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By Root 2522 0

She thought the animals she saw in the distance were horses. But when they got closer, she began to notice differences. They were slightly smaller, their ears were longer, and their tails were not a flowing trees of many hair strands, but a shorter, thin shaft covered with the same kind of hair that was on their bodies, with a darker tuft at the end. Both kinds of animals had erect manes, but the onagers’ were more uneven. The coats of the animals in the small herd were a light reddish brown on their backs and sides, and a much paler, almost white coloring underneath, even on their legs and muzzles, but they had a dark stripe along their backbones, plus another across their shoulders, and several bands of the darker shade on their legs.

The young woman compared them with the general coloring of the horses. Though her dun coat was a shade lighter than average, with a rich golden yellow tone, most steppe horses were a similar neutral grayish brown shade and generally resembled Whinney. Racer’s deep brown color was unusual for his breed. The mare’s stiff thick mane was a dark gray, and the color extended down the middle of her back to her long, loose tail. Her lower legs were dark, too, almost black, and above that, only the bare suggestion of stripes showed on her upper legs. The bay stallion’s color was too dark to show the black feral stripe that ran down his backbone very well, but his black mane, tail, and legs followed the typical pattern.

To someone who was knowledgeable about horses, the body conformation of the animals ahead was somewhat different, as well, yet they did seem to be horses. Ayla noticed that even Whinney showed more interest than she usually did at the sight of other animals, and the herd had stopped grazing and was watching them. Wolf was interested, too, and had assumed a stalking posture, ready to take out after them, but Ayla signaled him to stay. She wanted to observe them. One of the onagers suddenly voiced a sound and the woman noticed another difference. It wasn’t a neigh, or a whinny, but rather a more strident braying sound.

Racer tossed his head and neighed an answer, then gingerly stretched his head forward to sniff at a large pile of fresh dung. It looked and smelled like horse dung to Ayla, when she rode up alongside Jondalar. Whinney nickered and sniffed the pile, too, and as the odor wafted up to her a while longer, Ayla thought she detected a faint undercurrent of something else, perhaps from somewhat different food preferences.

“Are those horses?” she asked.

“Not exactly. They’re like horses, the way elk are like reindeer, or moose are like megaceroses. They’re called onagers,” Jondalar explained.

“I wonder why I haven’t seen them before.”

“I don’t know, but they do seem to like this kind of country,” he said, inclining his head in a gesture that indicated the rocky hills and sparse vegetation of the arid, semidesert upland plains they were riding through. Onagers were not a cross between horses and asses, though they appeared to be, rather a unique and viable species, with some characteristics of both, and extremely hardy. They could subsist on even coarser food than horses, including bark, leaves, and roots.

When they got closer to the herd, Ayla noticed a pair of young ones and couldn’t help smiling. They reminded her of Whinney when she was young. Just then the wolf yelped to get her attention.

“All right, Wolf. If you want to chase those … onagers”—she said the unfamiliar word slowly, getting used to the sound—“go ahead.” She was pleased with the progress she was making in training him, but he didn’t like staying in one place for long. He was still too full of puppyish enthusiasm and curiosity. Wolf yelped and bounded after the herd. With a startled burst, they raced away with a sustained speed that soon left the young, would-be hunter behind. He caught up with Ayla and Jondalar as they were approaching a broad valley.

Though the valleys of rivers carrying the silt of slowly eroding mountains still cut across their path, the land was falling off gradually toward the basin