"Loved them, yes. That's not the same thing."

"How would you know? Have you ever been in love?"

"A few times. Maybe it hasn't lasted, but I know the difference. Look, Brother, I don't want to pry, but I worry about you, especially when you get moody. And you don't have to run. I'll shut up if you want me to."

Jondalar slowed down. "So, maybe you're right. Maybe I've never fallen in love. Maybe it's not in me to fall in love."

"What's missing? What don't the women you know have?"

"If I knew, don't you think..." he began angrily. Then he paused. "I don't know, Thonolan. I guess I want it all. I want a woman like she is at First Rites-I think I fall in love with every woman then, at least for that night. But I want a woman, not a girl. I want her honestly eager and willing without any pretenses, but I don't want to have to be so careful with her. I want her to have spirit, to know her own mind. I want her young and old, naive and wise, all at the same time."

"That's a lot to want, Brother."

"Well, you asked." They walked in silence for a while.

"How old would you say Zelandoni is?" Thonolan asked. "A little younger than Mother, maybe?"

Jondalar stiffened. "Why?"

"They say she was really beautiful when she was younger, even just a few years ago. Some of the older men say no one could compare to her, not even come close. It's hard for me to tell, but they say she's young to be First among Those Who Serve the Mother. Tell me something, Big Brother. What they say about you and Zelandoni, is it true?"

Jondalar stopped and slowly turned to face his brother. "Tell me, what do they say about me and Zelandoni?" he asked through gritted teeth.

"Sorry. I just went too far. Forget I asked."

5.

Ayla walked out of the cave and onto the stone ledge in front of it, rubbing her eyes and stretching. The sun was still low in the east and she shaded her eyes as she looked to see where the horses were. Checking the horses when she awoke in the morning had already become a habit, though she had been there only a few days. It made her solitary existence a little more bearable to think she was sharing the valley with other living creatures.

She was becoming aware of their patterns of movement, where they went for water in the morning, the shade trees they favored in the afternoon, and she was noticing individuals. There was the yearling colt whose gray coat was so light that it was almost white, except where it shaded darker along the characteristic stripe down the spine and the dark gray lower legs and stiff standing mane. And there was the dun mare with her hay-colored foal, whose coat matched the stallion's. And then the proud leader himself, whose place would someday be taken by one of those yearlings he barely tolerated, or perhaps one of next year's brood, or the next. The light yellow stallion, with the deep brown feral stripe, mane, and lower legs, was in his prime, and his bearing showed it.

"Good morning, horse clan," Ayla signaled, making the gesture commonly used for any greeting purpose, with a slight nuance which shaded it to a morning greeting. "I slept late this morning. You've already had your morning drink-I think I'll get mine."

She ran lightly down to the stream, familiar enough with the steep path to be sure-footed on it. She took a drink, then doffed her wrap for her morning swim It was the same wrap, but she had washed it and worked it with her sc.r.a.pers to soften the leather again. Her own natural preference for order and cleanliness had been reinforced by Iza, whose large pharmacopoeia of medicinal herbs required order to avoid misuse, and who understood the dangers of dirt and filth and infections. It was one thing to accept a certain amount of grime while traveling, when it couldn't be avoided. But not with a sparkling stream nearby.

She ran her hands through thick blond hair that fell in waves well below her shoulders. "I'm going to wash my hair this morning," she motioned to no one in particular. Just around the bend she had found soaproot growing, and went to pull some roots. As she strolled back looking over the stream, she noticed the large rock jutting out of the shallows with smooth saucer-shaped depressions in it. She picked up a round stone and waded out to the rock. She rinsed the roots, scooped water into a depression, and pounded the soaproot to release the rich sudsy saponin. When she had worked up the foam, she wetted her hair, rubbed it in, then washed the rest of her body and dove into the water to rinse.

A large section of the jutting wall had broken off at some time in the past. Ayla climbed out on the portion that was underwater and walked across the surface that rose above the water to a place warming in the sun. A waist-deep channel on the sh.o.r.eward side made the rock an island, partly shaded by an overhanging willow whose exposed roots clutched at the stream like bony fingers. She broke a twig off a small bush whose roots had found purchase in a crack, peeled it with her teeth, and used it to pull snarls out of her hair while it dried in the sun.

She was staring dreamily into the water, humming under her breath, when a flicker of movement caught her eye. Suddenly alert, she looked into the water at the silvery shape of a large trout resting beneath the roots. I haven't had fish since I left the cave, she thought, recalling she hadn't had breakfast either.

Slipping silently into the water off the far side of the rock, she swam downstream a ways, then waded toward the shallows. She put her hand in the water, letting her fingers dangle, and slowly, with infinite patience, she moved back upstream. As she approached the tree, she saw the trout with its head into the current, undulating slightly to maintain itself in its place under the root.

Ayla's eyes glistened with excitement, but she was even more cautious, placing each foot securely as she neared the fish. She moved her hand up from behind until it was just below the trout, then touched it lightly, feeling for the open gill-covers. Suddenly, she grasped the fish and, in one sure movement, lifted it out of the water and threw it on the bank. The trout flopped and struggled for a few moments, then lay still.

She smiled, pleased with herself. It had been difficult learning how to tickle a fish out of the water when she was a child, and she still felt almost as proud as she had the first time she succeeded. She would watch the spot, knowing it would be used by a succession of tenants. This one was big enough for more than breakfast, she thought, as she retrieved her catch-antic.i.p.ating the taste of fresh trout baked on hot stones.

As her breakfast cooked, Ayla busied herself making a basket of beargra.s.s she had picked the day before. It was a simple, utilitarian basket, but with small variations in the weaving she created a change in texture to please herself, giving it a subtle design. She worked quickly, but with such skill that the basket would be watertight. By adding hot rocks, it could be used for a cooking utensil, but that was not the purpose she had in mind for it. She was making a storage container, thinking about everything she had to do to make herself secure for the cold season ahead.

The currants I picked yesterday will be dry in a few days, she estimated, glancing at the round red berries spread out on gra.s.s mats on her front porch. By then, more will be ripe. There will be a lot of blueberries, but I won't get much out of that scrawny little apple tree. The cherry tree is full, but they're almost too ripe. If I'm going to get some, I'd better do it today. Sunflower seeds will be good, if the birds don't get them all first. I think those were hazelnut bushes by the apple tree, but they're so much smaller than the ones by the little cave, I'm not sure. I think those pine trees are the kind with the big nuts in the cones, though. I'll check them later. Wish that fish would cook!

I should start drying greens. And lichen. And mushrooms. And roots. I won't have to dry all the roots, some will keep for a long time in the back of the cave. Should I get more pigweed seeds? They're so small, it never seems like much. Grain is worth the effort, though, and some seed heads in the meadow are ripe. I'll get cherries and grain today, but I'm going to need more storage baskets. Maybe I can make some containers out of birchbark. Wish I had some rawhide to make those big cases.

There always seemed to be extra skins around for rawhide when I lived with the clan. Now I'd be happy if I had one more warm fur for winter. Rabbits and hamsters aren't big enough to make a good fur wrap, and they're so lean. If I could hunt a mammoth, I'd have plenty of fat, even enough for lamps. And nothing is as good and rich as mammoth meat. Wonder if that trout is done yet? She moved aside a limp leaf and poked at the fish with a stick. Just a little more.

It would be nice to have a little salt, but there's no sea around here. Coltsfoot tastes salty, and other herbs can add flavor. Iza could make anything taste good. Maybe I'll go out on the steppes and see if I can find some ptarmigan, and then make it the way Creb always liked it.

She felt a lump in her throat thinking about Iza and Creb, and shook her head as though she were trying to stop the thoughts, or at least the impending tears.

I need a drying rack for herbs and teas, and medicines, too. I could get sick. I can chop down some trees for posts, but I need fresh thongs to bind them together. Then, when they dry and shrink, it'll hold. With all the deadfall and driftwood, I don't think I'll have to cut down trees for firewood, and there will be dung from the horses. It burns well when it's dry. I'll start bringing wood up to the cave today, and I should make some tools soon. It's lucky I found flint. That fish must be done.

Ayla ate the trout straight off the bed of hot rocks on which it had cooked, and she thought about looking through the pile of bones and driftwood for some flat pieces of wood or bone to use for plates; pelvic or shoulder bones worked well. She emptied her small waterbag into her cooking bowl and wished she had the waterproof stomach of a larger animal to make a more capacious waterbag for the cave. She added hot stones from the fire to start the water in her cooking bowl heating, then sprinkled some dried rosehips from her medicine bag into the steaming water. She used rosehips as a remedy for minor colds, but they also made a pleasant tea.

The arduous task of collecting, processing, and storing the abundance of the valley was no deterrent; rather, she looked forward to it. It would keep her busy; she wouldn't have time to think about being lonely. She only had to preserve enough for herself, but there were no extra hands to make the task go faster, and she worried whether there was enough of the season left to lay in an adequate supply. Something else bothered her, too.

Sipping tea while she finished the basket, Ayla considered the requirements she would need to survive the long cold winter. I should have another fur for my bed this winter, she was thinking. And meat, of course. What about fat? I should have some in winter. I could make birchbark containers much faster than baskets, if only I had some hooves, bones, and hide sc.r.a.ps to boil for glue. And where will I get a large waterbag? Thongs to bind the posts for a drying rack? I could use sinew, and intestines for storing the fat, and...

Her rapidly moving fingers stopped. She stared into s.p.a.ce as though seeing the vision of a revelation. I could get all that from one large animal! Just one is all I'd need to kill. But how?

She finished the small basket and put it inside her collecting basket, which she tied to her back. She put her tools in the folds of her wrap, picked up her digging stick and sling, and headed for the meadow. She found the wild cherry tree, picked as many as she could reach, then climbed up to get more. She ate her share, too; even overripe, they were tart-sweet.

When she climbed down, she decided to get cherry bark for coughs. With her hand-axe, she chopped away a section of the tough outer bark, then sc.r.a.ped off the inner cambium layer with a knife. It reminded her of the time when she was a girl and had gone to collect wild cherry bark for Iza. She had spied on the men practicing with their weapons in the field. She knew it was wrong, but she was afraid they might see her leaving, and she became intrigued when old Zoug began teaching the boy to use a sling.

She knew women weren't supposed to touch weapons, but when they left the sling behind, she couldn't resist. She wanted to try it, too. Would I be alive today if I hadn't picked up that sling? Would Broud have hated me so much if I hadn't learned to use it? Maybe he wouldn't have made me leave if he didn't hate me so much. But if he hadn't hated me, he wouldn't have enjoyed forcing me, and maybe Durc would not have been born.

Maybe! Maybe! Maybe! she thought angrily. What's the sense of thinking about what might have been? I'm here now, and that sling isn't going to help me hunt a big animal. For that I need a spear!

She picked her way through a stand of young aspen to get a drink and wash the sticky cherry juice off her hands. There was something about the tall, straight young trees that made her stop. She grasped the trunk of one; then it struck her. This would work! This would make a spear.

She quailed for a moment. Brun would be furious, she thought. When he allowed me to hunt, he told me I must never hunt with anything but a sling. He'd...

What would he do? What could he do? What more can any of them do to me, even if they knew? I'm dead. I'm already dead. There's no one here except me.

Then, like a cord pulled so taut it breaks from the strain, something inside her snapped. She fell to her knees. Oh, how I wish there were someone here besides me. Someone. Anyone. I'd even be glad to see Broud. I'd never touch a sling again if he'd let me go back, if he'd let me see Durc again. Kneeling at the base of the slender aspen, Ayla buried her face in her hands, heaving and choking.

Her sobs fell on indifferent ears. The small creatures of meadow and woodland only avoided the stranger in their midst and her incomprehensible sounds. There was no one else to hear, no one to understand. While she had been traveling, she had nursed the hope of finding people, people like herself. Now that she had decided to stop, she had to put that hope aside, accept her solitude, and learn to live with it. The gnawing worry of survival, alone, in an unknown place through a winter of unknown severity, added to the strain. The crying relieved the tension.

When she got up, she was shaking, but she took out her hand-axe and hacked angrily at the base of the young aspen, then attacked a second sapling. I've watched the men make spears often enough, she said to herself as she stripped off the branches. It didn't look that hard. She dragged the poles to the field and left them while she gathered seed heads of einkorn wheat and rye for the rest of the afternoon, then dragged them back to the cave.

She spent the early evening stripping bark and smoothing shafts, stopping only to cook herself some grain to have with the rest of her fish, and to spread the cherries out to dry. By the time it was dark, she was ready for the next step. She took the shafts into her cave, and, remembering how the men had done it, she measured off a length on one somewhat taller than herself and marked it. Then she put the marked section in the fire, turning the shaft to char it all around. With a notched sc.r.a.per, she shaved away the blackened section and continued to char and sc.r.a.pe until the upper piece broke off. More charring and sc.r.a.ping brought it to a sharp, fire-hardened point. Then she started on the next one.

When she finished, it was late. She was tired, and glad of it. It would bring sleep more easily. Nights were the worst time. Ayla banked her fire, walked to the opening, gazed out at the star-spattered sky, and tried to think of some reason to delay going to bed. She had dug a shallow trench, filled it with dry gra.s.s, and covered it with her fur. She walked toward it with slow steps. She lowered herself onto it and stared at the faint glow of the fire, listening to the silence.

There were no rustlings of people preparing for bed, no sounds of coupling from nearby hearths, no grunting or snoring; none of the many small sounds of people, not a single breath of life-except her own. She reached for the cloak she had used to carry her son on her hip, bunched it up and pressed it to her breast, and rocked back and forth crooning under her breath while tears rolled down her face. Finally she lay down, curled herself around the empty cloak, and cried herself to sleep.

When Ayla went outside the next morning to relieve herself, there was blood on her leg. She rummaged through her small pile of belongings for the absorbent straps and her special waist thong. They were stiff and shiny despite washings, and they should have been buried the last time she used them. She wished she had some mouflon wool to pack in them. Then she spied the rabbit fur. I wanted to save that rabbit skin for winter, but I can get more rabbits, she thought.

She cut the small skin into strips before she went down for her morning swim. I should have known it was coming, I could have planned for it. Now I won't be able to do anything except...

Suddenly she laughed. The women's curse doesn't matter here. There are no men I have to avoid looking at, no men whose food I can't cook or gather. I'm the only one I have to worry about.

Still, I should have expected it, but the days have gone by so fast. I didn't think it was time yet. How long have I been in this valley? She tried to remember, but the days seemed to fade into each other. She frowned. I ought to know how many days I've been here-it might be later in the season than I thought. She felt a moment of panic. It's not that bad, she reminded herself. The snow won't fall before the fruits ripen and the leaves drop, but I should know. I should keep track of the days.

She recalled when, long ago, Creb had shown her how to cut a groove in a stick to mark the pa.s.sage of time. He had been surprised when she caught on so quickly; he had only explained it to still her constant questions. He shouldn't have been showing a girl sacrosanct knowledge reserved for holy men and their acolytes, and he had cautioned her not to mention it. She remembered, as well, his anger another time when he caught her making a stick to count the days between full moons.

"Creb, if you're watching me from the spirit world, don't be angry," she said with the silent sign language. "You must know why I need to do it."

She found a long smooth stick and made a notch in it with her flint knife. Then she thought a while and added two more. She fit her first three fingers over the notches and held them up. I think it's been more days than that, but I'm sure of that many. I'll mark it again tonight, and every night. She studied the stick again. I think I'll put a little extra nick above this one, to mark the day I started bleeding.

The moon went through half its phases after she made the spears, but she still didn't know how she was going to hunt the large animal she needed. She was sitting at the opening of her cave looking at the wall across and the night sky. The summer was waxing into full heat and she was savoring the cool evening breeze. She had just completed a new summer outfit. Her full wrap was often too hot to wear, and although she went naked near the cave, she needed the pouches and folds of a wrap to hold things when she went very far from it. After she had become a woman, she liked to wear a leather band wrapped tightly around her full b.r.e.a.s.t.s when she went hunting. It was more comfortable to run and jump. And in the valley she didn't have to put up with surrept.i.tious glances from people who thought she was odd for wearing it.

She didn't have a large hide to cut down, but she finally devised a way to wear rabbit skins, dehaired, as a summer wrap that left her bare from the waist up, and she used other skins as a breast band. She planned to make a trip to the steppes in the morning, with her new spears and hopes of finding animals to hunt.

The gradual slope of the northern side of the valley gave easy access to the steppes east of the river; the sheer wall made the western plains too difficult to reach. She saw several herds of deer, bison, horses, even a small band of saiga antelopes, but she brought back nothing more than a brace of ptarmigan and a great jerboa. She just couldn't get close enough to jab anything with her spears.

As the days pa.s.sed, hunting a large animal was a constant preoccupation. She had often watched the men of the clan talk about hunting-they talked about almost nothing else-but they always hunted cooperatively. Their favorite technique, like that of a pack of wolves, was to cut an animal out of a herd and run it down in relays, until it was so exhausted, they could get close enough to make the fatal thrust. But Ayla was alone.

They had talked sometimes of the way the cats lay in wait to pounce, or made a furious dash to bring down prey with fangs and claws. But Ayla had neither fangs nor claws, nor the short-run speed of a cat. She wasn't even very comfortable handling her spears; they were rather large to grasp and long. Yet, she had to find a way.

It was the night of the new moon when she finally got an idea she thought might work. She often thought of the Clan Gathering when the moon turned its back on the earth and bathed the far reaches of s.p.a.ce with its reflected light. The Cave Bear Festival was always held when the moon was new.

She was thinking about the hunt reenactments made by the different clans. Broud had led the exciting hunt dance for their clan, and the vivid re-creation of chasing a mammoth into a blind canyon with fire had won the day. But the host clan's portrayal of digging a pit trap on the path a woolly rhinoceros usually took to water, and then surrounding it and chasing him into it, had brought them in a close second in that compet.i.tion. Woolly rhinos were notoriously unpredictable, and dangerous.

The next morning, Ayla looked to see if the horses were there, but she didn't greet them. She could identify each member of the herd individually. They were company, almost friends, but there was no other way, not if she was going to survive.

She spent the greater part of the next several days observing the herd, studying their movements: where they normally watered, where they liked to graze, where they spent the nights. As she watched, a plan began to take shape in her mind. She worried over details, tried to think of every contingency, and finally set to work.

It took a full day to chop down small trees and brush and drag them halfway across the field, piling them up near a break in the trees along the stream. She gathered pitchy barks and limbs of fir and pine, dug through rotted old stumps for residual hard lumps that caught fire quickly, and pulled up bunches of dry gra.s.s. In the evening, she bound the lumps and pieces of pitch to branches with gra.s.s to make torches that would start quickly and burn smoky.

The morning of the day she planned to start, she got out her hide tent and the aurochs horn. Then she scrounged through the pile at the foot of the wall for a flat st.u.r.dy bone and sc.r.a.ped one side until it tapered to a sharp edge. Then, with hopes she would need them, she got out every cord and thong she cound find, and pulled lianas down from the trees and piled them on the rocky beach. She hauled loads of driftwood and deadfall to the beach, too, so she'd have enough for fires.

By early evening, everything was ready, and Ayla paced back and forth along the beach as far as the jutting wall, checking on the herd's movements. Anxiously, she watched a few clouds building up in the east and hoped they would not move in and obscure the moonlight she was counting on. She cooked herself some grain and picked a few berries, but couldn't eat much. She kept picking up her spears to make practice lunges and putting them down.

At the last moment, she dug through the pile of driftwood and bones until she found the long humerus from the foreleg of a deer with its k.n.o.bby end. She smashed it against a large piece of mammoth ivory and winced at the recoil through her arm. The long bone was undamaged; it was a good solid club.

The moon rose before the sun set. Ayla wished she knew more about hunting ceremonies, but women had always been excluded. Women brought bad luck.

I never brought bad luck to myself, she thought, but I've never tried to hunt a big animal before. I wish I knew something that would bring good luck. Her hand went to her amulet, and she thought of her totem. It was her Cave Lion, after all, that had led her to hunt in the first place. That's what Creb said. What other reason could there be for a woman to become more skilled with her chosen weapon than any man? Her totem was too strong for a woman-it gave her masculine traits, Brun had thought. Ayla hoped her totem would bring her luck again.

Twilight was fading into darkness when Ayla walked to the bend in the river and saw the horses finally settling down for the night. She gathered up the flat bone and the tent hide, and ran through the tall gra.s.s until she came to the break in the trees where the horses watered in the morning. The green foliage was gray in the waning daylight, and the more distant trees were black silhouettes against a sky ablaze with color. Hoping the moon would shed enough light to see, she laid the tent on the ground and began to dig.

The surface was hard-packed, but, once she broke through it, digging was easier with the sharpened bone shovel. When a pile of soil was mounded on the hide, she dragged it into the woods to dump it. As the hole became deeper, she laid the hide out on the bottom of the pit and hauled the dirt up with it. She felt her way more than seeing, and it was hard work. She had never dug a pit by herself before. The large cooking pits, lined with rocks and used to roast whole rumps, had always been a community effort by all the women, and this pit had to be deeper and longer.

The hole was about waist high when she felt water and realized she should not have dug so close to the stream. The bottom filled quickly. She was ankle deep in mud before she gave up and climbed out, breaking down one edge as she lifted out the hide.

I hope it's deep enough, she thought. It will have to be-the more I dig, the more water comes in. She glanced at the moon, surprised at how late it was. She was going to have to work fast to finish, and she wasn't going to get the short rest she had planned.

She ran toward the place where the brush and trees were piled, and tripped on an unseen root, falling heavily. This is no time to be careless! she thought, rubbing her shin. Her knees and palms stung, and she was sure the slippery ooze down one leg was blood, though she couldn't see it.

With sudden insight, she understood how vulnerable she was, and had a moment of panic. What if I break my leg? There's no one here to help me-if anything happens. What am I doing out here at night? With no fire? What if an animal attacks? She vividly recalled a lynx that leaped at her once, and reached for her sling, imagining glowing eyes in the night.

She found the weapon still securely tucked into her waist thong. It brought rea.s.surance. I'm dead anyway, or supposed to be. If something is going to happen, it will happen. I can't worry now. If I don't hurry, it will be morning before I'm ready.

She found her brush pile and began to drag the small trees toward the pit. She couldn't surround the horses by herself, she had reasoned, and there were no blind canyons in the valley, but, with an intuitive leap, she got an idea. It was the stroke of genius to which her brain-the brain that had differentiated her from the Clan far more than had physical appearance-was especially suited. If there were no canyons in the valley, she thought, perhaps she could make one.

It didn't matter that the idea had been thought of before. It was new to her. She didn't think of it as a great invention. It seemed only a minor adaptation to the way Clan men hunted; only a minor adaptation that might, just might, enable a lone woman to kill an animal that no man of the Clan would dream of hunting alone. It was a great invention, born of necessity.

Ayla watched the sky anxiously as she wove branches, constructing a barrier angling out from both sides of the pit. She filled in the gaps and made it higher with brush as the stars winked out in the eastern sky. The earliest birds had started their warbling greeting and the sky was lightening when she stood back and looked over her handiwork.

The pit was roughly rectangular, somewhat longer than it was wide, and muddy around the edges where the last wet loads had been hauled out. Loose piles of dirt, spilled from the hide, were strewn on the trampled gra.s.s within the triangular area defined by the two walls of brush corning together at the muddy hole. Through a gap where the pit separated the two fences, the river could be seen, reflecting the glowing eastern sky. On the other side of the rippling water, the steep southern wall of the valley loomed darkly; only near the top were its contours distinguishable.

Ayla turned around to check the position of the horses. The other side of the valley had a more gradual slope, growing steeper toward the west as it rose to form the jutting wall in front of her cave, and leveling out to rolling gra.s.sy hills far down the valley on the east. It was still dark there, but she could see the horses beginning to move.

She grabbed the hide and the flat bone shovel and raced back to the beach. The fire was down. She added wood, then fished out a hot coal with a stick and put it in the aurochs horn, grabbed the torches, the spears, and the club, and ran back to the pit. She laid a spear down on either side of the hole, the club beside one, then loped around in a wide circle to get behind the horses before they began to move.

And then, she waited.

The waiting was harder than the long night of working. She was keyed up, anxious, wondering if her plan would work. She checked her coal, and waited; looked over the torches, and waited. She thought of countless things she hadn't thought of before, that she should have done, or done differently, and waited. She wondered when the horses were going to begin their meandering move toward the stream, thought about prodding them on, thought better of it, and she waited.

The horses began to mill around. Ayla thought they seemed more nervous than usual, but she had never been this close to them, and she wasn't sure. Finally, the lead mare started toward the river and the rest followed behind, stopping to graze along the way. They definitely became nervous as they drew nearer the river and picked up Ayla's scent and the smell of disturbed earth. When the lead mare appeared to be veering off, Ayla decided it was time.

She lit a torch with the coal, then a second from the first. When they were burning well, she started after the herd, leaving the aurochs horn behind. She ran, whooping and hollering and waving the torches, but she was too far from the herd. The smell of smoke brought an instinctive fear of prairie fires. The horses picked up speed and quickly outdistanced her. They were heading toward their watering place and the brush fence, but, sensing danger, some made a break toward the east. Ayla angled in the same direction, running as fast as she could, hoping to head them off. As she drew closer, she saw more of the herd swerving to avoid the trap, and she ran into their midst yelling. They dodged around her. Ears laid back, nostrils flaring, they pa.s.sed her by on either side, screaming in fear and confusion. Ayla was getting panicky, as well, afraid they were all going to get away.

She was near the eastern end of the brush barrier when she saw the dun mare coming toward her. She screamed at the horse, held her torches wide, and ran straight for what seemed a sure head-on collision. At the last moment, the mare dodged, the wrong way-for her. She found her escape blocked and galloped along the inside of the fence, trying to find a way out. Ayla pounded behind her, panting for breath, feeling her lungs were about to burst.

The mare saw the gap with its beckoning glimpse of the river and headed for it. Then she saw the open pit-too late. She gathered her legs under her to leap over the hole, but her hooves slipped on the muddy edge. She crashed into the pit with a broken leg.

Ayla dashed up, breathing hard; she picked up a spear and stood looking at the wild-eyed mare that was screaming, tossing her head, and floundering in the mud. Ayla grasped the shaft with both hands, braced her legs, and plunged the point toward the pit. Then she realized that she had driven the spear into a flank, wounding the horse, but not mortally. She raced around to the other side, slipping on the mud and nearly falling in the hole herself.

Ayla picked up the other spear and this time took more careful aim. The mare was neighing in confusion and pain, and, as the point of the second spear bored into her neck, she lurched forward in a last valiant effort. Then she sank back with a whinny that was more like a whimper, with two wounds and a broken leg. A hard blow with the club finally ended her pain.

Realization came slowly to Ayla; she was too dazed to comprehend her achievement yet. At the edge of the pit, leaning heavily on the club she still held and gasping for breath, she stared at the fallen mare in the bottom of the hole. The s.h.a.ggy grayish coat was streaked with blood and covered with mud, but the animal did not move.

Then, slowly, it filled her. An urge, like none she had ever known, rose out of her depths, grew in her throat, and burst from her mouth in a primal scream of victory. She did it!

At that moment, in a lonely valley in the middle of a vast continent, somewhere near the undefined boundary of the desolate northern loess steppes and the wetter continental steppes to the south, a young woman stood with a bone club in her hand-and felt powerful. She could survive. She would survive.

But her exultation was short-lived. As Ayla looked down at the horse, it suddenly occurred to her that she would never be able to drag the whole animal out of the pit; she would have to butcher it in the bottom of the muddy hole. And then she would have to get it back to the beach, quickly, with the whole skin in reasonably good condition, before too many other predators picked up the scent of blood. She would have to cut the meat into thin strips, salvage the other parts she wanted, keep the fires going, and keep watch while the meat dried.

And she was already exhausted from the grueling night's work and the anxious chase. But she wasn't a man of the Clan who could relax, now that his exciting part was over, and leave the job of butchering and processing to the women. Ayla's work had just begun. She heaved a great sigh, then jumped down into the pit to slit the mare's throat.

She ran back to the beach for the tent hide and the flint tools, and, on her return, she noticed that the herd at the far end of the valley was still moving. She forgot them as she struggled in the cramped s.p.a.ce of the pit, covered with blood and mud, hacking out hunks of meat and trying not to damage the hide any worse than it was.