Mammoth Boy (7 page)

“Stay. My people here.”

“Your people, Agaratz? Where?”

“In cave.”

“Cave?”

“Special cave. Special for my peoples.”

Urrell had heard such caves existed. Old Mother had told him of those of her youth, the land of mammoths. Deep in them sacred pictures from legendary times recorded animals and rites.

“Where is the cave, where?”

“Near.”

“Can I see it?”

A cloud of such sadness passed over the long expressive face that Urrell knew he had overstepped a bar. Agaratz noticed the boy’s look.

“Other time, Urrell, other time we go. When you older.”

Boys had to wait to learn the ways of men.

“Now collect foods, much foods, for cold time, Urrell.”

All Urrell’s experience was of hunting and gathering and living from day to day. A big kill meant feasting, plenty; no kill meant berries, lizards, carrion. Nothing was hoarded.

“We collect foods,” said Agaratz to his doubting charge, “you see.”

It was the start of a systematic campaign of gathering. Agaratz planned each day’s activity in a way unknown to Urrell. They set off with pouches, grubbing sticks, lanyards tressed from thongs, each day to places Agaratz knew, as he seemed to know all places within several days’ march, in search of storable foods. Urrell, unsure of the purpose of these expeditions, followed wherever Agaratz led, the wolf cub happy to gambol from side to side, mock-hunting insects and anything else in the grass that their footfalls startled.

Their first expeditions took them to wetlands and water meadows by the river, the Nani, as Agaratz called it, where a variety of grasses and sedges throve in the damp, rich silts. The grasses were familiar enough to Urrell. Like Agaratz he chewed a few seed heads as they hunted wildfowl along the river, without a second thought. Now he was to be surprised yet again. Agaratz went to an old tree with a large hollow and wriggled in to reach up into the gap, from which he pulled down a hide, bound tightly with thongs. These he untied and the complete fusty hide of a bison opened on the ground. Urrell stared.

“Now Urrell collect grasses and bring.” He showed Urrell what he meant by wrenching off handfuls of grasses with ears of seeds and piling them on the hide spread bare side up. They toiled at this for a while, Urrell not inclined to ask why. When the pile was as big as Agaratz wanted, he handed Urrell a cudgel, took one himself, and said, “Now beat.”

As they flailed the heap seeds fell from the ears. They ended up with handfuls of grain, which Agaratz winnowed by shaking the hide with Urrell and blowing away as much chaff and awns as he could.

“Good to eat, Urrell, when big colds, no hunt. Eat.” He gave Urrell a big pinch. The grain formed a chewy gobbet in Urrell’s mouth, hard to swallow.

“You like?”

“Yes, I like it.”

They spent several days like this, camping and reaping. When their pouches were all full Agaratz replaced the hide in its hollow and they trudged back to the cave, where Urrell watched as Agaratz spread the grain on hides to dry. In a side gallery he had rigged a framework of poles lashed with withes and bast, from which he hung the dried grain in pouches. Round each he sprinkled a circle of grain, muttering as he went. Seeing the lad’s incomprehension, he explained: “For rats. Not touch pouches.”

Having gathered as much grain, in several such trips, as he seemed to think they might need, Agaratz said, “Now go for
xaurak.”
Urrell waited to see what these might be.

For this trip they hugged the cliffs to where they petered out into a gap letting the Nani cut through on its journey to the sea. A long day’s march along its bank and they came to groves of nut-bearing bushes Urrell knew well. They grew in his valley, where he and other boys cracked them when in season – cob nuts.
Xaurak,
Agaratz called them.

Agaratz climbed into the low dense trees, swinging from one bough to another, shaking down showers of nuts for Urrell to gather while the cub frisked about to catch hers, cracking the shells and eating the kernels as if wolves ate little else.

By nightfall they had a good heap. Agaratz showed Urrell how to bend hazel wands into a wickey-up for the night. Around them animals foraged, none of them making sounds to alarm them. Only once were they roused when some small forager emptied a pouch of nuts and Agaratz shooed and hissed till it scampered off, pursued by a yelping cub.

“Call her Rakrak,” said Agaratz, “make rakrak noise.”

In three days their harvest became sizable. How Agaratz intended to transport it he showed Urrell on the third day. He cut two hazel poles, getting the boy to pull them down so that his axe sliced better into the tensed wood. He stripped and laid the poles flat and showed Urrell how to weave wands between them to form a travois, something new to Urrell. He helped the lad to make a lighter one for himself and when both were complete they loaded their bags, pouches and skins full of nuts on to them, bound them with strips of green bark, lifted the butt ends on their shoulders and set off home.

It was hard work. They repeated the trip to the nut groves till Agaratz had enough to see them through the hardest weather, then he announced another crop. “Now we fetch
intauraka.”

This foray took another direction. They went up the cliff using a chine not far from their cave, across upland and into a hidden valley, a long rift in the plateau created where the surface, in another age, had fallen in. Trees abounded in the shelter provided. Acorns littered the ground and beechmast lay everywhere. Urrell found crab apples starting to fall, a few medlars and in thickets the blue masses of sloes, uneatable till blackened by frosts.

Agaratz was unusually cautious, spear-thrower at the ready. Urrell was soon to see why. A herd of wild boar trotted past as both stood still in the undergrowth, Urrell holding Rakrak’s muzzle tight lest she yelped and attracted a charge. Deer abounded. Birds sang. “Here bear live,” warned Agaratz.

This was no longer the grasslands, with their open vistas and distant herds of bison, horses and deer that moved on at the sight of humans. Here the humans were the intruders, in a hidden garden, whose denizens might not depart so easily. Urrell was alert, but as if the peacefulness of their mission was clear to the animals of the woods, nothing had befallen the threesome by the time they reached the trees which bore
intauraka
. “Ah, Agaratz, these are walnuts.”

“Walnuts, walnuts,” Agaratz repeated this new word from Urrell’s language. Urrell, in his turn, repeated
intauraka
to himself. Although both learnt scraps of the other’s tongue this way, Agaratz plainly knew Urrell’s from some other time or distant source, outdoing the boy’s attempts to understand the elusive, shifting language of his mentor.

Some nuts had already fallen, their cases splitting to reveal shells within. They cracked some to eat on the spot, feeding bits to the wolf, which ate anything Urrell gave her. It was an idyllic scene in the sun and shade of the slope, beneath the trees.

Urrell noticed it first. He looked up and saw the bear not a spear’s cast away, a massive male, sniffing their scent, drawn perhaps by the sound of cracking nuts.

“Agaratz, bear!”

His companion remained unconcerned. He said it again: “Bear.”

All hunters knew how irascible, how unpredictable a male bear’s behaviour could be, how irresistible its strength. Even the bravest, ablest hunters shunned them. Any boy knew that. Urrell knew it. He cowered, clutching Rakrak.

“Not move,” said Agaratz as he slowly stood up.

The bear responded by standing also. It looked immense. Should it drop on all fours and charge, neither flight nor shinning up a tree would save them. Agaratz was puny by comparison. All he held was a spear in one hand.

Bear and man eyed each other, neither yielding. When at last the bear dropped to all fours, Urrell hoped it would disappear into the woods, satisfied with its stand. Instead it charged, full pelt, at Agaratz. Instinctively Urrell curled up with Rakrak into the tightest ball he could, leaving Agaratz to dodge the bear, even draw it away. When he dared peep up Agaratz was still there: the huge animal, disconcerted, had reared up, fifteen paces from them, and was pawing the air as though inviting the man into a vast embrace. Agaratz grunted bear-like, spread his arms wide, pulled himself up to his full height and seemed to grow as he mimicked the bear’s pawing. His bear growls, his fixed stare, had their effect. The bear dropped to the ground, shrugged, grunted a reply, and turned off into the trees.

“Better we go now,” said Agaratz. “Bear come back.”

CHAPTER 10

O
nce out of range of the bear they filled their pouches with beechmast, for lack of walnuts, so that their foraging had not quite been in vain.

“Agaratz, are there big cave-bears?”

“Now few. Long ago many.”

Urrell recalled his engraving, the bear lumbering away, its head turned as though towards pursuers.

“But ice-bears, Agaratz, bears that live with mammoths?” They were the huge bears of legend, those Old Mother spoke of, like the big tiger cats and the beasts with one horn.

“Only in pictures, in caves, Urrell. Now gone.”

“I saw a picture of one, Agaratz.”

At this Agaratz stopped and looked intently at Urrell, making the boy feel he had hit on something important.

“Where?”

“In my valley.”

“How far?”

“Five, six days.”

“When cold time over, you show me.”

“Oh yes.”

Old Mother of the Mammoths, you would be watching, you who knew the bear.

In the last long weeks of fine weather, as the bison drifted across the grassland, herds of horses with them, fattening as they went, harried by wolves and the furry lions of the forest, Urrell watched Agaratz’s preparations for winter and helped, learning. His muscles were developing and the down over his mouth and by his ears was darkening into hair. He was now slightly taller than Agaratz.

“Soon be man,” said Agaratz as Urrell washed by the spring.

“Good.”

The wolf, too, was now nearly full grown.

“I take that wolf because smallest. If stay with pack, soon die in cold. Now strong.”

They had been scraping hides for several days, following deer hunts where Agaratz’s skill and accuracy with the spear-thrower had roused Urrell’s admiration, when the lad thought to ask the question uppermost in his mind.

“When deer, bison, horses all go to lowlands what can we hunt in great cold?”

“Boar stay. Snow-deer come. Snow-oxen come. Aurochs in forest. Some big deer in woods. Perhaps…
mammurak
.” Agaratz grinned at Urrell. “No, not
mammurak
.”

“How can you hunt alone?”

“I hunt. Now you help. But much foods here.” He waved a hand at their stores of seeds, nuts, roots, bulbs and pouches packed with fat and suet mixed with herbs.

“But auroch, bison are too strong for a lone hunter, Agaratz.”

“You see. Now we go for mushroom.”

However, this search was not for the edible fungus that Urrell liked.

Instead Agaratz ferreted under logs, in crannies, for kinds either Urrell did not know or knew were poisonous. In addition Agaratz sought berries no-one touched. In clefts where limestone whitened the cliff-face Agaratz gathered a creeper with a milky sap, as well as its seed pods. Urrell followed, observing.

Back in the cave he watched Agaratz mix and mash these into a sticky paste to be stored in hollowed stems of elderberry wood, using acorns as stoppers. He muttered something rhythmic and unintelligible as he laid the filled stems delicately on a little ledge.

When Urrell asked their purpose he was told, “Soon you see.”

On their next hunt Agartatz took a stem with him. Game was scarcer with the approach of winter but deer were still about, if in small wary groups keeping out of range. Without explanation Agaratz had armed himself with light javelins, little more than reeds, tipped in bone, that to Urrell looked inadequate.

After a morning spent stalking they managed to close on a small herd. Agaratz paused to dab paste from his elderberry vial on to the tips of two javelins. The movement alerted the deer. As they raised their heads in alarm he sprang forward and cast both javelins almost together, one from either hand, hitting the buck and a doe. At such range neither animal was much harmed and fled with the rest, the buck’s javelin even falling out. Urrell expected disappointment on Agaratz’s face. Instead he set off in pursuit, waving over his shoulder for Urrell to follow, picking up his javelin on the way.

On the open floor of the woods the deer spoor was not hard to follow. After a few hundred paces Urrell saw the doe, unsteady, lagging behind her group. Agaratz ran up and speared her dead.

“Urrell, you catch buck.” He knew it was an honour, a test maybe.

The male, stronger, less affected by the paste on the javelin, had gone much further before Urrell caught up with it and managed to pierce its tough hide with his stabbing spear, proud to win a four-point stag. Dragging it back to where Agaratz had already gralloched the doe and was flaying and quartering it into manageable cuts was another matter.

They did the same between them with the buck, its flesh rancid from the rut.

“See,” said Agaratz, “in winter can hunt.”

Half the meat they cached in a tree fork; the remainder they bundled up in the animals’ own skins and hoisted on their backs for the return trip. “Tomorrow fetch other, Urrell.”

“How do you know which plants and mushrooms to use?” Urrell felt there was more to it than the ingredients, which he had seen and memorised.

“Secret from my peoples.”

“Your father?”

“Yes, father. Others.”

“Why not use the bane all year?”

“Not ready then. Not time.”

Agaratz would, Urrell knew, not expand. He would have to learn the rhythmic chant that went with the paste, to make it work.

In the mornings frost had begun to whiten the grass and sharpen the air. Urrell’s breath hung before him. In his home valley his clan would be gathering to leave for the caves by the sea, there to huddle behind piles of seashells discarded by earlier folk, perhaps those who had painted and engraved those very cave walls beyond which only the dead dared venture.