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looked at the bodies and the blood and brains and scattered ordure, and he smelled the pieces of the stag that were still roasting by the fire and raised his face and cried out in triumph, again and again. Feetborn's Son and Red Boy sang with him; of the males only Lefthand did not sing but knelt looking wonderingly into the open eyes of a dead female cub.
    The Man told Lefthand and Cryer to go and bring the rest to the cave at once. Then he walked slowly about, chewing a piece of deer flesh. Feetborn's Son began to saw off the head of the big female. Red Boy was stuffing deer meat into his mouth with both hands. Snowborn's shoulder had nearly stopped bleeding. The Man looked curiously at the chips of flint in one corner. The twisted male had had a flint-head spear, but it was blunt. The young males only had hardened wood spears. These flints were not sharp. He picked one up and made a scratch on the cave wall, then another and another. Now he had made the mark of a bird, like the redlegged bird that had stayed silent by his feet even at the owl call. They were fat and good to eat and easy to kill, those birds, but none of his should ever eat one again, except as a blessing, for now it was his brother.
    Snowborn had set the big female's head in the coals, and the smell of roasting brains rekindled his hunger. Soon Lefthand and Cryer came back with the rest, Cryer carrying her dead baby. They all stood close, and the Man put a piece of flesh into the baby's mouth, then carried it back far into the cave and pushed it into a high crevice, where no animal could reach it. Cryer wept a little, for her breasts still hurt, but one of the boys drank milk from her, and then the Man told them of the bird, his brother, and all began to talk excitedly.
    The Man looked about him and began to smile. He jumped up and down and grabbed Snowborn and Feetborn together, one arm about each, and danced with them, twirling round and round around the fire, shouting at the top of his voice.
     
    The Woman crouched by a bush far from the cave, under the steepest cliff of the Rock, where the sun never shone. It had begun to snow, and her baby was cold. She had fallen in her flight, landing on top of it, and it had not cried or moved or sucked since. Her throat itched to wail, but she dared not. Bent Brother she had seen killed, but where was the Father? The young men? Was there no one? She began to whimper softly, uncontrollably.
    Late in the morning two young male Others came, with their tall, straight-up walk. They would have passed below, but her skin prickled, and before she could stop herself, she jumped up and ran away. Then they saw her, and she heard their shouts behind her. She ran with all her strength, but they closed fast. She threw her baby away and dived into the thick bush at the foot of the cliff. She ducked and twisted through thorn and creeper, but they were very close. A cleft in the rock, narrow and low, showed black before her, and she slipped in, dropped to her knees, to her belly, wriggling frantically forward. Soon the cleft widened. She turned and waited, her hands like claws and her lips drawn back from her teeth.
    She heard the Others at the cave mouth, and the thin light was blocked. They growled and hissed for a time, and then they too waited. They made no sound, but the Woman smelled them. When the sun set, they went. The Woman lay without movement of hair or muscle until no light at all came down the narrow slit. Then she began to unwind and wriggle toward the entrance. As she moved her left knee against the side of the cave, a mass of rock broke free, fell, and crushed her leg. It was a big block, sharp-edged, and however hard she tried, she could not move.

BOOK TWO
OUT OF THE CAVES
    To the Jewish year 3188, which was
    AUC 180 (180 years from the founding of the city of Rome)
    573 B.C.
     
    The loser in the encounter and in the general struggle for existence was Neanderthal man; the winner was Cro-Magnon man (both named