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The visitor looked at Frebec in disbelief, then settled back and prepared to listen to the stories the Lion Camp had to tell.
In the morning, after a long night of storytelling, Ludeg was given an example of Ayla’s and Jondalar’s horse-riding skills, and was suitably impressed. He left for the next Camp ready to spread the word of the new Mamutoi woman, along with his news of the changed location of the Summer Meeting. The Lion Camp planned to leave the next morning, and the balance of the day was spent in last-minute preparations.
Ayla decided to take more medicines than she usually carried in her medicine bag, and was going through her supply of herbs, talking with Mamut while he packed. The Clan Gathering was much on her mind, and watching the old shaman favor his stiff joints, she recalled that the old people of the Clan, unable to make the long trek, had been left behind. How was Mamut going to manage a long trip? It bothered her enough to go outside and look for Talut, to ask.
“I carry him most of the way, on my back,” Talut explained.
She noticed Nezzie adding a bundle to the pile of things that would be hauled on the travois by the horses. Rydag was sitting on the ground nearby looking disconsolate. Suddenly Ayla went looking for Jondalar. She found him arranging the traveling pack Tulie had given him.
“Jondalar! There you are,” she said.
He looked up, startled. She was the last person he expected to see at that moment. He had just been thinking about her, and how to say goodbye to her. He had decided this was the time, when everyone was leaving the lodge, for him to leave, too. But instead of going with the Lion Camp to the Summer Meeting, he would go the other way and begin his long trek home.
“Do you know how Mamut gets to the Summer Meeting?” Ayla asked.
The question took him entirely by surprise. It was not the most pressing thing on his mind. He wasn’t even sure what she was talking about. “Uh … no,” he said.
“Talut has to carry him, on his back. And then there’s Rydag. He has to be carried, too. I was thinking, Jondalar, you’ve been training Racer, he’s used to carrying someone on his back now, isn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“And you can control him, he will go where you want him to, won’t he?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“Good! Then there’s no reason Mamut and Rydag can’t ride to the Meeting on the horses. They can’t guide them, but you and I can lead them. It would be so much easier on everyone, and Rydag has been so unhappy lately, it might raise his spirits. Remember how excited he was the first time he rode on Whinney? You don’t mind, do you, Jondalar? We don’t need to ride, everyone else is walking,” Ayla said.
She was so pleased and excited about the idea it was obvious she hadn’t even considered that he might not be going with them. How could he refuse her? he thought. It was a good idea, and the Lion Camp had done so much for him, it seemed the least he could do.
“No. I don’t mind walking,” Jondalar said. He felt a strange sense of lightness as he watched Ayla go to tell Talut, as though a terrible weight had been lifted. He hurried to finish packing, then picking up his gear, went to join the rest of the Camp. Ayla was supervising the loading of the two travois. They were nearly ready to go.
Nezzie saw him coming and smiled at him. “I’m glad you decided to come with us and help Ayla with the horses. Mamut is going to be much more comfortable, I think, and look at Rydag! I haven’t seen him this excited about going to a Summer Meeting ever.”
Why did he have the feeling, Jondalar wondered, that Nezzie knew he had been thinking of going home?
“And think what an impression it will make when we arrive not only with horses, but with people riding on them,” Barzec said.
“Jondalar, we were waiting for you. Ayla wasn’t sure who should ride on which horse,” Talut said.
“I don’t think it makes any difference,” Jondalar said. “Whinney is a little easier to ride. She doesn’t bounce you as hard.”
He noticed that Ranec was helping Ayla balance the loads. He cringed inwardly when he saw them laughing together, and realized how temporary his reprieve was. He had only put off the inevitable, but he was committed now. After Mamut made mysterious gestures and spoke esoteric words, he stuck a muta in the ground at the front entrance to guard the lodge, and then with help from Ayla and Talut, mounted Whinney He seemed nervous, but it was hard to tell. Jondalar thought he was hiding it well.
Rydag was not nervous, though, he had been on the back of a horse before. He was just excited when the tall man picked him up and put him on Racer’s back. He had never ridden the stallion. He grinned at Latie, who was watching him, with a mixture of concern for his safety, delight at his new experience, and just a bit of envy. She had observed Jondalar training the horse, as much as she could from a distance, since it was hard to convince another woman to go with her just to stand around and watch—there were drawbacks to adulthood. She decided training a young horse wasn’t necessarily magical. It just took patience, and of course, a horse to train.
A last check was made of the Camp, and then they started up the slope. Halfway up, Ayla stopped. Wolf did too, watching her expectantly. She looked back at the earthlodge where she had found a home and acceptance among her own kind. She missed its snug security already, but it would be there when they returned, ready to shelter them again through a long cold winter. Wind riffled the drape across the archway of mammoth tusks at the entrance, and she could see the skull of the cave lion above it. The Lion Camp seemed lonely without people. Ayla of the Mamutoi shivered with a sudden uneasy pang of sadness.
30
The great grasslands, bountiful source of life in that cold land, displayed yet another face of the renewing cycle as the Lion Camp traveled. The bluish-violet and yellow flowers of the last dwarf iris were fading but still colorful, and fernleaf peonies were in full bloom. A broad bed of the dark red blossoms filling the entire depression between two hills caused exclamations of wonder and appreciation from the travelers. But it was the young bluegrass and ripening fescue and feather grasses that predominated, turning the steppes into waves of softly billowing silver accented by shadows of blue sage. Not until later, after the young grass grew ripe and the feather grass lost its plumes, would the rich plains change from silver to golden.
The young wolf took delight in discovering the multitude of small animals that lived and thrived on the vast prairie. He dashed after polecats and stoats—ermine in summer-brown coats—and backed off when the dauntless predators held their ground. When mice, voles, and velvety-furred shrews, who were used to evading foxes, scurried into holes burrowed just below the surface, Wolf chased gerbils, hamsters, and long-eared, prickly hedgehogs. Ayla
laughed at his look of startled surprise when a thick-tailed jerboa, with short forelegs, and three toes on its long hind legs, bounded away in jumps and dived into the burrow in which it had hibernated all winter. Hares, giant hamsters, and great jerboas were large enough for a meal, and tasty when skinned and skewered over an evening fire. Ayla’s sling brought down several that Wolf flushed.
The digging steppe rodents were beneficial, loosening and turning over the topsoil, but some changed the character of the land with their extensive burrowing. As the Lion Camp hiked overland, the ubiquitous holes of spotted susliks were too numerous to count, and in some areas they had to wend their way around hundreds of grass-covered mounds, two to three feet high, each a community of steppe marmots.
Susliks were the preferred prey of black kites, though the long-winged hawks also fed on other rodents, and carrion and insects as well. The graceful birds usually detected the unsuspecting susliks while soaring in the air, but the kite could also hover like a kestrel, the native falcon, or fly very low to take its prey by surprise. Besides hawks and falcons, the tawny eagle favored the prolific little rodent. On one occasion, when Ayla noticed Wolf striking a pose that caused her to look closer, she saw one of the large dark brown predatory birds land near its nest on the ground, bringing a suslik to its young. She watched with interest, but neither she nor the wolf disturbed them.
