Silverhair tm-1

by Stephen Baxter

  After a time a knot of hunger gathered in Silverhair’s stomach, but the Lost would not let her feed. Even when she passed dung, which the Lost could scarcely prevent, they would kick and prod at her so that her stomach clenched, and they picked up the dung and threw it in her face.

  Mammoths need a great deal of food daily, and in fact spend much of each day feeding and drinking. To be kept from doing that was a great torment to Silverhair, and she weakened rapidly.

  The Lost were not organized. They were careless, lethargic, and seemed to spend a lot of their time asleep.

  All save Skin-of-Ice. It was Skin-of-Ice who drove on the others, like a lead Bull, making them work when they would rather sleep or feed or squabble, maintaining the slow cruelty inflicted on Silverhair. All the Lost were repulsive. But it was Skin-of-Ice, she saw, who was the source of evil.

  Meanwhile, as the shadows stretched over the tundra, a group of the Lost worked in the pit that had trapped and killed Eggtusk.

  Eggtusk was still upright in the pit, his legs trapped out of sight, his head supported by the stumps of his tusks. The blood that had seeped out of his wounds had soaked the ground around the pit, making it black. His body was already rigid with death, and perhaps half-frozen too.

  Now the Lost slung ropes around Eggtusk and hauled. At first they could not budge the passive carcass, but they made a rhythmic noise and concerted their efforts.

  At last they managed to drag Eggtusk out of the hole.

  Silverhair could hear the crackle of frost-ridden fur as Eggtusk was rolled onto his back, exposing his softer underbelly, and then the more ominous crack of snapping bone. His head settled back to the cold earth, and his mouth gaped. Silverhair could see how the dried blood and dirt matted the great wounds in his chest and belly, and his stomach was swollen and hard.

  It was Skin-of-Ice himself who began it.

  He took an ice-claw and thrust it into Eggtusk’s lower belly. Then, bracing himself and using both paws, he dragged the claw up the length of Eggtusk’s body, cutting through hair and flesh, in a line from anus to throat. Silverhair felt the incision as if it had been made in her own body.

  Then, under the direction of Skin-of-Ice, the Lost reluctantly gathered to either side of Eggtusk. They dug their forelimbs into the new wound in his belly, grabbed his rib cage, and hauled back. The rib cage opened like a grotesque flower, the white of bone emerging from the red-black wound.

  Eggtusk was opened up, splayed.

  Skin-of-Ice now climbed inside the body of Eggtusk. He reached down, and, with his forelegs, began to dig out Eggtusk’s internal organs: heart, liver, a great rope of intestine.

  Another of the Lost turned away, and vomit spilled from his mouth.

  When Skin-of-Ice was done, the Lost took hold of Eggtusk’s legs and hauled him away from the steaming pile of guts they had removed from the carcass. Then they turned Eggtusk over again; this time he slumped, almost shapeless, against the ground.

  The Lost began to hack at the skin of Eggtusk’s legs and around his neck. When it was cut through, they dug their small forelimbs inside the skin and began to haul it off the sheets of muscle and fat that coated Eggtusk’s body. It came loose with a moist rip. Wherever it stuck, Skin-of-Ice or one of the others would hack at the muscle inside the skin, or else reach underneath and punch at the skin from the inside.

  At last the skin came free from Eggtusk’s back, belly, and neck, a great sheet of it, bloody on the underside and dangling clumps of hair on the other. Silverhair could see it was punctured by the many wounds he had suffered.

  The Lost folded up the skin and put it to one side. Eggtusk’s flayed carcass was left as a mass of exposed muscle and flesh.

  Now the Lost took their ice-claws and began to hack in earnest at the carcass. They seemed to be trying to sever the flesh from Eggtusk’s legs, belly, and neck in great sections. They even cut away his tail, ears, and part of his trunk.

  When they were done, Eggtusk’s body had been comprehensively destroyed.

  But now there came a still worse horror; for the Lost began to throw lumps of dripping flesh on the fire — Eggtusk’s flesh. And when it was all but burned, they dragged it off the fire, sliced it into pieces, and crammed it into their small mouths with every expression of relish.

  Silverhair forced herself to watch, to witness every cut and savor every fresh stink, and remember it all.

  The Lost seemed baffled by the absence of the old Bull’s tusks, and they spent some time inspecting the bloody stumps in his face. Silverhair realized that Eggtusk had been right. For some reason the loathsome souls of these Lost cherished the theft of tusks above all, and even as he lay trapped and dying Eggtusk had defied his killers.

  She clutched that to her heart, and tried to draw courage from Eggtusk’s example.

  But she had little time for such reflection, for the goading she endured continued without relief. Soon her need for sleep drove all other thoughts from her mind, and the ache from the injuries to her neck and cheek refused to subside.

  Snagtooth was not mistreated as Silverhair was. She was bound by a single loop of rope fixed to a stake driven into the ground. Silverhair thought that with a single yank Snagtooth could surely drag the stake out of the ground. But Snagtooth seemed to have no such intention.

  Skin-of-Ice came to Snagtooth, so close she could surely have gutted him with a single flick of her remaining tusk. But Snagtooth dipped her head and let the Lost touch her. He brought her food: pawfuls of grass that he lifted up to her, and water in a shell-like container that he carried from a stream. Passively Snagtooth dipped her trunk into the shell thing. She even lifted her trunk, and Silverhair watched her tongue flick out, pink and moist, to accept the grass from the paw of her captor.

  With the watery sun once more climbing the sky, Silverhair saw, in her bleary vision, that Skin-of-Ice had come to stand before her.

  He reached toward her with one paw, as if making to stroke her as he had Snagtooth. But Silverhair rumbled and pulled her head away from him.

  Before she had time even to see its approach his goad had slapped at her cheek. She could feel the scabs that had crusted over her earlier wounds break open once more, and the pain was so intense she could not help but cry out.

  Now Skin-of-Ice turned to his companions and gestured with his goad.

  Immediately the pressure around her throat and across her back intensified. She was forced to kneel in the dirt. Under her belly hair, she could feel the stale warmth of her own dung.

  And now Skin-of-Ice stepped forward. She could feel him grab her hair, step on one kneeling leg, and hoist himself up onto her back so that he was sitting astride her. The Lost around her were cawing and slapping their paws together, in evident approval of Skin-of-Ice’s antics.

  She strained her muscles and tried to dislodge him, but she could not stand, let alone rear; she could not remove this maddening, tormenting worm from her back.

  Now the pressure of the ropes lessened, and the Lost came forward and began to prod at her belly. Reluctant though she was to do anything in response to their vicious commands, she clambered slowly to her feet. She could feel Skin-of-Ice wrap his paws in her long hair to keep from falling off as she did so.

  The Lost moved around behind her, and she could feel a new load being added to her back: something unmoving that had to be tied in place with ropes around her belly.

  She could not see what this load was. But she could smell it. It was the remnants of Eggtusk: bones, skin, and dismembered meat.

  She tried to shake the load loose, but the ropes were too tight.

  The Lost moved around her belly, loosening the ropes that bound up her legs. Skin-of-Ice pulled her ears and slapped at her with his own goad. The Lost before her dragged at the ropes around her head and trunk.

  What they intended was obvious. They wanted her to walk with them to their nest at the south of the Island, to carry the dishonored, mutilated corpse for them.

  But she stood
firm. She could not escape, but, even as weak as she was, the Lost were not strong enough to haul her against her will.

  But now a new rope was attached to her neck. A pair of Lost pulled it across the tundra, and attached it to the collar around Snagtooth’s neck.

  One of the Lost held Snagtooth’s trunk in his paw, but otherwise, she was under no duress or goad. Led by the Lost, Snagtooth began to walk, deliberately, to the south. The rope between the two mammoths stretched taut, and began to drag at Silverhair’s neck. And the monster on her back lashed at her with his goad.

  Silverhair’s feet slipped on the dusty ground. She took one step, then another. She could resist the feeble muscles of any number of the Lost, but weak and starved as she was, not the hauling of an adult mammoth.

  She tried to call to Snagtooth. "Why are you doing this? How can you help them?"

  But her voice was weak and muffled. Snagtooth did not hear, or perhaps chose not to; she kept her face firmly turned to the south.

  As she stumbled forward from step to step, constantly impeded by the ropes that still loped between her legs, Silverhair felt her shame was complete.

  They reached the coast, not far from the place where Silverhair had first encountered Skin-of-Ice.

  Silverhair was hauled along the beach.

  She saw, groggily, that the season was well advanced. The sea was full of noise and motion. The remnant ice was breaking up quickly, with bangs and cracks. Small icebergs were swept past in the current. She saw a berg strike pack ice ahead and rear up out of the water, before falling back with a ponderous splash.

  She was led past a floe where a large male polar bear lay silently beside a seal’s breathing hole. With startling suddenness the bear dived into the pool, and after much thrashing, emerged with its jaws clamped around the neck of a huge ringed seal. The incautious seal was dragged through a breathing hole no wider than its head, and there was a soft crunching as the bones of the seal’s body were broken or dislocated against the ice. Then, with a cuff of its mighty paw, the bear slit open the seal and began to strip the rich blubber from the inside of the seal’s skin.

  It seemed to Silverhair that the seal was still alive. Silverhair was dragged away from the bear and its victim. Even the Lost, she realized, were wise enough to watch the bear with caution.

  At the top of the beach, away from the reach of the tide, the Lost had made their nest.

  There were more Lost here. They moved forward, hesitantly, but with curiosity. They approached Snagtooth, and she allowed them to touch her trunk and tug at the fur of her belly. Even when one of them prodded the stump of her broken tusk, an action that must have been agonizingly painful, she did little more than flinch.

  Even on first contact with the mammoths, the Lost seemed to have no fear, so secure were they in their dominance of the world around them. Now Silverhair was dragged forward.

  The beach was scarred by the blackened remains of fires. She recognized a stack of thunder-sticks, looking no more dangerous than fallen branches. There were little shelters, like caves. They were made of sheets of reddish-brown shiny stuff that appeared to have come from the monstrous hulk she had observed on the shore with Lop-ear, in a time that seemed a Great-Year remote.

  There was much she did not understand. There were the straight-edged, hollowed-out boxes from which the Lost extracted their strange, odorless foods. There were the glinting, shining flasks — almost like hollowed-out icicles — from which the Lost would pour a clear liquid down their skinny throats, a liquid over which they fought, which they prized above everything else. There was the box that emitted a deafening, incessant noise, and the other box that glittered with starlike lights, into which one or another of the Lost would bark incessantly.

  And all of this strange, horrific place was suffused with the smell of mammoth: dead, decaying, burned mammoth.

  The Lost set up four stakes in the ground. They beat them in place with blocks of wood they held in their paws.

  Silverhair was led toward the stakes.

  One of the Lost walked around her on his skinny hind legs, plucked at the ropes that bound her grisly load to her belly, and stepped in front of her face to inspect her tusks — and stretching her ropes to the limit, she twisted her head and swiped at him. She caught him a glancing blow with the side of her tusk — he was so light and frail, she could barely feel the impact — and he sprawled on the ground before her. He howled and squirmed. She raised her foreleg. In an instant she would crush the rib cage of this mewling creature.

  But Skin-of-Ice was there. He grabbed the paw of the one on the ground and dragged him away from her.

  The Lost closed rapidly around her. Commanded by Skin-of-Ice, they prodded, poked, and dragged at Silverhair until the four stakes were all around her. Then they tied rope around her legs, so tightly it bit into her flesh, pinning each of her legs to a stake, and she could not move.

  14

  The Nest of the Lost

  The endless day wore on.

  Silverhair had could not lie down, not even move. And she wasn’t allowed to sleep. The Lost tormented her continually.

  The stake ropes were never released. Though she chafed against them, she only rubbed raw her own flesh; she could feel how the ropes cut to the very bone of her forelegs.

  The Lost would give her no water. Soon it felt as if her trunk was shriveling like drying grass, and her chest and belly were dry as the bones that had emerged from the yedoma.

  And they tormented her with food. One of them would hold up succulent grass before her, push it toward her mouth, perhaps even allow a blade or two to touch her tongue. Then, invariably, he would snatch the grass away.

  Even when there were no Lost with her — when they were all asleep in their artificial caves, the flasks and scraps of half-chewed mammoth meat scattered around their snoring forms — they would set up one of their deafening noise-making boxes beside her, and its unending stomping ensured she could never sleep.

  Snagtooth was kept tied up, in full view of Silverhair. But her tether was just a single rope. Her feet were not bound, so she was free to move as far as the rope would allow her, and she was fed with pawfuls of grass and containers of water.

  Several times a day, Skin-of-Ice or one of the others would climb on the back of Snagtooth. The Lost would kick at the back of her ears, as if trying to drive her forward or back. Snagtooth was rewarded with mouthfuls of food if she guessed what they wanted correctly, and strikes of a goad — not as severely as they beat Silverhair — if she got it wrong. All this was greeted with hoots of laughter from the staggering, swaying Lost.

  Silverhair tried to recall the Cycle, the legends of Kilukpuk and Ganesha and Longtusk; but the Cycle seemed a remote irrelevance in this place of horror. At last Silverhair’s spirit seemed as if it was half-detached from her body, and even the pain of her poisoned wounds receded from her awareness.

  When she was left alone, she would look beyond the camp, seeking solace. Somehow it seemed strange that the world was continuing its ancient cycles, regardless of her own suffering and the cruel designs of the Lost. But life was carrying on.

  The cliffs above the beach were crowded with thousands of eider, kittiwakes, murres, and fulmars. Every ledge and crevice was packed with nesting birds, and their noise and smell were overwhelming; so many birds circled in the air, they darkened the sky. At the base of the cliffs was a bright carpet of lichens and purple saxifrage, fertilized by the guano from the birds.

  Silverhair saw a thick-billed murre taking its turn to sit on its single egg, freeing its partner to seek food at the ice-edge. But when the attention of the murre was distracted, a gull swooped down and easily snatched the egg, swallowing it in a single movement. The distress of the murre pair was obvious, for they might not have time in the short season to raise another egg. Silverhair, despite her own plight, felt a stab of sadness at the small tragedy.

  …But then Skin-of-Ice would return, sometimes with a flask of liquid in his paw. H
e would adjust the ropes that pinned her, perhaps tightening them around some already chafed and painful spot. And then he would devise some new way to hurt her.

  Some of the Lost even seemed to show regret for the suffering they caused. They would hurry past the place she was staked with their faces averted. Or they would stand before her and stare at her, their spindly forelegs dangling, their small mouths gaping open; sometimes they would even reach up to her hesitantly, as if to stroke her or feed her.

  But not Skin-of-Ice.

  He knows I’m conscious, she thought. He knows I’m in here.

  He knows what he does hurts me. That’s why he does it. The others may kill us for food or skin or bones, but not this one. He enjoys inflicting pain. And he enjoys humiliating.

  His was a deliberate cruelty of a type she had never encountered before. And she knew it would not stop until she bent her head to him, as had Snagtooth.

  Or until one of them was dead.

  "…Silverhair. Silverhair. Can you hear me?…"

  Snagtooth was a silhouette against the dying light of the fire.

  "Leave me alone," said Silverhair.

  "You don’t understand." Snagtooth was using the contact rumble, a note so deep, it was not muffled by the clatter of the noise-maker beside Silverhair, so deep it would not disturb the light slumbers of the Lost. But Snagtooth’s voice sounded oddly distorted, as if she spoke with a trunk full of water.

  "What is there to understand? You have given yourself to the Lost."

  "We can’t fight them, Silverhair. Think about what the Cycle says. Once, the mammoths dominated the north of the whole world. But then the Lost came and took it from us — all of it, except the Island. We have to live as they want us to live. We have no choice."

  "There is always a choice," rumbled Silverhair.

  "I think they want us to work for them. Lifting things, moving things about, in the odd way they have of wanting to reorder everything. But it isn’t so bad. When one of them climbs on your back, you don’t even feel his weight after a while…"