Suta held her baby at her waist and glanced north. A grey blue sky was interrupted by low hills and the brown earth of an arid land without much vegetation. Ahead of her, to the north east, lay the end of a huge fresh water lake.

By now, Suta knew the difference between a fresh water lake, and the ocean. You could not drink the ocean water, but could eat fish that lived there. A fresh water lake had drinking water she could carry with her.

The planet was gripped by the last of the ice age. It would remain thus for many more centuries.  The time frame was about ten thousand years ago.

To the south of the lake was the beginning of an unending stretch of undulating land of lush grass. It was a scene Suta had never seen before. As far as her eye could see, it was just green and more green.

And the land was teeming with animals. She could see the slow moving dark dots on the savannah. It was that land, and the game, that proved to be such an attraction to her clan. It was into this land that they wished to enter. But it was still a day’s walk away, and downhill.

Twice before they had tried to enter this land of the endless greens, and twice they were attacked by other humans, driving them away. Their clan had lost its old leader and two younger men. One woman and child were abducted, and another child was killed, stricken by a thrown rock.

They were recuperating and regrouping.

They were not hungry, since rabbits could be trapped and firewood was available. They had succeeded in carrying the smoldering fire, they they could cook even when it rained.

But they knew, come winter, food will get scarce and it will get a lot colder. There were not good caves in the area as shelter. They needed to go through the mountain pass into the green savannah, or they would die. There was no going back either, since the land they left behind, was so difficult to live through in the winter. Their only good route lay ahead of them – and roving bands of spear and rock throwing bearded men has successfully repulsed them twice already, with almost no casualty to themselves.

The old leader was dead. He had held the small clan together through many a winter and helped them move through difficult land for the past ten years. But now he lay in the open hill side, his skull cracked open, and how soon the vultures arrived to tear into his flesh. As it grew darker, they kept lit a fire in their camp behind a few boulders and fed wood into It all night, to keep animals away. But she had seen, peering above the boulder, scanning the land downhill from her, how the leopards had come sniffing around at the carcass, as had the hyena and the jackals. Before it got fully dark, there would be little of the man left at the spot where he fell. Animals will have scattered his bones right across the land.

Moy, the younger man still left able bodied, had tried to take control of the group. Suta had lost her man a winter ago, when he got progressively sick and could not keep up with them any more. Their clan left him to die on a hill top. She too had to leave him, or else she would not only die herself, but also cause the death of their child.

Suta had seen enough death to have a clear idea of what it was, and her sense of self preservation was less fierce than her sense to save her bright eyed child. She would do anything, even leave her sick man, or face death herself, just to make sure the child survives.

 She would have liked a son, since she lost her son five winters ago to a lion. But a son had not come so far. She got a daughter instead, bright eyed and always laughing. Suta loved the child. And now, she was without a man.

Moy liked her, but he had his own women, two of them. Suta did not feel like competing with those women. Besides, the two women had four kids between them. Too many. Suta preferred, for now, to stay by herself without a man, and help the clan in preparing food. She knew how to skin an animal and how to roast it without wasting fuel.

Suta had come back into the circle of her clan members, holding the child by her hand. She was five years old. Another five years and she would be grown up enough to fend for herself. Suta could count easily upto ten and more, mostly using one of her fingers  starting with right hand. All her fingers were used up by the time she reached ten. Any number more than that, and she used her toes, though it got difficult to keep track beyond ten. She knew that her child was five, and that in another five she will have grown up. Suta’s task was to see that she stayed alive and healthy till then.

They had skinned two rabbits, two dead birds, some worms and a few shrub berries. Since they still did not have much water, she had roasted the meat and left the worms and seeds to be eaten raw. They had eaten their meal just before dark. Half the clan was sleeping. The others kept guard.

Suta helped her child into her grass bed, and covered her up with the fox skin quilt. She had herself stitched the piece using mostly fox hide, but also pieces of a porcupine and a a river otter that they had found dead when they last crossed a river many moons ago.  She was not just a good cook skinner of animals and a good cook, but also good in stitching leather using a bone needle and rabbit sinew as chord. She was already teaching her child those essential skills.

Her thoughts were jolted by a sudden shrill scream. Everyone jumped up. Suta’s child cried out in terror. They had heard that sound before. Soon, it was accompanied by the thumping noises. Everyone scampered away from the camp and huddled behind the large boulders.

The thumping grew louder, along with the unearthly screams that tore into the night. A herd of Mastodons came charging down from the western highlands – either heading for the lake for a drink or for the lush vegetation on the lake shore. Their dark sloping shapes and the domed heads outlined against the glow on the western horizon. Huge beasts, many times the numbers that Suta could count quickly on the fingers of her hands thumped their way past the huddled clan. They had seen mastodons being hunted by men, but that was in different terrain and in different arrangements – many men against a single sick or old animal. This herd was so large, it would trample an entire clan if annoyed.

The herd thundered past them, screaming and squealing, ignoring the huddling group of less than a dozen humans. There was a commotion at the waters edge. And now it became clear

Moy, who was watching the scene and also the south eastern opening into the green lands farther afield, got an idea. This unearthly noise and intimidation was aimed at driving away other animals at the shallow end of the lake. The giant animals needed the waterfront theatre to itself.

However, this frightening scene is likely to drive away the roving bands of raiders at the mountain pass to the south east. Herd mastodons were known to be wary of humans holding spears – and are as apt to charge at them as other animals by the water.

So, Moy stood atop a boulder and peered into the darkening scene. Sure enough, the herd branched into two. One part fanned out towards the lake end. It was the smaller section of the herd. They scattered all the animals from the water.

The larger group, meanwhile turned southward and charged down the sloping mountain pass into the distant savannah. Moy was now sure. The intension was to clear the approaches to the lake of the spear wielding humans. This would be a good opportunity for sneaking into the grassy plains. It had to be done wile the Mastodons were still present, so the plainsmen would be missing. And it had to be done stealthily, so the Mastodons did not get annoyed by Moy and his team.

He turned to his gang and hissed softly under his breath, signaling an invitation for them to get closer. He would explain it to them, half in simple words and half is sign language. They would bid their time till it was a bit darker, and then slip out and sneak into the grasslands – crouching or slithering on their belly if need be, and they would get to the open grounds past the narrow mountain pass before dawn. Once into the endless open savannah, there would be ample space to lose themselves from attackers. They would also keep their eyes open and pick up any weapon they find on their way through the pass. They needed at least two more good stone tip wooden spears and a few hand axes.

Suta packed her small belongings into the leather pouch and kept her daughter sleeping. The child will be women up at the last moment and the quilt will be packed in. She had her stick, her cutting flint blade and her stone ball. She had the poison seeds in her pouch. She had the dried jerky and smoked rabbit wrapped in leaf, and she had half a gourd of water. She would have liked it full, but there was water, plenty of it, ahead and to the side of them. The lake itself was massive and one would take more than a summer and a winter to walk around it.

She was ready.

—————————–

 Tony sat back and contemplated the scene he had just created. He was not fully satisfied. Firstly, he was tempted to use the wooly mammoth instead of the mastodon. They were related, but the mammoth was, after all, a mammoth – the king of the land. But the problem was, Tony was not sure of its exact range, and the exact time when it went extinct in different parts of the world. It was the most cold adapted of the ice age pachyderms. He knew of the possibility that human hunters might have been at least partly or largely responsible for the extinction of these megafauna.

So, was it normal to expect a large herd of forty or fifty mammoths to be present so far south and out of the ice belt? They were essentially around the present day northern Iran near the southern shores of Caspian Sea. To the east and south of them was the immense stretch of grassy well watered savannah, and the land of a high biomass of vegetation and animals – all kinds of food source for humans. It was to be also a land of relatively high human population, part of which was beginning to experiment with marginal and seasonal agriculture here and there. The  Aurochs was about to be domesticated, into future cattle, as was jungle foul, into chicken.

Tony thought that a Mastodon, even if less dramatic, might be more plausible in the ice free lands, or the early ancestors of todays Asiatic or African elephants. He chose the Mastodon because, again, it had the magic of an extinct animal, never to come back again.

The thing is, he had not studied the topography, geography, flora and fauna of the last phase of the last ice age enough to be able to describe the land, its people, its climate and ints animals well enough to weave a serious story. And yet, he knew, that his ancestors were there – he inherited their faint footsteps through those lands in those times.

And he wanted that woman into the story.