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Finally, exhausted, she surrendered to the inexorable force of the tide The river, taking its advantage, swept the makeshift raft back in the direction of the strea now controlled her

But ahead, the river’s course was changing, its southerly direction swerving sharply west as it curved around a jutting spit of land Ayla had traversedtorrent before giving in to her fatigue, and when she saw the rocky shore, with a resolute effort, she took control

She forced her legs to kick, pushing to reach the land before the river carried her around the point Closing her eyes, she concentrated on keeping her legs ainst the bottom and come to a stop

Ayla couldn’tto the branch stubs A swell in the turbulent strea woman with panic She forced herself to her knees and shoved the battered tree trunk forward, anchoring it to the beach, then fell back into the water

But she couldn’t rest long Shivering violently in the cold water, she made herself crawl onto the rocky spit She fumbled with the knots in the vine, and, with that loosened, she hauled the bundle to the beach The thong was even ers

Providence helped The thong broke at a weak spot She clawed the long leather strap away, pushed the basket aside, and crawled on the bearskin and wrapped it around her By the ti woman was asleep

Ayla headed north and slightly west after her perilous river crossing The summer days warn of huhtened the brief spring faded, and the grass neared waist high

She added alfalfa and clover to her diet, and welco the roots by tracing ra with rows of oval green vegetables in addition to edible roots, and she had no trouble distinguishing between them and their poisonous cousins When the season for the buds of day lilies passed, the roots were still tender A few early-ripening varieties of loling currants had begun to turn color, and there were always a fe leaves of pigweed, reens

Her sling did not lack for targets Steppe pikas, souslik ray bro instead of winter white—and an occasional, oiant harouse and ptarh Ayla could never eat ptar that the fat birds with the feathered feet had always been Creb’s favorite

But those were only the s on the plain’s summer bounty She saw herds of deer—reindeer, red deer, and enoriant deer; coers, which resea antelope occasionally crossed her path The herd of reddish broild cattle, with bulls six feet at the withers, had spring calves nursing at the ample udders of cows Ayla’swas not an adequate weapon to hunt aurochs She gli woollyat their backs facing down a pack of wolves, and carefully avoided a family of evil-tempered woolly rhinoceroses Broud’s totem, she recalled, and suitable, too

As she continued northward, the young wo drier and more desolate She had reached the ill-defined northern limit of the wet, snowy continental steppes Beyond, all the way to the sheer walls of the ilacier, lay the arid loess steppes, an environ the Ice Age

Glaciers, massive frozen sheets of ice that spanned the continent, mantled the Northern Hemisphere Nearly a quarter of the earth’s surface was buried under their un tons The water locked within their confines caused the level of the oceans to drop, extending the coastlines and changing the shape of the land No portion of the globe was exeions and deserts shrunk, but near the borders of the ice the effect was profound

The vast ice field chilled the air above it, causing moisture in the atmosphere to condense and fall as snow But nearer the center high pressure stabilized, creating extrees The huge glaciers grew at theirdimensions, a sheet of ice more than a mile thick

With lacier, the land just south of it was dry—and frozen The constant high pressure over the center caused an at the cold dry air toward lower pressures; wind, blowing from the north, never stopped on the steppes It only varied in intensity Along the way it picked up rock that had been pulverized to flour at the shifting border of the grinding glacier The airborne particles were sifted to a texture only slightly coarser than clay-loess—and deposited over hundreds of miles to depths of many feet, and became soil

In winter, howling winds whipped the scant snowfall across the bleak frozen land But the earth still spun on its tilted axis, and seasons still changed Average yearly teer the forlacier; a few hot days have little effect if they don’t alter the average

In spring the er snow that fell on the landdown and out across the steppes The h, above the perrasses and herbs to sprout The grass grew rapidly, knowing in the heart of its seed that life would be short By thehay, an entire continent of grassland, with scattered pockets of boreal forest and tundra nearer the oceans

In the regions near the borders of the ice, where the snow cover was light, the grass supplied fodder the year around for uncountableanilacial cold—and to predators who can adapt to any cliraze at the foot of a glea a mile or more above it

The seasonal streah the deep loess, and often through the sedi the continent Steep ravines and river gorges were coorges shelter froreen valleys existed

The season warrew tired of traveling, tired of thesun and incessant wind Her skin roughened, cracked, and peeled Her lips were chapped, her eyes sore, her throat always full of grit She careener and more wooded than the steppes, but none tempted her to stay, and all were empty of human life

Though skies were usually clear, her fruitless search cast a shadow of fear and worry Winter always ruled the land On the hottest day of suht Food had to be stockpiled and protection found to survive the long bitter season She had been wandering since early spring and was beginning to wonder if she were doomed to roam the steppes forever—or die after all

She made a dry camp at the end of another day that was so like the days that had gone before it She hadwith a fire, but she had no appetite She threw the a as sharp an eye out for it Gathering was round was hard-packed and rowth And there was always the wind

She slept poorly, troubled by bad drea to eat; even her discarded

one She took a drink—stale and flat—packed her carrying basket, and started north

Around noon she found a streahtly acrid, but she filled her waterbag She dug up soy and bland, but she chewed on theo on, but she didn’t knohat else to do Dispirited and apathetic, she wasn’t payingShe didn’t notice the pride of cave lions basking in the afternoon sun until one roared a warning

Fear charged through her, tingling her into awareness She backed up and turned west to skirt the lions’ territory She had traveled north far enough It was the spirit of the Cave Lion that protected her, not the great beast in his physical form Just because he was her totem did not mean she was safe from attack

In fact, that was how Creb knew her tote parallel scars on her left thigh, and had a recurring night into a tiny cave where she had run to hide when she was a child of five She had dreaht before, she recalled Creb had told her she had been tested to see if she orthy, and marked to show she had been chosen Absently, she reached down and felt the scars on her leg I wonder why the Cave Lion would choose ht