Poul Anderson - The Shield of Time

About midday the snowfall ended. They went on north. The going was hard, through stuff light but ankle-deep, sometimes knee-deep. Would that I had magical shoes to walk on top of this, Red Wolf thought. Do Tall Man and Sun Hair? They own so much else that is wonderful … Well, Aryuk is hindered too, worse than us.

From a ridge they saw hugely ahead, across the steppe. Clouds had parted and shadows reached long and blue over purity. Every bush and boulder stood marked. Right, left, forward the men peered, until Broken Blade pointed and cried, “Yonder!”

Red Wolf’s heart jumped. “Maybe. Come.” They struggled downslope. By the time they reached what they had glimpsed, the sun was gone, but some light remained by which to read the troubled snow.

“Yes, a man,” said Red Wolf. “Surely no long way off. See how he floundered and … yes, here he stumbled, fell, and picked himself up awkwardly.” His mittened hand tensed on the spearshaft. “He is ours.”

They went on at an easier pace than before, saving their strength, less for the prey than for the trek home afterward. Night rolled across the world. The sky was mostly clear, the moon still down; stars were soon aswarm, frost-sharp. The trail stayed plain.

Suddenly Broken Blade stopped short. Red Wolf heard his gasp and likewise looked up. Above the northern horizon, the Winter Hunters were kindling their fires.

In billows and rays light shivered aloft, brighter, higher, brighter, higher, until it licked at the roof of heaven. Cold had deepened and all sound lay frozen. Only the sheen of light on snow was alive. Awed beyond terror, the men stared. There danced the mightiest of their forebears, ghosts too strong for earth to hold them.

“Yet you are ours,” Red Wolf breathed at last. “You remember, do you not? Watch over us. Ward us. Keep horrors and vengeful ghosts from us, your sons. In your name, for you, we make our kill tonight.”

“I think they have come for that,” said Broken Blade as low.

“We should not keep them waiting.” Red Wolf moved onward.

Presently he saw something, a blot on the snow beneath the chill fires. He hastened his stride. The other must have seen him in turn, for a shrill, keening chant reached his ears. What, did Vole men also sing their death songs?

As he neared, he made Aryuk out, seated cross-legged in a hollow he had scooped for himself. “I will do this, Broken Blade,” Red Wolf said. “Running Fox was close to my spirit.” He went on as if no fresh snow burdened his feet.

Aryuk rose. He moved very slowly, clumsily, his last strength spent. But he never cringed. He finished his song and stood slump-shouldered, left arm lashed to his side below the skin cloak, yet steadfast. Frost whitened his beard. When Red Wolf drew nigh, he smiled.

Smiled.

Red Wolf halted. What was this? What might it portend?

The silent fires burned overhead, commanding him. He took another step, and another.

Here is no animal brought to bay, he knew. Aryuk is ready for death. Well, he shall have it as easily as I can give it. He has earned that much.

Two-handed, he thrust the spear. Bone and keen flint went in below the breast and up to find the heart. The blow felt oddly soft, into so worn and wasted a body. Aryuk toppled before it, onto his back. Once he kicked, and his throat rattled. Then he was quiet.

Red Wolf withdrew the spear and leaned on it, staring downward. Broken Blade joined him. The flames leaped and shook in heaven.

“It is done,” said Broken Blade finally, tonelessly.

“Not altogether,” answered Red Wolf.

He took the graven bone from his pouch and clamped it between his teeth. Kneeling, he opened Aryuk’s pouch. Nothing was in it but—yes—He drew out the eyes of Running Fox. “You shall go back to him,” he promised. Giving them to Broken Blade: “Wrap these well and sing them the Spirit Song. I have other tasks.”

Even for one who knew he was doomed and who was emptied by weariness, Aryuk died calmly. Almost happily, as far as I could tell by this witch-light. What did he know? What did he mean to do … later?

Well, he shall not. Answerer has told me how to bind a ghost.

Red Wolf did to the body what had been done to Running Fox’s. He crushed the eyeballs between two stones he dug from the snow. He slit the belly and laid more stones among the entrails. He tied wrists and ankles with thongs of wolverine leather. He drove a spear through the chest and out the back, as deeply into the ice beneath as he could. He danced around the corpse while he called on his namesake, the Father of Wolves, to send more wolves—and foxes, weasels, owls, ravens, all manner of carrion eaters—to devour it.

“Now it is done,” he said. “Come.”

He felt exhausted himself; but he would walk as long as he was able before he slept. When morning came, he and Broken Blade ought to spy a landmark, such as a distant mountain, and find their way home.

They set forth across the steppe, beneath the spirit fires.

To Wanda Tamberly, over the months the old rogue mammoth had come to be like a friend. She almost hated to bid him goodbye. But now he’d given her what information he could, which might well include a key to the entire history of Beringia. If she hoped to learn more about other aspects, she’d better get busy on them. “Already” her superiors wanted her elsewhere and elsewhen. It was with difficulty, as messages went to and fro across space-time, that she had persuaded them to let her spend just a bit more lifespan here, finish out the season and observe one last interstadial spring. She suspected that they suspected her real reason was to see, in daily detail, how her Tulat would fare.

Not that genuine science did not remain to be done, man-centuries’ worth of it. She had heard that civilian researchers made studies of their own, both pastward and futureward of this period. But they came from civilizations uptime of hers, too alien for her ever to work with them. She was of the Patrol, whose concern was with things impinging directly on human affairs.

There were advantages to that, she often reflected. The real comprehension of an ecology lay in its foundations, geology, meteorology, chemistry, microbes, plants, worms, insects, humble small vertebrates. She got to trail the big glamorous creatures near the top of the food chain. Of course, she too must gather a lot of nitty-gritty data. In a general way, she oversaw the activities of the tiny robots that scuttled beetlelike about, sampling, observing, passing information on to the computer in her dome. But she also followed slot, examined scat, watched from a distance or from a blind, punted around lakes, mingled with herds; and that was fine, fun, real.

I’ll be sorry to leave for good. Although —her spine tingled— next assignment, Cr ô -Magnon Europe?

She had made this trip alone. Wanayimo guides were often invaluable, much better than any Tulat before them, but must not be exposed to really high tech. Loaded with camp gear, her timecycle rose on antigravity till it hung high. Instruments gave her a final look around. Their sensitivity and versatility were part of the reason that she, all by herself, could report on an entire region after a couple of years’ work. Overleaping miles, piercing mists, amplifying light, they spotted single animals and brought views as magnified as she wanted before her eyes. Musk oxen stood back to the wind, a hare lolloped through drifting snow, a ptarmigan took wing, and yonder wandered and grumbled the old mammoth….

Upon the vast white land, his shagginess was dark as the cliffs rearing northward. His one tusk scuffed snow off moss and his trunk grubbed the fodder. It was sparse, but the best that a solitary male, defeated in fight and driven from his fellows, could find. Sometimes Tamberly had thought that mercy required she shoot him. No, he was providing an important clue; and now that she had it, well, leave him in his gaunt pride. Who knew, he might survive into summer and fill his belly again.