the way of their people, and hope that the onlookers would not laugh.
But they did not laugh. They were quiet, entranced by the measured grace of her steps, the quiet cadence of her song, and her beauty. When at last she completed the required circuit of the fallen game and paused, eyes downcast, before her man and Karana, asking permission to butcher and eat their kill, everyone exhaled with approval. Her heart swelled with joy and relief to see that he was beaming with pride and love.
But then his eyes focused beyond her, and Karana also seemed transfixed.
She turned to see Sondahr standing behind her.
The meat of the woolly rhinoceros did not last long when shared by many. Lonit allowed the other women to assist in the butchering. They praised her for her generosity, and all but Sondahr helped to skin the animal, pack its meat, and carry the usable portions of its dismembered carcass back to camp. The women, headed by a particularly belligerent Pomm, drove Sondahr away, telling the magic woman that her powers were such that she would have her share and must not bloody her hands in the work. In the night of feasting that followed, all the meat was eaten, but the magic woma
n stayed with Aliga within her hut upon the Hill of Dreams and did not come to claim a portion of it.
In the morning one of the magic men brought word from the Hill of Dreams that the tattooed woman’s fever had lessened and that, in the care of the mystical Sondahr, she was sleeping easily. Lonit asked if she might sit with the sister of her man’s fire, but was told that only magic men, Sondahr, and those specifically invited by them might set foot upon the sacred hill.
Disappointed and trying hard not to be jealous of Sondahr, Lonit set to work with the other women. By the end of the day they had stretched the rhinoceros hide and secured it to a drying frame for curing. Its sinews were strung, its fat rendered, its bones cracked and scraped of precious marrow, and its skull added to those that lined the encircling wall of bones and tusks.
The beast’s horn was set upright at the edge of Torka’s camp circle. He and Karana initially had placed it next to the entrance to their pit hut but were soon forced to move it. The horn was reputed to have great magical powers, so every male ventured near to lay his hands reverently upon it. Since the men were forced to run a gauntlet between barking dogs to do so, Torka carried the horn well away from the fire and the dogs to assure quiet and make certain that no one was bitten. Nevertheless, Lorak, glowering, said that magic such as that within the horn had no place among the encampment of mere men.
By dusk the elders of the various bands were calling for a night of storytelling, games, and dancing to celebrate the hunt, but the supreme elder was still sulking. He kept to himself, expressing only surly resentment of those who had saved his life.
“Better to have let the great horned woolly one take the life spirit of the ungrateful old condor,” hissed Zinkh, still holding a grudge against the supreme elder for the way Lorak had publicly insulted him.
Torka looked at the summit of the Hill of Dreams where Lorak brooded alone outside his feather-covered hut. He had unintentionally made an enemy of the supreme elder. For the sake of his women and children, it was not wise to displease Lorak’s many friends among the magic men; theirs was the power behind those who were assembled at the Great Gathering. Besides, he felt sorry for old Lorak.
“It must be a terrible thing to lose one’s pride,” he told Zinkh. “Perhaps this man can find a way to give back to Lorak that which he and Karana have inadvertently taken.”
So he took up the horn, and since all believed him to be a shaman, he had Karana follow him in unquestioning silence onto the Hill of Dreams. As several magic men appeared at the entryway to the house of bones, Torka respectfully placed the horn before the seated old man.
“Torka’s spirit has walked his dreams,” said Torka, searching for the right words, standing stiffly beside Karana in the overbearing way that he had seen magic men always stand when they wished to press a point in a manner that would allow no debate. “Torka’s spirit has relived the hunt. Torka’s spirit has understood that by the tradition of this man’s people, the horn of the great woolly one must go to the one who risked his life so that others might make the kill.”
Lorak frowned up at him, not understanding. From the house of bones the watching magic men murmured. Karana looked at Torka, confused by his words and his uncharacteristic behavior.
“It was bold and brave and beyond the ways of most men to fall deliberately before a charging rhinoceros so that the other members of a hunting party might escape death.”
Lorak winced at Torka’s statement, knowing it to be a lie and suspecting that Torka also knew it. Their eyes met and held. Why was this younger, physically stronger man deferring to one who, in a moment of terror, had screamed and fouled his garments like an infant?
Lorak growled resentfully. Lie or not, Torka’s premise promised a path to heroism. He had only to assent to it, and he would be supreme magic man again. And Sondahr would respect his power once again. And he might finally find a way to seduce her into sharing his bed skins!
“Yes. It is so!” he snapped. “It took Torka long enough to see past his arrogance to the truth!”
They went down from the Hill of Dreams, with Karana looking back to where Sondahr stood at the crest of the hill, looking at him as no woman had ever looked at him before.
That night, when the games of evening were finished, Karana came away as a delighted and breathless victor from nearly every challenge that Torka forced him to accept from youths of his own age. Several of the combatants came to him and offered friendship.
“I am Yanehva, son of Cheanah. My brother Mano and I say that there is much we could show you in this camp. And with Tlap here, and also Ank, we could hunt in the days to come and show the men what we can do, eh? And now, if you want, we can show you another kind of game.”
Karana was amazed. It had been many years since he had had friends his own age, so he did not know what to do except nod and follow happily as they led him off in a circuitous route in search of the huts of the prettiest and most well-endowed girls in the camp. Here they stalked in the fire lit shadows, peeking through seams in pit-hut walls well known to the brothers, winking and suppressing laughter at the sight of the women and girls as they dressed for the night’s festivities. Karana enjoyed the company of the other youths, but though many of the girls were beautiful to behold, his mind and heart were filled with images of the proud and mysterious Sondahr. He could think of nothing else and soon wandered off, bored with the game and content to sit with Torka as he savored the camaraderie of other hunters.
Soon a great feast fire was blazing. Karana joined Torka and the others around a huge, stone-lined pit in which flames fed off turf and lichens and bones, crackling, popping, spitting sparks high into the stars. In the sky above the eastern horizon an aurora glowed like a shivering, ox bowed river of red and gold.
As was customary, the women and children sat together on one side of the circle, while the men and youths sat on the other. All listened as Lorak pointed to the sky and told wondrous stories of the great fish that swam in the sky rivers, of the stars that were their eggs, and of how, when clouds covered the sky and the rain fell, the stars fell to earth in the rain. This, he said, was how fish came to swim within the rivers of the earth so that men and women could catch and eat them. “Fish!” exclaimed Zinkh with disgust when the story was done. “This man says it would be a fine good thing if the sky rained stars that were the eggs of man meat instead of woman meat! In this land there is lately too much fish and berries and birds.” “All food is spirit given!” countered Lorak. “All! We who gather here to await the coming of the great mammoths will eat only that meat if the choice is given. But the gifts of Mother Below are gifts, nonetheless; and while we wait for the coming of the great ones, fish are plentiful in the streams and rivers, and waterfowl are fat with summer’s end, and berries are sweet for our children. We are of many bands in this camp. If woman meat is forbidden you, then refrain from partaking of it. When the hooves of the great herds move across the world, when the wind spirits howl in the distant canyons, when Thunder Speaker’s roars split the sky, then all men know that Father Above is the force that puts life to man meat within the bellies of the mothers of the game!”
“Eh yah, hay!” The affirmation was spoken in unison from many youths.
Courteously, and with much pride in their style, men of many bands joined in the storytelling. They spoke of far lands and of different yet always similar ways of life. They boasted of adventures. They thrilled their listeners with tales of survival. The last man to speak enthralled them all with a story of how he had single-handedly killed a great short-faced bear and had eaten it himself, sharing none of it with his women because its belly had been so filled with just-eaten char that there had been enough of that to feed his women for weeks, while he alone savored the meat of the great bear.
“The red meat of the great horned one was the first fresh meat that many men in this camp have eaten in all too many days. The man Torka has brought luck with him to the Great Gathering,” said one magic man, and all of the hu
nters who had seen his spear fly faster, farther, and harder than any other cheered him.
“Tell us of your band. How is it that Torka’s people come to this camp speaking of a land rich in man meat when we have hunted the game trails of our fathers for an entire season with little to show?”
Torka spoke quietly, with no embellishment. None was necessary, for all men knew of the great mammoth Thunder Speaker. They trembled when he told them of how it had destroyed his band and forced him to wander the world with only an old man, a young woman, and a wild dog, until at last he had made his peace with the Destroyer and had come to name it Life Giver for leading him to a new life in a strange and forbidden land.
“Why should land rich with game be forbidden?” The question came from one of two disreputable-looking band less hunters who hunkered close together. Between them, tethered with a thong collar, was a frail, femininely pretty, haggard looking boy.
“And why has Torka left this land of good hunting to winter in a camp where neither mammoths nor any of the great herds have come?” pressed the second of the two hunters, drawing Torka back to the moment as he looked him straight in the eyes. Torka’s head went up defensively. He measured the dirty, grimy-faced man. The rudely prodding tone of the question had not startled and offended him. But among his people and all bands he had ever had contact with, it was forbidden to look directly into the eyes of another unless that person was kindred or lover, and thus a part of one’s own life spirit. To do so was to invade the other person’s soul through his eyes and open a vent by which the life spirit could escape and fall under the control of the invader. Perhaps the man was unaware that he was breaking an ancient taboo. Torka deliberately met his stare; to look away once eye contact was made would be an admission of weakness.
