Chapter 75 - The Last Mammoth Hunter part 1

The Mammoth Hunters stalked their prey, and I stalked them.

I was curled in the scant shade of a wind-warped shrub, observing them from the pinnacle of a grassy hummock as they snuck up on the herd. It was early morning, but the light was already burning my eyes, the sun a blazing nova in the sky. I had finally caught up with hunting party after a week of crawling across the ground on my belly, and I watched them now hungrily from my hiding place, only a couple hundred meters away.

Though I'd moved without rest after freeing myself from the stones, it had taken me a week to catch up to them. The hunters moved swiftly by day. It was only at night that I managed to gain any ground on them.

My progress was slow during the day, as I had to inch forward on my belly, my face turned to the frozen ground. Contrary to popular fiction, vampires do not burst into flames at the first glint of sunlight-- ridiculous!-- but we prefer to move at night. Our eyes are very sensitive. So during the day, I slid mechanically through the grass, only faintly aware of my surroundings, following them by the scent they left behind them on the frosty earth. I made better progress at night, shuffling forward lizard-like in the dark, my eyes and fangs gleaming.

Along the way, I'd managed to catch a mole and an injured bird, and I'd sucked every drop of blood from them, but such paltry fare had done little to satisfy my hunger, or repair the horrific damage to my body. Every so often, I encountered the bones and entrails of the small animals the Mammoth Hunters had snared and devoured, and I licked the last bloody juices from the bits of offal they'd cast aside.

Each day I was able to move a little faster, until I finally caught up to the Mammoth Hunters last night.

Though I was tempted to snatch one of them from their campsite when I caught up to them, it was close to dawn and I was afraid I was too weak to kill one of them and dispose of the corpse before the sun peeked over the distant horizon. Already the eastern sky was lightening. I knew I had to wait. One of them would wander from the group tomorrow evening, I counseled my ravening thirst, and when that happened, I would be waiting. I would have the cover of darkness, and the time to do what must be done. Feed, dispose of the body and hide myself before his companions arose.

I'd followed at a distance after they roused. They made their toilet and ate before they broke camp, and now I watched them crawling forward, in the same manner I'd trailed after them, slithering through the grass on their bellies toward a small herd of mammoths.

The herd was comprised of three subordinate females and a large matriarch. There were two calves following at their mother's sides, but no bulls. Not at this time of year. The largest of the beasts, the alpha female, stood almost ten feet tall at the shoulder, and was covered, like the other adult females, in a thick and swaying shag of tangled auburn hair. The animals were tearing clods of grass from the frozen earth with their long trunks. They slapped the grass against the ground to shake the dirt from the roots, then curled their trunks under to place it in their mouths. Busy eating, none of great beasts seemed aware of the hunters winding toward them in the grass. As I watched, shading my eyes from the sun with my one good hand, I was mildly curious to see how the little men would kill one of those giant, browsing animals.

My people had encountered Mammoth Hunters from time to time when I was a living man, but I had no recollection of it then, watching them from the hill. The many millennia I'd slumbered in the glacier had pulped my brain a thousand times over, and I had not yet healed enough to recover my memories. I had become a little more cunning in the last few days, feeding on the blood of the region's scant wildlife, that and the hunters' castoffs, but that afternoon, watching the Mammoth Hunters stalk their prey, I was hardly more intelligent than any other predatory animal.

At some unseen signal, several of the hunters leapt to their feet and pelted toward the mammoths. The massive animals reared in surprise and began to thunder away from the sprinting humans. As the subordinate females fled in a panic, the matriarch of the herd doubled around, her ears flapping out to the sides in a threatening display. She moved to protect the calves at the rear of the group. The trumpeting of the shaggy animals echoed across the windy tundra.

As I watched, two of the bigger men in the hunting party ran alongside one of the smaller adult females and caught handholds in her draping pelt. They began to pull themselves up her coarse wool, hand over hand. She reared and blared as they climbed her, but couldn't jar them loose.

Korg, the leader of the hunting party, was first to haul himself onto the back of the agitated creature. He pumped one fist in the air in triumph, then reached behind to pull some kind of lance from a leather pack strapped between his shoulder blades.

Before he could stab the mammoth with his spear, the matriarch of the herd came lumbering toward him. Unlike modern elephants, both the male and female mammoth were equipped with tusks. Korg saw the matriarch's deadly tusks coming at him and swung down onto the opposite side of the smaller female's flanks. He did not drop to the ground, but clung to the beast's shaggy wool, swinging to and fro as she trampled around in fear.

The matriarch and the smaller female almost collided. The bigger mammoth trumpeted in frustration and anger, then swung away as she shifted her attention to three nearby hunters, who were chasing down a calf. Squalling in fury, she gave pursuit. Even so far away, I could feel the impact of her footsteps throbbing through the soil.

The second hunter fell off the bucking subordinate female and was struck a glancing blow by her shuffling hind leg. The impact sent him wheeling across the ground, but Korg did not fall. The big leader of the Mammoth Hunters held on.

I watched him climb back on the female's shoulders. He didn't pump his arm in triumph as he had the first time, but drove his spear into the mammoth's neck, right where the base of the animal's skull met the vertebrae of the neck. He must have missed whatever vital spot he was aiming for, however. As the female reared up, honking in pain, he grabbed two handfuls of her coarse wool and tried to cling to the bucking behemoth. His legs swung out below him. I watched, entranced, as the great beast reared, pumping her forelegs, the little man swinging back and forth from his handhold. Her feet returned to the ground with a resounding thoomb! then Korg regained his position, snatched another lance from his quiver and drove it into the animal's skull.

The female went down instantly, her legs buckling beneath her. The six ton beast struck the ground with a reverberating thud that made the little stones around my arm, some two hundred meters away, jump off the ground. I saw a geyser of blood jet across the hunter on her back. The sight made me twitch forward hungrily before I could restrain my appetite and hunker back down in the shade of the bush.

The alpha female glanced toward her fallen sister, then herded the others away. They receded anxiously into the distance, their mournful trumpeting and the low thunder of their movement, lingering in the air even after they'd vanished from sight.

The Mammoth Hunters gathered around the fallen cow. I watched her eyes roll round to look at them, little men jumping and pumping their fists in the air in celebration, and then she huffed and passed away.

Although there's been quite a bit of debate in recent decades concerning why the mammoths went extinct, the simple truth of the matter—at least for the wooly mammoths of the north—is that they were easy to climb onto.

I watched as the hunters began to butcher the six ton animal. A couple of the men went to tend to the fellow who was struck by the mammoth's foot. He hadn't risen from the spot where he'd rolled. The others set to the tasks of building a fire and carving into the meat of the beast.

After a few hours, the hunters settled down to palaver while mammoth steak roasted over their fire, a midday feast. One of the younger men nodded, accepting some duty they appointed him. He cut some of the sizzling meat from the spit and then turned and jogged South. Headed home, I suppose, to fetch the group's wives and children. But the young man would never complete his task. I watched him diminish into the distance, then abandoned my hiding place to trail after him.