by neetha Napew
Torka watched them and wondered if they were very brave or very stupid. Perhaps in people as unimaginative as Galeena’s band, the latter induced the former. He told Karana to stay close and to keep his spears at the ready. The same thick, high ground cover that had hidden the great short faced bear could be hiding equal dangers.
Despite a slight limp, the boy kept up with him. His leg was strong again, and although the other boys taunted him for his stiff gait, Torka noted that Karana refused to rise to their baiting. He demonstrated his mettle by going anywhere that they dared to go, by never complaining or asking that any exception be made for him. The leg had to pain him at times, but if it did, he never spoke of it; only an occasional tension at the corners of his lips betrayed the extent of his effort.
They continued on until a projecting, down-thrusting lobe of the summit glacier blocked their passage. Further penetration into the canyon was impossible unless they ascended the ice. The sheep skittered up ahead, their small, sharp hooves cutting into the snow, sending fragments of it exploding outward as they raced for their lives. Galeena’s well-thrown spear took an adolescent ewe through the neck. Manaak’s weapon flew to embed itself in the haunch of a ram. Several animals stumbled and rose to run on, half of them with spears protruding from various portions of their bodies. Others fell, their white coats red with spattered blood, their bleats drowned by the howling of Galeena’s hunters.
Torka told Karana to go forward and make a kill if he wished. The boy was off in an instant. Torka did not move. He stood transfixed, momentarily disoriented. The glacier ... it had not been there before—he was certain of it. He eyed the soaring, dirty-faced mass of ice that blocked the way before him. Several spruce trees lay broken and half-buried in a rubble heap of rock-hard boulders of snow, which the boys and hunters of Galeena’s band were scrambling over as they climbed to retrieve their kills. Those trees had been erect when Torka had last seen them; they had composed the little grove in which Umak killed the moose. Now, as he studied the now and ice in which the trees lay all but totally buried, he realized that he was not looking at a glacier but at the accumulated debris that had been falling away from the underlayer of the summit ice pack ever since he had led the others to the mountain.
Manaak came toward him, carrying his ram slung over his shoulders. He was curious as to why Torka was not participating in the hunt. When Torka shared his thoughts, Manaak shrugged and told him that it was the same everywhere. “Old men in far khamps they say that ice spirits grow strong. Ice spirits fall from sky. They coveh the earth. Stay on mountains. Not melt. This mass of ice, it will grow in the dark time winteh. In shady canyon like this, even in summeh, not all of it will melt. Next dark time, it will grow again. It will fill the canyon, grow so high it will join with the main summit glacier. In the next time of light, it will begin to walk out of the canyon, grinding all before it. This man has walked fah and hunted many game trails. In the fah mountains, whole passes are disappearing under ice that walks. In many places, game must find new ways to come through the mountains to the land of good grass.”
Torka understood at last why his people had waited in vain for the caribou to return along their usual route of migration. “From where do the herds come, Manaak? Have you traveled there, into the face of the rising sun?”
“No man may do that. The herds come from out of the rising sun, through the Corridor of Storms, from oveh the edge of the world where no man may follow.”
“I wonder....” Torka’s musing was curtailed before it was fully begun. A terrible high, raking screech reverberated through the canyon. It was followed by the pain-filled screams of a boy and by the shouts and curses of men.
The lion-size jumping cat had been feeding off the carcass of the camel that it had killed several nights before. The cat was old, with a partially joined spinal column, and an arthritic hip. Its limbs were short, giving it hyena like proportions, as though the bodies of two distinctly different types of animals had been joined by mistake. This cat was no swift-footed predator of the open tundra; this cat was designed to spring. Its brain was small. Its disposition was surly. In its waning years it had become a particularly nasty and unpredictable aggressor. When Ninip and the other boys accidentally flushed it from its cover, it sprang for a quick retreat up the face of the icefall; but its hip hurt enough to make an upward vault too painful to consider. With its short, lynx like tail twitching, it wheeled and spat, swiping out at the boys and hissing as it displayed the two fangs that would someday win others of its species the name saber-toothed.
This cat, a prowler, a lurker, and leaper, was always ready to hurl itself upon dull-witted prey that happened to browse too close to where it lay waiting to pounce. And pounce it did, leaping at the boys who shouted and stamped and menaced it with the few spears that they had not thrown after the fleeing sheep. With all of its power projected into its spring, the lion-size cat was a blur of long, tawny fur. Its lower jaw appeared to have unhinged itself as it flapped back against its throat. Its mouth gaped impossibly wide, allowing its fangs, which were half as long as the forearm of a man, to project forward.
Ninip was its target, but the boy sidestepped just in time, pulling his nearest companion into the way of the cat. When the animal hit the boy, its canines plunged straight through his thorax. He went down hard, with the cat on top of him. One of the animal’s fang tips cracked against a rock that lay beneath the boy’s punctured back. The cat yowled against the pain of a shattered nerve, drew out its teeth, and stabbed its victim again and again, all the while scratching and tearing at the boy’s midsection until its paws and body were red and fouled with the color and stench of its victim’s disembowelment.
The boy was not dead. He could make no sound, but his hands spasmed at his sides and his limbs jerked convulsively. The cat was eating him alive. Karana threw his spear. All the other boys had fled, and the men of Galeena’s band were watching. Why they were making no move to come to the fallen boy’s aid, there was no time to guess. In his excitement, Karana had thrown one spear short of his target; but he still had another, his best one, the spear that Torka had made for him. His small hand curled around the haft, balancing it lightly. From the corner of his eye, he saw Ninip glowering at him.
Karana advanced slowly, spear arm bent, the weapon levering for just the perfect balance as he made ready to throw. He was aware of Torka and Manaak running toward him, their spears at the ready. Torka held his whalebone bludgeon in his left hand. Karana drew in a breath of resolve and aimed. He wanted to make the killing throw. Then all men would call him Lion Killer instead of Little Lame One. Torka would be proud. And Ninip would never have cause to mock him again.
Watching Karana, Ninip knew his intent. He was suddenly furious. How dare the little lame one stand up to the marauding cat as though he were the bravest boy in the world? He would never be able to live down the ridicule of his companions or the disgust of his father if he stood by in fear of the great cat while puny Karana made an attempt to kill it. Galeena still held him in contempt for having stumbled before the charging ox. Ninip would never win his respect if Karana made this kill.
With a burst of energy that eclipsed his fear, Ninip raced to Karana’s side and snatched the spear from his hand just as the smaller boy was about to release it. Caught off-balance by a violent elbow jab to his side, Karana fell as Ninip gave out a loud, triumphant whoop. The spear was light and long, much different in balance from the heavier, thick-shafted weapons made by the hunters of his own band. He sought the right position from which to make his killing throw, but his movement had caught the attention of the cat.
It moved so quickly and unexpectedly that Ninip had no opportunity to react. In one great leap it was on him, knocking him down. He fell on his side with the spear still in his hand, uselessly pinned to the ground by the downward pressure of his head against his forearm. Instinct had caused him to curl into a fetal tuck, protecting his vital organs from the ripping claws and stabbing fangs of the ca
t. With his thick winter clothing his only protection against the predations of the beast, he screamed out to his father to kill the cat before it tore him to pieces.
High above the canyon, the giant condor that was often seen circling in the sky flew across the face of the sun, drawn by the sounds of death and killing. Its shadow distracted the cat, which looked up for an instant, long enough for Ninip to see his father and the other hunters standing immobile. Not one of them was even making an effort to lift a spear. They were going to stand there and watch him die.
He could not have said when Torka’s spear struck the cat. Manaak’s followed. The cat seemed to lift straight up off the ground, whirling and backing away, making the deep, ugly rasping gargle that felines make when they are cornered and in a rage. Ninip did not move, uncertain if his limbs and arms were still connected to his body or if he was even alive. Slowly Torka moved into his line of sight to stand between him and the cat. Ninip’s vision was blurred by blood—his or the cat’s, he could not be sure. Torka was making low, hostile me wings to the animal, baiting it, calling it to him. He held his strange, knife-edged whalebone club. Ninip felt faint, confused. Why was Torka putting himself at risk for one who had never done anything to deserve his concern?
As Ninip watched, Torka crouched. He gripped the narrow, sinew-wrapped end of his weapon in both hands. He continued baiting the cat until, with a shriek of rage, it hurled itself at him. He leaped aside with supreme agility and grace, spinning around as he did so. The long, sharp edge of his weapon severed the outreaching taloned paws of the cat. It landed before it realized that its feet were missing. The stumps would not support its weight. Screaming and stunned, it fell rump over head as Torka closed on it to smash its skull with three brutal downward strokes of his bludgeon.
Like the boy whom it had disemboweled, the saber toothed cat died slowly.
If Galeena had had his way, Ninip would have been left behind to die beside the mutilated body of the disemboweled boy. The headman was openly angered by Torka’s killing of the cat.
“Again Torka risks his life to save a useless one! Did Torka expect othehs to join him in his risk? No. A band needs men, huntehs, not clumsy boys!”
The other hunters all spoke in agreement. They resented Torka’s display of bravery, which had shown them a standard by which they had no wish to be measured.
Torka looked incredulously at Galeena. “Ninip is your son.”
“Bah! What is son? This man has had many sons before. Will have sons again.”
It was difficult for Torka to comprehend the extent of his callousness. “The spirits have been generous to Galeena. The cat broke a tooth while attacking the other boy. It must have been in pain, so it did not stab Ninip. He is badly scratched and bruised, but with care, he will be healed soon enough.”
“You saved him, you heal him! Galeena will not claim that clumsy one as his own!”
The ice that formed on the ponds was bottom deep now and would not melt until spring. Daylight was little more than a brief blue haze. While the cold, dry wind blew hard out of the northwest, lana went into labor twice, but both episodes stopped short of producing a child. Manaak was restless. Umak made child-come-forth chants to no avail, and Ai smirked behind his back and whispered to Galeena that the spirit master’s magic was certainly less than effective. The old man harrumphed and said that lana’s child would not be born until its spirit was ready; Oklahnoo eyed him skeptically while Naknaktup pointed to Ninip and boasted that the boy was alive only because of her man’s healing magic.
For Umak’s sake, Torka did not argue with her. Ninip was recovering, albeit slowly. The incident with the cat had changed him. His combativeness and arrogance had bled out of him. Black and blue, sore and sutured, he sat in passive dejection beside Torka’s fire circle. Although Torka had once detested the boy for the way he had treated Karana, now Torka worried about him. Ninip would not eat unless food was forced upon him. He would not speak unless spoken to, and then his replies were limited to grunts and mumbles. His onetime companions wanted no part of him except to taunt and mock him as cruelly as he had once taunted Karana. His bright, ferretlike eyes had gone blank. He seemed to have lost the will to live.
Karana gloated. He was openly resentful of Ninip’s newfound place beside Torka’s fire circle. He was glad that the other boys had turned on their former leader. He found it infinitely satisfying to know that he was no longer the sole object of their animalistic pranks and derision. As for Torka, a strangely disturbing malaise had settled upon him since his killing of the cat. Sometimes, as he would work upon his weapons, he would find himself looking at Ninip, wondering if he had done the right thing. The headman had not put his own life in jeopardy, even for his own son, because he had others to consider—his women, his band, and the other boys. And Ninip was clumsy; he probably never would make much of a hunter. Among Torka’s people it had been considered a grievous affront to the spirits of the game to squander meat upon anyone who might prove a liability to the band. Why should it be different among Galcena’s band? In the depth of the time of the long dark, the lives of his people, as well as those of Torka’s little family, might depend upon the food that he was now forcing upon Ninip. He sighed, dissatisfied with the course of action to which he had so thoughtlessly committed himself.
With his back propped against the mountain wall and his buttocks cushioned by the grass-stuffed pockets of furs that Lonit had stitched to form a knapping pillow, he paused in his work. He had been reshaping damaged projectile points with his fire-hardened antler hammer. Despite the hide pad that kept the palm of his left hand from being accidentally cut or bruised, his hand ached with fatigue. How many spearheads had he braced against it while shaping them with his right hand? All that he had set aside for redefinition. He was surprised. It did not seem that much time had passed since he had first begun to work, but there they were, arranged in a line beside his hammer stones and flakers.
He found himself wondering once again where the great herds of grazing animals went in the last days of autumn before the world went cold and the long, storm-driven time of the long dark began. From this aerie, he often watched the sun rise and set in a pale, ever-diminishing arc that was barely in the sky long enough to grant any warmth. Soon it would be only the faintest glow on the southern horizon, and then it would be gone completely. Where? he wondered. Where does it go? Could not men follow it, tracking the great herds perpetually eastward to .. . what?
His thoughts paused in mid flow He had led his people to the mountain. He had lighted the signal fire that had drawn Galeena’s band across the miles, and although the man was filthy and flatulent and full of his own overinflated sense of self-worth, there was safety in numbers. With the time of the long dark beginning to settle upon them, it eased Torka’s mind to know that Lonit and Karana and Umak were safe, sheltered within the mountain like infants secure within their mother’s womb. Danger lay out there, on the open tundra, in the growing cold and dark where the Destroyer walked, looking for men to kill.
The days that followed were intensely cold. The wind slid down off the summit ice pack to mingle with the fierce, dry tides of air that blew out of the vast distances of Asia and the far north.
Lonit spent most of her time with lana. When the sad eyed woman had experienced the first of her unfruitful contractions, the other women had drawn her away to the very back of the cave lest the spirits of her suffering contaminate them all. There had been talk of sending her from the ledge to wait out her travail in a pit hut at the base of the mountain; but those women who were with child thought twice about this. Although it was customary for women in labor to be kept apart, it was one thing to have one’s man erect a little birthing hut at the fringes of an encampment, and another to be alone on the tundra while the rest of the band was high above and far away. Umak said that in new times, men and women must learn new ways. Everyone was relieved, and a grateful lana was allowed to stay while Manaak went down from the mountain to gather d
ry sedges and grasses and to cut sods from the tundra that would be used to soften the floor of the cave upon which she would give birth. He returned by way of the pulley, reporting that the permafrost was growing thick; soon the land would be frozen rock hard.
Lonit was unable to understand the unwillingness of the other women to sit with lana. With the exception of Naknaktup, who came occasionally to lay a questing hand upon lana’s belly and brow, they all appeared to be totally unconcerned. When lana’s pains began again, they and their men kept far away from her.
Lonit took lana’s dry, cold hands within her own warm palms and held them tightly. “Lonit will stay. Lonit will help. Lonit will sing woman songs for lana, but lana must tell Lonit how they go, because the women of Lonit’s band walked the spirit world before they could teach her.”
“Songs? Among lana’s people, theh are no songs for this.” She gasped, held her breath, and gritted her teeth until the wave of pain that washed over her had ebbed away.
Lonit released her hands and stroked her brow. “Among Torka’s people there were many songs. Happy songs. Sad songs. Songs for every happening. Especially for thisl Listen. Umak makes the child-come-forth chant for you! It has great magic!”
“This woman’s baby does not seem to heah it.”