Frodo pulled his furs tighter around his small frame, his eyes locked on the valley far below. Beside him sat old Garek, a man whose left leg ended in a scarred stump... a grim souvenir from a hunt many winters ago.
Frodo forced his jaw to stop chattering. "Garek," he said. "How far can my father throw his heaviest spear?"
The old hunter grunted, leaning on his crutch. "Tor has the arm of a cave bear. On a calm day, maybe thirty paces. Why do you ask such things now, boy? Pray to the mountain spirits. Your father needs their favor today."
Frodo sighed. "Tell me, how close does he need to be to actually pierce the Great Tusk’s hide?"
Garek frowned, rubbing his beard. "Ten paces. Less, if the beast’s winter coat is thick with mud and ice. You have to drive the flint right behind the front leg, into the softer flesh."
"So, for twenty paces, a hunter is entirely within the beast’s charging distance, holding a weapon that is practically useless until the very last second."
Garek gave a barking laugh that quickly dissolved into a cough. "That is the way of the hunt, Frodo. It is blood for blood. We risk our lives to take theirs."
"He’s stupid," Frodo said.
Garek’s eyes widened. "Watch your tongue, boy. Your father bleeds for you down there."
"If you could throw a spear with the crushing force of a falling boulder, but do it from fifty paces away," Frodo interrupted, "would you still have both your legs?"
Garek fell suddenly silent, the anger draining away from his face.
He looked down at his stump, then back to the valley. "Such magic does not exist."
"It is simply making the wood do the work instead of the man. And I am going to build it.." Frodo said, turning his gaze back to the snow.
Down in the shadowed belly of the valley, Tor crouched behind a snow-draped boulder, his grip on his spear turning his knuckles white.
Around him, fourteen hunters mirrored his posture.
At the far end of the pass, the mammoth was tearing at the frozen bark of a dead pine tree.
"It is a perfect trap," whispered Jarl, a young hunter with fresh ash-paint streaked across his eager face.
He grinned, hefting his spear. "We wait for it to move past the overhang. Then, we drop the deadfall. The stones will break its back."
Tor nodded slowly, though the tight knot in his stomach refused to untangle.
They had spent two full days setting the boulders on the cliffs above, propping them up with wooden levers.
Tor glanced up at the cliff where two men waited by the leverage logs. The mammoth took a earth-shaking step forward. It was heading exactly where they wanted it.
"Get ready," Tor hissed, motioning with a flattened hand to the men around him. "When the rocks fall, we rush the flanks. Do not attack the front. Stay away from the tusks."
The mammoth took another step, putting its bulk beneath the shadows of the overhang.
"Now!" Tor roared.
The men on the cliff kicked the wooden supports away.
With a sound like rolling thunder, three boulders detached from the cliff face.
They plummeted toward the earth, trailing a cloud of snow and loose shale. Down below, the hunters screamed their war cries, breaking from their cover, expecting to see the beast instantly crushed into the mud.
But the mammoth was not a slow, mindless creature. It lunged forward with a sudden burst of speed that defied its immense bulk. The boulder slammed into the earth exactly where the beast’s spine had been a fraction of a second prior, shattering into jagged stone shrapnel.
A smaller rock clipped the mammoth’s rear leg, drawing a bloody gash, but failing to break the bone.
The beast spun around, its trunk raising high into the air. It emitted a trumpeting roar that shook the snow from the high branches and made Tor’s ears ring with pain.
Its eyes locked instantly onto the rushing hunters.
Jarl, carried forward by his own momentum and youthful arrogance, was the first to reach it.
He thrust his flint-tipped spear at the creature’s thick side. The stone point merely glanced off the dense fur, snapping the wooden shaft in two with a pathetic crack.
Jarl froze, his boastful smile vanishing.
"Move!" Tor screamed, sprinting forward.
The mammoth swept its tusk in a sweeping arc. It caught Jarl square in the chest, lifting the young man off his feet and throwing him through the air.
He crashed into a pine tree twenty feet away with a sickening crunch, crumpling to the snow.
"Stand your ground!" Tor bellowed, though he knew it was useless. Two more men were knocked aside by the creature’s thrashing trunk.
The mammoth turned its attention toward Tor, identifying the loudest and largest of the remaining threats.
It lowered its head, preparing to charge.
Tor knew he couldn’t outrun it. The gorge was too narrow, and the snow was too deep. He had a fraction of a second to make a choice.
Tor ran directly toward the beast.
The mammoth charged. As the tusks swept down to crush him into the permafrost, Tor threw himself to the side, sliding on a patch of slick black ice. He slid right under the sweeping ivory, feeling the wind of its passing tear at his furs.
Using the rapid momentum of his slide, Tor planted the blunt butt of his spear against a solid notch in the rocky ground. He angled the flint tip sharply upward, directly into the creature’s path.
The beast’s softer underbelly, unprotected by the guard hairs, drove into the braced spear.
The shaft groaned, bending under the immense weight, before burying itself deep into the creature’s vitals.
The beast stumbled forward, its legs buckling, and crashed into the snow. It thrashed weakly for a few moments, staining the pristine white snow a brilliant crimson, before finally falling still.
Tor lay on his back, gasping for air.
He slowly pushed himself up, staring at the fallen mountain of fur.
They had won, but at what terrible cost?
He looked toward the tree line where Jarl lay broken, and where two other hunters were groaning in the bloody snow.
Frodo pushed his way past the remaining hunters. He walked straight to the shattered remains of Jarl’s spear. He knelt in the snow and picked up a piece of the broken shaft, turning it over in his hands.
Tor limped over to his son, wincing as he put weight on his bruised leg. "We did it, boy," Tor rasped. "The tribe lives."
Frodo stood up. "You won by luck," Frodo said.
Tor frowned, far too exhausted to argue with his strange son. "What are you talking about, Frodo?"
Frodo tightened his grip on the broken spear shaft.