The woman and man looked toward the ground ahead and saw nothing. The land in front of them had ceased to be there. They had nearly stepped over the edge of a precipice. Jondalar felt the familiar tightening in his groin as he stared down at the steep drop-off, but he was surprised to see that far below was a long, flat green field, with a stream running through it.
The floors of big sinkholes were usually covered with a deep layer of soil, the insoluble residue of the limestone, and some of the deep sinkholes joined together and opened out into elongated depressions, creating large areas of land deep below the normal surface. With both soil and water, the vegetation below was rich and inviting. The problem was that neither of them could see any way to get down to the green meadow at the bottom of the steep-sided hole.
"Jondalar, there's something wrong about this place," Ayla said. "It's so dry and barren, hardly anything can live up here; down there is a beautiful meadow with a stream and trees, but nothing can reach it. Any animal that tried would die in the fall. It's all mixed up. It feels wrong."
"It does feel wrong. And maybe you're right, Ayla. Maybe this is what Jeren was trying to warn us about. There's not much here for hunters, and it's dangerous. I've never known of a place where you had to worry about falling over a cliff when you're just walking across the land."
Ayla bent down, grabbed Wolf's head with both her hands, and touched her forehead to his. "Thank you, Wolf, for warning us when we weren't paying attention," she said. He whined his affection and licked her face in response.
They backed up and led the horses around the deep hole, without saying much. Ayla couldn't even remember what was so important about the argument they almost had. She only thought that they should never have gotten so distracted that they didn't even see where they were going.
As they continued north, the river on their left began flowing through a gorge that was becoming deeper as the rocky cliffs got higher. Jondalar wondered whether they should try to follow close to the water or keep to the highland above, but he was glad they were following the river's course and not attempting to cross it. Rather than valleys with grassy slopes and broad floodplains, in karst regions the large rivers that could be seen from the surface tended to flow in steep-sided limestone gorges. As difficult as it was to use waterways as travel routes with no stream edge to walk along, it was even harder to get across them.
Remembering the great gorge farther south, with long stretches where there were no banks, Jondalar decided to stay on the highland. As they continued to climb, he was relieved to see a long thin stream of water falling down the face of the rock into the water of the river below. Although the waterfall was across the river, it meant some water was available on the higher ground, even though most of it quickly disappeared into the cracks of the karst.
But karst was also a landscape with many caves. They were so frequent that Ayla and Jondalar, and the horses, spent the next two nights protected from the weather by stone walls, without having to put up the tent. After examining several, they began to develop a sense about which openings in the rock were likely to be suitable for them.
Although water-filled caverns deep underground were continuing to increase in size, most enterable caves near the surface were no longer growing larger. Instead, the space inside was decreasing, sometimes rapidly when the general conditions were wet, though hardly changing at all during dry spells. Some caves could only be entered in dry weather; they would fill up during heavy rains. Some, though always open, had running streams covering the floors. The travelers looked for dry caves, usually somewhat higher up, but water, along with limestone, had been the instrument that had shaped and sculpted all of them.
Rainwater, slowly seeping through the rock of the roof, absorbed the dissolved limestone. Each drip of calcareous water, even the tiniest droplet of moisture in the air, was saturated with calcium carbonate in solution, which was redeposited inside the cave. Though usually pure white, the hardened mineral could be beautifully translucent, or mottled and shaded with gray, or faintly colored with tints of red or yellow. Pavements of travertine were created, and immovable draperies festooned the walls. Icicles of stone hanging from the ceiling strained with each wet drop to meet their counterparts growing slowly from the floor. Some were joined in thin-waisted columns, which grew thicker with time in the ever-changing cycle of the living earth.
The days were getting noticeably colder and windier, and Ayla and Jondalar were glad for the prevalence of caves to break the chill of the wind. They usually checked potential shelters to make sure they were not occupied by four-legged inhabitants before they moved in, but they found they could rely on the keener senses of their traveling companions to warn them of danger. Without saying so, or consciously considering it, they depended on the smell of smoke to tell them if there were human occupants – humans were the only animals that used fire – but they encountered no one, and even other animal species were rare.
Therefore, they were surprised when they came to a region that was unusually lavish in vegetation, at least compared with the rest of the barren, rocky landscape. Limestone was not all the same. It varied greatly in how easily it dissolved, and in the proportion that was insoluble. As a result, some areas of limestone karst were fertile, with meadows and trees growing beside normal streams that flowed on the surface. Sinking lands and caves and underground rivers did exist in those areas, but they were rarer.
When they came upon a herd of reindeer grazing in a field of dry standing hay, Jondalar looked at Ayla with a smile, then pulled out his spear-thrower. Ayla nodded in agreement and urged Whinney to follow the man and the stallion. With nothing around but a few small animals, hunting had been poor, and as the river was by then far below in the gorge, they hadn't been able to fish. They had been subsisting essentially on dried food and emergency traveling rations, even sharing some with the wolf. The horses were hard pressed, too. The scraggly grass that managed to grow in the thin soil had been barely sufficient for them.
Jondalar slit the throat to bleed the small-antlered doe they killed. Then they lifted the carcass into the bowl boat attached to the travois and looked for a place to camp nearby. Ayla wanted to dry some of the meat and render the animal's winter fat, and Jondalar was looking forward to a good piece of roast haunch and some tender liver. They thought they'd stay a day or so, especially with the meadow nearby. The horses needed the feed. Wolf had discovered an abundance of small creatures, voles, lemmings, and pikas, and had gone off to hunt and explore.
When they noticed a cave tucked into a hillside, they headed for it. It was a little smaller than they would have liked, but it seemed sufficient. They dropped the pole drag and unloaded the horses to let them enjoy the meadow, put the packs beside the cave, and dragged the travois over themselves, then spread out to collect woody brush and dried dung.
Ayla was looking forward to making a meal with fresh meat and was thinking about what to cook with it. She gathered some dried seed heads and grains from the meadow grasses, and handfuls of the tiny black seeds from the pigweed that was growing beside a small stream somewhat north of the cave. When she returned, Jondalar had already started the fire, and she asked him to go to the stream and fill up the waterbags.
Wolf arrived before the man came back, but when the animal approached the cave, he bared his teeth and snarled menacingly. Ayla felt the hairs on the back of her neck rise.
"Wolf, what is it?" she said, unconsciously reaching for her sling and picking up a stone, although her spear-thrower was just as close. The wolf stalked slowly into the cave, his throat rumbling with a deep snarl. Ayla followed behind, ducking her head to enter the small dark opening in the rock, and she wished she had brought a torch. But her nose told her what her eyes could not see. It had been many years since she had smelled that odor, but she would never forget it. Suddenly her mind pictured that first time so long ago.
They were in the foothills of the mountains not far from the Clan Gathering. Her son was riding on her hip, supported by his carrying cloak, and though she was young and one of the Others, she was walking in the medicine woman's position. They had all stopped in their tracks and were staring at the monstrous cave bear, nonchalantly scratching his back against the bark of the tree.
Though the huge creature, twice the size of ordinary brown bears, was the most revered totem of all the Clan, the young people of Bran's clan had never seen a living one. There were none left in the mountains near their cave, though dry bones attested to the fact that there once had been. For the powerful magic they contained, Creb had retrieved the few tufts of hair that had been caught in the bark after the cave bear finally lumbered off, leaving only his distinctive smell behind.
Ayla signaled Wolf and backed out of the cave. She noticed the sling in her hand and tucked it in her waist tie with a wry face. What good was a sling against a cave bear? She was just grateful that the bear had begun his long sleep and hadn't been disturbed by her intrusion. She quickly threw dirt on the fire and stamped it out, then picked up her pack-saddle basket and moved it away from the cave. Fortunately they hadn't unpacked very much. She went back for Jondalar's pack and then dragged the travois by herself. She had just picked up her pack again to move it farther away when Jondalar appeared with the full waterbags.
"What are you doing, Ayla?" he asked.
"There's a cave bear in that cave," she said. At his look of apprehension, she added. "He's started his long sleep, I think, but they sometimes move if they are disturbed early in winter, at least that's what they said."
"Who said?"
"The hunters of Brun's clan. I used to watch them when they talked about hunting… sometimes," Ayla explained. Then she grinned. "Not just sometimes. I watched as often as I could, especially after I started practicing with my sling. The men usually didn't pay attention to a girl busying herself nearby. I knew they would never teach me, and watching when they exchanged hunting stories was a way to learn. I thought they might be angry if they found out what I was doing, but I didn't know how severe the punishment would be… until later."
"I guess if anyone would, the Clan would know about cave bears," Jondalar said. "Do you think it's safe to stay around here?"
"I don't know, but I don't think I want to," she said.
"Why don't you call Whinney. We have time before it gets dark to find another place."
After spending the night in their tent out in the open, they started out early in the morning, wanting to put still more distance between themselves and the cave bear. Jondalar didn't want to take the time to dry the meat, and he convinced Ayla that the temperature was cold enough for it to keep. He was in a hurry to get out of the region altogether. Where there was one bear, there were usually more.
But when they reached the top of a ridge, they stopped. In the sharp, clear, cold air, they could see in all directions, and the view was spectacular. Directly east, a snow-covered mountain of somewhat lower elevation rose in the foreground, drawing attention to the eastern range, closer now and curving around them. Though not exceptionally tall, the glaciered mountains reached their highest point to the north, rising to form a line of jagged white peaks, shadowed with hints of glacier blue against the deep azure sky.
The icy northern mountains were in the broad outer belt of the curving arc; the travelers were in the innermost arc, in the foothills of the range that encompassed them, standing on a ridge that stretched across the northern end of the ancient basin that formed the central plain. The great glacier, the densely packed cake of solid ice that had spread down from the north until it covered nearly a quarter of the land, ended in a mountainous wall that was hidden just beyond the far peaks. Toward the northwest, highlands that were lower but closer dominated the horizon. Shimmering in the distance the northern glacial ice could be glimpsed hovering like a pale horizon above the nearer heights. The huge range of much higher mountains to the west was lost in clouds.
The distant mountains that surrounded them were magnificent, but the most heart-stopping sight was closer at hand. Down below, in the deep gorge, the course of the Great Mother River had changed direction. It was now coming from the west. As Ayla and Jondalar stared down from the ridge and looked upstream at the wavering course of the river, they, too, felt as though they had reached a turning point.
"The glacier we have to cross is due west of here," Jondalar said, his voice taking on a faraway tone that matched his thoughts, "but we'll follow the Mother and she'll veer a little to the northwest after a while, then southwest again until we reach it. It's not a huge glacier and, except for a higher region in the northeast, nearly flat once we get up to it, like a big high plain made out of ice. After we get across it, we'll head slightly southwest again, but essentially, from here on, we'll be traveling west all the way home."
In breaking through the ridge of limestone and crystalline rock, the river, as though hesitating, unable to make up her mind, jogged north, then dipped south, and then north again, forming a lobe that the river traced, before finally heading south through the plain.
"Is that the Mother?" Ayla asked. "All of her, I mean, not just a channel?"
"That's all of her. She's still a good-size river, but nothing like she was," Jondalar conceded.
"We've been beside her for quite a while, then. I didn't know that. I'm used to seeing the Great Mother River so much more full, when she isn't all spread out. I thought we were following a channel. We've crossed feeders that were greater," Ayla said, feeling a little disappointed that the enormous swollen Mother of rivers had become just another large waterway.
"We're up high. She looks different from here. There is more to her than you think," he said. "We have some large tributaries to cross, yet, and there will be stretches where she breaks into channels again, but she will keep getting smaller." Jondalar stared toward the west in silence for a time; then he added, "This is just the beginning of winter. We should make it to the glacier in plenty of time… if nothing happens to delay us."
The Journeyers turned west along the high ridge, following the outside bend of the river. The elevation continued to increase on the north side of the river until they were looking down from a high point above the little southward lobe. The drop-off toward the west was quite steep, and they headed north down a slightly more gradual slope through scattered brush. At the bottom, a tributary that curled around the base of the lofty prominence from the northeast cut a deep gorge. They traced it upstream until they found a crossing. It was only hilly on the other side, and they rode beside the feeder until they reached the Great Mother again, then continued west.
In the broad central plain there had been only a few tributaries, but they were now in an area where many rivers and streams fed the Mother from the north. They came upon another large tributary later in the day and their legs got wet in the crossing. It was not like crossing rivers in the warm summertime, when it didn't matter if they got a little wet. The temperature was dipping down to freezing at night. They were chilled by the icy cold water, and they decided to camp on the far bank to get warm and dry.
They continued due west. After passing through the hilly terrain, they reached the lowland again, a marshy grassland, but not like the wetlands downstream. These were on acid soils, and more swampy than marshy, with moors of sphagnum mosses that in places were compacting into peat. They discovered the peat would burn when they made camp one day and inadvertently built a fire on top of a dry patch of it. The following day they collected some on purpose for their next fires.
When they came to a large, fast tributary that fanned into a broad delta at its confluence with the Mother, they decided to follow it upstream a short distance to see if they could find an easier place to cross. They reached a fork where two rivers converged, followed the right branch, and came to another fork where yet another river joined. The horses easily waded across the smaller river, and the middle fork, though larger, wasn't too difficult. The land between the middle and the left fork was a boggy lowland with sphagnum moors, and it was difficult going.
The last fork was deep, and there was no way to cross it without getting wet, but on the other side they disturbed a megaceros with an enormous rack of palmate antlers and decided to go after him. The giant deer, with his long legs, easily outdistanced the stocky horses, although Racer and Wolf gave him a good run. Whinney, hauling the pole drag, couldn't keep up, but the exercise had put them all in a good mood.
Jondalar, red-faced and windblown, his fur hood thrown back, was smiling when he came back. Ayla felt an unexplainable pang of love and longing as he rode up. He had let his pale yellow beard grow, as he usually did in winter, to help keep his face warm, and she always did like him with a beard. He liked to call her beautiful, but in her mind, he was beautiful.
"That animal can sure run!" he said. "And did you see that magnificent rack? One of his antlers must be twice as big as I am!"
Ayla was smiling, too. "He was magnificent, and beautiful, but I'm glad we didn't get him. He was too big for us, anyway. We couldn't take all that meat, and it would have been a shame to kill him when we didn't need it."
They rode back to the Mother, and even though their clothes had dried on them somewhat, they were glad to make camp and change. They made a point of hanging their damp clothing near the fire so it could dry further.
The next day they started out heading west; then the river veered toward the northwest. Some distance beyond, they could see another high ridge. The high prominence that reached all the way to the Great Mother River was the farthest northwest finger, the last they would see, of the great chain of mountains that had been with them almost from the beginning. The range had been west of them then, and they had traveled around its broad southern end following the lower course of the Great Mother River. The whitened mountain peaks had marched along to the east of them in a great curving arc, as they rode up the central plain beside the river's winding middle course. Going west along the Mother's upper course, the ridge ahead was the last outlier.
No tributaries joined the long river until they were almost up to the ridge, and Ayla and Jondalar realized they must have been between channels again. The river that joined from the east at the foot of the rocky promontory was the other end of the northern channel of the Mother. From there the river flowed between the ridge and a high hill across the water, but there was enough lowland riverbank to ride around the base of the high rocky point.
They crossed another large tributary just on the other side of the ridge, a river whose great valley marked the separation between the two groups of mountain ranges. The high hills to the west were the farthest eastern foreland of the enormous western chain. As the ridge fell behind them, the Great Mother River separated again into three channels. They followed the outer bank of the northernmost stream through the steppes of a smaller northern basin that was a continuation of the central plain.
In the times when the central basin had been a great sea, this wide river valley of grassy steppes, along with the swampy bogs and moors of the riverside wetlands and the grasslands to the north of them, were all inlets to that ancient inland body of water. The inner curve of the eastern mountain chain contained lines of weakness in the hard crust of the earth that became the vents for great outpourings of volcanic material. That material, combined with the ancient sea deposits and the windblown loess, created a rich and fertile soil. But only the skeletal wood of winter gave evidence of it.
The bony fingers and leafless limbs of a few birch trees near the river rattled in the rapacious wind from the north. Dry brushwood, reeds, and dead ferns lined the banks, where crusts of ice were forming that would thicken and build up jagged levees; the beginning of spring ice floes. On the northern faces and higher ground of the rolling hills in the valley divide, the wind combed billowing fields of gray standing hay with rhythmic strokes, while dark evergreen boughs of spruce and pine swayed and shivered in erratic gusts that found their way around to the protected south-facing sides. Powdery snow churned around, then settled lightly on the ground.
The weather had definitely turned cold, but snow flurries were not a problem. The horses, the wolf, and even the people were accustomed to the northern loess steppes with its dry cold and light winter snows. Only in heavy snow, that could bog down and tire the horses, and make feed harder to find, would Ayla begin to worry. She had another worry at the moment. She had seen horses in the distance, and Whinney and Racer had noticed them, too.
When he happened to look back, Jondalar thought he saw smoke coming from the high hill across the river from the last ridge they had edged around earlier. He wondered if there were people nearby, but he did not see smoke again though he turned around to check several times.
Toward evening, they followed a small feeder upstream through an open woodland of bare-branched willows and birch, to a stand of stone pines. Frosty nights had given a still pond nearby a transparent layer of ice on top, and had frozen the edges of the little creek, but it still ran freely in the center, and they set up camp beside it. A dry snow blew down and dusted the north-facing slopes with white.
Whinney had been agitated ever since they had seen the horses in the distance, which in turn made Ayla nervous. She decided to put the halter on her mare that evening, and she fastened it with a long tether to a sturdy pine. Jondalar tied Racer's lead rope to a tree near her. Then they collected deadfall and snapped off the dead branches still attached to the trunks of the pine trees underneath the living branches; "women's wood" Jondalar's people had always called it. It was available on most coniferous trees, and even in the wettest of conditions it was usually dry. It could be collected without having to use an axe or even a knife. They built the fire just outside the entrance of the tent and left the flap open to heat it inside.
A varying hare, already turned white, dashed through their camp when, by sheer chance, Jondalar happened to be checking the heft of his spear-thrower with a new spear he'd been working on for the past few evenings. He threw almost by instinct, but he was surprised when the shorter spear with a smaller point, made out of flint not bone, found its mark. He walked over, picked up the hare, and tried to pull out the shaft. When it didn't come easily, he took out his knife, cut out the point, and was pleased to see that the new spear was undamaged.
"Here's meat for tonight," Jondalar said, handing the hare to Ayla. "It almost makes me wonder if this one didn't come by just to help me test the new spears. They're light and easy. You'll have to try one out."
"I think it's more likely that we camped in the middle of his regular run," Ayla said, "but that was a good throw. I would like to try the light spear. Right now, though, I think I'll start this cooking and see what I can find for the rest of our meal."
She cleaned out the entrails but did not skin the hare, so the winter fat would not be lost. Then she skewered it on a sharpened willow branch and propped it up over the fire between two forked sticks. Next, through she had to break the ice to dig them out, Ayla collected several cattail roots, and the rhizomes from some dormant licorice fern. She pounded both of them together with a rounded stone in a wooden bowl with water to extract the tough, stringy fibers, then let the white starchy pulp settle in the bottom of the bowl while she looked through her supplies to see what else she had.
When the starch had settled and the liquid was almost clear, she carefully poured off most of it and added dried blue elderberries. While she waited for them to plump up and absorb more of the water, she stripped away the outer bark of a birch tree, scraped off some of the soft, sweet, edible cambium layer underneath, and added it to her root-starch-and-berry mixture. She gathered cones of the stone pines, and when she put them on the fire, she was pleased to see that several of them still had large, hard-shelled pine nuts in them that the heat had helped to crack.
When the hare was cooked, she broke off some of the blackened skin and rubbed the inside on a few stones she had put in the fire, to spread some fat on them. Then she took small handfuls of the doughy root starch, mixed with the berries, the sweet, flavorful licorice-fern root stalk, and the sweetening and thickening sap from the birch cambium, and dropped them on the hot rocks.
Jondalar had been watching her. She could still surprise him with her extensive knowledge of growing things. Most people, particularly women, knew where to find edible plants, but he had never met anyone who knew so much. When she had several of the doughy, unleavened biscuits cooked, he took a bite out of one.
"This is delicious!" he said. "You really are amazing, Ayla. Not very many people can find growing food to eat in the cold of winter."
"It's not the cold of winter, yet, Jondalar, and not so hard to find things to eat now. Wait until the ground is frozen solid," Ayla said, then took the hare off the spit, peeled back the crispy charcoaled skin, and put the meat on the mammoth-ivory platter, from which they both would eat.
"I think you could find something to eat even then," Jondalar said.
"But maybe not plants," she said, offering him a tender leg of hare.
When they finished the hare and the cattail-root biscuits, Ayla gave the leftovers to Wolf, including the bones. She started their herb tea steeping, adding some birch cambium for the wintergreen flavor, then took the pine cones out of the edge of the fire. They sat by the fire for a while, sipping their tea and eating pine nuts, cracked with rocks or sometimes with their teeth. After their meal, they made preparations for an early start, checked to make sure the horses were all right, then settled into their warm furs for the night.
Ayla looked down the corridor of a long, winding cave, and the line of fires that were showing the way cast light upon beautiful draped and flowing formations. She saw one that resembled the long flowing tail of a horse. As she approached, the dun-yellow animal nickered and swished its dark tail, seeming to beckon her closer. She started to follow, but the rocky cave grew dark, and the stalagmites crowded in.
She looked down to see where she was going, and when she looked up, it wasn't a horse that was beckoning, after all. It seemed to be a man. She strained to see who it was, and was startled to see Creb stepping out of the shadows. He motioned her on, urging her to hurry and come with him; then he turned and limped away.
She started to follow him, then heard a horse whinny. When she turned around to look for the yellow mare, the dark tail disappeared into a herd of dark-tailed horses. She ran after them, but they turned into flowing stone and then into a jumble of stone columns. When she looked back, Creb was disappearing down a dark tunnel.
She ran after him, trying to catch up with him, until she came to a fork, but she didn't know which branch Creb had taken. She was in a panic, looking at one and then the other. Finally she started up the right fork, and she found a man standing in the middle of it, blocking her way.
It was Jeren! He was filling the entire passage, standing with his legs apart and his arms crossed in front of him, shaking his head no. She pleaded with him to let her get by, but he didn't understand. Then, with a short, carved staff, he pointed toward the wall behind her.
When she turned to look, she saw a dark yellow horse running and a yellow-haired man running after. Suddenly the herd surrounded the man, hid him from sight. Her stomach churned into a knot of fear. As she ran to him, she heard horses whinnying, and Creb was at the mouth of the cave, beckoning with great urgency, telling her to hurry, before it was too late. Suddenly the pounding hooves of horses were louder. She heard whinnying, neighing, and, with a sinking feeling of horror and panic, the sound of a horse screaming.
Ayla bolted awake. Jondalar was up, too. There was a commotion outside the tent, horses neighing and hooves stamping. They heard Wolf snarling, then a yelp of pain. They threw back their covers and rushed out of the tent.
It was very dark, with only a sliver of a moon, which shed little light, but there were more horses in the pine woods than the two they had left there. They could tell from the sounds, though they couldn't see anything. As she ran toward the sounds of horses, Ayla tripped on an exposed root and fell heavily to the ground, knocking the wind out of her.
"Ayla! Are you all right?" Jondalar said, searching for her in the dark. He'd only heard her fall.
"Here I am," she said, her voice hoarse, trying to catch her breath. She felt his hands on her, and she tried to get up. When they heard the sounds of horses racing off into the night, she pulled herself up and they ran toward the place where the horses were tied. Whinney was gone!
"She's gone," Ayla cried. She whistled and called her name. There was an answering whinny in the distance.
"That's her! That's Whinney! Those horses, they've taken her. I have to get her back!" The woman started after the horses, stumbling through the woods in the dark.
Jondalar caught up to her in a few strides. "Ayla, wait! We can't go now, it's dark. You can't even see where you're going."
"But I have to get her back, Jondalar!"
"We will. In the morning," he said, taking her in his arms.
"They'll be gone by then," the woman wailed.
"But it'll be light then, and we'll see their tracks. We'll follow them. We'll get her back, Ayla. I promise, we'll get her back."
"Oh, Jondalar. What will I do without Whinney? She's my friend. For a long time, she was my only friend," Ayla said, giving in to the logic of his argument, but breaking down into tears.
The man held her and let her cry for a moment, then said, "Right now, we need to see if Racer is gone, too, and find Wolf."
Ayla suddenly remembered hearing the wolf yelp in pain, and she grew concerned for him and for the young stallion. She whistled once for Wolf, and then she made the sound she used to call the horses.
They heard a whinny first, and then a whine. Jondalar went to find Racer, while Ayla followed the sound of the wolf in pain until she found him. She reached down to comfort the animal and felt something wet and sticky.
"Wolf! You're hurt." She tried to pick him up to carry him to the fireplace, where she could restart the fire and see. He yelped in pain as she staggered under his weight. Then he struggled out of her arms, but stayed up on his own legs, and though she knew it cost him some effort, he walked back to their camp on his own.
Jondalar also returned to the camp, leading Racer, while Ayla was stirring up the fire. "His rope held," the man announced. He had gotten into the habit of using sturdy ropes to hold the stallion, who had always been a little harder for him to handle than Whinney was for Ayla.
"I'm so glad he's safe," the woman said, hugging the stallion's neck, then stepping back to look him over more closely, just to make sure. "Why didn't I use a stronger rope, Jondalar?" Ayla said, angry with herself. "If I had been more careful, Whinney wouldn't have gotten away." Her relationship with the mare was closer. Whinney was a friend, who did what she wanted because the horse wanted to, and Ayla only used a light tether to keep the horse from wandering too far afield. It had always been enough.
"It wasn't your fault, Ayla. The herd wasn't after Racer. They wanted a mare, not a stallion. Whinney wouldn't have gone if the horses hadn't made her go."
"But I knew those horses were out there, and I should have realized they might come for Whinney. Now she's gone, and even Wolf is hurt."
"Is it very bad?" Jondalar asked.
"I don't know," Ayla said. "It hurts him too much when I touch him to be certain, but I think his rib is either badly bruised or broken. He must have gotten kicked. I'll give him something for pain, and I'll try to find out for sure in the morning… before we look for Whinney." Suddenly she reached out for the man. "Oh, Jondalar, what if we don't find her? What if I've lost her forever?" she cried.