SPIRIT WALKER

Chapter 16: The Challenge (part 1 of 2)

The party tracked the Mastodon Men in silence. The path was so easy to follow that they did not need to watch the ground. Instead they watched the trees and brush. The Mastodon Men would be resting in their band, asleep in a bed of ferns, possibly lying under the shadow of a fallen redwood, and perhaps only one or two drowsy youngsters would be awake, ready to howl in warning if they scented a razor cat.

Fear churned Tull's belly, constricted his breathing, like the snake that crushes its prey. He could not forget the musky scent of their hair, the smell of rotten meat that issued from them. Unlike some predators, Mastodon Men were not fastidious, and the odor of dried blood and rotting fat had been strong. To Tull, the fear now seemed fascinating. When he first saw the Mastodon Man, he feared it because it had reminded him of his father. But as Phylomon had said, his brain worked its magic after several hours, and he found that he was terrified of the beast itself.

At noon, they discovered their barrel sitting on the side of the hill deep in a bed of sword ferns. For a while, the men moved toward it slowly, fearing that they had found the camp of the Mastodon Men. Tull crept toward the barrel first. He felt the hair rise on his forehead, felt pimples of fear sprout on his arms.

They circled the barrel but found it empty except for a single tuft of brown hair.

In the early afternoon, the men entered a shallow valley, thick with wild grapes. The leaves were waxy and rigid, dried and lifeless after the heat of late summer. The men could not walk through the valley without making a sound of paper shredding.

At the north end was a steep hill. The redwoods marched up to the top of a small ridge, and there they stopped. Snail Follower's bloody path led straight for the rise several hundred yards away.

"If Snail Follower survived the fall, his legs will be broken," Phylomon said. "I believe we will find our quarry dining on him, there on the other side of the ridge."

Phylomon urged the others to stay behind, and then crept up the ridge alone, moving his feet so slowly that the wild grape leaves did not rustle as they slid over his naked legs. Even Ayuvah could not have crept so silently. Phylomon reached the top of the rise, then dropped to his hands and knees and crawled to the lip of the ridge.

He watched for five minutes, and slowly returned through the grape.

To Tull, it seemed that the sky grew darker. The air thickened with the sense of impending doom. He tried to shake off his fear, to remind himself that he had lived through the first attack by the Mastodon Men, but it did no good. His tongue dried and seemed to swell.

"Snail Follower is dead," Phylomon said when he returned. "Let's go."

Ayuvah sighed in relief.

"Dead?" Tull asked in disbelief. "Are you sure?"

"The Mastodon Men have got most of the carcass stripped of meat," Phylomon said. "They have a good thirty or forty in their band."

"What should we do?" Tull asked.

Phylomon arched a single hairless brow. "Do? Why leave, of course!"

Phylomon turned to go, and Ayuvah followed. Tull stood momentarily, stunned. Phylomon was right after all.

The Mastodon Men were dumb animals, incapable of recognizing their common ancestry to man. When they'd killed Little Chaa, they were not eating a fellow being, they were just eating an animal—the way Tull would eat a pig or a grouse.

Yet Tull wanted to punish them, wanted Phylomon and Ayuvah to run over the cliff with him, descend on the Mastodon Men, and slaughter them down to the last child. The very thought was madness. They had nothing to gain by attacking. But I have something to gain, Tull thought.