The Land of Painted Caves - Jean M. Auel [114]
Ayla couldn’t see what Wolf was looking at, but she heard movement and snuffling sounds. She put down her collecting basket and the bundle of cattails, picked up her baby, and put her on her back with the carrrying blanket. Then she loosened the ties and reached into the special pouch for a couple of stones as she pulled her sling off her head. She couldn’t see what was there; no point in using a spear if there was nothing to aim at, but a stone flung hard in the general direction might scare it off.
She cast one stone, followed quickly by another. The second hit something with a thump and a yelp. She heard something moving in the grass. Wolf was straining forward, whining softly, eager to go.
“Go ahead, Wolf,” she said, making the signal at the same time.
Wolf dashed ahead while Ayla quickly wrapped her sling back around her head, then took her spear-thrower out of its holder, and reached for a spear as she followed behind.
When Ayla reached Wolf, he was facing off with an animal the size of a bear cub, but much more fierce. The dark brown fur with a lighter band that ran along its flanks to the upperside of its bushy tail was the distinctive marking of a wolverine. She had dealt with this largest of the weasel family before, and had seen them drive bigger four-legged hunters away from their own kills. They were nasty, vicious, and fearless predators that often hunted and killed animals much larger than themselves. They could eat more than looked possible for a creature their size, which probably accounted for their other name, “glutton,” yet sometimes, it seemed, they slaughtered for pleasure, not hunger, leaving behind what they killed. Wolf was more than ready to defend her and Jonayla, but in any fight a wolverine could inflict serious injury, or worse, if not on a pack, certainly on a solitary wolf. But he wasn’t a lone wolf; Ayla was part of Wolf’s pack.
With cool deliberation, she fitted a spear onto her thrower, and without hesitation hurled it at the animal, but Jonayla made a crying sound that alerted the wolverine. The creature had seen the woman’s swift movement at the last moment, and started to scurry away. It might well have dashed out of her line of fire entirely if it hadn’t been distracted by having to watch the wolf. As it was, it moved enough that her spear missed its mark slightly. Though the animal was hurt and bleeding, the sharp tip had only penetrated the hind quarters, which was not immediately fatal. The flint point of her spear was attached to a short, tapering length of wood that fit into the front of a longer shaft, and had separated from the long end of the spear as it was supposed to.
The wolverine ran for cover in the wooded underbrush with the point still embedded in him. Ayla could not leave the injured animal. Though she thought it was mortally wounded, she needed to finish it. It was probably hurting and she didn’t want anything to hurt unnecessarily. Besides, wolverines were bad enough under normal circumstances—who knew what kind of damage it might inflict if it was frantic with pain, perhaps to their own camp, which wasn’t so far away. In addition, she wanted to retrieve her shaped flint point, to see if it was still usable. And she wanted the fur. She took out another spear, noting where the shaft of the first lay so she could come back for it.
“Find him, Wolf!” she signaled without saying the words, and followed behind.
Wolf, running in front, quickly sniffed out the animal. Not far ahead, Ayla found the canine snarling threateningly at a mass of dark brown fur snarling back from within a coppice of bushes.
Ayla quickly studied the position of the animal, then flung her second spear, hard. It pierced deeply, going all the way through the neck. A spurt of blood declared that an artery was severed. The wolverine stopped snarling and dropped to the ground.
Ayla disengaged the second spear shaft and considered dragging the wolverine back by its tail, but the nap of the fur lay in the other direction and