The Mammoth Hunters - Jean M. Auel [314]
31
In the morning the Lion Camp continued upstream, staying on the plateau of the plains, but catching glimpses of the swift waterway below on their left, cloudy with glacial runoff and churning with silt. When they reached a fork, a place where two major rivers joined, they took the left branch. After fording two large tributaries, putting most of their possessions in a bowl boat they had brought along for that purpose, they descended to the floodplain and traveled through the woods and grassy meadows of the river valley.
Talut kept watching the system of hollows and ravines on the high right bank across the river, comparing the actual landscape to the ivory scratched with symbols, whose meaning was still unclear to Ayla. Ahead, near a sharp bend, was the highest point of the opposite shoreline, rising some two hundred feet above the water. On their side, a broad grassy field and patches of woods extended inland for some miles. As they drew closer, Ayla noticed a bone cairn, with a wolf skull on top. A peculiar arrangement of rocks extended across the river in the direction Talut was heading.
The river there was wide and shallow, and would have been fordable in any case, but someone had made the crossing even easier. Piles of rock and gravel, and some bone, had been placed and spread out in the manner of stepping-stones to make a pathway for people to cross the river, while diverting the flow of water to the spaces in between.
Jondalar paused to look more closely. “What a clever idea!” he remarked. “You could cross the river here without even getting your feet wet.”
“The best places to put lodges are on that side—those deep hollows give good protection from the wind—but the best hunting is on this side,” Barzec explained. “This walkway washes out with the floods, but Wolf Camp builds a new one every year. They seem to have gone to extra trouble this year, probably to make it easier for visitors.”
Talut started across. Ayla noticed Whinney was extremely agitated, and thought the horse was nervous about the stepping-stone path with the watery spaces in between, but the mare followed her without incident.
The headman paused more than halfway over. “Right here, it’s good fishing,” he said. “The current runs fast, so it’s deep Salmon come up this far. Sturgeon, too. And other fish, pike, trout, catfish.” He directed his comments at Ayla and Jondalar in particular, though he included any of the youngsters who had not been there before. It had been some years since Lion Camp had visited Wolf Camp as a group.
On the other side, as Talut led them toward a wide ravine, perhaps a half-mile across at the top, Ayla heard a strange sound, like a loud hum or a muted roar. They gradually climbed uphill. Sixty feet or so above the level of the river and one hundred and fifty yards back, they came to the bottom of the large ravine. Ayla looked ahead, and gasped. Protected by steep walls, a half-dozen separate round lodges in a row were comfortably settled within the nearly mile-long hollow. But it wasn’t the round earthlodges that made Ayla gasp.
It was the people. In all her life, Ayla had never seen so many people. Well over a thousand human souls, more than thirty Camps, had gathered together for the Mamutoi Summer Meeting. The length and breadth of the entire area was filled with tents. There were at least four or five times as many people as had come together for the Clan Gathering—and everyone was staring at her.
Or rather, at her horses and Wolf. The young canine cowered against her leg, just as thunderstruck as she. She sensed panic in Whinney and was sure Racer felt the same. Fear for them helped her overcome her own feelings of sheer terror at the sight of so many human beings. She looked up and saw Jondalar hanging on the lead rope, struggling to keep Racer from rearing, while the frightened boy hung on tight.
“Nezzie, get Rydag!” she called out. The woman had already seen the problem and hardly needed Ayla’s words to impel her to move. Ayla helped Mamut down, and put her arm