Longtusk

by Stephen Baxter

  The Bull walked forward nonchalantly out of his dispersing brown cloud, muscles moving under his fat brown-black coat of hair. "Sorry about that. These Fireheads are an irritation at times."

  Longtusk stood his ground and raised his tusks. "Come any closer and I'll rip out your other eye."

  The mastodont grunted. He reached a stand of low, twisted spruce trees. His trunk flicked out, its pink tip running over one sapling after another. Finally he settled on the biggest, strongest tree of the grove. He wrapped his trunk around its girth and, with a single flick of his huge, low-slung head, ripped the tree out of the ground, roots and all. His mouth gaped, revealing a purple tongue and teeth like miniature mountains, chipped and worn. With a crackling splinter, he bit the tree clean in half, his long jaw bones moving in a powerful up-down motion quite different from the back-and-forth grinding of a mammoth's jaw. Then he stamped on the tree, breaking it up further.

  Within a few heartbeats, a healthy tree had been reduced to a few shards.

  "My name is Jaw Like Rock," said the mastodont. He opened his huge mouth and belched; a fine spray of spittle and wood chips peppered Longtusk. "I enjoyed that. But you grazers prefer to munch on a few blades of grass, don't you? I suppose if that's all you're strong enough to manage—"

  "I'm strong enough to best you," Longtusk said.

  Jaw Like Rock looked puzzled. "Oh, yes. It's time for me to get my eye ripped out, isn't it? We'd better get it over with."

  Unexpectedly, something barged into Longtusk's backside. Trumpeting, he tried to turn.

  Here was Walks With Thunder, his broad brow dipped. "You let me creep up on you downwind again, little grazer. You've a lot to learn."

  "I've nothing to learn from you wood-nibblers."

  Walks With Thunder's broad head once again rammed his backside, hard. Longtusk stumbled and took two or three steps forward.

  Now something wrenched backward on Longtusk's left hind leg. There was a hoop of hide rope knotted around his ankle, over his foot. The rope's other end was tied tightly around the roots of a tree.

  He heard a yelp of triumph from his feet.

  He looked down. It was the little fat Firehead, the one who had detected his presence before anybody else. He had been crawling on the ground close to Longtusk's feet, and his flabby skin was coated with something dark and pungent.

  "Dung," Longtusk said. "Mammoth dung."

  "Your dung," said Walks With Thunder easily. "That's how Lemming crept up on you. You couldn't smell him. Oldest trick there is, little grazer. And now you're caught."

  Longtusk trumpeted his alarm. "Why are you doing this to me? Let me go! In the name of Probos—"

  Walks With Thunder exchanged a glance with Jaw Like Rock, and Longtusk thought he detected a brief sadness there.

  Walks With Thunder said, "Grazer, this has nothing to do with Probos."

  "Don't worry, lad," Jaw said. "We've all been through it."

  "Been through what? Let me go." Frustrated, frightened, angry, humiliated, Longtusk tugged with all his strength at the rope. It wouldn't give. Rumbling, enraged, he fell back.

  The Fireheads stood around him in a loose circle, letting the drama play itself out.

  Jaw Like Rock took a heavy step forward, "Come on then, little grazer. Let's get this over. Give me your best shot."

  Longtusk eyed Jaw Like Rock. "There is a stink of Firehead on you," he said. "You have no honor."

  Jaw Like Rock stiffened.

  Walks With Thunder murmured, "I wouldn't get him angry."

  Longtusk cried, "For Probos!" And he roared and lunged with his tusks.

  The mastodont sidestepped — but not fast enough; the tip of one mammoth tusk scraped down his flank. "Well done, little grazer," he said, his trunk investigating the wound. "You were too fast for me."

  Longtusk looked down, and saw a smear of bright crimson at the sharp tip of one curling spiral tusk. He felt a surge of pride. If only Rockheart could see him now!...

  "Get it over, Jaw," growled Walks With Thunder. "Don't try to make him feel better about it."

  Longtusk, straining at the sinew on his leg, said, "What does he mean?"

  "Nothing," said Jaw Like Rock, wiping blood off the tip of his trunk on the sparse grass. "He's an old fool. Do your worst, mighty mammoth, calf of Primus!" And he trumpeted and raised his stubby tusks.

  Again Longtusk lunged.

  But the mastodont was standing at his side. He had moved in a blur of speed, too fast for Longtusk to see. "Forgive me, brave grazer." And he brought his tusks crashing down on Longtusk's head.

  It was as if thunder had clapped inside his head. The light was suddenly strange, with everything suffused by a bright golden tinge. To his surprise he found he was kneeling, his trunk dangling on the grass like the discarded skin of a snake.

  He tried to lift his tusks, but, oddly, they were scraping on the thin soil of the ground. With every breath he took, the golden light around him intensified.

  "...don't understand it. It's never taken more than a single blow before. That would have felled Kilukpuk herself."

  "You aren't used to these woolly grazers, Jaw."

  "No. Perhaps all that fur—"

  "More likely that wretched dome of bone on the top of his skull. Try it again, Jaw. Just make sure you don't kill him."

  A huge face loomed, a gaping jaw, the teeth surrounded by four short, squat tusks. "Try not to move, grazer."

  Longtusk felt a wash of fetid breath, a rush of air — and again there was an explosion inside his head.

  This time the world fell away, through deepening gold, into darkness.

  7

  The Taming

  THE SUN WAS HIGH.

  He was standing. He was conscious of hunger, an even more powerful thirst. There was a strong scent of mammoth around him... but not quite mammoth.

  "...Milkbreath? Matriarch?"

  "They aren't here, lad."

  The voice came from directly before him. It was a mammoth — no, a mastodont — short and squat, with a long narrow face and an extra pair of tusks. The mastodont seemed to swim into focus, as if ice water were draining out of his eyes.

  The mastodont was a Bull, grizzled with age, and his waist and head and legs and tusks were wrapped around with lengths of rope, knotted tight and tied to the stumps of trees. Only his trunk roamed free, its pink tip questing toward Longtusk.

  "Walks With Thunder," Longtusk said slowly.

  "I'm glad you know me. That oaf Jaw Like Rock is none too gentle; I feared he might have scrambled your brains for good... Who's Milkbreath? Your mother?"

  Longtusk growled and tried to back away. But he couldn't move. He could feel ropes wrapped around his legs and torso and head.

  "The ropes will tighten if you struggle. They will cut your flesh."

  Longtusk pushed hard with one leg. With a creak, the loops tightened just as Walks With Thunder had warned.

  He gave up, panting, longing for water. "Who did this?"

  "Our keepers. The Fireheads."

  "I am mammoth. I have no keeper."

  "You do now, little grazer."

  "They have tied me up so I will not run away?"

  "That's right."

  "...But why you?"

  Walks With Thunder emitted a deep snort from his trunk. "To show you it isn't so bad."

  Now a Firehead was coming toward them. It was the little fat one Longtusk had called Lemming — the one who had, with stealth, slipped that first loop of rope around Longtusk's leg. He was carrying a skin bag, some dry grass.

  Longtusk rumbled and lunged at the little Firehead. All over his body, the ropes creaked and tightened cruelly.

  Lemming yelped and staggered backward. He dropped his skin bag, which landed with a thick gurgle.

  "Let him feed you," Walks With Thunder urged.

  "I feed myself."

  "Not any more. Watch..."

  Lemming retrieved his dropped bag, opened it up and held it out to Walks With
Thunder. With a noisy slurp the mastodont sucked up a trunkful of water, draining the bag.

  The smell of the water filled Longtusk's head.

  Now the little Firehead started stuffing hay into Walks With Thunder's accepting mouth. The mastodont rumbled, "It isn't so bad, Longtusk. Just accept it. You're lucky. Lemming likes you. He's one of the better ones. He goes easy with the goads. Some of the others take it too far. Like Spindle — the one Jaw farted over—"

  "I won't give in."

  "You're special, are you? Different from us, smarter, stronger?"

  "Yes."

  "Sniff the air, little grazer."

  Longtusk did so — and found he was surrounded by mastodonts: ten, eleven, twelve of them, all males, presumably the same herd who had circled him earlier. Some were pulling branches from the low trees here; but most were feeding on heaps of smashed wood left for them by the Fireheads. One mastodont was wallowing in the mud of a shallow water hole, its fringe crusted with late-winter ice. He was rolling on his side and lifting his squat feet, letting a Firehead scrape mud off his delicate soles with a piece of sharpened stone.

  And now a mastodont walked past with a heavy gait. He had a passenger, a skinny Firehead who sat astride the mastodont's neck. His bare feet kicked at the animal's ears, and he struck the mastodont's broad scalp with a stick tipped with sharpened bone.

  The mastodont had a broad, ugly scar across his face, eclipsing one eye.

  It was Jaw Like Rock. And his rider was the keeper who had beaten him before, Spindle.

  "Why does he accept that? He could throw off that creature and crush him in a moment."

  "You don't understand. Jaw has no choice. I have no choice. You have no choice, but to submit."

  "No."

  Walks With Thunder's trunk drooped. "I was like you, once. Make it easy on yourself."

  "I won't listen to you."

  And Longtusk began to push against his ropes once more. They tightened around his neck and legs and belly, but still he struggled, until he was exhausted.

  The Firehead keeper came to him again, with water and food; again Longtusk ignored him.

  And so it went on, as the sun worked its path around the sky.

  NIGHT FELL. BUT IT WAS NOT DARK, not even quiet.

  The Fireheads set up huge fires in improvised hearths all around the steppe. Longtusk could feel their uncomfortable heat. The fires sent sparks up into the echoing night, and the Fireheads sat close, their faces shining in the red light, eating and drinking and laughing.

  Longtusk — hungry, thirsty, exhausted, his muscles cramped from immobility — now longed for sleep. But sleep was impossible. The Fireheads would come to him and shout in his ears, or whirl pieces of bone on ropes around their heads, making a noise like a howling wind.

  Walks With Thunder was still with him. "Give in," he urged. "They won't stop until you do."

  "No," mumbled Longtusk.

  "Let me tell you a story," Walks With Thunder said. "A story from the Cycle. This is of a time deep in the past — oh, thousands of Great-Years ago, long before the ice came to the earth. In those days there were no mammoths and mastodonts; we were a single kind, and we lived in a land of lush forests, far to the south of here.

  "But the Earth cooled. The forests follow the weather, as every mastodont knows. Year by year the land became cooler and drier, and great waves of trees moved north across the Earth—"

  "Why are you telling me this?"

  "Just listen. Now our Matriarch, the Matriarch of all mastodonts, was called Mammut. She was a descendant of Probos, of course, but she lived long before the mother of the mammoths."

  "Ganesha."

  "Yes. Now Mammut was wise—"

  "They always are in Cycle stories."

  Walks With Thunder barked his amusement at that. "Yes. It's always easy after the fact, isn't it?... Mammut could see the way the forests were migrating to the north. And she said, 'Just as the forests must follow the weather, so my calves must follow the forests.' And so, under her leadership, her Clan followed the slow march of the forests, seeking out the marshy places beneath the great trees, for that is what mastodonts prefer. And her calves prospered and multiplied, filling the land.

  "Now, much later, long after Mammut had gone to the aurora, another forest came marching across the land. A different kind of forest."

  "I don't know what you're talking about," Longtusk mumbled.

  "It was a forest of Fireheads, little grazer. And the mastodonts fled in panic."

  "That is because they were cowards."

  Walks With Thunder ignored that. "So the mastodonts called up to the aurora, 'What should we do, great Matriarch?'

  "Mammut was wise. She understood.

  "As the weather washes over the land, the trees must follow. As the trees wash over the land, the mastodonts must follow. And now, as the Fireheads wash over the land, the mastodonts must follow again. That is what Mammut said. And that is what we accept."

  "It isn't much of a story."

  "Well, I'm sorry. I was trying to make a point. I left out the fights and the sex scenes."

  "Anyway the Fireheads are not trees."

  Thunder growled irritably. "The point is that the Fireheads feed us, as the trees do. They even care for us — when they choose. And we cannot be rid of them, little grazer. Any more than the land can rid itself of the trees. Accept them. Accept their food."

  Once again, Longtusk saw blearily, the Firehead, Lemming, was before him. He held up a paw, full of grasses and herbs, fragrant, freshly gathered. But Longtusk turned his head away.

  IT LASTED THREE MORE DAYS, three more nights.

  Walks With Thunder and Jaw Like Rock were both with him.

  "Your courage is astonishing, little grazer. Nobody else has ever lasted so long before."

  Longtusk, beaten down by hunger and thirst and sleeplessness, could barely see through milky, crusted eyes. "Leave me alone."

  Jaw reached out and, with the pink tip of his trunk, smoothed the filth-matted fur of Longtusk's face. "Don't let them kill you," he said softly. "That way they will have won."

  Longtusk closed his eyes.

  After a time he felt a pressure at the side of his mouth. It was the paw of Lemming, the keeper, once more holding out sweet grasses.

  "Take it, grazer. It's no defeat."

  "My name is Longtusk."

  Walks With Thunder and Jaw Like Rock thumped the ground with their trunks. "Longtusk," they said.

  Lemming was staring at him, his eyes round, as if he understood.

  Longtusk opened his mouth and took the food.

  MORE DAYS PASSED. Gradually his strength returned.

  His ropes loosened. They had burned and cut him painfully. Lemming treated the wounds with salves of fat and butter, and with water heated in the hearths. He squeezed droplets of milk from an aurochs cow into Longtusk's eyes, soothing their itching.

  Five days after he had first accepted the food, more Fireheads came to see him: Bedrock the leader, the Shaman Smokehat with his grotesque headpiece of smoking bone, and the cub, Crocus.

  Though Bedrock was cautious and kept hold of her paw, Crocus approached Longtusk. Her necklace of mammoth teeth gleamed in the watery spring sun. She reached past the ropes and ruffled the long hair that dangled from his trunk.

  He closed his eyes, recalling how Willow, the male Dreamer cub, used to do the same thing.

  He wondered where the Dreamers were now, Stripeskull and Willow and the others. Scattered, he supposed, turned out of the caves they had inhabited for uncounted generations, in the face of the advance of these Fireheads —

  Pain lanced into his flank. He trumpeted and reared up, but he was contained by the ropes. There was a stink of burning flesh and hair.

  The Shaman, Smokehat, held a piece of stone fixed to the end of a stick. The stone had been chipped and shaped to look like the outspread paw of a Firehead. It glowed red hot.

  The mark of the Firehead, the outstretched paw
, had been burned into Longtusk's flank.

  Like all these others he belonged to the Fireheads, and was forever marked.

  He trumpeted his anger and despair.

  Part 2: Warrior

  The Story of Longtusk and the Fireheads

  AS YOU KNOW, ICEBONES (said Silverhair), Longtusk spent most of his years as a young Bull away from other mammoths.

  Everywhere he went he won friendship and respect — naturally, since he was the greatest hero of all, and even other creatures could recognize that — and in many instances he was made their leader, and led them to fruitfulness and success before passing on to continue his adventures.

  And so it came to pass that Longtusk came to live with the Fireheads, and to rule them.

  Now the Fireheads are the strangest creatures in all the Cycle: weak yet strong, smart yet stupid. In the summer heat they had difficulty finding the food and drink they needed, and in the winter cold they suffered because they had no winter coat.

  So Longtusk decided to teach them how to live.

  When they were cold, he took them to the west, where Rhino lived.

  Now Rhino was a magnificent beast with a coat as thick as a mammoth's and great horns like upturned tusks (yes, she really existed, Icebones, have patience!). And Longtusk said to the Fireheads, "You need coats like Rhino's to fend off the cold. See how warm and comfortable she is? When the wintertime is over she sheds her hair, and you may take it to make your own coats. Isn't that right, Rhino?"

  And Rhino replied, "Yes, Longtusk" — for all the creatures of the world knew Longtusk — "my hair will be all your friends need, and they may have it."

  And the Fireheads muttered and calculated, for that is their way.

  And when Longtusk's back was turned, they attacked poor Rhino, and robbed her of her fine coat, and even took her magnificent horns.

  When he found out what had happened, Longtusk berated the Fireheads for their greed and impatience. "You could have taken all you needed, if only you had waited!"