Mists of Dawn

by Chad Oliver

  Mark breathed easier, and was elated to see that the mammoth herd had joined the old bull and were jogging along toward the plains. Mark knew that they had not defeated the mammoths, in any sense. It was just that the mammoths, like most animals, did not want to fight at all. They wanted to be let alone, and doubtless considered the puny men as not worth killing. But they might change their minds at any moment; they had to be handled with skill.

  As Tlaxcan had trained him to do, Mark joined in guiding the moving mass of the herd, flanking them and shouting to keep them on course. Fang learned fast, and dashed in to nip almost at the quota’s heels, barking furiously all the while. Mark could not help thinking that he would have made a first-rate cattle dog. Fang was a big help, and Mark noticed that Tlaxcan was watching him approvingly.

  Everything was going according to plan, with the morning sun smiling in the blue sky. Now they were running along the grassy plains, and Mark began to relax.

  Instantly, he saw that he had let down his guard too soon.

  There was no warning, no hint of a suggestion of any sort that it was going to happen. One minute, everything was moving smoothly; the next, tragedy struck with blinding speed. Three of the giant mammoths turned aside as one, and there was no stopping them. They simply walked over the warrior who confronted them, brushing aside his spear as though it had been a toothpick. The man was trampled into a pulp with frightening swiftness; in an instant, where once a man had stood, there was nothing. The three mammoths moved sedately off on their own affairs, and nothing could be done about it.

  The warriors of the Danequa redoubled their efforts to hold the remaining twelve mammoths. There was really nothing to prevent the monsters from going with their fellows if they so chose—nothing but bravery and human voices and a few pitiful torches. But they did not go—they shambled with deceptive speed along toward the trap which awaited them.

  Mark did not relax again. He shouted with all his strength, and when his torch was exhausted he threw it in the midst of the mammoths. Fang barked and snarled as if he really thought he could tear a mammoth to pieces if he felt like it. Tlaxcan maneuvered with infinite skill and patience, a fighting smile on his proud face. Nranquar, whose bravery was beyond question, risked his life again and again to keep the trumpeting quaro in line.

  Across the morning-wet plains they ran, and Mark felt his newly toughened muscles rise to the occasion and carry him forward without a tremor. He breathed easily, and his hand was steady. He had a healthy respect for the mighty mammoths, and he knew that they could wipe him out in a second, but he had also learned a healthy respect for his fighting comrades, the Danequa. They were not fools, and they would not have attempted the hunt unless they had thought they would be successful. The very fact that they were still alive was eloquent testimony to their skill in the past.

  With the precision of trained experts, the Danequa warriors drew together into a compact group behind the mammoth herd at exactly the moment the beasts lumbered into the mouth of the trap funnel. The men shouted with renewed energy, and now the women and children sprang up on all sides, yelling madly, beating on drums, flapping robes in the air, and making a general racket with all sorts of noisemakers. It all made a terrific din, to which the mammoths themselves contributed by their trumpeting squeals and the vibrating thunder of their great feet.

  For the first time, the nervous monsters began to get really excited. The noise kept them mentally off balance, and they were not thinking clearly. Their one impulse was to get away from the noisy, irritating creatures that seemed to swarm around them like angry bees. Not yet in a panic, but simply eager to escape, they followed the path of least resistance, which is usually the most dangerous road you can take, no matter what your destination. They lumbered skittishly down the line of howling humans, and as the sides of the funnel closed in, the noise increased. The mighty beasts lifted their powerful trunks and trumpeted angrily, and at last they broke into a run.

  The earth shook beneath the heavy tread of the quaro herd, and the noise was deafening. Excited by their own running, the monster mammoths went faster, and faster still. They covered the ground at a surprising rate of speed, and the Danequa were hard-pressed to keep up with them. Their frantic trumpeting redoubled in strength, and Mark shouted with wild exultation.

  The mammoth herd had stampeded.

  Across the great plains, down the funnel of death, the great beasts charged, their yellowish-brown wool and long black hair tossing, their long trunks extended, their gleaming ivory tusks curving and shaking in the sunlight of early morning. Closer and closer to the yawning cliff thundered the quaro, and with every smashing step their speed increased. They were in a wild run, their one thought to escape from the noise and confusion all around them.

  Too late, the lead mammoth saw the destruction which awaited him. He squealed horribly and tried to stop, his trunk waving frantically in the air as he sounded his warning to his fellows. But the time for thought was long past; the jaws of the trap had closed, and there was no mistake. Driven on by the bedlam behind them, and unable to see what lay ahead, the mammoths rushed down the rock-lined corridor of extinction. Their massed tons of bulk shoved then-struggling leader off the brink of the cliff, and he fell with a piteous bleat to the jagged rocks far below.

  There was no stopping the racing monsters. Over they went, by ones and twos and threes, to fall crushed and broken to the foot of the cliff where the old warriors waited to finish them off. The morning air was split by their screams, and Mark had to grit his teeth to go on. Man, the killer, was killing again—and the innocent animals of the earth fell before him.

  Mark could have saved his sympathy, however. There was one mammoth, at least, who had ideas of his own about who should be pitied. He was the last of the herd, he had seen his fellows die, and there was no mammoth behind him to push him over. Excited and confused as he was by the shouting bedlam all around him, he somehow stopped dead at the brink of the cliff. His red eyes glittered with hot fury, and he spun around to face his tormentors. He was at bay, and deadly dangerous.

  They had to get him over—it was now or never. The warrior nearest to him did not hesitate, but rushed at the monster, shouting and waving his spear. This mammoth was not having any of that! He was smart, and he had learned his lesson thoroughly. He stood solid as a rock, unmoving, and his powerful trunk snaked out with the sudden deadly accuracy of a whip and coiled itself about the charging man. The warrior did not live long enough to scream. With a contemptuous flip of his trunk, the mammoth tossed his body over the cliff, there to fall among the animals he had killed.

  There was a sudden hush among the Danequa. The mammoth poised himself triumphantly on the edge of the cliff, his trunk lashing out angrily. He stamped his huge foot and trumpeted loudly, his red eyes sweeping his enemies with hatred. For a long moment no man moved.

  Then Nranquar walked proudly out of the group of warriors and advanced on the waiting mammoth. He was determined to force him back before more damage was done, and he had a still-burning torch in his hand. He held it before him like a shield, and his step did not falter. Ashamed by this display of raw bravery, Mark stepped out and followed his enemy. Without a word, Tlaxcan walked at his side.

  Nranquar was still in the lead, and marching steadily. The mammoth watched him come, his red eyes glittering as they reflected the flames from the burning torch. He snorted, hesitated. He did not like the torch, and he was not keen about charging the massed Danequa warriors waiting in the rear. But the three men coming at him were a different story. If they thought they were going to scare him into stampeding off the cliff, they were sadly mistaken. He would stampede, and do it willingly enough. But he was going forward.

  With a trumpeting bellow, the mammoth charged.

  Chapter 15 No Longer Alone

  Time seemed to freeze as the mammoth hurled his | tons of fighting fury away from the cliff’s edge and I toward the three men who had dared to challenge I him. Mark had no time to
think, but his mind registered every tiny detail as the monster came toward him. lie saw the place where one of the mammoth’s curving tusks was chipped slightly on the tip, he saw the red tongue exposed when the trunk snaked upward in the air, he saw distinctly the four large toes on the mammoth’s raised foot. He heard the harsh, whistling breathing of the beast. He smelled its rank animal smell. He felt the earth shake under its charging tread.

  Nranquar desperately backed away, but he could not possibly move fast enough to get out of the mammoth’s path. He hurled his torch and the monster brushed it aside with his trunk. Nranquar stopped dead for a long instant, poised himself, and threw his spear with all his might. The shaft lanced through the air and imbedded itself in the mammoth’s left shoulder. It was a good throw, and it hurt the beast, as was evidenced by a snort of rage and pain. But it did not stop him; on the contrary, it speeded him up.

  The mammoth rushed at Nranquar who, defenseless, turned and ran. The man was not fast enough. The mammoth’s deadly trunk whipped out with lightning precision and slashed sideways, knocking Nranquar down like a club. The warrior moaned once, and was still, though he was still breathing. The mammoth stopped, trumpeted angrily, and lifted one massive foot to finish the job.

  Mark and Tlaxcan charged as one, shouting at the top of their lungs to distract the great beast from his task. The mammoth hesitated, his foot hanging in the air over the prostrate Nranquar, his eyes beadily watching the two rash animals who dared to charge him. Mark, somewhat lighter in build, outdistanced Tlaxcan by a few steps and raced right at the mammoth without pausing. He was actually between the long, curving tusks when the surprised monster backed up a step, freeing Nranquar, who struggled to get up but could not.

  Mark knew that he was very close to death, but he was determined to show his friends, and most particularly Nranquar, the stuff he was made of. Death was no stranger to him now, and he faced it calmly.

  The mammoth had moved back one step, but that was all. He was not going over that cliff, and that was that. He braced himself, bellowing. Mark, planted between the monster and the fallen Nranquar, so close to the mammoth that he could see the crooked red veins in his eyes, took a deep breath, aimed, and lunged with his spear, every ounce of his power and every pound of his weight behind the thrust. He felt the shock in his arms when the spear rammed home, and he heard the mad trumpeting of the bull mammoth. He could see the red blood staining the monster’s woolly coat—and he caught a sudden glimpse of mighty ivory tusks tossing angrily, their sharp points digging at him furiously.

  That was all that Mark remembered with any degree of clarity. A fiery pain stabbed through his side, and as he twisted away, something slammed into his skull with paralyzing force. He crumpled in front of the enraged mammoth, his face buried in the grass. Vaguely, as from an infinite distance, whispering down from the stars, he heard shouts and trumpetings as a battle to the death raged over his body. He heard Tlaxcan barking orders, and old Roqan telling everybody to stand aside and let a man in there. Something caught hold of his feet and he felt himself pulled along the grass, away from the fight. His brain began to spin, and whirled faster and faster, in many-colored circles and bubbles of light. His whole body seemed to be whirling, around and around, and now the colored light all flowed together and was shot through with darkness. Someone was running crazily through his brain, wearing a billowing cape of black velvet…

  Blackness. Silence. His soul drifted on an infinite sea of calmness that had no waves and yet washed the shores of the universe. Mark knew that he was dead. It was good to be dead, with nothing to worry about ever again. He had often wondered what it would be like to die, and he had feared it. But now that it had happened it wasn’t bad at all. Very pleasant, really, just drifting on forever . . .

  “Mark.”

  Someone was calling him. Who could it be? He was all alone on the sea. “Mark!”

  His uncle? What was he doing here, drifting with the dead? But no—his uncle was thousands of years away.

  “Mark!”

  Mark stirred. The vast, unmoving sea dissolved into nothingness. His head hurt. He opened his eyes and there was the sun and the blue sky. He saw a cloud. Mark moaned and decided that he was still alive. He wished that he were dead again.

  “It’s all right, Mark,” said a voice. It wasn’t his uncle, the voice did not speak English. “The quote-is dead, but you are alive. The great red flower will burn through the heavens many more times before you leave us. The evil spirits had you—they were dragging you away across the Sea of Shadows—but I have brought you back.”

  Mark’s dazed eyes swam back into focus and he saw the owner of the voice. It was Qualxen, the shaman. He was smiling broadly, well pleased with his success in driving out the spirits with his magic. Mark managed a smile in return.

  “You are the most powerful medicine man in all the world,” Mark assured him, his voice weak with shock.

  Qualxen positively beamed with delight. “Sleep now,” the shaman whispered soothingly. “Sleep, sleep . . .”

  Mark slept, and he did not dream. When he woke up again, it was dark. There was a robe over him, and his head was clear. He sat up, looking around.

  He felt surprisingly good; the pain in his side had diminished to a throbbing ache, and a careful exploration with his fingers assured him that nothing was broken. His head was sore where it had been hit by the swinging tusk, but the soreness was all on the surface. He felt a warm glow of relief wash through him. He had evidently just been knocked out, and was not seriously hurt.

  Mark got uncertainly to his feet, taking it easy at first, and at once a shadow detached itself from the others that filled the night and came to him.

  “You are back with us,” said a voice. “I have been watching you.”

  “Nranquar!” Mark said with surprise. “Is that you?”

  “Yes, it is Nranquar. The others are down below the cliff, cutting up the meat.”

  “What happened? The mammoth . . .”

  “Tlaxcan and Roqan drove him back—the whole tribe hit him at once. He died fighting, but no one else was injured.”

  There was an awkward silence then, and Mark became aware of the sounds drifting up from below the cliff—quiet laughter, the low voices of people at work, the chip-chip of stone tools. The world was curiously hushed after the bedlam of the hunt, and the silver moon was already high in a sea of stars, floating in lonely splendor through the night.

  “Mark?”

  “Yes?”

  “I—I owe my life to you,” Nranquar said haltingly. This man who faced death without a tremor was acutely embarrassed at showing his emotions, but he was trying. “I have stood in your way ever since you came among us, and now you have saved my life. My life is yours.”

  “It is forgotten,” Mark assured him, placing his hand on Nranquar’s shoulder. “I would be proud to call you my friend.”

  “You are one of the Danequa now,” Nranquar said softly. “You are my brother.”

  Mark felt a thrill go through him at the words, a thrill and a tingling happiness. A few short months ago—or fifty-two thousand years ago, perhaps—these people had not even existed as far as he was concerned. They were savages, names in a book, dawn men who had once roamed the earth. And now their friendship and approval meant more to him than anything else in his life. He did not spoil the moment with words; all had been said that needed to be said, and he knew that now, whatever happened, the Danequa were his people, and he was one of them.

  “Let us join the others,” Nranquar said finally. “They are waiting for us.”

  Following Nranquar’s lead, Mark felt his way down a path that led to the bottom of the cliff. The moon was bright and clear, but they did not need it when they reached the Danequa. Great fires were burning redly in the night, and the delicious smell of wood smoke filled the air, together with that of roasting meat. The Danequa were feasting while they worked, and they were tired but content. Mark noticed that they had recovered their
dead, and the two warriors they had lost slept the final sleep under a robe by the fire. Their loss somewhat dampened the spirits of the Danequa, but there were no demonstrations of grief. There would be time enough for that when the work was done. Nor was this lack of feeling on then-part, Mark realized. It was just that these people lived with death at their side always; death was no novelty to them, and they had to save their sorrow for when they had time for it. Time enough to remember the dead after they were buried with their weapons and charms—time enough to remember the dead on the long winter nights, when the families were alone, when the spirits howled and moaned down the snow-driven winds.

  Mark was greeted by soft smiles and cheerful waves that meant more to him than any enthusiastic demonstration could have possibly meant. He belonged now; he was not a hero, and did not want to be, but was simply one of the Danequa, sharing their joys and sorrows because they were his joys and sorrows.

  Tlaxcan grinned. “You are just in time to miss all the work,” he told him.

  Old Roqan came up, wearing his perpetual frown, bringing a choice piece of meat and a chunk of split bone loaded with juicy marrow. “Here,” he grunted, “since you are too late to work you might as well eat a little something.” He gave Mark the meat and the marrow, the twinkle in his eyes taking all the sting out of his words. Mark gratefully dug into the tangy meat, and sampled the marrow, which was considered quite a delicacy by the Danequa. The marrow was the soft, red tissue that filled the bone cavities, and Mark found it rather salty but very good after he got used to it.

  Roqal, the plump wife of Roqan, ran up, skipping and laughing, and told Mark that she thought he was just the bravest thing ever. He told her that she was beautiful, and she raced happily away to convey this surprising intelligence to her husband, who had different ideas.