The Plains of Passage - Jean M. Auel [398]
“I will never forget you, either of you,” she called out, then ran into the cave.
As they rode away, back toward the Great Mother River, which was hardly more than a stream, Ayla thought she would never forget Madenia, or her people either. Jondalar was sorry to say goodbye, too, but his thoughts were on the difficulties they had yet to face. He knew the toughest part of their Journey still lay ahead.
39
Jondalar and Ayla headed north, back toward Donau, the Great Mother River that had guided their steps for so much of their Journey. When they reached her, they turned west again and continued to follow the stream back toward her beginnings, but the great waterway had changed character. She was no longer a huge meandering surge rolling with ponderous dignity across the flat plains, taking in countless tributaries and volumes of silt, then breaking into channels and forming oxbow lakes.
Near her source, she was fresher, sprightlier, a leaner, shallower stream that tumbled over her wide rocky bed as she raced down the steep mountainside. But the westward route of the travelers along the swiftly flowing river had become a continuous uphill climb, one that took them ever closer to their inevitable rendezvous with the thick layer of unmelting ice that capped the broad high plateau of the rugged highland ahead.
The shapes of glaciers followed the contours of the land. Those on mountaintops were craggy tors of ice, those on level ground spread out like pancakes, with a nearly uniform thickness, rising slightly higher in the middle, leaving behind gravel banks and gouging out depressions that became lakes and ponds. At its farthest advance, the southernmost lobe of the vast continental cake of ice, whose nearly level top was as high as the mountains around them, missed by less than five degrees of latitude a meeting with the northern reaches of the mountain glaciers. The land between the two was the coldest anywhere on earth.
Unlike mountain glaciers, frozen rivers creeping slowly down the sides of mountains, the unmelting ice on the rounded, nearly flat highland—the glacier Jondalar was so concerned about still to the west of them—was a plateau glacier, a miniature version of the great thick layer of ice that spread across the plains of the continent to the north.
As Ayla and Jondalar continued along the river, they gained altitude with each step. They made the ascent with an eye toward sparing the heavily laden horses, most often leading them instead of riding. Ayla was particularly concerned for Whinney, who was hauling the major portion of the burning stones that they hoped would ensure the survival of their traveling companions when they crossed the icy surface, a terrain that horses would never attempt on their own.
In addition to Whinney’s pole drag, both horses carried heavy packs, though the load on the mare’s back was lighter, to compensate for the travois she pulled. Racer’s load was piled so high that it was somewhat unwieldy, but even the backpacks of the woman and man were substantial. Only the wolf was free of additional burdens, and Ayla had begun to eye his unfettered movements, thinking that he, too, could carry a share.
“All this effort to carry rocks,” Ayla remarked one morning as she shrugged on her backpack. “Some people would think we were strange to be hauling this heavy load of stones up these mountains.”
“Many more think we’re strange for traveling with two horses and a wolf,” Jondalar countered, “but if we’re going to get them across the ice, we’re going to have to get these stones up there. And there is one thing to be glad for.”
“What is that?”
“How easy it will be once we reach the other side.”
The upper course of the river traversed the northern foreland of the range of mountains to the south, which was so huge that the travelers had little real sense of its immense scale. The Losadunai lived in a region, just south of the river, of more rounded, massiflike limestone mountains with extensive areas of relatively level