The sky over the Stone Age plain was always busy: vultures circling, mammoths marching, storms rolling in like dark mountains. But nothing shook the ground like Thunderhoof, the last giant aurochs of the valley.
He was taller than any man, horns wider than an outstretched spear. Hunters told stories of him when fires burned low: how he had gored a cave lion, how he had leapt a ravine where even horses turned back. Children drew him on cave walls with charcoal and ochre, a black shape with a blazing orange eye.
Thunderhoof had once led a herd, but seasons of drought and cold had taken them, one by one. Wolves grew bolder. Hunters’ spears grew sharper. Now he walked mostly alone, a dark shadow against dawn.
One winter morning, a hunting party from the Cliff-Cave tribe spotted him at the river bend. Frost clung to his shaggy coat; steam rose from his nostrils. The hunters stared, half in awe, half in hunger. A beast that big meant meat, hides, bones, and glory.
Their leader, Jarak, raised his hand. “We bring him down,” he said. “Our children will eat through the snow.”
But among them was Aro, a young hunter who had grown up tracing Thunderhoof’s painted shape with his fingers on the cave wall. He had seen the giant more than once, standing between wolves and a herd of smaller cattle, scattering the predators like leaves.
“He is the last,” Aro whispered. “If we kill him, the stories end.”
Stories did not outweigh hunger. They moved downwind, spears ready, feet silent in the frost. Thunderhoof lifted his head, ears twitching. He smelled them before he saw them, a bitter, familiar scent: men, fear, stone, fire.
Jarak’s spear flew first, whistling through the cold air. It grazed Thunderhoof’s shoulder, drawing a line of red. The giant bellowed, a sound that shook snow from branches. He charged.
The world turned into thunder and horn and flying snow. One hunter was tossed aside, landing hard. Another stumbled, dropping his spear. Jarak braced for the impact that never came.
Because Thunderhoof did not plow through them. He veered, deliberately, smashing through a rotten tree instead, showering them with bark. He could have killed Jarak. Instead, he broke the circle open and bolted for the river, hooves hammering ice.
Aro saw it first: the thin glaze of frozen water, the black current underneath. “No!” he shouted, but the giant’s weight was already on it.
The ice shattered like glass. For a moment Thunderhoof fought, hooves flailing, breath bursting in white clouds. Then the river swallowed him, dragging his massive body beneath.
Silence fell. The hunters stood on the bank, panting, watching bubbles rise and vanish.
Back at the cave, Jarak told the story as a victory: “The river took him after we struck. He fed the water spirits.” But Aro painted a different ending on the wall. He drew Thunderhoof leaping, horns pointed not at men, but at the sky, as if escaping into the clouds.
Generations later, children would touch the painting and whisper, “This was the last giant. He could have killed the hunters. Instead, he chose the river.”
And in their hearts, the ground still shook when they imagined his hooves.
