"Could it … could it have been a spirit?" asked Hanar in a tentative whisper.
Aruk shook his head. He rose, gladly accepting the support of his frail sister.
"But the spirits let it happen," Noav said. He nearly growled it, staring down at the sprawled body. "They did not save her."
"Spirits!" It burst from Tral in a cracked squeak. His face, turning to the mate of his mother with large and fearful eyes. "The Eye of Mammut … it is gone!"
"What?" Aruk and Garu demanded as one.
"I saw that it was not there," Tral said. He looked like a child again, as though he would have given anything to be able to cling to his mother as his little siblings were doing. "When I left the cave this morning. Before I found her. It was gone."
"Gone?" Hanar was ashen. "We have lost the protection of the Eye? We are in the disfavor of the spirits! This is the beginning! Soon, we will all die!"
His fear inflamed the others. A splitting agony, as if his skull had been chopped in two by a hand-axe, drove Aruk to his knees again. A rolling cloud of blackness billowed up and swallowed him.
**
Garu and Fanri had finally quieted the tribe, except for the ceaseless sobs of Inasa and the weeping of her younger children. The way the Spirit-Man had plunged bonelessly to the unyielding ground had further frightened them. Not even Fanri's assurances could bring them much comfort.
"You are certain that the Eye is gone?" Garu asked the son of his mate.
Tral nodded. The leader's heart swelled with pride for the boy even as it twisted in grief for the boy's dead sister. No. Not a boy anymore. The young man. The hunter. Tral Wolf-Slayer.
"I do not doubt the word of a hunter," Garu said, "but I must see for myself."
"We cannot leave Chala here for the wolves," Fanri said. "Or my brother."
Garu blew out a breath that steamed in the cool of the morning. "Bring them. Prepare Chala. She will be buried."
"And what of the one who killed her?" Inasa, eyes puffed and red, raised her hands plaintively to him. "Who did this? Who?"
The leader looked from one hunter's face to the next. Rugged, bearded, scarred, familiar. Dark eyes beneath heavy brows. Skin browned and weathered by the sun. He could not believe it of any of them. They were closer than brothers, the hunters were. They had to be. Their lives depended on trust, and acting as one. It was the only way that they, smaller and lacking claws, could bring down the big game.
The idea that one of his own had done this was almost beyond his comprehension. Hunters killed for food. They did not eat of their own kind. Only when a man was slain in the hunt did his fellows gather around, cut open his chest, and share his heart among them so that his strength and courage would not be lost from the tribe. No hunter …
It came to him slowly, and he turned around to search the faces again.
"Where is Dyan?" Garu asked.
Everyone glanced around. Tral spoke up first.
"He was not in his sleeping-place when I left the cave. He and Chala both were gone."
"Dyan!" Noav spat the name like a bite of rotten food. "He has done this?"
"Why would he harm Chala?" Gyri, the daughter of Noav's mate, asked. "They were …"
She lapsed into silence as Noav scowled.
Garu held his hands around his mouth to call as loud as he could. "Dyan!"
A bird chattered crossly, but there was no other reply.
"He has fled, the coward," said Noav. "He cannot kill a bison, no, but he can kill a helpless woman. And he has taken the Eye of Mammut! He has taken the favor of the spirits from us!"
"If Dyan was skilled at anything," Hanar said, "it was climbing. I have seen him scale rocks that would make a goat afraid, or climb trees fast as a squirrel. He could have reached the Eye."
"He has not gone far," Noav said. "Her blood is not yet dry. First Hunter, I ask permission to track this killer."
"You have it," Garu said. "Bring back the Eye, and Dyan as well. I want to speak with him."
"Mate of my mother, I, too, want to go," Tral said. He looked surprised at himself. "Chala was my sister. I am next eldest."
"I do not need the help of a boy," Noav grumbled.
"Boy he may be, but he slew the wolf and he is a hunter now." Garu clapped Tral on the back, making him stagger. "He has earned the privilege."
Tral drew himself tall at this honor. Noav glowered as though he might challenge the decision, then jerked his head in a brusque nod. Beckoning to the younger hunter, he set off into the woods.
Garu watched them go. His massive chest heaved up and down. His fists clenched.
The she-wolf and her pups were swiftly skinned. Their carcasses were left to rot, though Hanar pried out teeth to be threaded on cords as a trophy necklace for Tral.
"How is Aruk?" Garu asked the old woman.
"He visits with the spirits yet," Fanri said, smoothing the Spirit-Man's graying mane back from his brow. "He will wake, in time."
Garu ordered two men to carry the unconscious Aruk between them. Their clumsy procession made its way back across the meadow to the mouth of the cave.
He could see for himself the absence where the Eye of Mammut should have been. A pang of dread stabbed his gut. Without that stone, that sacred spirit-stone, what would become of the tribe? They could no longer call themselves Those Who Are Protected By The Bright Eye Of Mammut. They would be at the mercy of hostile forces.
Chala was taken away to the place where the tribe buried their dead beneath cairns of river-rock. Aruk was taken into the cave to be tended. Everyone else searched all around, but the Eye was nowhere to be seen.
Handing his spear to his Third Hunter, Garu stripped off his outer wrap and made ready for the climb. It was hard going, his arms aching as he scrabbled for toe-holds on the rocky escarpment. The others stood in a loose ring beneath him, breathless with worry. Garu did not have to be a Spirit-Man to know what would be foremost in their minds - suppose that he fell? Suppose that Garu, First Hunter and leader of the tribe, broke his neck and died? What would happen to them then?
He shuddered, which nearly dislodged him and made that fate come true. Gritting his teeth, digging his fingers into the crevices of stone, he hauled himself up by brute strength and force of will.
The Eye was not there. But something else was, something that he caught up in his hand and looked at with disbelief.
It was a slice of mammoth tusk, polished smooth. A braided cord was threaded through the hole at its center. The ends of the cord were frayed, snapped.
The tusks of that mammoth had been his prize, and he had given pieces of them as gifts to his mother, his mate, his siblings, and his mate's children.
This was the one that Chala had worn.
**
The boy's words rang in Aruk's ears. The Eye of Mammut … gone … the Eye …
He remembered the day Garu had brought it back from the hunt. Leading the exhausted but triumphant men, all of them laden with meat and the rolled hide and the long ivory tusks. Aruk had watched them from his cave, far enough away to sense their excitement without being overrun.
An omen. A sign from the spirits. A token of good fortune. When the tribe needed it most, for it broke at long last the winter's brutal hold on the land.
From then on, the Eye of Mammut had held a guardian's place of honor, and the tribe had prospered. The women went out to gather food and came back with heaping baskets. Game all but leaped upon the hunter's spears. Many babies were born and thrived. The winters turned milder, the floods ran lower.
In all that time, there had been only four deaths. An old man to the infirmities of age, a young hunter to the tusks of a boar, Noav's mate in childbirth, and a girl-child swept away in the river.
Now …
Aruk revived with his head pounding but his mind no longer battered by the tumult of thoughts. He sensed them, yes, but fewer, calmer. The blackness that had engulfed him was fading.
Cool liquid bathed hi
s face. Fanri was very close, giving instructions to the other women. He smelled medicinal herbs, and broth.
His eyes opened, their lids feeling held down by pebbles. Not his cave. The tribe's cave, soaring higher than three men standing on one another's shoulders.
He sat up. Fanri pressed a birchbark cup into his hands. The tea was strong, laced with medicinal herbs. As he drank, he realized that the chip of flint was still in his hand, stuck to his skin by a dried blotch of Chala's blood. Aruk plucked it up and held it thoughtfully before his eyes.
Women scurried about, busy with their tasks. The children, who would normally have been poking into everything, sat quiet and watched the proceedings with large, haunted eyes.
Garu came into the cave, a loop of cord dangled from his fist. He brought the item to Aruk. "I found it above, caught on the rocks. How did it come to be there, Spirit-Man?"
Inasa had wailed anew at the sight and tried to touch it, but Garu held it out of her reach, his gaze fixed on Aruk. As if, once again, waiting for him to speak that which the tribe's leader already knew.
"Chala took the Eye of Mammut," Aruk said, bracing his mind against the onslaught. It came as expected, nearly flattening him.
"She climbed that? A woman?" Gyri asked, mouth hanging open in amazement.
"Why would Chala take the Eye?" Inasa demanded. "She was my eldest daughter, a woman of high status!"
"To try and bend the spirits to her will," Aruk said, feeling suddenly very old and very weary. "To force them to give a sign that would stop her becoming the mate of Noav."
Gyri stiffened indignantly. "My dead mother's mate is Second Hunter! A good provider! She -"
"Hush," said Fanri. "We all know Chala wanted Dyan for her mate."
Inasa's head drooped in shame. Her daughter … not yet mated, and therefore still her responsibility. And to have done something like this, for love of an unworthy hunter!
"But she did not have the Eye," she said, her tone pleading. "If she took it, where is it?"
"Dyan must have taken it from her." Garu's upper lip curled away from his tough yellow teeth in a snarl. "When he killed her."
**
Noav went swiftly, bent so low that he appeared to be following the trail by scent alone. Tral had to trot to keep up. He was already regretting his rash request to accompany the older hunter. Had, perhaps, regretted it the moment the words left his lips.
A wolf was one thing. A human animal was another.
They had found the spot where the brutal act had been done. There, the reeds were bent and broken. Flies buzzed over the bloodstains. Strands of Chala's hair were caught on low boughs. One of the fox tails had been torn from her belt and Tral picked it up, thinking how she had adored the plush russet fur.
His neck prickled as he imagined deadly eyes watching from the concealment of the shadows. He strained his ears, but heard only the breath of wind in the trees, the cries of birds, and the chuckle of a creek flowing briskly over stones.
"I smell smoke," he hissed to Noav.
They crept in the direction of the elusive scent. Their leather-shod feet were silent except when they trod upon crackling dry leaves, or snapped twigs.
The creek had eaten away the earth from the roots of a massive tree. Its roots framed an undercut hollow. On the muddy bank was a small ring of stones, and the charred remains of wood from which tendrils of smoke still drifted.
Tral saw a bundle resting just within the overhanging shelf, and recognized it as a laced-together sack of hides that Chala had made.
Within, deeper in the shadows, he thought he saw something else. Another bundle? Dyan's? And a spear slanted against the earthen wall.
He turned to point these out to Noav, but the older hunter had already seen. He indicated with a gesture that Tral should stay put.
Objections rose up in Tral, but he bit them back. He hunkered obediently, eyes fixed on the undercut of the tree, squinting past the sun-dazzle on the rippling creek as Noav disappeared into the underbrush.
The wait went on and on. Tral's skin crept. He felt the prickle on the back of his neck again. As if someone was near, and moving stealthily nearer. His palms sweated on the haft of his spear. He pressed a fingertip to the crust of wolf's blood, wishing for the speed and bravery of the wolf to enter into him.
A sharp snap of wood brought Tral whirling around. The ground beneath him was loose and crumbling, eaten away by the creek. His heel punched through and he fell, landing flat on his back with a tremendous splash. Droplets caught the sun, twinkling. Knobby rocks pressed painfully into his spine. He sat up.
His attacker leaped down after him. swinging a heavy club at Tral's head.
**
Against Fanri's advice, Aruk paced and paced. The noise of many thoughts overwhelmed him.
He needed privacy to hear the voices of the spirits. But the tribe was all around him, waiting, expectant. He was the Spirit-Man, after all.
With an inarticulate cry, Aruk raced for the mouth of the cave, stumbling over and kicking over items in other hearths. A sharp point jabbed his foot. Wincing, Aruk instinctively looked down.
He saw a flint knife poking out from beneath a pile of sleeping-furs.
The thoughts of the tribe were blotted out by an avalanche, cold and tumbling and deadly-white, in his mind. It froze him.
"What is it, wise Aruk?" asked Garu.
Aruk picked up the knife. It had been wiped, but not entirely. Brownish streaks discolored the flint.
A flake had been chipped from its edge.
Looking up at Garu, unable to speak, Aruk took the shard he had removed from Chala's neck and touched it to the knife. It fit perfectly.
"It was Noav," he said. "Noav killed her."
**
Tral simultaneously ducked and jabbed with his spear as the club swung down. He turned Noav just enough so that the blow smashed down on Tral's left shoulder instead of shattering his skull. An immense pain, at once icy and searing, burst over him. He heard a loud crack, felt his bones pop out of place.
He kicked with both feet, acting purely on instinct. His heels hit Noav's shins, knocking the bigger man off balance. As Noav went down with a horrible growl of fury, Tral somehow scrambled out of the creek.
His left arm flopped limp, sending new stabs of agony with each movement. He wanted to hug it to him with his undamaged right, but needed his good hand to cling to the spear.
Unable to climb from the gully, knowing that to run over the wet and slippery stones was futile, Tral ducked into the dark undercut cave in the bank.
Dyan lay face-down on the ground. A pulpy, matted mess was all that remained of the back of his head.
Tral tripped on the corpse and went sprawling, bringing fresh pain crashing over his entire body. A shadow blotted out the light of the entrance.
Noav had to bend double to enter, giving Tral time to scramble to his feet. There was a niche at the rear of the little cave, some animal's burrow littered with old bones and droppings. Despite the pain of his useless arm, he wormed into it.
"You did it," he gasped.
"Come out of there, boy!" Noav reached in, his huge hand coming at Tral's face.
Tral bit deep, tasting dirt and blood. Noav bellowed and snatched his arm back out. Panting, each exhalation a whine that made him remember the wolf cubs, Tral groped for his knife.
Noav picked up an indifferently-made spear that must have been Dyan's. Tral struggled and twisted as he tried to retreat deeper into the burrow. Loose soil rained down on him. More fell as the spear jabbed into the earthen roof, but the angle was too awkward for it to find his flesh.
Noav glared in at him. "And they would call you a hunter, hiding in a hole like a rabbit. Pah!" He spat. "Come out and die like the man you think you are."
**
Aruk was only dimly aware of Garu holding him upright and helping him walk. He heard the First Hunter's urgent queries as a distant and unimportant murmur.
"Not far now," Aruk said. "I sense him, I feel him, so angry. Like a forest fire."
Noav. Angry, yes, waking in the night at their secretive whisperings. The ungrateful woman who should have been his mate … a proper prize for the Second Hunter … Chala, plump and enticing … fleeing the tribe with her worthless lover.
Bad enough that she should prefer Dyan, who could give her nothing! It was a slap to his face. But the offense was made worse when he heard them climbing the cliff, and understood that they meant to take the Eye of Mammut …
"Chala told Dyan that when the tribe learned the Eye was gone," Aruk whispered, hearing himself as if from very far away, "we would be in such terror of the spirits that we would agree to anything to have it back. Even the Old-Mothers would bend, and allow them to become mates."
He was lost in Noav's mind, reliving the Second Hunter's fury as he went in pursuit of Chala and Dyan.
Seeing it in the eyes of Noav's red-rage memory, Aruk recoiled from the image of Chala laughing as she carelessly tossed the Eye from hand to hand.
Dyan, for all his laziness, had fought to defend himself and the woman he loved. But he was no match for the maddened Noav. Aruk saw the back of Dyan's head crushing in. Saw his body falling, lying still.
Saw Chala, running, screaming. Saw a golden shimmer at Noav's feet. Saw him picking it up, thrusting it safely into the pouch where he kept his tools, before he gave chase.
Aruk pulled himself away from Garu, seizing a tree to support himself. His breath tore hotly in and out of his lungs.
"Chasing her," he groaned. "Catching her. Hair in his grasp. Her screams. Had to make her stop. Couldn't alert the tribe. Couldn't be found. The knife … pulling her head back by the hair … the edge, so sharp, ripping deep …"
And then the rest of it. Leaving her body near the wolves. Returning to the cave, meaning to replace the Eye in its spot of honor before anyone knew. But the boy awoke too soon, his shouts awakening the rest.
"He will kill Tral," Aruk said, bringing himself back to the here-and-now with a heroic effort. He stared into Garu's shocked brown eyes. "He will kill the boy, and say that Dyan did it."