The Tenth Chamber

SEVENTEEN

Ruac Cave, 30,000 BP

The first spear glanced off the tough hide, angering the animal but doing it no harm.

The hunters circled.

The beast was a good-sized male. The fact they had been able to isolate it from the herd so easily, spoke, they believed, to its willingness to be sacrificed. The huge animal had certainly heard them chanting the previous night and had agreed to surrender itself to their purpose.

But it was too noble to go down without a fight.

Tal’s only brother, Nago, moved in for the kill.

The bison was backed against the bank of the swiftly flowing river, its hooves sinking into the mud. Its nostrils flared and steamed. It would have to charge. It had no choice.

This is how men died, Tal thought.

He was seventeen, a grown man, already the tallest in his clan, which made his brother suspicious, because for generations, the head man of the Bison Clan was always the tallest. Their father was still head man, but his broken leg had never healed. It stank like rotten meat. At night he groaned in his sleep. There would be a new head man soon. Every clan member knew something was destined to happen to one of the brothers. The smaller Nago could not be their leader if the taller Tal lived. The younger Tal could not be the head if the older Nago lived.

It was not their way.

Nago made sure the butt end of his spear was flush against the bone spear-thrower.

A man could hurl a spear without a thrower and kill a reindeer, but to take down a bison, one needed extra power. They took only two bison a year, once, like now, in the hot season and once in the cold season. It was their right, their sacred calling to do so, but to kill more than one at a time was forbidden.

A single animal gave them enough hide to mend their winter clothes and fashion new ones for the children. One animal gave them enough bones to make digging tools and flaking tools and spear throwers. One gave them enough meat to feed the entire clan for a long while before it became rank.

They had a reverence for the bison, and the bison, they were certain, had a reverence for them.

Nago screamed the kill shout and swung his arm forward.

His spear flew straight and low and struck the bison in the breast, squarely between its front legs but the flint tip must have hit bone because it did not penetrate far.

Shrieking in agony and fear, the animal leaped forward, lowered its head and planted one of its thick horns in Nago’s shoulder.

Tal’s cries for the other men to converge was drowned out by Nago’s howls. It was up to him to save his brother.

Running forwards, he slung his thrower as hard as he could and the spear found the bison’s flank. It stuck deep and true but he took no chances. He ran to the beast, grabbed hold of the spear shaft and pushed it deeper and deeper until the animal’s front legs buckled and it collapsed on its side, bleeding from the mouth.

Nago was on the ground gasping, his shoulder a mass of blood and torn muscle.

Tal kneeled over him and began to wail. The other men converged, pointing at the wound and whispering to each other.

Tal had seen horn wounds before. They did not close or heal on their own. If Nago had been wearing a hide shirt, perhaps the wound would not have been so deep but owing to the warmth of the day he was bare-chested, his shirt tied around his waist.

Nago was the hunt leader but Tal had to take over as leader now. To slow the blood, he took Nago’s shirt and wrapped it as tightly as he could around the wound and told two cousins to carry him back to the camp.

Then he stood over the bison and thanked it for providing for their clan. He had never before been privileged to deliver the bison kill chant but he knew the words and delivered them with feeling. The rest of the men nodded their approval then fell upon the hot carcass to start the ritual butchering.

Tal peeled off and ran as quickly as he could towards the high grasses of the savannah. His father had taught him how to hunt and how to chant. Now it was time to use the knowledge passed to him by his mother.

His mother had been dead for two years. She left the world along with her newborn daughter after a tortuously difficult child-birth. She was not from the Bison Clan. She called her kin the People of Bear Mountain. As a young woman, she had been caught in a flash flood and separated from her tribe. Maybe they escaped or maybe they perished. She never knew. Tal’s father, then a young man, hunting with elders, came across her in the forest, cold and hungry and took her in. He liked her, and though it caused jealousy and conflict within the clan, he chose her for his mate.

Her people were healers and she was skilled in making poultices and had the knowledge what leaves, roots and barks to chew for various maladies. When Tal was young, he remembered a bitter leaf that stopped his gums from aching and a tasty bark that cooled his body when it was hot.

As soon as the boy could walk he would toddle after his mother, collecting specimens in the forest and grasslands and helping her carry them back to camp in pouches sewn from reindeer hide.

His memory had always been prodigious. He only had to hear a bird call or a clan chant one time to remember it for ever. He would smell a flower petal, see an animal track or a cluster of leaves just once, or listen a single time to an explanation of a phenomenon – and it would never leave him.

And it was not only his mind that was active. From the earliest age he excelled with his hands too. He learned how to strike long thin blades off a flint core. Even before he came of age, he was the best tool maker in the clan. He could carve wood and bone as skilfully as the older men and he was adept at making spears that flew straight and shaping perfectly balanced spear-throwers. Nago spent years stewing in anger at his skills but Tal never stopped respecting his brother because he always believed that one day Nago would become head of the clan.

Tal’s mother also taught him how to paint. The People of Bear Mountain had a long tradition of adorning rock shelters and caves with the outlines of great animals in charcoal and ochre. She would scratch naturalistic outlines of bears, horses and bison in the mud or hard dirt and the boy would take the stick from her hand and copy them.

When he was older, he would pick up colourful rocks and clays and crush them into pigments that he would smear on his body to the amusement of the adults.

He was never idle. He was perpetually in motion, scurrying to do something.

Now his lungs ached with all-out exertion. He didn’t have much time. The blood was draining from Nago’s body with each of his strides.

His mother had taught him many poultices. There were ones for colic, ones for the flux, for sores, for boils, for head pain and tooth pain. There were others for wounds, some for old wounds that oozed and stank, like his father’s and some for fresh bleeding wounds like Nago’s.

The key ingredient for staunching fresh blood was a bright-green vine that twisted itself around the bark of young trees. In much the way it choked the trees, his mother had explained, it would choke the flow of blood. He knew where to find it, in a glade near the river.

He also needed a particular kind of berry, known to keep a wound clean. There was a good patch of them growing on bushes, not far from the glade.

And finally, to bind the poultice together and give enough bulk to pack the wound and draw its edges together, he needed a generous amount of yellow grasses. These were all around, ever abundant.

Because the weather was warm, the Bison Clan was in an open-air camp. Two days’ journey towards the evening sun was a rock shelter they favoured for the cold months but the only protections they needed during this season were the skin lean-tos, made from reindeer and saplings that were flapping in the afternoon breeze.

Nago was laid out in the shade of one of these shelters. He gritted his teeth in pain. His shirt bandage seeped blood.

Tal ran to him. He had shed his own shirt and had used it to carry the plants and berries he needed to make the poultice.

All twenty-two members of the clan, men, women and children, gathered around but parted when Tal’s father limped up. He implored one son to save the other.

Tal set to work. His mother’s old limestone mixing bowl was fetched for him and he furiously began cutting the vine down to manageable pieces with a flint blade. One of his aunts crushed the berries between large shiny leaves with the heel of her hands and channelled the juices into the bowl. Tal added the vine segments and mashed them into the berries with a smooth river stone. Then he cut clumps of yellow grass into short lengths and mixed a large handful into the bowl’s red mush.

The finished poultice was thick and sticky.

Tal told his brother to be as strong as the bison they had killed. He scooped the poultice into the open wound and pushed more and more into the gaping hole until there was room for no more.

Nago was brave but the exertion of keeping silent overcame him and his eyes fluttered shut.

Tal kept vigil that night, and the next, and the next.

He left his brother’s side only long enough each day to collect more ingredients to keep the poultice fresh.

He took these brief journeys on his own, not because others did not want to join him, but because he relished being alone. One of his cousins, a girl named Uboas, was particularly keen on following him. And so was her small brother, Gos who tagged along wherever she went.

Uboas was fast and pretty and Tal knew they were meant to be mates, but he still wanted to be by himself. When she refused to return to the camp, he simply outran her, as she outran her brother. When he was free of her, he looked back. In the distance, he saw her reunite with the child and take his hand.

Tal was in the glade, cutting vines off a tree when he saw them.

Actually, he heard them first, a low jabbering. Words of some sort. He strained to hear but could not understand.

At the edge of the glade two trees were parted enough to see one, then two.

He had heard of them, the Shadow People, the People of the Night, the Others – his clan had several names for them – but he had never seen them before. And this first encounter was brief, lasting only a few heartbeats.

One was old, like his own father, the other younger, like him. But they were both shorter and thicker than his own kind and their beards were redder and longer. The younger one had a heavy growth, not a wispy one like his own. The older one looked like he had never trimmed his beard with flint as was the custom of the Bison Clan. They carried spears but they were heavy thick ones, good for direct strikes, useless for throwing. Their clothes were rough and fur-bound, bear-skin by the looks of it, uncomfortable in this kind of heat.

And then, after exchanging the briefest of mutual glances, no more than a tacit acknowledgement of Tal’s presence, they were gone.

Nago’s last night was turbulent.

There was no doubt that Tal’s poultice had done some good – the wound stayed clean and fresh-smelling and the blood flow had slowed to an ooze. But he had lost so much blood after the goring that no remedy or chant could reverse the outcome.

In his last hours his body grew swollen and the flow of urine stopped. Drops of water spooned into his mouth from a creased leaf just spilled out. As the dawn came, his breathing slowed then stopped.

The moment the women began to howl, the sky opened and a warm rain fell, a sign their ancestors had welcomed the head man’s son to their realm. Their camps were burning bright in the night sky but they were too far away for the Bison Clan to hear their songs.

Tal’s father laid his hands upon his shoulders and spoke to him in front of all the people. Tal would be the next head man. The old man wearily declared his time would come soon. Once Nago’s mourning ritual was done, Tal would need to go to the highest point of the earth to be close enough to their ancestors to hear their chants.

The rain kept falling and soon his mother’s limestone bowl, half-filled with unused poultice, was overflowing with rain water.

Tal was not afraid to climb.

He was sure-footed and even though the cliffs were wet from the rain he was able to make good progress. He had learned an old climbing trick from an elder years ago and had wrapped his loose hide boots with thongs of leather to keep them snugly on his feet.

Hours of daylight remained before he had to reach the top so his pace was unrushed. He carried two pouches on his belt, one with strips of dried reindeer meat and one with kindling and fire-making tools. When it was dark, he would build a campfire, chant and listen for the responsive song from the heavenly campfires far in the distance. Maybe, if he were pure enough of heart he would even hear a song from the campfire of his mother.

He didn’t burden himself with a water skin. He knew there was a waterfall flowing over the cliffs and he would reach it in time to slake his thirst.

Halfway up the cliff he stopped on a safe ledge and turned towards the mighty river. From this great height it did not look so powerful. The earth stretched as far as he could see, an endless sea of grasses. In the distance, two brown shapes were moving through the savannah, a pair of shaggy mammoths. Tal laughed at the sight. He knew they were the largest beasts in the earth but from high on the cliff, it seemed he could pluck them up with his fingers and pop them into his mouth.

At the waterfall, he drank and washed the sweat away.

He looked for a good way to the top and traced a path with his eyes.

He made his way to another safe ledge and when he pulled himself up, he stopped and stared.

A sign!

There could be no doubt!

In front of his eyes was a cleft of blackness in the face of the rock.

A cave! He had never seen it before.

He approached it slowly. There were creatures to fear. Bears. The Shadow People.

He cautiously stepped into the cool blackness and inspected the mouth of the cave to the point where the light of the sun stopped.

The floor was pristine. The walls were smooth. He was the first to enter. He was jubilant.

This is Tal’s cave!

I was meant to be the head man!

When it is my time I will bring my clan here!

The next day when the sun was high, Tal returned to his camp.

He shouted to his people that he had heard their ancestors chanting and that he had found a new cave in the cliffs. He could not understand why they seemed preoccupied with something else, all of them pointing at the ground by the camp fire. The women were crying.

Uboas ran to Tal and pulled him by his sleeve.

Her brother, Gos, was lying on the ground, spouting mad, nonsensical things, sporadically flailing his limbs about, trying to strike whoever drew closest.

Tal demanded to know what had happened and Uboas told him.

His mother’s limestone bowl had been sitting by the fire and the hot sun and warmth of the fire had made the contents hiss and bubble. Gos had wandered by that morning and with his usual curiosity he dipped a finger in and tasted the red liquid. He liked it well enough to taste more, and more, until his chin was red.

Then he became possessed, screaming words that did not fit together. He thrashed and fought, but now was becoming quieter.

Tal sat beside him, put the boy’s head on his lap and touched his cheek. The touch calmed him and his little eyes opened.

Tal asked how he felt and told him not to be afraid. He would stay with him until he got well.

The little boy wet his lips with his tongue and asked for water. In time he sat up and pointed at the bowl.

Tal wanted to know what he wanted and the boy’s answer shocked those who had witnessed his spell.

He wanted more red liquid.