Clan of the Cave Bear (4 page)

The man in the lead glanced back and saw the woman kneeling beside the child. He walked back to them.

“Iza! Come!” he commanded. “Cave lion tracks and scat ahead.”

“It’s a child, Brun. Hurt but not dead,” she replied.

Brun looked at the thin young girl with the high forehead, small nose, and strangely flat face. “Not Clan,” the leader gestured abruptly and turned to walk away.

“Brun, she’s a child. She’s hurt. She’ll die if we leave her here.” Iza’s eyes pleaded as she made the hand signals.

The leader of the small clan stared down at the imploring woman. He was much bigger than she, over five feet tall, heavily muscled and powerful, with a deep barrel chest and thick bowed legs. The cast of his features was similar, though more pronounced—heavier supraorbital ridges,
larger nose. His legs, stomach, chest, and upper back were covered with a coarse brown hair that was not enough to be called a pelt, but not far from it. A bushy beard hid his chinless jutting jaw. His wrap was similar, too, but not as full, cut shorter, and tied differently, with fewer folds and pouches for holding things.

He carried no burdens, only his outer fur wrap, suspended on his back by a wide band of leather wrapped around his sloping forehead, and his weapons. On his right thigh was a scar, blackened like a tattoo, shaped roughly like a U with the tops flaring outward, the mark of his totem, the bison. He needed no mark or ornament to identify his leadership. His bearing and the deference of the others made his position clear.

He shifted his club, the long foreleg of a horse, from his shoulder to the ground, supporting the handle with his thigh, and Iza knew he was giving her plea serious consideration. She waited quietly, hiding her agitation, to give him time to think. He set his heavy wooden spear down and leaned the shaft against his shoulder with the sharpened, fire-hardened point up, and adjusted the bola he wore around his neck along with his amulet so the three stone balls were more evenly balanced. Then he pulled a strip of pliable deerskin, tapered at the ends with a bulge in the middle to hold stones for slinging, out of his waist thong, and pulled the soft leather through his hand, thinking.

Brun didn’t like making quick decisions about anything unusual that might affect his clan, especially now when they were homeless, and he resisted the impulse to refuse at once. I should have known Iza would want to help her, he thought; she’s even used her healing magic on animals sometimes, especially young ones. She’ll be upset if I don’t let her help this child. Clan or Others, it makes no difference, all she can see is a child who is hurt. Well, maybe that’s what makes her a good medicine woman.

But medicine woman or not, she is just a woman. What difference will it make if she’s upset? Iza knows better than to show it, and we have enough problems without a wounded stranger. But her totem will know, all the spirits will. Would it make them more angry if she’s upset? If we find a cave … no, when we find a new cave, Iza will have to make her drink for the cave ceremony. What if she’s so upset she makes a mistake? Angry spirits could make it go
wrong, and they’re angry enough already. Nothing must go wrong with the ceremony for the new cave.

Let her take the child, he thought. She’ll soon get tired of carrying the extra load, and the girl is so far gone, not even my sibling’s magic may be strong enough to save her. Brun tucked his sling back in his waist thong, picked up his weapons, and shrugged noncommittally. It was up to her; Iza could take the girl with them or not as she pleased. He turned and strode off.

Iza reached into her basket and pulled out a leather cloak. She wrapped it around the girl, hoisted her up, and secured the unconscious child to her hip with the aid of the supple hide, surprised at how little she weighed for her height. The girl moaned as she was lifted and Iza patted her reassuringly, then fell into place behind the two men.

The other women had stopped, holding back from the encounter between Iza and Brun. When they saw the medicine woman pick something up and take it with her, their hands flew in rapid motions punctuated by a few guttural sounds, discussing it with excited curiosity. Except for the otter-skin pouch, they were dressed the same as Iza, and as heavily burdened. Among them they carried all the clan’s worldly possessions, those that had been salvaged from the rubble after the quake.

Two of the seven women carried babies in a fold of their wraps next to their skin, convenient for nursing. While they were waiting, one felt a drop of warm wetness, whipped her naked infant out of the fold, and held it in front of her until it was through wetting. When they weren’t traveling, babies were often wrapped in soft swaddling skins. To absorb moisture and soft milky stools, any of several materials were packed around them: fleece from wild sheep gathered from thorny shrubs when the mouflon were shedding, down from birds’ breasts, or fuzz from fibrous plants. But while they traveled, it was easier and simpler to carry babies naked and, without missing a step, let them mess on the ground.

When they started out again, a third woman picked up a young boy, supporting him on her hip with a leather carrying cloak. After a few moments, he squirmed to get down and run by himself. She let him go, knowing he would be back when he got tired again. An older girl, not yet a woman but carrying a woman’s load, walked behind the woman who followed Iza, glancing back now and then at a
boy, very nearly a man, trailing the women. He tried to allow enough distance between himself and them so it would seem he was one of the three hunters bringing up the rear and not one of the children. He wished he had game to carry, too, and even envied the old man, one of the two flanking the women, who carried a large hare over his shoulder, felled by a stone from his sling.

The hunters were not the only source of food for the clan. The women often contributed the greater share, and their sources were more reliable. Despite their burdens, they foraged as they traveled, and so efficiently it hardly slowed them down. A patch of day lilies was quickly stripped of buds and flowers, and tender new roots exposed with a few strokes of the digging sticks. Cattail roots, pulled loose from beneath the surface of marshy backwaters, were even easier to gather.

If they hadn’t been on the move, the women would have made a point of remembering the location of the tall stalky plants, to return later in the season to pick the tender tails at the top for a vegetable. Later still, yellow pollen mixed with starch pounded from the fibers of old roots would make doughy unleavened biscuits. When the tops dried, fuzz would be collected; and several of the baskets were made from the tough leaves and stalks. Now they gathered only what they found, but little was overlooked.

New shoots and tender young leaves of clover, alfalfa, dandelion; thistles stripped of prickles before they were cut down; a few early berries and fruits. The pointed digging sticks were in constant use; nothing was safe from them in the women’s deft hands. They were used as a lever to overturn logs for newts and delectable fat grubs; freshwater molluscs were fished out of streams and pushed closer to shore for easy reach; and a variety of bulbs, tubers, and roots were dug out of the ground.

It all found its way to the convenient folds of the women’s wraps or an empty corner of their baskets. Large green leaves were wrappers, some of them, such as burdock, cooked as greens. Dry wood, twigs, and grass, and dung from grazing animals, were collected too. Though the selection would be more varied later in the summer, food was plentiful—if one knew where to look.

Iza looked up when an old man, past thirty, hobbled up to her after they were on their way again. He carried neither
burden nor weapon, only a long staff to help him walk. His right leg was crippled and smaller than the left, yet he managed to move with surprising agility.

His right shoulder and upper arm were atrophied and the shriveled arm had been amputated below the elbow. The powerful shoulder and arm and muscular leg of his fully developed left side made him appear lopsided. His huge cranium was even larger than those of the rest of the clan, and the difficulty of his birth had caused the defect that crippled him for life.

He was also a sibling of Iza and Brun, first-born, and would have been leader but for his affliction. He wore a leather wrap cut in the masculine style and carried his warm outer fur, which was also used as a sleeping fur, on his back as the other men did. But he had several pouches hanging from his waist thong and a cloak similar to the kind the women used which held a large bulging object to his back.

The left side of his face was hideously scarred and his left eye was missing, but his good right eye sparkled with intelligence, and something more. For all his hobbling, he moved with a grace that came from great wisdom and a sureness of his place within the clan. He was Mog-ur, the most powerful magician, most awesome and revered holy man of all the clans. He was convinced that his wasted body was given to him so that he could take his place as intermediary with the spirit world rather than at the head of his clan. In many ways he had more power than any leader, and he knew it. Only close relatives remembered his birth name and called him by it.

“Creb,” Iza said in greeting and acknowledged his appearance with a motion that meant she was pleased he had joined her.

“Iza?” he questioned with a gesture toward the child she carried. The woman opened her cloak and Creb looked closely at the small flushed face. His eye traveled down to the swollen leg and suppurating wound, then back to the medicine woman and read meaning from her eyes. The girl moaned, and Creb’s expression softened. He nodded his approval.

“Good,” he said. The word was gruff, guttural. Then he made a sign that meant, “Enough have died.”

Creb stayed beside Iza. He didn’t have to conform to the understood rules that defined each person’s position and
status; he could walk with anyone, including the leader if he chose. Mog-ur was above and aside from the strict hierarchy of the clan.

Brun led them well beyond the spoor of cave lions before he stopped and studied the landscape. Across the river, as far as he could see, the prairie stretched out in low rolling hills into a flat green expanse in the distance. His view was unobstructed. The few stunted trees, distorted by the constant wind into caricatures of arrested motion, merely put the open country in perspective and emphasized the emptiness.

Near the horizon, a cloud of dust betrayed the presence of a large herd of hard-hoofed animals, and Brun sorely wished he could signal his hunters and take out after them. Behind him, only the tops of tall conifers could be seen beyond the smaller deciduous trees of the forest already dwarfed by the vastness of the steppes.

On his side of the river, the prairie ended abruptly, cut off by the cliff now some distance away and angling ever farther from the stream ahead. The rock face of the steep wall merged into the foothills of majestic glacier-topped mountains, looming near; their icy peaks vibrant with vivid pinks, magentas, violets, and purples reflecting the setting sun, gigantic sparkling jewels crowning the sovereign summits. Even the practical leader was moved by the pageant.

He turned away from the river and led his clan toward the cliff, which held out the possibility of caves. They needed a shelter; but almost more important, their protective totem spirits needed a home, if they hadn’t already deserted the clan. They were angry, the earthquake proved that, angry enough to cause the death of six of the clan and destroy their home. If a permanent place for the totemic spirits was not found, they would leave the clan to the mercy of evil ones that caused illness and chased game away. No one knew why the spirits were angry, not even Mog-ur, though he conducted nightly rituals to appease their wrath and help relieve the clan’s anxiety. They were all worried, but none more than Brun.

The clan was his responsibility and he felt the strain. Spirits, those unseen forces with unfathomable desires, baffled him. He was more comfortable in the physical world of hunting and leading his clan. None of the caves he had examined so far were suitable—they all lacked some condition that was essential—and he was getting desperate. Precious
warm days when they should have been storing food for the next winter were being wasted in the search for a new home. Soon he might be forced to shelter his clan in a less than adequate cave and continue the search next year. That would be unsettling, physically and emotionally, and Brun fervently hoped it would not be necessary.

They walked along the base of the cliff as the shadows deepened. When they reached a narrow waterfall bouncing down the rock wall, its spray a shimmering rainbow in the long rays of the sun, Brun called a halt. Wearily, the women set down their burdens and fanned out along the pool at the bottom and its narrow outlet to find wood.

Iza spread out her fur wrap and put the child on it, then hurried to help the other women. She was worried about the girl. Her breathing was shallow and she hadn’t roused; even her moans came less frequently. Iza had been thinking about how to help the child, considering the dried herbs she carried in her otter-skin pouch; and while she gathered wood, she looked over the plants growing in the vicinity. To her, whether it was familiar or not, everything had some value, medicinal or nutritional, but there was little she couldn’t identify.

When she saw long stalks of iris ready to bloom on the marshy bank of the little creek, it settled one question and she dug up its roots. The three-lobed hop leaves twining around one of the trees gave her another idea, but she decided to use the powdered dry hops she had with her, since the conelike fruit would not mature until later. She peeled smooth grayish bark from an alder shrub growing near the pool and sniffed it. It was strongly aromatic and she nodded to herself as she put it in a fold of her wrap. Before she hurried back, she picked several handfuls of young clover leaves.

When the wood was gathered and the fireplace set, Grod, the man who walked in front with Brun, uncovered a glowing coal wrapped in moss and stuffed into the hollow end of an aurochs horn. They could make fire, but while traveling through unknown territory, it was easier to take a coal from one campfire and keep it alive to start the next one, than to try to start a new fire each evening with possibly inadequate materials.