Time's Last Gift Part 7

The first behemoth was also dead. Gribardsun's spear had driven into its brain.

The remaining beasts had turned uncertainly and moved back into the brake. Von Billmann signaled that they were now moving rapidly up the valley. Gribardsun picked up one of the spears that had ricocheted off the beast and went into the brake. It did not take long to find what remained of the unfortunate Thrimk.

Kaemgron pushed past Gribardsun and then wailed loudly. He went around the corpse three times widdershins, dragging his speartip in the earth, and then he returned to the body of the rhino that had killed Thrimk. There he beat the animal over the head with the b.u.t.t of his spear, wailing and weeping all the time. Then he walked three times counterwiddershins around the beast and cut off its tail with his flint knife. He gave the tail to Gribardsun, who stuck it in his belt. Gribardsun recovered his spear, noting that the reindeer antler tip was loose.

Kaemgron returned to his son's body to mourn. Those who followed him also began wailing. But those who stayed to cut up the two carca.s.ses were jubilant. They laughed and smeared blood over their foreheads and lips and dipped their index fingers in the blood and spotted Gribardsun's forehead with the blood. After von Billmann came down off the hillside, he was daubed with blood, too.

'That was very good shooting, Robert,' Gribardsun said.

Tve practiced enough in the preserve,' von Billmann said. But you, you were magnificent! Right through the eye, and you had to crouch and drive it upward, the rhino's head was so low! If it had turned on you...'

'But it didn't,' the Englishman said. 'He had his heart set on Kaemgron. Though it is true that the beasts are very unpredictable and he might have turned.'

He did not seem to want to talk about his feat. But he looked as if he were bursting with happiness.

Drummond joined them. He said, 'I got some fine shots, but the people back home aren't going to believe them.'

Thammash approached Gribardsun. 'We have plenty of meat for a week or so,' he said. 'And the mourning for Thrimk must start soon. But the day is far from being over, and it would be well if we pushed on and killed more. What do you think?'

Though he had been treated with great politeness and respect from the beginning, Gribardsun had not before been asked to decide any course of action. Apparently his spectacular feat had made him the equal, or perhaps even the superior, of the chief. He was now one of them - in some respects anyway.

Von Billmann had been daubed with the rhino blood, and he was treated with great respect too. But the tribesmen seemed to believe that he was secondary to the Englishman, Perhaps they thought this because Gribardsun, being the first one to use the rifle, was considered to be the owner. And he had loaned his thunder stick while he killed the rhino with unmagical weapons to show that he could use them as no one else could.

Gribardsun considered and then said, 'We should push on, I believe. Why waste the day?'

The body of Thrimk was wrapped in a great bearskin and six men were delegated to watch the body and to cut up the two behemoths. Leaving these behind weakened the party, but the hyenas, wolves, lions, and bears had to be kept away.

The party set out again toward the edge of the plain where a herd of mammoths was eating. The great beasts did not pay them any attention until the hunters were within fifty yards. They were downwind, and the mammoths, like the elephants of Gribardsun's time, were weak-eyed. But when they detected the ma.s.s of humans, they began moving away. Several big bulls, however, threatened them with short charges and much trumpeting and tearing up of small trees.

The very long and fantastically curved tusks, the huge hump of fat on top of the head, the long reddish-brown hairs, and the sheer size of the beasts was very impressive.

The men spread out in a deep crescent formation. While the center held the attention of the bulls, the horns advanced very slowly.

One of the bulls broke and ran toward the herd. The other two kept up their bluffing charges until the center had gotten within fifty feet and the horns of the crescent were past them. Then the biggest bull charged.

The plan was for the center to turn and flee, drawing the beast after it. The horns would close in and try to hamstring or spear the beast.

The center was not imitating panic. Its members were scared, and rightly so. The beast was over eleven feet high at the shoulder, weighed possibly four tons, and was running faster than any man.

Only Gribardsun did not run. He waited with his spear b.u.t.t resting against the notch of the atlatl. When the beast was a shrilling gray and reddish-brown wall with great curving ivory tusks and uplifted trunk and big outspread ears and little red eyes, only thirty feet away, he sped to one side.

The mammoth started to turn toward him, but it wasn't fast enough. Gribardsun cast the spear from the atlatl, and half its length disappeared into the beast's left front leg.

The animal went down with a crash that must have broken some of its bones. Trumpeting agonizedly, it struggled to get back onto its feet.

The hunters ran in and lunged, driving their flint or reindeer-antler-tipped spearheads into the stomach or under the tail.

But they ran away then, because the second bull had decided to charge too. It shook the earth, and it screamed through its uplifted proboscis.

Gribardsun's spear had been snapped off when the beast fell on it. He had only a stone axe, which he took from his belt and threw. But, it might as well have been made of feathers. It rotated through the air and its head struck the animal in the open mouth. It bounced out, and now the mammoth was concentrating on him.

He turned and ran. As he did so, he looked for von Billmann, who had been on the left with the rifle. He could see nothing of him and had no time to speculate where he was.

Though Gribardsun was very fast, he was not as swift as the mammoth. Its long legs covered the ground faster than his could, and suddenly the trumpeting and thundering of the hoofs was close behind him. With a yell he leaped to one side, and the mammoth reared up and whirled around with an unbelievable, and terrifying, swiftness.

Gribardsun ran forward and through the front legs of the startled creature and then threw himself to one side.

The mammoth whirled around him, stopped, and reversed its horizontal rotation on seeing the man rolling away.

Angrogrim, yelling, ran in past Gribardsun and hurled his spear into the open mouth of the beast. Its point disappeared into the pinkish flesh.

Gribardsun leaped up and ran off with the mammoth again pursuing him. Shivkaet launched a spear from his atlatl not ten feet from the beast, and the shaft drove at least a foot into its side.

The mammoth, however, would not be turned aside. It had its heart set on trampling Gribardsun.

The Englishman looked to his right. The tribesmen were running toward them with the intention of hurling their spears at the beast. Beyond, Drummond was looking through the camera's viewfinder. He was carrying a 32-caliber rifle with explosive bullets, but he seemed intent only on getting good pictures.

The yelling hunters swarmed in and the spears flew. One sc.r.a.ped Gribardsun's shoulder and another plunged into the ground and he had to leap over it.

But a series of thuds told him that many had plunged into the mammoth. He looked behind him; the beast had slowed down. Half a dozen shafts were sticking out from its sides, and one had entered a few inches into its right front leg and lamed it.

Then the express rifle boomed out three times, and the beast, gouting blood from great holes in its side, fell over. The impact made the earth quiver under Gribardsun's naked feet.

Drummond, his rifle still suspended on a strap over his shoulder, walked up and circled the beast, his camera taking in all the details.

Von Billmann, looked distressed, ran up to the Englishman.

'I'm sorry I didn't shoot sooner,' he said. 'But I caught my heel on a rock and fell on my head. I was stunned for a minute or so.'

He brushed the back of his head and showed Gribardsun the blood still welling from the cut.

Silverstein did not comment. The Englishman said, 'I realize the necessity of taking films. But didn't you understand that I was in bad trouble?'

Silverstein flushed and said, 'No, I didn't. By the time I realized that von Billmann should be shooting, it was too late. And then things happened so fast that I froze. But Robert did shoot then, and everything seemed all right.'

'In the future, the cameraman will have to be a backup for the rifleman,' Gribardsun said. 'An alert backup.' He turned away. There was nothing more to say. Silverstein was an intelligent man and would realize what Gribardsun could have said. Gribardsun was not sure that Silverstein had frozen because of panic. He might have been hoping, consciously or unconsciously, that the mammoth would trample Gribardsun.

The Englishman waved away the tribesmen who wanted to smear his forehead with the mammoth's blood. He sterilized the cut on the German's head and sprayed it with pseudoskin. Then he accepted the mammoth's tail and permitted the daubing.

The rest of the day was heavy work. The beasts were cut up into pieces small enough to haul. The entire tribe, except for the sick and the very old, of whom there were few, helped to carry the meat in.

While the work was going on, the vultures, ravens, wolves, and hyenas gathered around. Presently two cave lions appeared, scattered a pack of hyenas, and occupied their spot. They sat watching, occasionally roaring but not offering to approach closer. And then the hyenas suddenly attacked the lions.

Gribardsun shouted at Drummond to take pictures. This was too good to miss. There was nothing cowardly about these great beasts, and their teamwork was worthy of wolves. One would dash in and snap at a lion, and when the lion whirled and leaped, another would run in behind him and bite. Every time a lion bounded after a fleeing hyena, he had to quit chasing it because of painful bites on his tail or rear legs.

But a hyena was caught and killed by one of the lions as it tormented the other. Before it died, the hyena bit down once and the immensely powerful jaws broke the lioness's right front leg. The lioness closed her jaws on the hyena's hindquarters and scooped out its entrails with a huge paw. But she was crippled thereafter, and her mate, a giant possibly a third larger than the African lions of Gribardsun's time, was hard put to it to defend her. He was of a beautiful golden color that reminded Gribardsun of a pet he had once had in Kenya. He lacked the mane of the African lion, however.

The people had stopped working on the mammoths when the uproar of the battle broke out. Thammash spoke to Gribardsun.