The Shield of Time Read online

  At a swinging, energy-conserving, mile-devouring pace, he and she had proceeded northwest. In the dome, she fast-forwarded. Why’d I stop for that scene? Nothing significant. Unless it’s the last of its kind for me, ever.

  She let herself relive two more. Once she saw a herd of wild ponies, shaggy and long-headed, gallop on a ridge against the sky. Once she saw, afar, a herd of Pleistocene bison, the lead bull eight feet at the hump. To those mighty ones Aryuk sang a song of awe.

  His folk were not really hunters. They took fish from the rivers and lakes with their hands or in crude weirs. They collected shellfish, eggs, nestlings, grubs, roots, berries in season. They snared birds, rodents, other small game. Now and then they came upon a fawn, calf, whelp, or upon a large carcass still edible; in the latter case they took the hide too. It was no wonder they were scarce and had left hardly a trace of their presence, even in lands far south of the glacier.

  A flicker in the screen caught Tamberly’s eye. She stopped the playback, recognized the view, nodded. Restarting the record function, she moistened lips gone suddenly dry and said, “About noon, we reached what we were after.” Distorted molecules held a notation of the precise local time. “I will enter this unedited.” She could have done so in a fractional second, but decided to sit back and watch it through. Maybe she’d notice details that had escaped her before or think of a new interpretation. In any event, it was wise to refresh memory. At mission headquarters she was bound to get a skinningly intense debriefing.

  Again she saw where she had been. The scattered woodlands of the seaboard were behind her. Watery though it was, this open country was better called steppe than tundra. Herbal growth spread like a carpet, dull greens occasionally interrupted by a few scrub willows or silvery patches of reindeer moss. In the offing were some birch, not much larger than the willows but densely clustered, vanguards of an invasion. Pools and sedgy marshes glinted manifold. Two hawks cruised the wind, theirs the only wings in sight; grouse, ptarmigan, and the rest must be lying as low as the muskrats and lemmings. The mammoths moved slowly, feeding, less than a mile away. Stomach rumbles rolled across the distance.

  Aryuk heard her cry out. He tensed. “What is wrong?” he asked.

  The screen showed her extended arm and the tiny figures at which her finger pointed. “There! Can you see them?”

  Aryuk shaded his eyes, squinted, strained. “No, things blur away.” That savages all have keen sight is a superstition on a par with their all enjoying robust health.

  “Men. And—and—oh, come.” The scene jounced. Tamberly had broken into a run. Aryuk tightened his grip on the hand ax and loped at her side, though fear stood naked on his face.

  The strangers spied them, poised, briefly conferred, and sped likewise toward a meeting. Tamberly counted them: seven. That was as many adults as dwelt at Aryuk’s place, if you included the half-grown, and these were entirely male.

  They did not make straight for her and him, but at an angle. Soon she could see their leader beckon, and altered her course accordingly. She recalled thinking between breaths: Yeah, they don’t want to alarm the mammoths. Must’ve been trailing them for days, skillfully harassing, to bring them into parts where they wouldn’t ordinarily go, an area poor in their kind of food but rich in mudholes and suchlike spots where hunters have a fair chance of trapping one and killing it.

  They were stocky, black-haired, attired in leather coats, trousers, boots. Each carried a spear with a head of bone slotted to hold a row of flint bladelets, a cutting edge long and keen. At his waist hung a pouch, which doubtless bore provisions and a sharpened stone that served as a knife. Under the belt was a hatchet. A roll of hide across the shoulders must be a blanket. It wrapped two or three more lances. Readily accessible beneath the lashings was tucked a spearthrower of the grooved type. Stone, wood, antler, bone, skin were beautifully worked. As Tamberly and Aryuk neared, the men halted. They took loose formation, ready to fight.

  No band of Tulat would have done that. Personal violence, including homicide, was not unknown among them, though rare. Collective conflict did not exist, whether in action or imagination.

  Both parties stopped. “What are they?” Aryuk gasped. Sweat shone on his sun-darkened skin and he breathed hard, not because of the sprint. To him the unknown was always supernatural, terrifying unless he could come to terms with it. Yet she had seen him venture out on broken ice floes in a storm, to club a seal pup that would feed his family.

  “I will try to find out,” she said, her voice not altogether steady. Palms raised, she walked toward the strangers; but first she had loosened her pistols in their holsters.

  The peaceful approach eased them a trifle. Her vision flickered from one to the next. Beneath their individuality, she searched for underlying sameness, race. Twin braids framed broad countenances with naturally bronze complexions, almond eyes, strong noses, whiskers sparse or absent. Lines of paint patterned brows and cheeks. I’m no anthropologist, she had thought amidst her heartbeats, but I’d guess these count as archaic or proto-Mongoloid. They have surely come from the west….

  “Rich be your gathering,” she greeted as she reached them. The Tula language had no word for welcome, which was taken for granted. “What do you find lucky to tell me?” Certain revelations might give an opening to evil spirits or hostile magic.

  The tallest of the men, almost her height, young but hard-featured and bold-mannered, trod forth to confront her. What purred and growled from his lips was incomprehensible. She signed as much, smiling, shrugging, shaking her head.

  He peered. She understood how weird she must be to him, size, coloring, clothes, accouterments. But he showed none of the initial timidity of the We. After a moment, inch by inch, his free hand crept forward until the fingertips touched her throat. They moved downward.

  She had stiffened, then stifled a lunatic impulse to laugh. Copping a feel, are you? The exploration moved over her breasts, belly, crotch. It remained moth-gentle and, she saw, impersonal. He was simply verifying that she was the female she seemed to be. What’d you do if I gave you a gotcha? She had suppressed that too. Avoid conveying any wrong ideas. When he had finished, she stepped back a pace.

  He snapped something to his fellows. They also scowled, first at her, next at Aryuk. Probably women in their tribe didn’t go hunting. Probably they supposed she was his mate. Okay, why did he hang behind her?

  The leader called to Aryuk. It sounded contemptuous. The Tula cowered the least bit before he braced himself. The leader raised his spear and moved as if to cast it. Aryuk threw himself to the ground. The newcomers barked laughter.

  “Now hold on there. Just a minute, bo,” Tamberly exclaimed in English.

  In the shelter, she lost desire to watch further. She directed the capsule to transfer its remaining information immediately, sighed, and spoke: “As you’ve seen, we didn’t stick around. Those were tough customers. Not stupid tough, though.” Her show of indignation, as she brandished her steel sheath knife, had quieted them down. They couldn’t decide what to make of her, but stayed put when she and Aryuk withdrew, staring after them until the horizon walled them off. “I’m glad I didn’t have to shoot into the air or any such demonstration. Heaven knows what the consequences would have been.”

  A second later: “Heaven knows what they will be anyway. Those are surely Paleo-Indians out of Siberia. I’ll sit tight and wait for further orders.”

  Removing her recording, she bore it over to one of the message capsules stored by her vehicle, inserted it, set the controls, activated. The cylindroid vanished in a pop of air. It wasn’t bound for milieu headquarters, because none was maintained this far in the past. Its leap through space-time took it to the project office, which happened to be in her home country and century. All at once she felt very lonesome, very tired.

  No prompt response came. They’d figure she needed a night’s rest. And a square meal. Scrambling it together, eating, washing dishes relaxed her a lot. However, she wasn’t sleepy. S
he sponge-bathed, donned nightclothes, stretched out on her bunk shelf with a pillow against the dome side for a backrest. As the sun lowered more and the interior darkened, she turned on a light. For a while she hesitated over what show to screen or book to read. She’d brought War and Peace along, thinking that on this expedition she’d finally get around to it; but she never had, and after a day like today, she wasn’t about to start. How about the Travis McGee novels she’d been saving, carried here from her last furlough? No, MacDonald cut too near the bone.

  Ah, yes, good old Dick Francis.

  II

  Red Wolf and his men could not harry the mammoths much farther onto ground well suited for taking one. The beasts no longer gave way, almost carelessly, to their small pests. Oftener and oftener they stopped, stamped their feet, only moved on when they had eaten everything in reach. Yesterday a bull charged, forcing the hunters to scatter and wait till dawn to return. Clearly this herd had come about as far from its wonted range as it would endure.

  “By now, hunger dwells in the camp,” Horsecatcher said. “I think our undertaking was foredoomed. If the land-wights are angry, let us not offend them more, but go after other game instead, and give them our first kill.”

  “Not yet,” Red Wolf replied. “You know how badly we need to bring down a mammoth. And we shall.” More than the flesh and fat were the great bones, tusks, teeth, hide, hair, for making things grown scarce among the Cloud People. More even than that was the victory itself, luck reborn. The trek had been long and grim.

  Fear fluttered in the eyes of Caribou Antler. “Has that witch whose hair is like straw said otherwise?” he mumbled. “Too many whispers blow on these winds.”

  “Why must you think she has powers?” Red Wolf challenged. “She and the shaggy man went away from us. That was three days ago. Wait and hear what news Running Fox brings.”

  With such words he kept the band steady until their scout rejoined them. Running Fox told of a deep bog not far off. Thereupon Red Wolf harangued them and they agreed to try.

  First everybody went about gathering twigs, dead reeds, and other dry stuff, which they bound into faggots. Red Wolf then took the fire drill. While he worked he sang the Raven Song, and his comrades danced the slow measures of it around him. Night had fallen, but it was the short light night of summer, a dusk through which ponds glimmered and earth reached gray to horizons still visible. The sky was like a shadow overhead, wherein a few stars dimly flickered. Cold deepened.

  Red Wolf brought up the rear as they approached the mammoths, lest the burning torch he carried alarm the quarry too soon. Twigs crackled, herbs rustled, ground squelched underfoot. A breeze carried rankness and, he thought, a touch of warmth off the bulks ahead. It made him a little dizzy; he had eaten scantily of late. Noises from throats, trunks, shuffling huge feet quickened his heart and cleared his head. The animals were uneasy after being annoyed throughout these past days. They were ready to stampede.

  When he deemed the moment ripe, he whistled. The men heard and dashed back to him. They kindled their brands at his. Now he took the lead. In a broad arc, his band leaped forward. They whirled their fires on high; flames flared, sparks streamed. They sounded forth the wolf’s howl, the lion’s roar, the bear’s growl, and that terrible, sharp-edged, endlessly rising and falling scream which is man’s alone.

  A mammoth squealed. Another trumpeted. The herd fled. Earth quaked beneath. “Ya-a-ah, ya-a-ah!” Red Wolf shrieked. “This way! Yonder one—drive him—To me, brothers, to me, right and left, drive him! Yee-i-i-i-ya!”

  The chosen prey was a young bull that happened to bolt straight toward the bog. Though his companions did not spread widely, they went separate ways, blundering and bleating through the dark. Men saw better than they did. Men overtook him, bounded along his flanks. As the faggots burned short, the hunters threw them. He bawled his terror. Red Wolf sprang close. The tail brushed his shoulders. He drove his spear in underneath, left it to waggle and rip, himself fell back. More weapons whirred from throwing-sticks. When they struck, they hurt almost as much. The mammoth pounded faster. His breath gusted hoarse.

  Soil came apart, muck spurted and gulped, he sank to his belly and stood mired. His kin boomed past him, on into the night.

  Left in peace, he could have worked free. The hunters gave him none. They darted yelping around the morass and cast spears. They waded out to thrust. Blood blackened starlit water. The bull bellowed in his agony. Trunk lashed, tusks swung to and fro, blindly, uselessly. The stars walked their silent paths above him.

  His struggles weakened. His voice sank to a rasping pant. The men crowded close. Lighter in weight and helping each other, they did not sink deep in the mire. Their knives slashed, their axes chopped. Snowstrider lanced him in the eye. Even so, his other eye saw the sun rise, dulled and chilled by mist that had drifted in while he was being killed.

  “Enough,” said Red Wolf. The men withdrew to firm ground.

  He led them in the Ghost Song. On behalf of everyone, he spoke aloud, northward, telling the Father of Mammoths why this deed was needful. Then: “Go, Running Fox, and fetch the people. Let the rest of us recover what spears we can.” Though a point was easily made, nobody knew yet where the right kinds of stone were in these parts, and wooden shafts were always precious.

  Having taken care of that, the band rested. They ate the last of the dried meat and berries in their pouches. Some spread blankets, which they had no reason to roll up in after air had warmed, and slept. Some talked, japed, watched the bull’s death throes. Those went on until midmorning, when the vast body shuddered, filled the bog with dung, and slumped into stillness.

  Thereupon the men stripped off their clothes and brought their knives to it. They sucked blood while it was fresh and hacked off pieces of tongue and hump fat such as were hunters’ right. Afterward they washed themselves in a clean pool, to which they gave the unpierced eyeball as a thank offering. They hastened to get dressed again, for mosquitoes blackened the surroundings. Then they feasted. Shooing and throwing rocks, they defended the carcass against carrion birds. Drawn by the stenches, a wolf pack hovered in the offing but did not venture close.

  “They know somewhat about men, these namesakes of mine do,” Red Wolf said.

  The tribe arrived late next day. They had had no great way to go after breaking camp, for the mammoth hunt went slowly and zigzag; but they were burdened with hides, tent poles, and other gear, as well as having small children and aged persons among them. Weariness weighted their cries of joy. Just the same, they were quickly settled; and Red Wolf went in that evening to Little Willow, his wife.

  In the morning folk began butchering the catch, a task that would take days. Red Wolf sought Answerer in the shaman’s tent. They sat silent while they breathed the smoke of a sacred peat fire into which herbs of power had been cast. It made the dimness stir with half-seen presences; noise outside reached them as if from across the world. Yet Red Wolf’s thoughts flowed strong.

  “We have come long and far,” he said, “Enough?”

  “The Horned Men walk no more in my dreams,” replied the shaman cautiously.

  Red Wolf moved a hand up and down, showing he understood. The folk who drove the Cloud People from their ancestral country had had no cause to pursue them, but the flight eastward had hitherto been through lands held by tribes much like their enemies, a threat that soon forced them onward. “Ill is homelessness,” he said.

  Answerer’s face drew together till the wrinkles and furrows met the painted lines. He fingered his necklace of claws. “Often at night I hear those we buried as we traveled, wailing in the wind. If we could tend our dead as we ought, they would have the strength to help us, or even to go join the Winter Hunters.”

  “We seem at last to have reached territory where nobody else lives, save for a very few weaklings.”

  “Are you sure they lack might? Also, your followers complain of how hard the mammoth drive was.”

  “Will we ever find a plac
e where it is easier? I wonder if we do not remember Skyhome as better than it truly was. Or else mammoth are everywhere becoming rare. Well, hereabouts I have found ample trace of bison, horse, caribou, and more. Also, when we were on this hunt we met something wonderful, and this is what I want to ask you about. Did it mean welcome or did it mean danger?”

  Red Wolf told of the encounter with the strange pair. He went on to other things he and his fellows had noticed—stone chips, firesites, rabbit bones cracked for the marrow—that meant humans. Those must be feeble, unlike the tribes westward, for the big game of the region showed no special fear of man; and the one who accompanied the woman had been naked, carrying merely a rough-hewn rock for weapon. She was different, big, bright-pale of hair and eyes, peculiarly outfitted. She had shown anger when the hunters gibe-tested her companion. But she did nothing worse than depart. Might her kind be willing to deal with the Cloud People, with real men?

  “Unless she is some sort of troll, and we should again move on,” Red Wolf finished.

  As he expected, the shaman gave him no answer to that, only: “Do you want to go find out?”

  “I and a few bold friends,” Red Wolf said. “If we have not come back when the carcass is ready, you will know this country is not for you. But we have been so long homeless.”

  “I will cast the bones.” They fell in such a pattern that the shaman ordered, “Leave me by myself until dawn.”

  During the night Red Wolf and Little Willow heard him chant. His drum thuttered. Their children crept over to them and everybody clung together, yearning for sunlight.

  At its first glow Red Wolf approached Answerer’s tent. The shaman came out, haggard and trembling. “My spirit roved widely,” he said low. “I walked in a meadow where the flowers were beautiful, but they forbade me to taste of them. I, an owl, hatched from the moon and in my talons caught the morning star. Snow fell in summer. Go if you dare.”