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A well-watered valley, a highland meadow, a hilltop, or a slight dip in elevation, each invited its own community of plant life, which grew close beside complexes of unrelated vegetation. A slope facing south might harbor warm-climate growth, surprisingly different from the cold-adapted boreal vegetation on the north face of the same hill.
The soil of the rugged upland Ayla and Jondalar were traversing was poor, and the grass cover thin and short. The wind had eroded deeper gullies, and in the upper valley of an old spring-flood tributary, the riverbed had gone dry and, lacking vegetation, had drifted into sand dunes.
Though later found only in high mountain reaches, in this rough terrain not far from lowland rivers, singing voles and pikas were busily cutting grass, to be dried and stored. Instead of hibernating in winter, they built tu
Arctic herbs, which did well in the wetter northern land of bogs and fens, benefited in spring from the additional moisture of the melting drifts and grew, in an unusual association, alongside small hardy alpine shrubs on exposed outcrops and windswept hills. Arctic cinque-foil, with small yellow flowers, found protection from the wind in the same sheltered pockets and niches preferred by pikas, while on exposed surfaces, cushions of moss campion with purple or pink blossoms formed their own protective hummocks of leafy stems in the cold drying winds. Beside them, mountain avens clung to the rocky outcrops and hills of this rugged lower land, just as it did on mountainsides, its low evergreen branches of tiny leaves and solitary yellow flowers spreading out, over many years, into dense mats.
Ayla noticed the fragrant scent of pink catchfly, just begi
She saw blue-purple pasqueflowers, erect and beautiful, each rising from expanding leaves covered with fine hairs and, unbidden, the medical associations came into her mind – the dried plant was helpful for headaches and women's cramps – but she enjoyed it as much for its beauty as for its usefulness. When her eye was caught by alpine asters with long thin petals of yellow and violet growing from rosettes of silky, hairy leaves, her fleeting notion became a conscious temptation to gather a few, along with some of the other flowers, for no reason except to enjoy them. But where would she put them? They would only wilt, anyway, she thought.
Jondalar was begi
Though they often scavenged, and when hungry were satisfied with the most noxious of rotten carcasses, the large hyenas with their powerful, bone-cracking jaws were also effective hunters. They had pulled down a yearling bison calf, nearly full-grown, but not fully developed. His lack of experience with the ways of predators had been his undoing. A few other bison were standing around, apparently safe now that one had succumbed, and one was watching the hyenas, bawling uneasily at the smell of fresh blood.
Unlike mammoths, and steppe horses, which were not exceptionally large for their species, the bison were giants. The one nearby stood nearly seven feet at the withers and was heavily built in the chest and shoulders, though his flanks were almost graceful. His hooves were small, adapted to ru
Although they were all grass eaters, the various grazers did not eat precisely the same food. They had different digestive systems or different habits and made subtly different adaptations. The highly fibrous stems that sustained horses and mammoths were not sufficient for bison and other ruminants. They needed grass sheaths and leaves that were higher in protein, and bison preferred the low-growing, more nutritious shortgrass of the drier regions. They only ventured into the midgrass and tallgrass regions of the steppes in search of new growth, usually in spring when all the lands were rich with fresh grass and herbs – which was also the only time of the year when their bones and horns grew. The long, wet, green spring of the periglacial grassland, gave bison, and several other animals, a long season for growing, which resulted in their heroic proportions.
In his dark and introspective mood, it took a few moments for the possibilities of the scene on the hill to make an impact on Jondalar. By the time he was reaching for his spear-thrower and a spear with the idea of also bringing down a bison, as the hyenas had, Ayla had already assessed the situation, but had decided on a somewhat different course of action.
"Hai! Hai! Get away from there! Go on, you filthy beasts! Get out of here!" she shouted, galloping Whi
A few yelps of pain made it clear that Ayla's stones had reached their mark, though she had held the force of her weapon in check and aimed for nonvital parts. If she had wished, her stones could have been fatal; it wouldn't have been the first time that she had killed a hyena, but that had not been her intention.
"What are you doing, Ayla?" Jondalar asked, riding toward her as she was returning to the bison the hyenas had killed.
"I'm chasing those filthy, dirty hyenas away," she said, though it certainly must have been obvious.
"But why?"
"Because they are going to share that bison kill with us," she replied.
"I was just going after one of those that are standing around," Jondalar said.
"We don't need a whole bison, unless we're going to dry the meat, and this one is young and tender. The ones that are standing around are mostly tough old bulls," she said as she slid off Whi
Jondalar looked more closely at the gigantic bulls, who had also retreated from Ayla's hazing, and then at the young one on the ground. "You're right. This is a male herd, and that one probably left his mother's herd recently and just joined this male group. He still had a lot to learn."