Mists of Dawn

by Chad Oliver

  A silver moon climbed high into the sky of night, and still the drums played on, and the singing sobbed across the valley floor. Mark had hoped that the ceremony might end, and someone might come by and just say hello before morning—but no one came. This was a night for the Danequa, and he was not of the Danequa.

  Finally, unable to watch the fires any longer, but still not tired, Mark crawled on into the tiny cavern and stretched out on the floor under the robe. He closed his eyes, but he could not sleep. The rhythmic pounding of the drums, mixed with the humming roar of the waterfall, marched in through the cavern mouth and thumped against his ears. The singing filled the cave, and Mark knew that he had never been so lonely in his life. He thought of home, as lonely people do, and he was acutely aware that home was almost fifty-two thousand years away.

  Then another sound came into the cave, a different sound. For a moment, Mark could not place it. It was something of a whine, and yet it was something of a snarl . . .

  Mark leaped to his feet, wide awake, the .45 ready in his hand. His first thought was of the half-men, and he felt himself shuddering. He would kill himself before he would surrender to those monsters again, but he would take a few of them along with him. He waited, holding his breath. Nothing happened.

  The sound came again, and Mark peered cautiously at the mouth of the cave. He couldn’t see anything. He took a long stick with his free hand and stirred up die fire. The circle of light expanded, slowly. There, a dark shadow! Mark took careful aim, but held his fire.

  “Who is it?” he called. “What do you want?”

  No answer. There was only the night, and the moon, and the shadows.

  “Answer or die!” Mark hissed, his finger curling on the trigger.

  There was a low whine. The shadow moved and came into the circle of firelight.

  “Well, I’ll be darned,” Mark muttered in relief.

  The thing was an animal. More than that, it was a dog. At least, it looked so much like a dog Mark could not see any difference. He was almost full-grown, a brownish-gray in color, and looked a great deal like an Arctic husky. He was lying flat on his belly, his head cocked to one side in a questioning attitude, his bushy tail wagging hopefully.

  Mark remembered at once the sounds he had heard coming from this cave when he had first arrived among the Danequa, and it did not take him long to put two and two together. He did not believe that the Danequa had domesticated the dog, in the sense of keeping them and breeding them in captivity. But it was certainly possible that they permitted some of them to hang around the camp, living in empty caverns, to feed on the scraps and thus keep the place clean. No doubt they even petted them occasionally, and perhaps played with the puppies. At any rate, this dog looked anything but vicious. He seemed to be pathetically eager to make friends.

  “Well, boy,” Mark said, speaking now in English, “did I put you out of your home?”

  The dog thumped his tail affirmatively.

  “No offense,” Mark assured him. “Come here. I’m glad to have some company.”

  Eying Mark, the dog came forward very slowly, and stretched out by the fire. Not wanting to scare him away, Mark moved over carefully, and gently scratched his ears. The dog stiffened, then relaxed and wagged his tail vigorously.

  Mark listened to the distant throb of the drums, and the eerie singing of the Danequa. The night wind moaned outside, and the silver moon floated through a sea of stars.

  “That’s right,” Mark whispered to the dog, “you just stay right here. You and I—we’ll be alone together.”

  Chapter 13 Titans of the Ice

  The long days passed, and became weeks. Mark stayed with the Danequa, learning their language, learning their ways, and learning the million things that he had to know in order to exist in this strange new world. His friends, Tlaxcal and little Tlax, Roqan and Roqal, Qualxen, the shaman, stuck by him and helped him. And there was always Tlaxcan, steady as a rock at his side, ready to kill or to laugh on a moment’s notice. These were happy days, and busy days, but still Mark was lonely. With all his friends, he was yet not a member of the tribe of Danequa, and was therefore necessarily rather left out of things.

  The dog, who had come to him in the night, was like the man who came to dinner; Mark could not get rid of him. Not that he wanted to, for the dog made the long nights less lonely. lie was really quite a dog, and Mark named him Fang, after the dog he had left behind in 1953. He had named his cocker spaniel Fang as a kind of joke, but the new Fang lived up to his name. Gentle enough with Mark, who fed him, he bristled and snarled at anyone else who came near him. The Danequa were curious about the friendly relationship between Mark and the dog; they had never seen a pet before. But they accepted it as they had accepted Mark himself. Different people behaved in different ways, and that was all there was to it. Nranquar was still suspicious of Mark, and having Fang around didn’t help matters any, but he was the only one who seemed to care one way or the other.

  Then one day it happened. One of the scouts, out on the same duty that had first taken Tlaxcan to Mark, came back to camp with the long-awaited news. The mammoth herd had been sighted!

  The camp was thrown into great excitement over the information, and at once preparations for the hunt were begun. The primitive equivalent to K-ration, dried meat pounded and mixed with berries, then sealed with animal fat, was made ready for use. Qualxen went into action to contact the supernatural, and brief ceremonies got underway. Mark for the first time appreciated how much time was taken up by the Danequa in their almost endless ceremonies, but the ceremonies gave to them a confidence that was well worth the time invested. On a tough job, it helps for the worker simply to believe that the job can be done.

  The men were armed with lances, harpoons, bows and arrows, and sharp cutting knives. The women and children prepared noisemakers of various sorts, and loaded up on robes which they would flap. Mark carried his .45, and was prepared to use it if he had to, but he was not under the illusion that he could kill a mammoth with a pistol. In addition, he carried one of TIaxcan’s spears, and he was determined to prove himself on this hunt.

  He had to prove himself, he remembered grimly.

  The camp moved out through the valley and hit the long trail. The quaro herd had been sighted due north, on the edge of the retreating ice sheet, about fourteen hours distant. Men, women, children—the whole tribe went. The mammoth meant food, shelter, clothes, and many other things for the whole village, and it took the whole village to bring one down. One hunter, no matter how able, could not possibly handle a mammoth. It would be like hunting an elephant with a slingshot, a practice which does not work very well outside of the jungle movies.

  It was broad daylight when the Danequa moved out, and once more Mark found himself on the great plains with their waving grasses and millions of brilliant flowers. But it was different this time; he was no longer alone, he was part of a team, and the world held no terrors for him now. He might win or he might lose, he might live or he might die, but he could face what was to come with a steady heart. Part of it was due, of course, to the friends that walked at his side—but part of it, too, was due to Mark himself. For Mark, subtly and almost unknown to himself, had changed. It is doubtful that his friends in 1953 would have recognized him now—a young, bronzed savage, spear in hand, long hair held in place by a thong of bison hide, his body covered with the warm furs that had been made for him by Tlaxcal, a fierce wolf-dog at his side. Mark had been aged by more than time, and he was hard as only a hard world can make a man, with a confident, even look in his eyes.

  All through the day the colorful procession moved through the dawn of time. The men were painted, even Mark having consented to a couple of stripes of green across his forehead and arms. In fact, he remembered with a smile, he had been grateful to Qualxen for offering to paint him—thus quickly did his values change. He even wore a tiny medicine bundle on a string around his neck. There was nothing in it but a tooth and a small stone, and he assured h
imself that he did not believe in its powers. He wore it, however.

  When in Rome, do as the Romans do. He had almost gone to Rome—what would have happened to him there? Would his uncle ever see that fabled city in the time of its glory? He thrust the thought from his mind.

  The sun drifted down to the rim of the mountains, and the evening shadows crept across the land. Mark was astounded when they saw a herd of bison in the distance, so vast that it was like a black flood on the land, and when they broke into a run, the dark waves were set into motion. There must have been thousands upon thousands of the beasts, and now Mark could well believe the stories of the early American West about herds of buffalo that stopped trains. But the Danequa were not after buffalo now—they were out after bigger game.

  Just at nightfall, they saw a large herd of horses galloping across the grass, racing the shadows. Mark could not help thinking of how much easier life would be for the Danequa if they could just see the possibilities of using the horse as a riding animal. But evidently the idea had never occurred to them, and they marched along on foot within a hundred yards of the finest riding animal the world had ever known. How many other such opportunities, Mark wondered, were under our very eyes in 1953, obvious enough if someone could only put two and two together in the right way?

  Through the night marched the Danequa, under the stars and under the moon. They seemed to have an infallible sense of direction; there were no landmarks that Mark could see. Somewhere in the night, he knew, was the space-time machine. It was there, to the west, to his left. It was ready to go now, if it was in good condition still. All he needed to do was to walk to it and get in. But that was the catch—walking to it. The Neanderthals would be watching from their valley of death, and he could never get through them alive.

  Almost, he fancied that he felt the cold eyes of the half-men on him now, as he walked on across the plains.

  In the tricky light of false dawn, which faintly illuminates the earth an hour before the true dawn of sunrise, the scouts located the quaro herd. Mark had not yet caught a glimpse of them, but he could hear them. Their trumpetings, elephant-like, coughed through the cold air surrounding the ice sheet, sending shivers along the spines of the bravest of men.

  Like a well-drilled team, the Danequa went into action. Every person knew his place—knew what to do and how to do it. The old men stationed themselves at the foot of a jagged cliff that offered a drop of fully one hundred yards to solid rock below—a product of the great earth cracks and fissures which resulted from the passing of the glacial ice. The Danequa had obviously used the cliff before, because Mark could see plenty of bones around. Huge bones . . .

  The women and children, armed with all sorts of noisemakers and robes, spread out behind rocks leading to the cliff. They formed a long V-shaped funnel, with the narrow end opening on the cliff. Except for the rocks, the women and children were unprotected. They had only their noisemakers, their robes to flap— and their raw courage, of which there was a plentiful supply.

  Nranquar, the only man who had been completely hostile to Mark, led the warriors around in a wide circle. Mark felt the grass play out under his feet, and quite suddenly they were walking on ice. The footing was difficult, but the Danequa did not make a sound. It was darker now, just before the dawn, and there was no talking. Even Fang, struggling to walk on the ice, was completely quiet. He seemed to know, as did Mark, that if he made a sound Nranquar would destroy him without an instant’s hesitation.

  Nranquar had taken them neatly into position now. They were behind the mammoth herd, between the huge animals and the open ice sheet. The men of the Danequa arranged themselves in a broad semicircle behind the quaro, waiting silently in the darkness. Mark, Tlaxcan, and old Roqan, who, although somewhat lame, had insisted on staying with the warriors, built up a pile of kindling wood on the ice. The wood had been carried with them, and it was arranged in a curious fashion. First there were wood shavings, to serve as paper. Then smaller sticks were added, and after them larger ones. The largest wood used in the actual fire consisted of sticks not over an inch in diameter, and wide air spaces were left between them. It was essential that the fire catch in a hurry when it was lighted, for the failure of the fire would mean disaster. Placed carefully end to end around the fire, with only their tips in the flame area, were dried and treated torches, one for each warrior.

  The eastern sky began to glow softly with the approach of the sun, and the gray light of dawn filtered across the cold ice sheet. Mark strained his eyes, but could not yet see anything. He heard restless coughs from the invisible monsters, and twice an ear-splitting trumpeting, startlingly near, cut through the chill air. Mark swallowed hard as the familiar dryness of excitement choked up his throat, and he felt his heart thumping so loudly in his chest that he was almost afraid the sound would carry to the quaro herd and alarm them.

  The light increased, and Mark could make out several of the nearer warriors, crouching in their positions on the ice. He looked out ahead, across the flatly gleaming ice. He was sure that he saw something out there now—great blotches of blackness, enormous shadows that moved and swayed as he watched.

  The sun crept higher; its rim inching almost over the horizon. Mark felt his hands sweating and he wiped them on his furs.

  “Now, Mark,” old Roqan whispered sternly, “light the fire quickly, and see that you do it right.”

  Mark dropped to one knee, the matches ready in his hand. Tlaxcan stood by with his fire drill, just in case the magic failed to work, as magic sometimes did at crucial moments. Mark struck the match, cupped it carefully, and fired the wood shavings. A tiny trickle of flame crawled along the shavings with agonizing slowness, branched out, fired other shavings. Mark held his breath—and the fire caught with a puffing whoosh that exploded like a cannon shot in the silence.

  Mark heard an excited trumpeting ahead of him, but he did not look up. He watched the fire, making certain that the torches were caught properly before he moved. Then he and Tlaxcan grabbed up the flaming torches and dashed at full speed down the line, Tlaxcan going one way and Mark the other, handing out the torches to the waiting Danequa warriors. It was the work of but a moment, and they ran back to join Roqan in the center of the line.

  “Took you long enough,” hissed Roqan. “In my day I could have done it in half the time. I don’t know what’s happening to this younger generation.”

  The sun touched the horizon—it climbed higher, Mark gasped and gripped his lance tightly. He could see the quaro now, and the blood turned to ice in his veins.

  “Charge!” shouted old Roqan, before Mark had time to think.

  Through the dawn, with the mists beginning to rise from the ice sheets, the Danequa moved to the attack. Mark charged with the rest, his torch gripped in one hand and his spear in the other, shouting and screaming at the top of his lungs, the barking Fang at his side.

  There was no time for fear now, and Mark avoided looking directly at the trumpeting quaro. But a corner of his mind whispered to him as he raced across the ice through the rising mists—whispered to him that they were charging the titans of the ice, who would trample them to shreds if anything went wrong.

  Chapter 14 Man Against Mammoth

  The morning air, hushed and silent a moment before, became a bedlam of roaring sound. Mark ran through a chaos of shouting, screaming men, trumpeting, coughing mammoths, pounding, thumping feet. The very earth beneath the ice sheet trembled under him, the cold air stabbed at his lungs—and the quaro were right before him.

  Mammoths! The very word means enormous, and enormous they were. There were fifteen of the monsters clustered on the ice, and they were big. Mark judged that the largest of them would weigh at least twenty thousand pounds—ten tons of maddened power. They were built something like a modern elephant, with a huge, powerful trunk reaching almost to the ground, but they were covered with a heavy coat of yellowish-brown wool mixed with long black hair. The quaro had immense, curving tusks of ivory, some of th
em fully fifteen feet long and wickedly pointed. Nor was their quarry a stupid hulk, such as the extinct dinosaur had been. For all their massive size, the mammoths were smart. Mark knew that elephants in general were among the most intelligent of living animals, their flexible trunk being one of nature’s experiments on the road that had finally led to man’s opposable thumb and grasping hand. Beyond doubt, the mammoth was a worthy foe, and Mark wondered how many people would have cared to charge him with only a spear and a torch.

  But charge the Danequa did, and Mark with them.

  Mark yelled frantically, and waved his torch in fiery circles around his head. He knew that the success of the hunt depended entirely on keeping the mammoths confused by fire and noise; if they were allowed time to think clearly, they would squash the Danequa like so many buzzing insects hit by a baseball bat. The first step was to get them moving, and it was not an easy step.

  It was the oldest military tactic in the book, surprise and panic. Like all tactics, it was wonderful if it worked. If it didn’t . . .

  The mammoths were in no hurry to move. They eyed the shouting warriors nervously, they trumpeted and shifted, their eyes began to gleam angrily, but they did not break. Mark screamed and brandished his torch, and one of the beasts backed away a little. But that was not enough. Nranquar suddenly dashed in behind one of the mammoths and jabbed him with a spear. The mammoth trumpeted angrily and spun around with surprising speed. He reared up on his huge hind legs, snorting. Nranquar stood his ground, yelling and waving his torch. It was a crucial moment, and Mark and Tlaxcan ran to help. If the mammoth decided to fight, he could probably handle all three of them without difficulty, and the other monsters would join in the massacre. The three warriors shouted, and Tlaxcan, with sudden insight, threw his torch like a spear at the rearing mammoth. The mammoth snorted at the heat, and came down with an earth-shattering impact. His tremendous feet missed the dodging men, but it was close. The mammoth eyed them warily, and then turned slowly away and lumbered into motion in the other direction.