The Mammoth Hunters - Jean M. Auel [342]
“What’s going on here?” Tarneg said, wading into their midst and pulling the fighters apart. One was bleeding from the mouth, the other had an eye that was swelling shut.
“They’re just having a … competition,” someone said.
“Yes, they’re … uh … practicing … for the wrestling games.”
“This is no competition,” Tarneg said. “This is a fight.”
“No, honest, we weren’t fighting,” the boy with the puffy eye said, “just playing around a little.”
“You call black eyes and broken teeth playing around? If you were just practicing, you wouldn’t have to come here to this out-of-the-way place where no one would see you. No, this was planned.-I think you’d better tell me what’s going on.”
No one volunteered an answer, but there was a lot of shuffling of feet.
“What about the rest of you?” Tarneg said, eying the other youths. “What are all of you doing here? Including you, Druwez. What do you think Mother and Barzec are going to do when they find out you were here, encouraging a fight? I think you’d better tell me what’s going on here”
Still no one would say.
“I think we’d better take you back and let the Councils decide what to do with you. The Sisters will find some way to let you work off your urge to fight, and make a good example of you, besides. Maybe they’ll even ban all of you from mammoth hunts.”
“Don’t tell on them, Tarneg,” Druwez pleaded. “Dalen was only trying to stop them.”
“Stop them? Maybe you should tell me what this fight is about,” Tarneg said.
“I think I know,” Danug said. Everyone turned to look at the tall young man. “It’s because of the raid.”
“What raid?” Tarneg said. This was sounding serious.
“Some people were talking about making a raid on a Sungaea Camp,” Danug explained.
“You know raiding has been banned. The Councils have been trying to negotiate a friendship fire and establish trading with the Sungaea. I hate to think of the trouble a raid would cause,” Tarneg said. “Whose idea was this raid?”
“I don’t know,” Danug said. “One day everyone was talking about it. Someone discovered a Sungaea Camp a few days’ away. The plan was to say they were going hunting, and instead go and wreck their Camp, steal their food, and chase them away. I told them I wasn’t interested, and I thought they were stupid to do it. They would just make trouble for themselves and everyone else. Besides, we stopped at a Sungaea Camp on our way here. A brother and sister had just died. Maybe it isn’t the same Camp, but they probably all are feeling bad about it. I didn’t think it was right to raid them.”
“Danug can do that,” Druwez said. “No one’s going to call him a coward, because no one wants to fight him. But when Dalen said he wasn’t going on any raid, either, then a whole bunch of them started saying he was afraid of a fight. That’s when he said he’d show them he wasn’t afraid to fight anyone. We said we’d come with him so they wouldn’t gang up on him.”
“Which one of you is Dalen?” Tarneg said. The boy with the broken tooth and bleeding mouth stepped forward. “Who are you?” he said to the other one, whose eye was already turning black and blue. He refused to answer.
“They call him Cluve. He’s Chaleg’s nephew,” Druwez volunteered.
“I know what you’re trying to do,” Cluve said sullenly. “You’re going to put all the blame on me just because Druwez is your brother.”
“No, I wasn’t going to put blame on anyone. I’m going to let the Council of Brothers decide. You can all expect to get a summons from them, including my brother. Now, I think you’d better clean yourselves up. If you go back to the Meeting looking like that, everyone will know you were fighting, and no one would be able to keep it from the Sisters. I don’t have to tell you what will happen to you if they find out you