The valley of horses_ a novel - Jean M. Auel [16]
He could tell they had more hair because their fur wraps covered mainly their torsos, leaving shoulders and arms bare despite the nearly freezing temperature. But their scantier covering didn’t surprise him nearly as much as the fact that they wore clothing at all. No animals he’d ever seen wore clothes, and none ever carried weapons. Yet each one of these had a long wooden spear—obviously meant to be jabbed, not thrown, though the sharpened points looked wicked enough—and some carried heavy bone clubs, the forelegs of large grazing animals.
Their jaws aren’t really like an animal’s, Jondalar thought. They just come forward more, and their noses are just large noses. It’s their heads. That’s the real difference.
Rather than full high foreheads, like his and Thonolan’s, their foreheads were low and sloped back above their heavy brow ridges to a large fullness at the rear. It seemed as though the tops of their heads, which he could easily see, had been flattened down and pushed back. When Jondalar stood up to his full six feet six inches, he towered over the biggest one by more than a foot. Even Thonolan’s mere six feet made him seem a giant beside the one who was, apparently, their leader, but only in height.
Jondalar and his brother were both well-built men, but they felt scrawny beside the powerfully muscled flatheads. They had large barrel chests and thick, muscular arms and legs, both bowed somewhat in an outward curvature, but they walked as straight and comfortably upright as any man. The more he looked, the more they seemed like men, just not like any men he’d seen before.
For a long tense moment, no one moved. Thonolan crouched with his spear, ready to throw; Jondalar was standing, but with his spear firmly gripped so it could follow his brother’s the next instant. The six flatheads surrounding them were as unmoving as stones, but Jondalar had no doubts about how quickly they could spring into action. It was an impasse, a stand-off, and Jondalar’s mind raced trying to think of a way out of it.
Suddenly, the big flathead made a grunting sound and waved his arm. Thonolan almost threw his spear, but he caught Jondalar’s gesture waving him back just in time. Only the young flathead had moved, and he ran back into the bushes they had just stepped out of. He returned quickly, carrying the spear Thonolan had thrown, and, to his amazement, brought it to him. Then the young one went to the river near the log bridge and fished out a stone. He returned to the big one with it and seemed to bow his head, looking contrite. The next instant, all six melted back into the brush without a sound.
Thonolan breathed a sigh of relief when he realized they were gone. “I didn’t think we were going to get out of that one! But I was sure going to take one of them down with me. I wonder what that was all about?”
“I’m not sure,” Jondalar replied, “but it could be that young one started something the big one didn’t want to finish, and I don’t think it was because he was afraid. It took nerve to stand there and face your spear, and then make the move he did.”
“Maybe he just didn’t know any better.”
“He knew. He saw you throw that first spear. Why else would he tell that youngster to go get it and give it back to you?”
“You really think he told him to do it? How? They can’t talk.”
“I don’t know, but somehow that big one told the young one to give you back your spear and get his stone. Like that would make everything even. No one was hurt, so I guess it did. You know, I’m not so sure flatheads are just animals. That was smart. And I didn’t know they wore furs and carried weapons, and walked just like we do.”
“Well, I know why they’re called flatheads! And they were a mean-looking bunch. I would not want to tangle with one of them hand to hand.”
“I know—they look like they could break your arm like a piece of kindling. I always thought they were small.”
“Short, maybe, but not small. Definitely not small. Big Brother,