CRO-MAGNON (45 page)

After a while, the shaman’s mutters grew louder. Still, Leya was unable to understand. Was he speaking some special language that she could not hope to learn without instruction? Her heart sank.

Creeping closer, she cupped her ears. The muttering, still unintelligible, began to segue to an ululating chant, rising at intervals to a tremolo, then falling to a quaver. It went on and on.

Suddenly she understood. Sugn was not speaking sentences at all, but rather a wordless gibberish engendered by his trance-like state. The “sacred chant” was actually the drivel of a stupefied old man! True, there was a certain form to it, either passed from shaman to shaman or unique to each practitioner, but she felt it was devoid of meaningful content.

Having obtained the knowledge she needed, Leya eased to her feet and tiptoed toward the tunnel. So this was the mysterious core of the shaman’s powers—a dream-induced outpouring of his inner mind. The subconscious invocation might or might not enable the shaman to commune with animal spirits and influence the hunt, though she did not see why it should. Either way, she felt that after a little practice she could imitate it.

As soon as she was out of the chamber she picked up her pace, tracing the tunnel turnings with outstretched fingers. At the place where she thought she had stubbed her toe she slowed, feeling her way past the fallen rock.

When she scrambled past Sugn’s tent in the archway, she saw that it was late afternoon. She considered sheltering inside the entrance until dark. But she didn’t want people noting her absence, wondering where she was, perhaps growing suspicious. Or Sugn coming up behind her. On the playground, three boys were throwing javelins at a target, their lilting voices floating like birdcalls on the cold wind. Seeing them engrossed in their sport, she wrapped herself in her cloak, ducked her head, and hurried to the campground and around the larger longhouse.

#

The bison hunt did not go well. After a scout confirmed that the animals were still in the canyon, Leya, Nola, and the other beaters formed a semicircle across the mouth. Meanwhile, the hunters quietly descended the declivity at the upper end of the ravine. Mungo, together with his half-
brator
Hodr, a large man named Wald, and an old hand named Tajo, waited in two rush blinds by the funnel end of the brush trap, while Jarv, Drem, and the remaining hunters hid among the poplars. Ronan and Sugn crouched on cliffside ledges, ready to shout directions. When all were in position, Ronan blew a mournful note on a large shell obtained in trade from the Tribe of the Inland Sea, and the shouting beaters marched up the slope waving cattail torches and rattling their bone noisemakers.

At first, everything went as planned. The bison, frightened by the flames and noise, retreated up the slope, where Leya could see their humped backs moving among the trees. She proceeded in line with the others, waving her torch carefully to avoid setting the surrounding brush on fire.

This was what ensured the success of the hunt she thought—coordinated action by many people, not figures drawn on cave walls or an old man chanting gibberish.

As the canyon narrowed, the women closed ranks to form a solid line, driving the burly creatures into the brush funnel. Leya counted about a score. As soon as the stragglers entered the funnel, the forward party rushed from their blinds and closed a willow gate, leaving only a narrow opening. The hunters emerged from the tree cover and the whole group sprinted inside the trap, each man brandishing a javelin and carrying four spares plus the cudgel dangling from his belt.

As the men screamed at the top of their lungs, the bison milled in confusion, then wheeled in unison behind the alpha animal and bounded toward the upper end of the trap, the shouting hunters charging behind. Leya, helping to close the gate, watched them reach the steep declivity at the rear. The leader wheeled right and seemed to disappear. Sugn, standing on his ledge, pointed and shouted, his querulous voice whipped away by the wind as, one by one, the bison followed.

Ronan’s cry rose above the thunder of hooves: “A hole! There’s a hole,” and the hunters ran where Sugn was pointing.

But it was too late. The leader found a way through the packed trees by the cliff and the small herd careered after him. Too panicked by the shouting hunters to be deterred by a few people waving torches, they raced into the open and stampeded down the canyon. Leya, having run after them with the other women, stopped as she saw the herd coalesce in the valley below.

Watching the shaggy beasts gallop up the valley toward the tundra, she experienced a chill that did not result from the cold wind. She felt certain that the mishap was due to the failure of the hunters to check the condition of the previously constructed trap and that it had nothing to do with her spying on the ceremony.

But the debacle would be discussed, dissected, and scrutinized that evening and the ones to follow, and no one would want to accept blame. She thought back to yesterday afternoon and the three boys in the playground. They’d been engrossed in their mock hunting, and she’d felt confident they didn’t notice her sneaking out of the sacred cave.

#

“
Offa was practicing with his javelin,” Ronan said. “He saw you leave the cave.”

Leya’s heart thudded, but she said nothing. There was no point in denials. It was the evening of the day after the failed bison hunt, and the chief had summoned her to his tent in the main longhouse.

Sugn was also present, his austere features scribed as if in stone.

“
You spied on the ceremony, Leya. You brought disaster to the hunt.”

“
I did not,” Leya said.

“
I found your tracks.”

“
I mean, I didn’t ruin the hunt,” Leya said, careful to keep her voice level. “It failed because we neglected to check the trap.”

The shaman’s fevered eyes burned like twin coals. “The spirits opened the trap after you violated them.”

“
Spirits don’t have substance. They can’t move things.”

“
Blasphemy!” Spittle sprayed Leya’s cheek. Sugn turned to Ronan. “It’s blasphemy.”

The chief looked bemused.

He wants to agree with me,
Leya thought.
But he doesn’t dare.

“
Leya, you knew how important the hunt was,” Ronan said finally. “Why did you pry?”

“
I needed to know the ritual so I’d get to demonstrate my other talents. You know I’ve always wanted to be a shaman.”

“
No chance of that now,” Ronan said.

“
There was no chance anyway, unless I could change things. I had to try.”

Sugn said, “The first duty of a shaman is to respect the tribe’s customs.”

“
I respect them. But you refused to accept me as an acolyte.”

“
You are female,” Sugn said. “Your spirit is unclean.”

Now we’re getting to it.

Leya knew there was no point in trying to mollify the old man. She lifted her chin.

“
I suppose stupefying oneself on dream-flowers and chanting gibberish is immaculate behavior.”

Sugn’s swarthy face blanched and his jaw trembled. He looked at Ronan, the corners of his eyes drooping.

“
Enough!” Ronan said, his bemused expression belying his commanding tone.

In the tribes, there always existed an unspoken rivalry between the chief and the shaman, and Leya sensed that Sugn’s discomfiture secretly pleased Ronan. But of course, in a spiritual matter the chief was bound to defer to the shaman.

Ronan turned to him. “What is your recommendation?”

It would be a “recommendation” in name only, Leya thought. In a matter of this kind, the shaman’s word was law.

“
That Leya be banished from the Tribe of the Twin Rivers,” Sugn said.

“
So ordered.” Ronan looked at Leya, his grizzled countenance gentle and severe at the same time. “You must go Leya, and not return.”

Leya gestured toward the outside. “It is still winter. To force me to leave now is to sentence me and my child to death.”

The chief nodded. “We are not savages. You may stay with your
mator
until the first leaves appear.”

“
That is not much better. With Brann to care for, I will not be able to gather or hunt enough to survive.”

“
Go back to the Flatheads,” Sugn said, his upper lip curling. “Maybe you can be shaman there.”

“
You know they banished me also, because of my People blood and my mixed child.”

“
You should have considered that.”

“
Enough,” Ronan said again. “Recriminations do not help.”

“
You can’t just turn me out to die,” Leya said. “Custom requires that the person, by selfish actions, be the cause of someone’s death.”

“
You’re a fine one to speak of customs,” Sugn said. “You—”

“
I told you, no more,” Ronan said, and it was clear who was the real power. He turned to Leya. “Your
mator
came from the mammoth hunters to the north. When spring arrives, I will provide an escort for you and Alys and your child to the Tribe of the Great Plain.”

“
Thank you,” Leya said, rising to leave. So, her return to her tribe had come to naught. And by her own hand. She should have listened to Alys and Nola.

Walking back to her
mator’s
tent she felt sure that Alys, with both mates dead and no desire for another, would agree to the move. But would the Tribe of the Great Plain accept two women without a man to hunt for them, both of them barren and one the
mator
of a half-Flathead
baban
?

She and Alys would have to try. It was Brann’s only chance.

She shook her head. She’d had no right to gamble with his life. Why couldn’t she have bowed to Mungo’s will and become his mate? After all, being someone’s
tegu
slave and punching-dummy was preferable to dying.

Or was it? Stooping to open the tent flap, she sighed. The more she tried to improve her position, the worse it got. Was there no place for her in this world?

A picture drifted into her mind of a freckled man with shaggy yellow hair and a lopsided nose. A savage brute, able to kill a knife-tooth tiger single-handed. But who, she had belatedly come to realize, was also possessed of a gentle spirit.

How do you fare now, Gar?
Do you ever think of me?

#

Gar tripped over a tuft of dormant foxtail grass and managed to regain his stride. He was growing tired. And his
brut
even more so. Puk had begun dropping back some time ago and now ran well behind, his stride shortened by a thigh bruise he had incurred earlier. Gar’s left ankle had ached since he swerved to avoid an ice slick between wind-scoured hummocks on the snowy tundra. It seemed as if he had been running the young wooly rhino most of the afternoon.

As winter had lingered, the supply of meat in the clan’s main frost pit shrank. Unable to find enough deer in the forest or argal and ibex on the craggy peaks, the clan decided to send hunting parties up onto the tundra, though they knew the pickings would be lean in this season. But if they could kill just one large animal, the clan could make it through to spring, when the reindeer would trek north from their winter grounds.

Alternate pairs of hunters—Gar and Puk, and Caw and Odd—had been making trips to the windswept bush-and-grass land while the other pair rested. Only large animals could withstand the freezing winds to root through the crusted winter snow: mammoths with their twin tusks, and rhinos with their single horns. But most mammoths ranged farther north along the edge of the Big Ice.

Ull had been unable to chase down game since his mishap with the charging rhino. Bor had participated in open-country hunts until this winter, when the effects of a hard life, cold weather, and cumulated injuries finally rendered him unfit for long chases. After a half-score of bitterly hard winters and a decrease in able-bodied hunters, the clan was feeling the pinch of low numbers.

Today was the fourth that Gar and Puk had ranged the tundra, and they were tired. Shortly after noon they had spotted a rhino grazing alone, as was the animal’s custom. Gar, trotting in the lead, signaled a halt and they stood assessing the animal, which was relatively small. Gar judged that its body would come only to his shoulder, whereas a mature rhino would stand higher than his head. The wind was wrong for it to use its acute hearing and sense of smell. It went on rooting bunch grass. Either it could not see them because of its poor eyesight or it did not consider the two puny figures a threat.

“
Small,” Gar said. “Probably its
mut
chase it away this season.”

“
Ay.”
Puk shielded his eyes against the glare coming off the snow. “But still dangerous. One that cripple Ull not much bigger.”

“
Meat get clan through to spring.”

“
If we catch. Small ones run better.”