by Kevin Ashman
The faint blue glow became brighter as Kraiach returned to the lagoon. He looked down at the remaining members of his once great tribe and though there were no pictures behind his eyes, his senses were overwhelmed with the emotions radiating from the assembled watchers.
‘Mwrllwch, come,’ he commanded
He dropped back down into the depression, and after a moment, the tribe walked slowly and nervously up the soft floor of the cavern, reluctant to face whatever it was that had caused their leader to cry out in fear.
Kraiach stood before the vertical rear wall of the cave, his small lantern raised up to shed light on the flat surface. The tribe had gathered close, still shaken from their abrupt awakening in this otherworldly place, staring in awe at the scene illuminated by the blue flickering light. Looking down at them from the vertical rock face was a huge Mammoth head, staring with wild bloodshot eyes, tusks dripping with blood, and trunk raised in anger. Brola shouted and rushed forward to stab the beast ferociously with his spear, shattering the stone tipped weapon as it impacted uselessly against the two dimensional rock images.
‘Stop!’ ordered Kraiach. ‘It does not live.’
Brola picked up his broken spear and nervously prodded the realistic painting, not sure that Kraiach was correct. Nervously others drew near, touching the beast’s image at arm’s length. They had never seen such a thing.
More lamps were lit and the wall was illuminated in glorious colour. Though the Mammoth head was the centre piece, the complete wall was covered from end to end with sweeping scenes of hunting and tribal life. Beasts of all types and sizes were depicted all over the wall varying from single line drawings, to full colour animal portraits, but none as glorious and lifelike as the Mammoth head.
Stick-like humanoid figures were depicted, spears in hand, surrounding Reindeer, Rhinoceros and other beasts of the plain, while others just showed solitary animals, most of which Kraiach recognized and had hunted himself. Kraiach mentally named them in his mind as he recognized them; the bear, deer, auroch, pig, lion, and hyena. Others he had not hunted, or even seen before.
At the end of the wall was the most puzzling scene of all. A stick figure stood tall above many small sketches of Mammoth of different sizes. Some were bigger than others and the further along the wall he went, the smaller the animals became. Kraiach struggled with the perspective. Why were the Mammoth smaller than the watcher? Why were they different sizes? Why were there so many?
Kraiach thought of his many hunts. When he was high on a hill, the deer of the plain had also seemed small. Realization dawned. He was looking at the Mammoth from the figures perspective. The larger pictures were nearer to the stick man and the smaller they got, the further away they were, but...why so many?
Realization gave way to shock. There were so many because.......there were so many! Where was this place, where Mammoths were as numerous as the deer? He had not seen a single Mammoth since he was a child and this wall that told a story to his eyes said there was a place where a Mwrllwch could hunt as many Mammoth as he could see. His mind spun as walked along the wall and Kraiach finally realized that this was not a depiction of a place, but of a time. This was a picture of before the long ago.
Back at the Mammoth portrait, Brola’s feet hit something hard on the floor and he glanced down at the off-white sharp bone protruding through the leaf litter. He scuffed the rotting mixture of leaves, soil and bat guano with his feet revealing more and more of the circular bone, getting wider the further down he probed. The digging was easy in the soft mulch, and soon several hands were helping him dig out the now recognizable relic. Soon the command reverberated around the cave.
‘Kraiach come!’ Brola called.
Kraiach turned reluctantly away from the wondrous scenes and walked back to the group in the hollow. They were sitting on the slope of the earthen bowl, watching as Brola and Morlak uncovered the half-buried discovery. They paused, as Kraiach gazed at the familiar remains.
The sharp bone tip that had cut Brola’s foot turned out to be one of a pair of upturned Mammoth tusks, still attached to the enormous sightless skull, its eye sockets filled with detritus, giving it a surreal look. Kraiach looked at the skull, then at the picture on the wall and then back again. If the head still had the meat and fur, it would be the same size as the picture on the wall. This was obviously the same animal.
Kraiach struggled with the thoughts and scenes clouding his mind. The dead beast at his feet still lived on the rock above where he lay. This was truly a wondrous place, a place from the long ago, where beasts still lived, yet were dead. A place where pictures like those in his dreams showed hunts where Mammoth numbered more than any other beast. He needed to know more, and made a decision. The tribe would stay here during the cold that was coming. They were safe from the beasts, it would keep them dry from the white feathers, there was water to drink and the forest was near for the hunt.
Eventually, the tribe returned to the water’s edge, while Brola and Morlak carried on with their excavation. Several more of the men waded back out of the cave to hunt for meat, and to gather fire wood, while the women and children waited on the rock ledge, patient and quiet.
----
Chapter 12
The snow lay heavy in the valley by the sea. Though the winter had not been as bad as they had feared, the sun still had little warmth and struggled to melt the snow on the ground. The flesh of the Morfil had lasted long through the cold days and had been supplemented with shellfish, seaweed and the odd mammal hunted in the nearby enormous forest.
The cavern was light and warm from the roaring fire in its centre, casting dancing shadows on all the wall surfaces. Smaller hearths went unlit at each family location, conserving the dwindling supply of damp firewood. The hunters were getting restless and talked of the hunt that they would have to undertake soon. The dried meat had almost gone and the fruit baskets were empty. Memories of the feasts in the summer were fondly recalled, mouths watering at the recollections.
Tan told enthralled young men the story of how he had cornered a Long-tooth cat in this very cave when he was young, and had killed him after a long and bloody battle, earning his name, but losing his eye in the process. They had heard the story before, but it grew in realism when told in the eerie fire lit darkness where the confrontation actually took place. Young boys took the rare opportunity of handling the giant cat’s massive incisors that gave it its name, Tan’s usual aloof demeanour easing in the enforced confines of the cave.
‘Did you ever hunt Mammoth?’ asked Alid, giving his neighbour a nudge with his elbow when he sniggered. Tan smiled benignly.
‘When I was a boy, I was not of the Fire-clan,’ he said. ‘I was born into a people that roamed the Great Plains in the wake of the mighty herds of Mammoth that roamed our lands. Our clothes were made from the soft skin of the calf, and our bellies were always full of meat.’
‘They were good times,’ he continued, ‘but they were also hard times. We fought the giant lion and the hyena that came to steal our kill. Many died, but soon we grew stronger than the Rheibwr and we came to dominate the steppe. The herds were plenty and we lived alongside them, only killing when we were hungry or taking the weak and the old.’
Tan went on to recall the hunts when a single Mammoth was identified and the final life and death struggle was between man and beast alone. The clan would hunt and eventually surround the exhausted animal, wounding it over and over again with arrow and spear. Finally, when the giant mammal was weak through blood loss, a young hunter would be selected to supply the killing blow. All the young men around the fire leaned forward slightly, listening intently as they imagined themselves in the story.
‘The selected boy,’ continued Tan, ‘would stand in front of the beast and beg forgiveness for what was about to happen, and after offering thanks to the Sun-god and to the beast for giving the clan its life, he would receive the Hell-farch from the chief.
Tan described how the Shaman distracted the confuse
d dying Mammoth with their rhythmic chanting and loud drum beats, and the selected young man would advance to the side of the exhausted beast, and screaming his killing cry, drive the stake into its massive pumping heart. The thrust took every ounce of the hunter’s strength, and if it did not strike home, he had a great chance of being killed by tusk, trunk or giant hairy foot.
The boys around the fire were enthralled at the description from the chief. If the killing strike was true, then the hunter gained great kudos and after the Shaman had taken the animals heart, he earned first choice of meat from the carcass. In addition, the hide was his to set up his own hut and claim a wife. It was a very important time for a young hunter and a rite of passage not only welcomed, but eagerly anticipated by all the young men of the clan. Tan’s voice grew quieter and sadder
‘But not all treated the Mammoth with such respect,’ he continued. ‘Many clans took the chance to kill for the sake of killing and often they drove whole herds over cliffs to their death. They took all they could carry and stored as much as they could, but even then, there was far more than they could use. After a few days the mountains of un-skinned Mammoth spoilt on the bone, and the smell would be so bad that they would be left to rot, and only the scavengers feasted on their great death.’
Tan looked back in sadness. The days of the Mammoth hunt had ended long ago and none of the giant beast had been killed with the killing spear for many, many summers. His mouth watered at the memory of the roast Mammoth steaks and his heart ached for the majesty of the hunt. But it would be no more. The Mammoth were gone. The people had killed them all.
Tan went on to recall that with the demise of the giant beasts, the Mammoth clan eventually lost their identity and purpose, and despite a few summers searching further and further north toward the ice walls, they slowly imploded. Finally, when a hunting party failed to return during the depths of winter, the women took the remaining children south and searched for another clan to join, leaving a trail of frozen corpses in their wake, young and old alike. If it wasn’t for a hunting party of the Fire-clan coming across his lone half-frozen frame alongside a long cold fire and the body of his even colder mother, Tan would never have been able to use his skill and guile to eventually become chief and lead this successful group over so many years, eventually returning to the area of his birth to find the Hell-farch.
‘So you are the last of the Mammoth-clan!’ said Alid.
‘It is true,’ answered Tan. ‘When you lay my tired bones beneath the soil, the last of my great people will have disappeared as dust in the wind. I will join with my father Blaidd-du, the last great chief of the Mammoth-clan as he hunts the plains of the Sun-god, and my brother Coeden, who was lost with the last hunting party as they sought food for our starving bellies.’
Tan fell silent, staring into the flames. As it became obvious there would be no more stories from the old man that night, the boys dispersed from his fire, leaving him to his memories.
----
Golau sat at his own hearth making arrows for his bow, watched closely by Little-bear. Taking the thin straight willow branches, he stripped the bark and smoothed out any gnarled knots with his flint knife. He picked up two sandstone stones and drew the willow over and over again between the abrasive surfaces, sanding out any final imperfections, repeatedly sighting down the shaft until satisfied it was perfectly straight. When happy with his work, he hardened the moist but straight willow branch by carefully rolling it in the fire flames until all the moisture had hissed out and the shaft had blackened in the heat.
He took a flint the size of his fist and carefully examined its surface, looking for a good site to strike with his rock hammer. Aiming carefully, he struck sharply, forcing a sliver of flint from its host. He examined the splinter and repeated the exercise several times until a suitable arrowhead shaped shard fell from the source stone. He cautiously notched the end of the arrow shaft with his knife, making sure the wood didn’t split and adjusted the depth until the arrowhead fitted snugly in the carefully formed slot.
Happy that the fit was good, Golau took a piece of hardened tree sap and held it over a flame to soften. He rubbed the resulting soft gel over the notch in the arrow shaft and carefully placed the arrowhead in its socket, removing any excess after filling in any gaps around the flint. Before the sap got cold, he wrapped a thin strip of soaked animal hide, stretched tight, around the neck of the arrow, and secured it with a length of sinew, harvested from a previous kill specifically for this purpose. When the hide was securely in place, it would dry and shrink, securing the arrowhead in its new home, wood married to stone in a permanent vice like grip.
Golau turned the arrow over to attach the flight. Selecting two similar sized Blackbird’s wing feathers from his stock of many, he trimmed one side of each so there were only feather strands on one side of each quill. He used more melted tree sap to stick each quill into position on opposite sides of the arrow shaft and waited for it to dry. Finally, he wrapped a length of fine sinew around the end of the shaft to tie plume to wood, carefully prizing several feather strands at a time apart to insert the sinew between their delicate spines and closing them back together as the natural twine clamped the quill spine against arrow shaft. Finally, he sighted down the finished arrow and grunted his satisfaction.
The hunter sat up, stretching his back. It was his third arrow that evening and there were always more to make. Little-bear picked up an untrimmed, leafy willow branch from the pile on the cave floor and offered it to his father hesitantly. Golau looked down the shaft, and acknowledged Little-bear’s selection.
‘You choose well, Little-bear,’ he said, ‘this one will fly true and make a great kill.’
Little-bear grinned and he settled down, chin in his hands to watch the process for the fourth time that day. Inwardly Golau sighed. This one would take much work to straighten.
----
Sky sat at the hearth of her parents, eating slowly of the last of the tasteless whale flesh. Mon-du was asleep and Raven once again weaved a basket from stored strips of bark.
‘Why must the clan die so young, Raven?’ she asked after a few minutes. Raven looked at her daughter.
‘I do not understand, Sky,’ she replied.
‘Every cycle we send so many to the Sun-god,’ said Sky, ‘so many tears are shed around the fires’.
‘We must eat, Sky,’ she said softly. ‘The beasts must be killed or we will all travel to the sun, but sometimes, the beasts are greater than the hunter.’
‘But why,’ she asked, staring into the fire, ‘why must we always hunt the beasts? Why can we not live on the fish or the berries? Why is it that the beasts live season after season yet only eat the grass?’
‘I do not know this answer, Sky,’ she said, ‘though, have you ever tasted grass?’ she laughed gently.
Sky smiled, feeling a little better. After a few minutes, she continued, warming to the subject.
‘Raven, where do the dogs come from?’
Raven thought for a moment, off balance from the strange and unexpected question.
‘The clan dogs?’ she asked looking over at a scabby animal busy scratching deep into his shaggy fur.
‘Yes, where are they from?’
‘They have always been, Sky. They scare away the beasts of the night and warn of nearby danger.’
Sky turned to her mother, her thoughts racing and eager eyes glistening.
‘Yes, I know, but where do they come from? I mean apart from their mothers, surely they are nothing but wolves.’
‘It is said that our ancestors welcomed wolves to their hearths many lifetimes ago,’ replied Raven-hair.
‘Why do they not return to their own kind?’ continued Sky.
‘At first, the ancestors would break a leg bone to stop them fleeing, but they came to like the taste of our hunt and the warmth of our hearth. When the leg was strong again, they stayed at the hearth and when their young were born they accepted our ways.’
‘But
they could return if they wanted?’ asked Sky.
‘They have no honour and are turned away from their own kind in the forest’
Sky returned to her furs with another piece of whale meat, her thoughts racing.
‘Raven-hair,’ she said eventually, sitting up.
Raven put down her bark skin basket and joined Sky on the skins picking up a bone comb to detangle her daughter’s hair.
‘I have thoughts, Raven,’ said Sky, ‘there can be another way.’
----
Sky continued to talk with Raven-hair well into the night, exploring her strange ideas, arguing and counter arguing, giving reasons and discussing problems. Gradually, the other women, Keera, Fox-tooth, and the others joined them. Mirth gave way to consideration, doubt was overtaken by enthusiasm, and when they finally went to their hearths, an idea had formed. It was a turning point, not just in the fortunes of the clan, but also in the evolution of mankind itself.
The following morning, Sky was deep in conversation with Raven. The enthusiasm for her earlier ideas had waned with the women as they realized that the men would not go for the idea. Their pride would never allow it.
‘I have no voice at the fire,’ said Sky, ‘I will speak my ideas to Golau and ask him to speak for me.’
‘No, Sky,’ said Raven, ‘You are asking for great change. The voice must be Tan’s. If he does not hear you, no one will.’ It was decided. That night, Sky approached Tan and asked to speak to him alone. For the next few hours, they talked, uninterrupted by any clan member except with arrival of food carried by Keera. Tan mouthed the soft, already chewed meat, taking the time to consider the strange ideas.
Sky knew she had spoken well. She had outlined the ideas in detail, covering all the angles and carefully laid mind traps for the old man to fall into. She posed possible problems as she went, giving Tan the opportunity to come up with the solutions, even though she had already covered every resolution in her own mind. Where necessary, she gave ground in her scheming, enabling the old hunter to maintain the traditions of the clan. Finally, she played on his paternal instinct, outlining the alternatives if they kept losing hunters as they had over the past few seasons, and reminded him of how great a chief he was and the obligations he had to his people.