Ratha's Creatures - What Are the Face-tails?

You meet them in the first few pages of Ratha's Challenge, trumpeting, stamping and flapping their ears. Even a half-grown face-tail is too much for the Named and after the youngster launches the young herder Khushi into a thornbush, Ratha and the others give up, although only temporarily.
So what are these animals? In the book they are called mammoths, although the Named don't use that term. Actually, it is a bit of an author mistake. Creatures such as the woolly mammoth, the steppe mammoth, the imperial mammoth and others, didn't exist in the Early Miocene 20 million years ago. Although people tend to think that mammoths were ancestral to elephants, they were actually close cousins.
The family Elephantidae includes the African elephant, Loxodonta africana, the Asiatic elephant, Elephas maximus and the mammoths, Mammuthus. They all originated in Africa about 4 mya. The fact that mammoths died out relatively recently, a few thousand years ago, gives the impression that elephants are their descendants, but they evolved separately in parallel lines. The true ancestors of elephants and mammoths alike appear to be the four-tusked Stegotetrabeladon and the smaller Primelephas, who have the tooth structure that defines true elephants. Primelephas, like Stegotetrabelodon, had tusks in the lower jaw, but they receded, giving way to the two upper tusks of the elephants.
So, mammoths weren't around during Ratha's time. What then could the face-tails possibly be?

One possible proboscidean (trunk- or proboscis-bearing) candidate is Deinotherium, which looked a lot like an elephant, but its tusks originated from the lower incisor teeth. They grew from the lower jaw and turned downward. Deinotheres originated about 40 Mya and survived until 5 mya, so they span the required time period. However the series is set on the West Coast of North America, and all deinothere fossils found so far have been in Africa. This doesn't rule out deinotheres, however. There might have been some migrants and we haven't yet found their remains.
Another group of proboscideans called mastodonts originated later than the deinotheres and co-evolved with them. One mastodon family includes the American mastodon, confusingly called Mammut. Like the later mammoths, the American mastodon had a hairy coat and two upturned tusks rooted in the upper jaw. Mammut paralleled the mammoths but it was a distant cousin, with a separate 25 million year evolutionary history. Though the mastodonts gave rise to the elephants, Mammut and its kind were also a contemporary with the mammoths, disappearing with them in the Pleistocene extinction of mega-beasts. (Click the image to enlarge.)



It is too easy to confuse the American mastodon, Mammut, with its Mammuthus cousins, which is probably one reason for my mistake. I imagine that early paleontologists though Mammut was a mammoth, hence the similar name.
Mammut is probably the best candidate for the boisterous tusker who throws Khushi into a thornbush.
It existed at the right time and place. It was also smaller than its contemporaries, which would make it slightly easier for the puma- and cheetah-like Named to capture and manage.
Why did I describe the young face-tail's fur as orange? Because many of the frozen baby mammoths dug up in Siberia had remnants of orange-colored hair. At first paleontologists assumed that the hair had been that hue during life and that the baby mammoths had different coloration than adults.
However, later investigation suggested that the orange was a result of pigment loss during burial and that the original coat was a variation of dark brown. This was another case of paleontology outrunning the author.
By the way, it was Rudyard Kipling's “Two-Tails” the pack-elephant in his poem about British-Indian army animals, who inspired the term face-tails. A trunk looks very much like a tail, hence “Two-Tails”, which gave rise to the Named idea that these animals wear their tails on their faces, and the term “face-tails”.
CB

Ratha's Courage E-Released on Baen!

This version is an electronic book, which means you purchase it, then download it into your laptop, Sony reader or other device. On sale now for $6.00.

To buy it from Baen Books, you need to get an account, which is free and easy.

Here's the link:

http://www.webscription.net/p-822-rathas-courage.aspx

Baen's homepage is:

http://www.baen.com

Baen will have an exclusive on the book during April, then Amazon and Fictionwise http://www.fictionwise.com will be carrying it.

If Courage does well as an E-book, the next step is print publication.

Eeeeyarooo!

The other books in the series are Firebird re-issues and are available through the net and at bookstores.

My deepest thanks to everyone who made this happen, including E-Reads, Baen, and my agent, Richard Curtis.

CB

A Taste of Ratha's Courage

Update 2: The book wasn't up as of 4/3. E-Reads has done the E-Book file, checked it and has sent it to Baen. As well as herding the book to E-publication, I am currently writing the kickoff announcement article that will appear on the E-Reads Blog (http://www.ereads.com).

Ratha's Courage to be released 4/1/08 on Baen Books (http://www.baen.com) along with E-Reads (http://www.ereads.com)

Ratha's Courage
by Clare Bell
Excerpt copyright 2007

Chapter One

A shiver of excitement went through Ratha. She began her stalk, belly fur brushing the ground. Grass whispered past her legs as she felt the slow controlled power of each muscle. Her tail-tip tingled with the urge to twitch, but she held it still.

The horse the Named called a striper tossed its head and flapped its tail, eyes widening. Ratha slowed her down-wind stalk so that she seemed nearly frozen, yet was still moving. The striper swung its neck around, jerking its head and ears back.

Ratha stilled until the herdbeast settled, then quickened her stalk, easing her weight from one foot to the next, placing each directly ahead of the one behind and moving so smoothly she felt as though she were flowing across and through the grass, a green-eyed river of tawny gold.

Nearing the striper’s dancing rear hooves, inhaling it’s sweat-sharpened scent, Ratha trembled with the impulse to dash, spring and wrestle her prey to the ground. She took a long slow breath, as the herding teacher, Thakur had taught her, mastered her urge and crept around the striper, circling in front of it.

Stripers were new to the Named herds. This horse was dun, with dark brown mane and tail. Ratha turned her head to bring her gaze down along its banded forelegs to the three-toed feet. These feet differed from those of the smaller dappleback horses that the clan had long tended. The striper’s center toe, sheathed in a single hoof, was larger, the side toes further off the ground. That hoof had far more power than the four and three-toed feet of the dapplebacks. Ratha had dodged it many times and other herders had been sent sprawling.

The striper grunted and whinnied, its nostrils flaring with her smell. From her crouch, Ratha lifted her chin and stared up at the horse, trying to catch and hold its gaze. As if sensing her purpose, the striper reared, its forefeet cutting the air, its tail whisking its flanks. She froze again; waited.

When the striper dropped down, she pounced on its stare with her own. Again it evaded her, closing its eyes and ducking its head, showing her only its bristling mane.

She knew the stripers were smarter than the dapplebacks; by now her stare would have a dappleback helplessly imprisoned.

Thakur had warned her that the stripers were clever; that the larger head held a more alert and cunning mind. Suppressing her frustrated growl, Ratha made several rasping snarls that were almost barks.

The sounds had the effect she wanted. The striper’s ears swiveled, the head came up, the eyes opened. Again her eyes sought the striper’s gaze and this time she captured it. The animal stiffened, as if about to fight, but snort and stamp as it would, the striper couldn’t break Ratha’s stare. It stilled to near-immobility, only its hide shivering.

Ratha felt triumph strengthen her heartbeat and deepen her breathing. She was so close; she could reach out and tap one of the horse’s forelegs with a front paw.

Again came the rush of desire that threatened to propel her up onto the horse’s shoulders, driving her teeth into its neck. In her imagination, she was already atop the striper, feeling the stiff upright mane bristle into the corners of her mouth. Part of her already felt the velvet-furred skin resist, stretch and then tear through beneath the points of her fangs, her neck muscles pulling and twisting in just the right way so that her fangs would slip between the neckbones and skillfully separate them while the prey’s blood flowed in pulses over her tongue. . .

Outwardly Ratha shuddered, yet kept her eyes fixed on those of the horse while inwardly she swiped the feelings aside. No, such a fevered attack was not the way of the Named. She had fought this internal battle many times before, when she trained as a cub under Thakur, and later when she began her duties as a herder. Even when she culled herd-beasts, she would not let instinct run wild.

Ratha used her frustration and desire, pouring them out savagely through her eyes. The horse was now as still as if it were already in her killing embrace. The muscles and tendons atop her forelegs quivered with the need to drive her claws out and deep into flesh.

She lifted out of her crouch, rearing up on her hind paws to lay one foreleg almost gently over the horse’s shoulders and up along the back of its neck. In spite of her care, the beast started, but before it could begin its escape flurry, Ratha slapped the other forepaw around the underside of its neck.

Now Ratha used her claws, but only enough to maintain her hold as she pushed backwards with her hind feet to unbalance the striper and pull it over. She was so close to the horse now that she couldn’t hold its gaze, but she no longer needed to. It was falling into the daze that doomed prey often assumed.

Instead of digging into the striper’s nape with claws and teeth, Ratha used the pressure and friction of her pads combined with her weight and her experience in knowing exactly how and where to push in order to topple the beast.

As if in a trance, the striper sank to its knees. Ratha climbed further onto it, using her weight to press the horse down onto its belly. She draped herself across the animal, one forepaw keeping the horse’s forelegs, with their dangerous hooves, at a distance. She wrapped the other forepaw around the top of the horse’s head, twisting it up so that the throat lay exposed.

Feeling the striper's heartbeat thudding through its ribs and into her own body, Ratha bent her head, jaws starting to open. The heart’s beat was strong in the creature’s neck, visibly jolting the skin over the great vessels and releasing a deep temptation in Ratha to bite deeply and hard.

Instead she opened her mouth to its full gape and set her teeth in position for the instinctive throat bite. With the horse’s sweat-smell hot in her nose, she squeezed her eyes shut with the effort not to bite, feeling the jaw-closing muscles beneath her eyes and on the sides of her forehead tremble with the strain.

The onlookers, Thakur and the young cubs learning herding from him, had grown quiet, as if they sensed the conflict within her.

Slowly, deliberately, she pulled her head up, feeling the skin of her muzzle slide
back over her teeth as her mouth closed. She swallowed the saliva that had flooded her mouth, staying atop the striper while the youngsters shrilled their praise and Thakur added his deeper note. Their cries sounded strangely muted to her, as if they were distant or her ears muffled...

(End of excerpt)

Courage galloping toward 4/1/08 release

My agent, Richard Curtis, has just confirmed today that everything is on-track.

Courage will be released on 4/1/08 as an E-Reads/Baen Books selection.

Baen's website is www. baen. com. (Note - you can buy individual titles as well as the subscription.) E-Reads is www. ereads. com.

After all this time and grief, it really is happening.

Yarrrooo!

"Get the blood off the book. You can leave the sweat and tears..."