Stone spring

6

Mammoth Talker woke them all not long after the dawn.

If he had been uncomfortable in the night, huddled alone in the cold protected only by his cloak, he said nothing of it. But Dreamer thought he looked paler, his eyes that bit darker. Even his great strength was not infinite, and he was a fool to waste it on displays of temper.

He pointed with his spear. ‘The kill site is that way. South. Not far. We will leave our stuff here.’

Moon Reacher wasn’t happy. She was a child who in her eight years had seen almost everything taken from her, her whole family destroyed by the glacial flood, and now she had a habit of clinging to what was left.

Dreamer squeezed her hand. ‘Don’t worry, Reacher. We will be fine, our stuff will be safe here.’

Stone Shaper objected too. ‘I will take the medicine bag, and the fire, even so.’

‘By the Wolf’s teeth – fine, fine, just make sure you bring your blades.’ Mammoth Talker hefted his spear. ‘Everybody had a drink and a piss and a shit? Anybody got anything else to say? Then let’s go.’ So they walked south. As soon as they were away from the lee of the rock bluff the wind from the icebound north bit at their backs. The country seemed lifeless, with only dead grass and scrub at their feet. Once Dreamer saw a cloud of dust on the horizon, far to the east. A crowd of large animals – bison, perhaps, or horses, or deer.

Talker was right that it wasn’t far to the Cowards’ kill site. The morning was not much advanced by the time they saw threads of smoke rising, and Dreamer began to hear noises: a general lowing, deep screams of pain, high-pitched human calls.

Confidently Talker led them towards a bluff of layered, eroded rock. It was clear he had done his scouting well. They climbed, and on the feature’s flat top they lay down on their fronts. This was awkward for Dreamer, who tried to favour her belly. They inched forward until they could see.

From here the land sloped downward gently to a valley incised sharply into the ground and littered with shattered rocks. People clustered in knots around fires that burned on both sides of the valley.

The valley itself was dry, as far as Dreamer could see. But it was not empty. The narrowest part of the valley, she was astonished to see, was full of squirming animals.

They were bison, no doubt about that, many of them, heaped up on each other. The living tried to stand on the backs of the dead below, wriggling and tossing their heads. Blood splashed everywhere, and there was a lingering stench of ordure, mixing in the morning air with the smoke from the fires. The air was full of heart-rending bellowing.

She could see where the herd had been driven into the trap. On one side of the valley the dusty ground was churned up by the hooves of stampeding animals, who had evidently crashed through a concealing screen of brush and tumbled down the steep valley wall.

And the hunters worked, Cowards with their strange spiky hair and dense tattoos. As Dreamer watched, a carcass was hauled out of the pit and dragged to a fire, where it was efficiently butchered, the skin slit and dragged away, the limbs detached, the guts spilled, haunches cut off the carcass and hung on racks or thrown straight on the fires. This was going on all around the valley, and the ground was marked by the remains of butchered carcasses, bloody masses that looked as if the animals had been dropped from a height and splashed open.

Some of the Cowards danced for fun around the terrified, furious animals, jabbing with spears, mocking, keeping well back from hooves and horns. There was plenty of meat; there was no need for everybody to work.

Talker murmured, ‘It was like this before dark. It must have been going on all night. Look at them prodding the wretched animals with their stupid little spears. Look how they sprawl on the ground, asleep in the middle of the day.’

Dreamer made a rough count. ‘I see a dozen fires. There must be a hundred hunters here – hunters and their women and children.’

‘The Cowards always hunt in packs,’ Talker said dismissively. ‘Like dogs. They like to stampede their prey. They set fires and holler and chase.’

Shaper said, ‘But some run in front, directing the beasts to the trap they want them to fall into. We call them Cowards. It must take courage to run ahead of a stampede.’

Talker dismissed this. ‘It takes courage to face the animal whose life you will take for the sake of your own. To look it in the eye, to see its spirit vanish. Not like this. And look how wastefully they are butchering the beasts. Taking only the best fillets.’

‘They can afford to,’ Dreamer murmured. ‘Anyhow, Talker, what’s your plan?’

‘There’s plenty of meat down there. We could haul away a dozen prime bulls and they wouldn’t know the difference.’

‘No matter how much they have they won’t share with us.’

‘They won’t know anything about it,’ Talker said. ‘Not if they don’t see us.’

Shaper said, ‘We could wait for night, and then sneak up.’

Talker said, ‘Have you ever tried butchery in the dark? No. We will go in while there is still light. I’m a hunter. I can sneak up on a deer. I can certainly get close enough to those animals, with the noise and the stink of them, without disturbing the dreams of fat, lazy Cowards.’ He pointed. ‘See that part of the valley, away from the circle of fires? If we head that way we will be concealed by the slope of the land, and can get to the herd where nobody is working.’

‘It’s a risk,’ Dreamer said. ‘If we’re seen-’

‘If we’re seen we run,’ said Talker with supreme confidence. ‘Those Cowards with their bellies full of meat will never catch us. And then we’ll wait for another chance.’

It looked terribly dangerous to Dreamer, who had been on hunts herself, and knew how to read a landscape. ‘Let’s wait and see if a better chance offers itself.’

‘If we wait we’ll be discovered. I told you, I scouted this out, I know what I’m doing. You people do nothing but argue, argue. Now we act.’ He got on his haunches, preparing to move. ‘Follow me. Step where I step. Don’t kick a pebble, don’t break wind – don’t make a sound.’ He glared at them until they all nodded, even wide-eyed Reacher. Talker moved out of the shelter of the bluff. In the open he kept low, running in a crouch.

Dreamer’s heavy belly made it difficult for her to copy him, but she did her best, and, padding in his footprints in the dust, stayed as silent as he was.

They came to a kind of tributary, just as dry as the main valley. They crept into this, and then scrambled to lie flat behind a worn boulder that hid them from the kill site. The smell of blood and ordure was strong here, and the noise of the animals was a continual lowing wail. With great care Talker levered himself up until he could see around the boulder. He dropped back, grinning. ‘Get your blades ready. We are only paces from the animals, but we must be a hundred paces from the Cowards and their nearest fire.’

Dreamer frowned. ‘Really, as far as that?’ She tried to remember the land as she had seen it from the bluff.

‘Don’t argue with me,’ he snapped. ‘I will go first.’ He dug into his wrap and produced a cutting tool, a block of flint with a single sharp edge. He held this in his right hand, and hefted his spear in the left. ‘I will take as much meat as I can. Then I will come back here, and we will decide what to do next.’

‘I’m not sure-’

‘Woman! Do you want to eat? Then do as I say.’ And with that, silent as a cloud, he crept around the rock and was gone.

‘We are closer than a hundred paces to the Cowards,’ Shaper whispered, quietly enough that Reacher couldn’t hear. ‘I am no hunter but I have a good sense of place.’

Dreamer didn’t reply.

For an unmeasured time they huddled behind the rock. Dreamer strained, trying to hear Talker’s butchery, or his returning footsteps – or the tread of a Coward band. The hunger and the strain began to make her feel light-headed, and she felt the tension winding up inside her, coiling her guts.

It was too long. She had to see.

She got up to a squat and slowly, carefully, lifted her head above the lip of the stone. She winced at every blade of dead grass that rustled under her legs.

Reacher and the priest-boy watched her wide-eyed.

There was Talker. Beyond him she saw the bison struggling in their heap, dead or dying. Talker had walked just a few paces down the valley slope and cut open a dead animal. Its innards were spilled, a haunch of liver lay on the ground beside him, and there was blood around Talker’s mouth. He hadn’t been able to resist taking the rich delicacy immediately, the traditional prize of the successful hunter. Too long, Talker, you are taking too long, she thought desperately.

She shifted a little so she could see further along the length of the valley – and there was the nearest fire of the Cowards. She was shocked; it could be no more than fifty paces away. In his courage or stupidity Talker had indeed lied, and was taking a much greater risk than he had admitted-

Movement. She saw them clearly, two, three, four, five – four men, one woman – sneaking through broken ground at the lip of the valley. Even on this freezing day they went naked. They wore their hair stiffened with dust into spikes, and painful-looking jagged tattoos had been incised into their cheeks. They bore no spears or knives, but they each hefted rocks, as you would use to drive a dog away.

They knew Talker was there. They thought he was a scavenging dog or coyote. And meanwhile Talker dug his hand deep in the innards of the dead bison. Perhaps he was looking for the gall bladder; she knew he relished that morsel. He had not heard the Cowards, who were nearly on him.

She stood up. She yelled, ‘Talker! Cowards!’

Without waiting to see what happened, she ducked back down. ‘They know we are here. Go!’

Stone Shaper did not hesitate. He didn’t even pick up his medicine bundle. He ran back the way they had come, keeping to cover, heading for the stone bluff where they had hidden.

But Moon Reacher clung to Dreamer’s arm. ‘I won’t leave you.’

Dreamer could hear the jabber of the Cowards, only paces away. ‘Come, then.’ And she ran, clutching her heavy belly, the child hanging onto her arm.

She risked one glance back. She saw Talker standing – not running – facing the Cowards. ‘I am Mammoth Talker,’ he yelled. ‘Mammoth Talker! Remember me!’ And he hurled his heavy spear with his fluted blade straight at the lead Coward. The spear, heavy enough to bring down a charging bison, smashed into the Coward’s chest, and heart and lungs were torn out of his back before he was pinned to the ground.

The Cowards hesitated; they were armed only with rocks. But now Talker had only his stone meat-cutting blade. In a heartbeat they were on him.

Dreamer turned and ran harder. Maybe even now they might make it, if she could get them to a bit of cover where they might hide out-

It felt as if a huge fist grabbed her heels, pulling them out from under her. She went down hard, face first, her nose slamming into the dirt. Tasting blood, she looked down to see rope wrapped around her legs, a throwing rope weighted with stones.

The shouts of the Cowards were loud.

Reacher was still here, dragging at her hand. ‘Get up!’ she screamed. ‘Get up!’

Dreamer, stunned, unable to talk, tried to push the child away.

Hands grabbed her, her shoulders, legs, hair. She was dragged back along the ground, and the pain of her scalp made her scream.

Then she was hauled to her feet and turned around. She saw the men around her in a blur. Before she got her balance the punches came, one in her face that jarred her jaw, another in the pit of her belly. She tried to double over to protect the baby, but the hands pulled her up. She could smell the men, the meat and blood and sweat and smoke from their fires, all around her, she had no control, could do nothing.

There was a respite from the blows. She found she was being held before Mammoth Talker. He dangled, held up by his hair. His chest and face had been smashed inwards so they were like caves of blood and bone. They had killed him with their fists and their stones, the last hunter of the True People. But he had fought, and done some damage. One man stood before her holding up a gashed arm, his face a tattooed mask. He screamed at her in his own tongue.

She hawked and spat blood and dust in his face. Again they fell on her with punches and kicks, and she went down again.

Somebody began to jabber commands. They got her on her back and began to drag at her skins, and somebody took hold of her ankles, forcing her legs apart. She heard them calling, and more men came running to join in. She struggled and spat and bit, but the punches rained down, and she was weakening fast.

And, as if through a bloody haze, she remembered Moon Reacher. She forced her head to left, right, and there she was. A man held the girl up in the air with one big paw around her wrists, and with his other hand he was pulling away her skins like peeling a berry. Reacher’s leg was injured; blood streamed down from a wound in her thigh.

Dreamer stopped fighting. She looked around until she found the single Coward woman. As naked as the rest, and as garishly tattooed, she stood away from the men, nursing a bruised arm. ‘Please!’ Dreamer yelled until the woman looked at her, and met her eyes. ‘Please – the little girl – she is only a child – you’re a woman, help her-’

The woman could never understand her words. The language of the people and of the Cowards had nothing in common. But she shared some basic humanity. She stepped over to the man with Reacher. She slapped him until he let the girl go, and she gestured at Dreamer, on the ground. Take what you want over there. She dragged Reacher away, out of Dreamer’s sight.

The men were getting organised. One held her arms up over her head, another two, crouching, held her legs open. A younger man, not much more than a boy, ran his hands over her big belly and her milk-swollen breasts, as if fascinated. Then the men started clapping, and another approached her, a huge bull of a man with a swirling blood-red tattoo on his belly. He was already erect, she saw, his penis like a spear shaft, tattooed along its length and with what looked like a splinter of bone through the glans. He leaned over her and grinned.

She worked her aching mouth, summoning up one more mouthful, and spat blood and mucus in his face. That earned her a punch in the head, and the world fell away.