Out of The Ice Age: A Tale of Adventure

By David Slabotsky

In the bloody, war-torn world of prehistory, two young people escape from a tribal battle and use their survival skills to travel through a savage land, fighting against primitive, explosive forces of nature, and the brutality of humans who would destroy them. This is an adventure story with non-stop action, a short, quick read that will leave you breathless.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jul 16, 2014
• ISBN: 9781630687748

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Chapter One

He was so entranced by the fire exploding into the black night sky that he failed to hear the tell-tale signs - the snap of a twig, whispering voices, the sound of a stone knife being drawn from a stiff leather sheath, the soft swish of braided rope being unwound.

When he heard the war party scream out of the forest and grab him from behind, it was too late. In a moment it was done. A gag was wound around his mouth, and a hood made of deer hide was thrown over his head and quickly tied around his neck so that he was effectively blind and could barely breathe. While he struggled to free himself from the hood, quick hands grabbed his hands and secured them behind his back with a rope made from the fibers of a soft tree bark. The bark had a deep and sweet aroma, a bleak contrast with the violence in which he was swamped and overwhelmed. A moment later, his feet were bound and he was tied onto what felt like a litter of some sort, like saplings lashed together into a rough-made platform. Within a few minutes, it was done. He was being dragged through the forest like a wild animal being hauled to camp by hungry hunters.

As the litter banged across the forest floor, rocks, brush and tree roots pounded his young body without mercy. He began to scream and something hard struck the side of his head. He could feel the line of blood wetting his hair and dripping down his cheek. He didn't scream again. He held his body tight against the pain and began to sob quietly, and shake. He was not struck again.

They travelled through the forest all night long. The forest terrain with its sounds of footfalls on earth and brush and the smells of the deep woods, ever-deeper and richer in the damp night air, gave way to the sounds of feet crossing a rocky surface. The air became clearer, and he knew that he was out of the trees and into the foothills. As they climbed higher, freezing winds blew from the ice mountains. Whereas before he shook from pain and despair, now he shook from cold. He could tell from how he lay on the litter that he was being carried upward. At last, the cold overwhelmed him, pain overwhelmed him, terror overwhelmed him, and somewhere in the night, he lost consciousness.

He dreamed it all again: His clan was marching through the wooded mountains to hunting grounds that belonged to the Shells Clan. They were prepared for war. The Shells Clan controlled the ground on the far side of the river. His family and their allies would cross the river at night and overwhelm them. Although he was still a boy, he had already been to war. He could pull a bow and shoot an arrow, which, light as it was, could still kill a man at close range. He could race into the middle of a battle and jump onto the back of a larger man and cut his throat with a stone knife. He had been wounded twice, once with a stone blade, another time with a stone mallet. The clan leader had praised him and dressed his wounds with a plant that he pulled from the river.

It was a moonless night. The clan moved like a cloud through the pass, and then began the descent to the river. The impenetrable ice fields loomed above them. Below lay the river, and beyond it the plain, and on the plain were the wild grazing herds whose flesh would feed them. But between them and the herds were the Shells Clan, warriors and hunters like all humans who lived on the planet. There was not enough food for both clans. There was never enough food. Humans were crowded toward each other, as if the moving mountains of ice were herding them, corralling them, forcing them face to face, testing them in battle, testing their worthiness to walk the earth. The earth was still too young for mercy or kindness. Life was a river of blood.

In his dream, he remembered the winding path down the mountain, and he remembered how in the darkness even his own kind were invisible. He could hear their footsteps, hear their breath, but he could not see them, they had all been swallowed up into the black ocean of the night. And yet they moved as one, quietly and surely, with the mind and spirit of a herd, one blood, one body, moving down to the river. What dreams did the Shells Clan dream at that moment, curled together like a knot of muscle and bone, some under the skin of an animal, some under the open black sky beside the embers of a dying fire? They would die when his herd crossed the river. They would die beside their dying fire. There would be a slaughter, and it would be good. And then there would be a slaughter of animals on the plains. And that, too, would be good.

His heart beat fiercely as they approached the river. At times, it beat so powerfully that he could barely take a breath. There were moments when he could not feel the earth underneath his feet, and, at those times, he moved only because the herd moved, the herd pushed and pulled him forward, like a stick pushed and pulled by the tide.

And then the horror began. It started with the sound of a single pebble bouncing down the mountain and striking the root of a small tree at his feet. It made a soft, dull sound. But then more pebbles came raining down, followed by waves of rocks and boulders. With a shattering sound, the mountain broke apart and threw out rivers of fire and a rain of ash. The force of the eruption threw him into the air and he landed on a rock ledge which saved him from the flood of mud and fire that consumed the path below him. But the rest of the clan was swept away. The noise of the mountain exploding drowned out their screams. The mountain split apart, and then there was no one but himself. The clan herd was gone. And gone, as well, was the mind of the herd. He had only his own mind now. He stared at the fire reflected off the mountains of ice. Could he hunt alone? It was more likely that he would be hunted. The Shells people would kill him. No one would protect him now. And at that moment, the warriors screamed out of the forest and grabbed him.

When he awoke, it was dawn. He could tell by the fragrance of the mountain air and the sound of the birds. They had covered him with an animal hide but his body was still rigid from the cold. Were these the Ice People? Were these the ones who lived in caves carved out of the frozen mountains? The Ice People took slaves to dig deeper into the mountains. Is that why they took him? Is that why they covered him with a hide, to keep him alive until he could be put to work? He did not think he would live very long in the cold mountains.

He lost consciousness again, only to be jolted awake as the litter was dropped roughly to the ground. He could hear many voices, and the sounds and smells of a night-time encampment, meat cooking, a woman singing. One voice stood out from the others, strong, insistent and commanding. It grew louder, dominating all the other sounds in the camp until, at last, there was only this one voice to be heard. The voice came closer and closer, and soon it was louder than a voice, louder than a roar, It became an inhuman sound, wild and savage. Soon the voice was directly beside him and the sound of it made his body shake uncontrollably. He felt the breath of the voice on his skin.

As his body shook, his wrists and ankles pulled against the ropes that bound him. He gagged inside the hood, he began to gasp for air, and then, all of a sudden, the one who owned the voice ripped his hood away. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the firelight, but when they did, he saw that he was looking into the face of a monster. He screamed, tearing at the ropes that bound him. He could see the blood pouring from his young body but he could do nothing but scream and thrash as the horror stood over him. Then the horror reached down and touched him, and the young man wailed.

At the sound of his wailing, a huge cry went up from the camp and suddenly people were running everywhere. Their effort was directed to gathering wood and piling it in the center of the camp. The pile was higher than a man in no time, and yet they continued to stack the wood higher and higher until they could stack it no more. No sooner was that task completed than a silence descended on the encampment. The only sound was ice cracking on the mountainsides and frozen