2011 BC (Roxy Music - Strictly Confidential, For Your Pleasure)

The wind howled as the last of the thin, watery daylight drained away towards night. It was growing colder; the rain returning time and again like a predator - coming back to see if its prey had stopped moving.
Having reached the top of the ridge alongside the west side of the valley - not far above where a colossal outline of a horse had been carved down to the chalk below, the boy and his father had been ambushed by a group of six warriors from the enemy tribe and, although they had successfully driven them off, his father had received a deep wound from a thrown spear. When he tugged the crude iron tip from his abdomen the blood had gushed forth in a torrent.
The boy, only 15 years old, had fought valiantly alongside his father as they battled the group and, having seen the last of them run helter-skelter down the slope in retreat, he turned to grin at his father. His grin of victory, however, quickly changed to one of fear as he saw his father's expression. Though still tender of years, he had the presence of mind to help him stagger across to where a small outcrop of rock formed a natural windbreak before his legs gave out from under him.
Fraught with indecision, the youngster sat next to his father, giving him what body heat he had as the older man grew colder.
Slicing off a length of his animal skin tunic, he held it against the hole, but the blood still seeped steadily through. He gazed into his father's eyes - alarmed to see them glazing over; unable to help him himself, he stared around the uninhabited wilderness for aid.
But the wind continued to blow with a frustrating indifference; the night dropped steadily, robbing the boy of the last sight of his living father's face.
They had set off from their village at dawn, armed with spears and crude swords as they walked off to join with the warriors of their own tribe a few miles beyond this valley. Skirmishes with their neighbouring tribe had been common for as long as anyone could remember, but there had been an outrage committed, and the call had gone out for a massing of able-bodied men.
Despite his father's insistence that he was still too young for fighting, the boy had kept on until his father reluctantly armed him and gave him a rudimentary lesson in hand-to-hand combat the night before. Had they not been ambushed by the small force of enemy warriors they would have reached the rest of their own before nightfall.
Not knowing what to do, he huddled closer to his father as the rain came back for another foray. It was getting colder now and, although the outcrop sheltered them from the worst of the wind, the cold rain found them all too easily. Tears spilled helplessly from his eyes as the severity of the situation came back to him with increasing rapidity.
The melancholy sound of a horn made him cast his gaze around feverishly but, although it rang out several times, he could neither make out whether it was blown by friendly lips nor discern from which direction it came from.
Sleep came to him intermittently, occasionally disturbed by the calling of another distant horn; it's note in a slightly different pitch to the first - sometimes overlapping to form a strange, otherwordly melody - colouring his troubled dreams and reminding him of how cold he was.