Far more prevalent were the variety of elk known in this land as red deer. They also grew large antlers, but of the branching variety.

Red deer were primarily grazers and could live in a broad range of open country, from mountains to steppes. Nimble and fearless, steep hills and rough country didn't deter them, nor did narrow ledges above the treeline if there was grass to tempt them. Forests with enough spaces between trees to allow an undergrowth of grasses and ferns or interspersed with sunny glens were acceptable habitats, as were heather-covered hills and open steppes.

Red deer didn't like to run, but their long-legged walk or lively trot covered ground with celerity, and if chased, they could run for miles, leap a forty-foot distance, and jump to a height of eight feet. They were also excellent swimmers. Though they preferred to eat grass, they could feed on leaves, buds, berries, mushrooms, herbs, heathers, bark, acorns, nuts, and beechnut mast. Red deer congregated in small herds at this time of year, and in a meadow beside a stream, Ayla and Jondalar saw several of the deer and stopped to observe them. The grass was just turning from green to gold, and a few fully leafed-out, luxuriant beech trees lined the bank, but on the other side was a substantial gallery forest.

It was a male herd of various ages, and their antlers were in full velvet. Antlers began when the males were about a year old with single spikes. They were cast off in early spring, but they started to grow new ones almost immediately. Each year a new tine was added, and by early summer even the biggest were fully grown, encased in velvet, a soft skin full of blood vessels, which carried the nutrients that allowed their antlers to grow so quickly. By mid- to late summer, the velvet dried and became very itchy, causing the deer to scratch against trees and rocks to rub it off, but the bloody skin often hung in tatters until it was gone.

They counted twelve points on the biggest, which weighed around eight hundred pounds. Though they were called red deer, the color of the coat of the twelve-point buck was a black gray brown; others in the herd were a light brownish-red color, some shading toward taupe, and one was blond. A young one with just the hint of spikes still showed faintly the white spots of a fawn. Although Jondalar was tempted, he decided not to go after the one with the huge rack, though he was sure he could bring it down with his spear-thrower.

"That big one is in his prime," he said. "I'd like to come back and watch him later, they often come back to the same places. In his season of Pleasures, he'll fight for as many females as he can, though many times just displaying that rack is enough to discourage competitors. But they fight hard and will go at it all day. It makes so much noise when they run into each other with those antlers, you can hear them from very far away, and they will even get up on their hind legs and fight with their front legs. As big as he is, he must be a very good, aggressive fighter."

"I've heard them fight, but I've never seen them," Ayla said.

"Once, when I was living with Dalanar, we saw a couple of them locked together with their antlers intertwined. They couldn't get apart no matter how they tried. We had to cut the antlers to separate them so we could use them. They were an easy kill, but Dalanar said we were doing them a favor, they would have died anyway of hunger and thirst."

"I think that big stag has had a brush with people before," Ayla said, signaling Whinney to move back. "The wind just shifted and must have given him our scent, he's getting edgy. You can see he's starting to walk away. They will all go if he goes."

"He does look nervous," Jondalar said, backing off, too.

Suddenly, a lynx that had been lying in wait, unseen, in one of the beech trees, dropped down onto the back of the youngest when he walked underneath. The faintly spotted deer leaped forward, trying to dislodge the wildcat, but the short-tailed feline with the tufted ears held on to the deer's shoulders and bit down, opening his veins. The other deer raced away, but the young cervid with the cat on his back ran in a large arc and circled around. As they watched the panicky animal heading back, both Ayla and Jondalar readied their spear-throwers for protection, just in case, but the lynx had been drinking his blood and the deer was showing signs of exhaustion. He stumbled, the lynx took a new grip, and more blood spurted. The deer took a few more steps, stumbled again, then dropped to the ground. The lynx bit open the head of the young animal and started feeding on the brains.

It was over quickly, but the horses were nervous and the humans were both ready to leave. "That's why he looked nervous," Ayla said. "It wasn't our scent at all."

"That deer was young," Jondalar said. "You could still see his spots. I wonder if his dam died early and left him alone a little too young. He found the male herd, but it didn't matter. Young animals are always vulnerable."

"When I was a little girl, I once tried to kill a lynx with my sling," Ayla said, urging Whinney to a walk.

"With a sling? How old were you?" Jondalar asked.

She thought for a moment, trying to remember. "I think I could count eight or nine years," she said.

"You could have been killed as easily as that deer," Jondalar said.

"I know. He moved and the stone just bounced off. It just irritated him and he sprang at me. I managed to roll aside and found a piece of wood and hit him with it, and he went away," she said.

"Great Mother! That was a close call, Ayla," he said, leaning back on his horse, which caused Racer to slow down.

"I was afraid to go out alone for a while afterward, but that was when I got the idea to throw two stones. I thought if I had had another one ready, I could have hit him a second time before he came for me. I wasn't sure if it could be done, but I practiced and worked it out. Still, it wasn't until I killed a hyena that I felt confident to go hunting again," she said.

Jondalar just shook his head. When he thought about it, it was amazing that she was still alive. On the way back to their current camp, they saw a herd of animals that made Whinney and Racer pay attention: a horselike animal called an onager, which appeared to be a cross between a horse and donkey, but were a viable species of their own. Whinney stopped to smell their droppings, and Racer nickered at them. The whole herd stopped grazing and looked at the horses. The sound they returned was closer to a bray, but both animals seemed to be aware of their similarity.

They also saw a female saiga antelope with two young. Saiga were goatlike animals with overhanging noses who preferred plains or steppes, no matter how barren, to hills or mountains. Ayla remembered that the saiga antelope was Iza's totem. The following day they saw another herd of animals that bothered Ayla more than she wanted to admit: horses. Both Whinney and Racer were drawn to them.

Ayla and Jondalar studied them and noticed some differences between the wild herd and the animals they had brought with them from the east. Rather than Whinney's dun-yellow color, which was most common all over, or even the rare dark brown of Racer's coat, most of the horses in this herd were a bluish-gray color with a white belly. They all, their two included, had similar stand-up brushlike black manes and black tails, black stripes down their backbones, and black lower legs, with some suggestion of striping on their lower haunches. They were generally small horses, broad backed with rounded bellies, but the herd animals seemed to stand a fraction higher and had slightly shorter muzzles.

The herd was watching Whinney and Racer with as much intensity as the two were watching the herd, but this time Racer's nicker brought a ringing neigh of challenge in return. She and Jondalar looked at each other when they heard the call and saw a large stallion coming toward them from the back of the herd. By tacit agreement, Ayla and Jondalar rode their horses in another direction as fast as they could. Jondalar did not want Racer to be drawn into a fight with the herd stallion, and with Wolf being gone so much of the time, Ayla was afraid the horses, too, might be tempted to leave her and decide to live with their own kind.