Longtusk tm-2

by Stephen Baxter

  It disturbed Longtusk that there was absolutely nothing he could do — and it disturbed him even more that Lemming, the undisputed Firehead expert on mastodonts and their illnesses, was at this crucial time preparing to leave, accompanying the Bulls on their northern march.

  Through that last night, Longtusk stayed with Neck Like Spruce. She slept briefly. He could see the calf in her belly struggle fitfully, pushing at the skin that contained it.

  The next morning, the Fireheads nursing sore heads and crammed bellies, the party assembled in a great column and began its sweep to the north. With Crocus on his back, Longtusk led the slow advance.

  Since that first encounter with the Whiteskins two years before there had been several skirmishes with other bands of Fireheads. Crocus’s tribe, settled for several years in their township of mammoth-bone huts, were well-fed, healthy and strong, and were able to fend off the attacks — mounted mostly by bands of desperate refugees, forced north from the overcrowded southern lands.

  But this wouldn’t last forever, predicted Walks With Thunder.

  "There is no limit to the number of Fireheads who might take it into their heads to come bubbling up from the south. We can defend ourselves and this settlement as long as the numbers are right. But eventually they will overrun us."

  "And then?" said Longtusk.

  "And then we will have to flee — go north once again, as we have done before, and find a new and empty land. And this is what Crocus, in her wisdom, knows she must plan for; it is surely going to come in her time as Matriarch."

  So it was that Crocus was remaking herself. Still young, already skilled in hunting techniques, she had learned to use the tribe’s weapons with as much skill and daring as any of the buck male warriors. And she had learned to command, to force her tribe to accept the harshest of realities.

  But Longtusk thought he detected a growing hardness in her — a hardness that, when he thought of the affectionate cub who had befriended him, saddened him.

  As for himself, Longtusk was now bigger and stronger than any of the mastodonts. He was no longer the butt of jokes and taunts in the stockade; no longer did the mastodonts call constant attention to his differences, his dense brown hair and strange grinding teeth. Now he was Longtusk, warrior Bull, and his immense tusks, scarred by use, were the envy of the herd.

  Only Walks With Thunder still called him "little grazer" — but Longtusk didn’t mind that.

  And, such was Crocus’s skill in riding Longtusk — and so potent was the mammoth’s own intelligence and courage — that the stunning, unexpected combination of warrior-queen and woolly mammoth leading the column could, said Walks With Thunder, prove to be the Fireheads’ most important weapon of all.

  During the long march, Longtusk’s days were arduous. He was the first to break the new ground, and he had to be constantly on the alert for danger — not just from potential foes, but also the natural traps of the changing landscape. He paid careful attention to the deep wash of sound which echoed through the Earth in response to the mastodonts’ heavy footsteps, and avoided the worst of the difficulties.

  And, of course, he had to seek out food as he traveled. Firehead Matriarch on his back or not, he still needed to cram the steppe grasses and herbs into his mouth for most of every day. But the mastodonts preferred trees and shrubs, and if he found a particularly fine stand of trees he would trumpet to alert the others.

  A few days out of the settlement a great storm swept down on them. The wind swirled and gusted, carrying sand from the frozen deserts at the fringe of the icecap, hundreds of days’ walk away, to lash at the mastodonts’ eyes and mouths, as if mocking their puny progress. Crocus walked beside Longtusk, blinded and buffeted, clinging to his long belly hairs.

  At last the storm blew itself out, and they emerged into calmness under an eerie blue sky.

  They found a stand of young trees that had been utterly demolished by the winds’ ferocity. The mastodonts browsed the fallen branches and tumbled trunks, welcoming this unexpected bounty.

  Walks With Thunder, his mouth crammed with green leaves, came to Longtusk. "Look over there. To the east."

  Longtusk turned and squinted. It was unusual for a mastodont to tell another to "look," so poor was their eyesight compared to other senses.

  The sun, low in the south, cast long shadows across the empty land. At length Longtusk made out something: a blur of motion, white on blue, against the huge sky.

  "Birds?"

  "Yes. Geese, judging from their honking. But the important thing is where they come from."

  "The northeast," Longtusk said. "But that’s impossible. There is only ice there, and nothing lives."

  "Not quite." Walks With Thunder absently tucked leaves deeper into his mouth. "This is a neck of land, lying between great continents to west and east. In the eastern lands, it is said, the ice has pushed much farther south than in the west. But there are legends of places, called nunataks — refuges — islands in the ice, where living things can survive."

  "The ice would cover them over. Everything would freeze and die."

  "Possibly," said Thunder placidly. "But in that case, how do you explain those geese?"

  "It is just a legend," Longtusk protested.

  Thunder curled his trunk over Longtusk’s scalp affectionately. "The world is a big place, and it contains many mysteries. Who knows what fragment of rumor will save our lives in the future?" He saw Crocus approaching. "And the biggest mystery of all," he grumbled wearily, "is how I can persuade these old bones to plod on for another day. Lead on, Longtusk; lead on…"

  The geese flew overhead, squawking. They were molting, and when they had passed, white fathers fell from the sky all around Longtusk, like snowflakes.

  As the days wore on they traveled farther and farther from the settlement.

  Longtusk hadn’t been this far north since he had first been captured by the Fireheads. That had been many years ago, and back then he had been little more than a confused calf.

  But he was sure that the land had changed.

  There were many more stands of trees than he recalled: spruce and pine and fir, growing taller than any of the dwarf willows and birches that had once inhabited this windswept plain. And the steppe’s complex mosaic of vegetation had been replaced by longer grass — great dull swathes of it that rippled in the wind, grass that had crowded out many of the herbs and low trees and flowers which had once illuminated the landscape. It was grass that the mastodonts consumed with relish. But for Longtusk the grass was thin, greasy stuff that clogged his bowels and made his dung slippery and smelly.

  And it was warmer — much warmer. It seemed he couldn’t shed his winter coat quickly enough, and Crocus grumbled at the hair which flew into her face. But she did not complain when he sought out the snow that still lingered in shaded hollows and scooped it into his mouth to cool himself.

  The world seemed a huge place, massive, imperturbable; it was hard to believe that — just as the Matriarchs had foreseen, at his Clan’s Gathering so long ago — such dramatic changes could happen so quickly. And yet it must be true, for even he, young as he was, recalled a time when the land had been different.

  It was an uneasy thought.

  He had been separated from his Family before they had a chance to teach him about the landscape — where to find water in the winter, how to dig out the best salt licks. He had had to rely on the mastodonts for such instruction.

  But such wisdom, passed from generation to generation, was acquired by long experience. And if the land was changing so quickly — so dramatically within the lifetime of a mammoth — what use was the wisdom of the years?

  And in that case, what might have become of his Family?

  He shuddered and rumbled, and he felt Crocus pat him, aware of his unease.

  After several more days Crocus guided Longtusk down a sharp incline toward lower ground. He found himself in a valley through which a fat, strong glacial river gushed, its waters curdled white with
rock flour. The column of mastodonts crept cautiously after him, avoiding the sharp gravel patches and slippery mud slopes he pointed out.

  After a time the valley opened, and the river decanted into a lake, gray and glimmering.

  The place seemed familiar.

  Had he been here before, as a lost calf? But so much had changed! The lake water was surely much higher than it had once been, and the long grass and even the trees grew so thickly now, even down to the water’s edge, that every smell and taste and sound was different.

  …Yet there was much that nagged at his memory: the shape of a hillside here, a rock abutment there.

  When he saw a row of cave mouths, black holes eroded into soft exposed rock, he knew that he had not been mistaken.

  Crocus called a halt.

  She and her warriors dismounted, and on all fours they crept through the thickening vegetation closer to the caves. They inspected footprints in the dirt — they were wide and splayed, Longtusk saw, more like a huge bird’s than a Firehead’s narrow tracks — and they rummaged through dirt and rubble.

  At last, with a hiss of triumph, the hunter called Bareface picked up a shaped rock. It was obviously an axe, made and wielded by clever fingers — and it was stained with fresh blood.

  And now there was a cry: a voice not quite like a Firehead’s, more guttural, cruder. The mastodonts raised their trunks and sniffed the air.

  A figure had come out of the nearest cave: walking upright, but limping heavily. He stood glaring in the direction of the intruders, who still cowered in the vegetation. He was short and stocky, with wide shoulders and a deep barrel chest. His clothing was heavy and coarse. His forehead sloped backward, and an enormous bony ridge dominated his brow. His legs were short and bowed, and his feet were flat and very wide, with short stubby toes, so that he left those broad splayed footprints.

  He was obviously old, his back bent, his small face a mask of wrinkles that seemed to lap around cavernous nostrils like waves around rocks. And his head was shaven bare of hair, with a broad red stripe painted down its crown.

  Not a Firehead, not quite. This was the Fireheads’ close cousin: a Dreamer. And Longtusk recognized him.

  "He is called Stripeskull," Longtusk rumbled to Thunder. "I have been here before."

  "As have I. This is where we found you."

  Walks With Thunder described how, when the Fireheads had first moved north, they had sent scouting parties ahead, seeking opportunities and threats. Bedrock himself had led an expedition to this umpromising place — and Crocus had been, briefly, lost.

  "The Dreamers saved her from the cold," said Longtusk.

  Thunder grunted. "That’s as may be. We drove the Dreamers from their caves. But the land was too harsh, and we abandoned it and retreated farther south."

  "And the Dreamers returned to their caves?"

  "They are creatures of habit. And, back then, the Fireheads did not covet their land."

  "But now?"

  "See for yourself. The land has changed. Now the Fireheads want this place…"

  Longtusk said, "It was so long ago."

  "For you, perhaps," Thunder said dryly. "For me, it seems like yesterday."

  "How did Stripeskull get so old?"

  "Dreamers don’t live long," growled Thunder. "And I fear this one will not grow much older."

  "What do you mean?"

  But now Stripeskull seemed to have spotted the intruders. He was shouting and gesturing. He had a short burned-wood spear at his side, and he tried to heft it, but his foreleg would not rise above the shoulder.

  A spear flew at him. It neatly pierced Stripeskull’s heart.

  Longtusk, shocked, trumpeted and blundered forward.

  Stripeskull was on the ground, and blood seeped red-black around him, viscous and slow as musth. His great head rocked forward, and ruddy spittle looped his mouth. He looked up and saw the mammoth, and his eyes widened with wonder and recognition. Then he fell back, his strength gone.

  Longtusk rumbled mournfully, and touched the body with the sole of his foot. He was gone, as quickly destroyed as a pine needle on a burning tree. How could a life be destroyed so suddenly, so arbitrarily? This was Stripeskull, who had grudgingly spared his own Family’s resources to save Longtusk’s life; Stripeskull, with long memories of his own stretching back beyond his Family to a remote, frosty childhood — Stripeskull, gone in an instant and never to return, no matter how long the world turned.

  But even while Stripeskull’s body continued to spill its blood on the trampled dust, the Fireheads were moving onward, driven, busy, eager to progress.

  Crocus beckoned to Longtusk. She led him to the dark mouth of the cave. "Bowl, bowl!" Speak…

  With a growing feeling of unease, he raised his trunk and trumpeted. The noise echoed within the cramped rock walls of the cave, where it must have been terrifying.

  A Dreamer came running out — a female, Longtusk saw, young, comparatively slim, long brown hair flying after her. She saw the mammoth, skidded to a halt and screamed.

  She did not know him. The Dreamers grew quickly, as Thunder had said; perhaps this one had been an infant, or not even born, during his time here.

  She tried to retreat — but the Shaman, grinning, had moved behind her, blocking her from the cave. Her eyes widened, and for a brief moment Longtusk saw the Shaman through her eyes: ridiculously tall, with a forehead that bulged to smoothness, willow-thin legs, a nose as small and thin as a spring icicle…

  Firehead warriors threw a net of hide rope over the female, as if she was a baby rhino, and they wrestled her to the ground. But she was strong, and was soon ripping her way through the net. So they tied more rope around her, leaving her squirming in the dirt.

  The hunters fell back, panting hard; one of them was missing a chunk of his ear, bitten off by the Dreamer female. They seemed to be studying her body as she writhed and struggled.

  "Perhaps they will mate with her," Longtusk said.

  "If they do it will be for pleasure only," said Walks With Thunder. "Their pleasure, not hers. Something else you need to know, Longtusk. Firehead cannot seed Dreamer with cub. They are alike, you see, cousins."

  "Like mastodonts and mammoths."

  Thunder growled, oddly. "But their blood does not mix. And so they compete, like — like two different species of gulls, seeking to nest on the same cliff face. To the Fireheads, the Dreamers are just an obstacle, something to be cleared out of the way."

  "Then what will become of the Dreamers?"

  "Though they are strong, they are no match for the cunning Fireheads. If they are lucky, the other Dreamers will have seen what happened here, and scattered."

  "And if not?"

  Thunder snorted. "The Fireheads are not noted for their mercy to their kin. The Dreamers will be butchered, the survivors enslaved and taken to the settlement where they will work until they die."

  Now there was a howl from the cave.

  Another Dreamer emerged — this time a male. He was young and strong, and he had a stone knife in his free paw — crude, but sharp and potent. And he had taken a captive. It was Lemming, the mastodont keeper. The Dreamer’s foreleg was tight around Lemming’s neck. Lemming was whimpering, and blood dripped from a wound in his upper foreleg.

  The Dreamer’s small eyes, glinting in their caves of bone, swiveled this way and that. He seemed to be trying to get to the female on the ground. Perhaps that was his sister, even his mate.

  Crocus stepped forward. She was obviously concerned for Lemming. She held out her paws and said something in her high, liquid tongue.

  The Dreamer, not understanding, jabbered back and slashed with his knife.

  Longtusk acted without thinking. He slid his trunk around the Dreamer’s neck and yanked so hard the Dreamer lost his grip on Lemming, and he fell back into the dirt at Longtusk’s feet. The mammoth pinned him there with a tusk at the throat.

  Lemming fell to the ground, limp. Crocus ran to him and called the others for h
elp.

  The Shaman stalked toward the fallen Dreamer. "Maar thode," he snapped at Longtusk. "Maar thode!"

  Break. Kill.

  Longtusk leaned forward, increasing the pressure on the Dreamer’s throat.

  But the Dreamer was saying something too, calling in a language that was guttural and harsh, yet seemed strangely familiar.

  On the Dreamer’s face, under a crudely shaved veneer of stubble, there was a mark, bright red, jagged like a lightning bolt. It had faded since this Dreamer was a cub, but it was still there.

  Willow, thought Longtusk. The first Dreamer I found, grown from a cub to an adult buck.

  And he recognizes me.

  Crocus was close by.

  Once again the three of us are united, Longtusk thought, and he felt a deep apprehension, as if the world itself was shaking beneath him. He had long forgotten the raving of the strange old Dreamer female when he had first brought Crocus here, her terror at the sight of the three of them together… Now that terror returned to him, a chill memory.

  The Shaman hammered Longtusk’s scalp with his goad, cutting into his skin. "Maar thode!"

  Longtusk stepped back, lifting his tusk from the Dreamer’s throat. Willow lay at his feet, as if stunned.

  With a hasty gesture, Crocus ordered other hunters forward. They quickly bound Willow with strips of hide rope. He did not resist, though his massive muscles bulged.

  The Shaman glared at Longtusk with impotent fury.

  Now Crocus, accompanied by more hunters, made her way into the cave. There seemed to be no more Dreamers present, and with impunity the hunters kicked apart the crude central hearth. Under Crocus’s orders, two of the hunters began to dig a pit in the ground.

  "It seems we will stay here tonight," Walks With Thunder growled. "The cave will provide shelter. And see how the hunters are making a better hearth, one which will allow the air to blow beneath and—"

  "The Dreamers have lived here for generations," Longtusk said sharply. "I saw it, the layers of tools and bones in the ground. Even the hearth may have been a Great-Year old. Think of that! And now, in an instant, it is gone, vanished like a snowflake on the tongue, demolished by the Fireheads."