The Plains of Passage - Jean M. Auel [293]
She was wearing her carrying belt over her fur parka and, in a loop of it, the dagger made from the tusk of a mammoth that had been a present from Talut. The ivory-handled flint knife he had made for her also dangled in its sheath, and he saw his hatchet in her belt, too. The worn otter skin of her medicine bag hung down her other side.
Riding the horse with easy grace, Ayla seemed dauntingly sure and confident, but Jondalar could see her tense readiness. She held her sling in her right hand, and he knew how swiftly she could let fly from that position. With her left hand, which he was sure held a couple of stones, she supported a spear, set in place on her spear-thrower and balanced diagonally across Whinney’s withers from Ayla’s right leg to the mare’s left shoulder. More spears stuck up from a woven grass holder just behind her leg.
On her approach, Ayla had watched the tall headwoman’s face reflecting her inner reactions, showing shock and fear, and the despair of her moment of clarity, but as the woman on horseback drew closer, dark and deranged shadows clouded the leader’s mind again. Attaroa narrowed her eyes to watch the blond woman, then slowly smiled, a smile of twisted, calculating malice.
Ayla had never seen madness, but she interpreted Attaroa’s unconscious expressions, and she understood that this woman who threatened Jondalar was someone to be wary of; she was a hyena. The woman on horseback had killed many carnivores and knew how unpredictable they could be, but it was only hyenas that she despised. They were her metaphor for the very worst that people could be, and Attaroa was a hyena, a dangerously malignant manifestation of evil who could never be trusted.
Ayla’s angry glare was focused on the tall headwoman, though she was careful to keep an eye on the entire group, including the stunned Wolf Women, and it was fortunate that she did. When Whinney was within a few feet of Attaroa, in the periphery of her vision Ayla caught a stealthy movement off to the side. With motions so swift they were hard to follow, a stone was in her sling, whipped around, and flung.
Epadoa squawked with pain and grabbed her arm as her spear clattered to the frozen ground. Ayla could have broken a bone if she had tried, but she had deliberately aimed for the woman’s upper arm and checked her force. Even so, the leader of the Wolf Women would have a very painful bruise for some time.
“Tell spear-women stop, Attaroa!” Ayla demanded.
It took Jondalar a moment to comprehend that she was speaking in a strange language because he found that he had understood her meaning. Then he was stunned when he realized that the words she spoke were in S’Armunai! How could Ayla possibly know how to speak S’Armunai? She had never heard it before, had she?
It surprised the headwoman, too, to hear a complete stranger address her by name, but she was more shocked to hear the peculiarity of Ayla’s speech that was like the accent of another language, yet not. The voice aroused feelings Attaroa had all but forgotten; a buried memory of a complex of emotions, including fear, which filled her with a disquieting unease. It reinforced her inner conviction that the approaching figure was not simply a woman on a horse.
It had been many years since she’d had those feelings. Attaroa hadn’t liked the conditions that first provoked them, and she liked even less being reminded of them now. It made her nervous, agitated, and angry. She wanted to push the memory away. She had to get rid of it, destroy it completely,