A warmer sun fills the sky as the great Ice Age is ending and a new and savage epoch descends upon the land. Warakan, son of war chiefs and spirit masters, wanders alone in the primeval forest, searching for the mysterious great white mammoth and the totemic power it can give him. He escaped into the wilderness as a boy and has now become a man, torn between his yearning for peace and companionship--and his desire for blood and vengeance. Under the shadowing wings of a golden eagle he is about to fulfill his destiny. A warmer sun fills the sky as the great Ice Age is ending and a new and savage epoch descends upon the land. Warakan, son of war chiefs and spirit masters, wanders alone in the primeval forest, searching for the mysterious great white mammoth and the totemic power it can give him. He escaped into the wilderness as a boy and has now become a man, torn between his yearning for peace and companionship--and his desire for blood and vengeance. Under the shadowing wings of a golden eagle he is about to fulfill his destiny. A warmer sun fills the sky as the great Ice Age is ending and a new and savage epoch descends upon the land. Warakan, son of war chiefs and spirit masters, wanders alone in the primeval forest, searching for the mysterious great white mammoth and the totemic power it can give him. He escaped into the wilderness as a boy and has now become a man, torn between his yearning for peace and companionship--and his desire for blood and vengeance. Under the shadowing wings of a golden eagle he is about to fulfill his destiny. Joan Hamilton Cline is the real name of William Sarabande, author of the internationally bestselling First Americans series. She was born in Hollywood, California, and started writing when she was seventeen. First published in 1979, Joan has been writing as William Sarabande for eleven years. She lives with her husband in Fawnskin, California. 1 He went from the lodge. Quietly and in stealth he went, although secrecy was against his nature, and he cursed the need for guile that sent him alone into the Ice Age night. Clad in the furs and skins of beasts, he stood beneath the stars, a giant of a man on the far side of youth, telling himself that from this moment on, no matter what happened, he must be young again, strong again, unafraid again. The world is changing. Nothing will ever be the same. On the hunt to come, if you are to take the prey you seek and return alive to speak of it, you must be all that you have ever been: Xohkantakeh . . . bold hunter and warrior of the People of the Land of Grass! He stared into the darkness. He did not feel bold. He felt tired, and old. The Land of Grass was far away; youth was farther still, and less attainable. And now Great Paws has sensed your weakness as a stink upon the wind. He has crawled from his den beneath the snow and mocks you as he prowls the broad hills and steals once more from your snares and caches. Xohkantakeh's eyes narrowed within the protective recesses of his wolfskin hood as an image flared within his brain. Furred and fanged and standing to a height that made even a giant of a man feel small, the vision burned behind his eyes and seared his tongue with the name of its kind: Bear. He fought the urge to retreat into the warmth of the lodge and won, but not easily. For the sake of your woman and daughters, you must go forth to hunt this Bear, this Thief, this Great Paws! His brow furrowed in response to the unspoken command; it was the only part of him that moved. Dire wolves were howling on the ridgetops and in the benighted hollows of distant hills. In the pulsing glow of a red aurora, it seemed to Xohkantakeh that both earth and sky were awash in blood. He grimaced at the inadvertent comparison and gazed upward, observing stars whose positions in the sky assured him that it was spring even though he could feel the hard chill of the winter snowpack beneath his trisoled moccasins. His gut tightened; there was something unnatural about the endless cold, about the unseasonal progression of springtime stars across the bloodred winter sky, and about the coming of the great bear into his hunting grounds now, at a time when . . . His thoughts stopped in midflow. An owl was sounding in the tamaracks beyond the palisade of dry reeds and deadfall that he had raised to keep wind and predators from his winter camp, making him shiver. In the lore of his people, Owl flew before Death. Unnerved, Xohkantakeh squinted across the compound to see streams of airborne ground snow misting toward him through breaks in the palisade. The wind had breached his defenses. With a sinking heart he knew it was only a matter of time before Great Paws did the same. "Not while I live!" The vow was a muted snarl. There was boldness in it, and defiance, but dread quickened the beat of his heart as he visualized the enormous tracks he had come across yesterday while journeying alone to the closest of his upriver cache pits. He had not