The hunts were usually brief, efficient, routine events, and only rarely would the hunters take on an animal the size of, say, a giant deer. The hunters were after all seeking food, and they tried to make their success as certain as possible, minimizing the risks they took.
But today's hunt was different. Today they were going after the largest prey of all. And only the strongest and most able hunters, including Bedrock himself, had been included in the party.
Though Crocus had joined in hunts before — the only female Firehead to do so — and had become skillful with spear and stone knife, this was the first time she had been allowed by her father to take part in such an event. And so — because Longtusk still refused to allow any other rider on his back but Crocus — it was the first time for him, too.
They were heading west, and they came to a strange land.
There were pools here, but they were small and misshapen and filled with icy, cloudy, sour water. Trees, mostly spruce, struggled to grow, but they were stunted and leaned at drunken angles. The ground was broken and hummocky, and Longtusk had to step carefully. Here and there, in fact, the turf was no more than a thin crust over a deeper hollow. With his deeper senses he could hear the peculiar echoes the crusty ground returned, but still an incautious footstep could lead to a stumble or worse.
Walks With Thunder, with Bedrock proudly borne on his back, loped alongside Longtusk. "The ice is retreating to its northern fastness. But this is a place where a remnant of ice was covered over by wind-blown silt and soil before it could melt. The earth is thin; the trees can establish only shallow roots, so they grow badly. And the ice is still there, beneath us... Look."
They came to a low ridge, half Longtusk's height. Under a lip of grass, he could see ice protruding above the ground, dirty, glistening with meltwater.
"The stagnant ice is slowly melting away. As it does so it leaves hollows and caverns under a crust of unsupported earth. But sometimes the rain and meltwater will work away at the ice, turning it into a honeycomb. So watch your step, little grazer, for you don't want to snap a tusk or an ankle. And you don't want to dump your rider on her behind."
So Longtusk stepped carefully.
When the sun was at its highest the party paused to rest. The mastodonts were freed of their packs, hobbled loosely and allowed to wander off in search of food.
Later some of them, Longtusk included, underwent some refresher training in preparation for the hunt, along with their riders. Jaw Like Rock, ridden by the cruel Spindle, led them.
Jaw trotted back and forth across the broken ground, and Spindle, riding Jaw's back, got cautiously to his feet. His feet were bare to improve his grip, and he kept his balance by holding out his forelegs.
Jaw kept up a commentary for the mastodonts. "You can see he can hold his place up there. The hunters stand so they get a better leverage when they hurl their spears and darts.
"But you have to realize it isn't natural. He isn't stable. I can feel he's on the brink of falling over. He can shift his feet and hind legs to adjust his balance, and I have to try to keep my back steady as I move. See? It gets a lot harder when you're racing over this crusty ground alongside the prey... And if you stop working at it even for a moment—"
He stopped dead.
Spindle tried to keep his balance, waving his forelegs in the air. But without Jaw's assistance, he was helpless. With a wail, he tumbled to the ground, landing hard.
Longtusk heard his own rider, Crocus, break into peals of laughter. The mastodonts trumpeted and slapped the ground with their trunks.
Spindle was predictably furious. He got to his feet, brushing off dirt and grass blades. He picked up his goad and began to lash at Jaw's face and rump.
The other keepers turned away, as if disgusted, and the mastodonts rumbled their disapproval.
Longtusk said grimly, "I don't know how you put up with that."
Jaw eyed him, stolidly enduring his punishment. "It's worth it. Anyway, nothing lasts forever—"
A contact rumble washed over the steppe. "Silence," Walks With Thunder called. "Silence. Rhinos..."
THERE WERE THREE OF THEM, Longtusk counted: two adults and a calf.
They were at the edge of a milk-white pond. One of the adults — perhaps a female — was in the water, which lapped around the fur fringing her belly. Her calf was in the pond beside her, almost afloat, sometimes putting her head under the water and paddling around her mother.
The other adult, probably a male, stood on the shore of the pond. He was grazing, trampling the grass flat and then using his big forelip to scoop it into his mouth.
They were woolly rhinos.
They were broad, fat tubes of muscle and fat. Their skin was heavy and wrinkled. On massive necks were set squat, low-slung heads with small ears and tiny black eyes. Their bodies were coated with dark brown fur, short on top but dangling in long fringes from their bellies. They had high humps over their shoulders, short tails and, strangest of all, each had two long curving horns protruding up from their noses. The bull's nasal horn in particular was long and glinting and sharp.
Small birds clustered on the bull's back, pecking, searching for mosquitoes and grubs.
Now the cow climbed out of the water, ponderous and slow, followed by her calf. Dripping, she grunted, shifted her hind legs, and emitted a spray of urine, horizontal and powerful, that splashed into the pond water and over the nearby shore. The urine came in gargantuan proportions. Longtusk saw, bemused, a series of powerful blasts, until it dwindled to a trickle down the long hairs of the cow's hind legs.
The bull, rumbling in response, immediately emptied his own bladder in a spray that covered the cow's. Then he rubbed his hind feet in the wet soil.
Thunder grunted. "The rhinos talk through their urine and dung. When other rhinos come this way, they will be able to tell that the cow over there is in oestrus, ready to mate. But the bull has covered her marker, telling the other bulls that she is his..."
They were almost like mammoths, Longtusk thought, wondering: short, squat, deformed — nevertheless built to survive the harshness of winter.
The party of mastodonts and Fireheads began to pad softly forward.
"They haven't sensed us yet," said Thunder. "See the way the Bull's ears are up, his tail is low? He's at his ease. Let's hope he stays that way."
The rhino calf was the first to notice them.
She (or he, it was impossible to tell) was prizing up dead wood with her tiny bump of a horn, apparently seeking termites. Then she seemed to scent the mastodonts. She flattened her ears and lifted her tail.
She ran around her mother, prodding her with her horn. At first the mother, dozing, took no notice. But the calf put both her front feet on the mother's face and blew in her ear. The cow got to her feet, shaking her head, and rumbled a warning to the male.
The rhinos began to lumber away from the pond, in the direction of open ground. The small birds which had been working on the backs of the rhinos flew off in a brief burst of startled motion.
The mastodonts and their riders pursued, rapidly picking up speed. Those animals heavy with pack were left behind, while others lightly laden for the chase hurtled after the rhinos: they included Thunder, bearing Bedrock, Jaw with Spindle — and Longtusk, carrying Crocus, who clung to his hair, whooping her excitement as the steppe grass flew past.
"This is it," said Thunder, tense and excited. "We're going after the bull."
Longtusk said, "Why not the cow? She is slowed by the calf."
"But she is not such a prize. See the way the bull's back is flat and straight, the cow's sagging? That shows she is old and weak. This hunt is a thing of prestige. Today these hunters are chasing honor, not the easiest meat. We go for the male."
Soon they passed the cow and her calf. The cow flattened her ears, wrinkled her nose and half-opened her mouth, as if she was about to charge. But the mastodonts and their riders ignored her, flying onward over the steppe in pursuit of the greater quarry.
They drew alongside the male rhino. He ran almost elegantly, Longtusk thought: like a horse, his tail high, his feet lifting over the broken ground. Even as he ran he bellowed his protest and swung his powerful horns this way and that, trying to reach the mastodonts.
With practiced ease Bedrock slid to his feet on the broad back of Walks With Thunder and prepared his atlatl. He raised a dart — it was almost as long as Bedrock was tall, and its tip, pure quartz crystal, glinted cruelly — and he fitted a notch in the base of the dart to the thrower. The thrower, perhaps a third the length of the dart, was carved from the femur of a giant deer.
Longtusk could feel Crocus clambering to her feet on his back. She was unsteady, and he sensed her leaning forward, ready to grab at his hairs if she felt herself falling. Nevertheless she hefted her own dart.
And she threw first.
She hurled hard and well — but not accurately enough; the dart's tip glanced off the rhino's back, scraping through his hair, and slid onward toward the ground.
Now her father raised his dart. He held it flat, with the thrower resting on his shoulder, his hand just behind his ear. Then, with savage force, his entire lean body whipping forward, he thrust at the dart. Longtusk saw the thin shaft bow into a curve, and then spring away from Bedrock, as if it was a live thing, hissing through the air.
The hard quartz tip shone like a falling star as it flew at the rhino. The dart hit beneath the rhino's rib cage — exactly where it could do most damage.
The dart point had been designed and made by master craftsmen for its purpose. It was long, sharp and did not split off or shatter on first impact. Instead it drove itself through the rhino's hair and layers of hide and fat, embedding itself in the soft, warm organs within.
The rhino screeched, his voice strangely high for such an immense animal. Longtusk could smell the sharp metallic tang of the blood which spurted crimson from the wound, and black fluid oozed from the rhino's lips.
But still, with awesome willpower, the rhino ran on. The pain must have been agonizing as the dangling, twisting spear ripped at the wound, widening it further and deepening the internal injury.
Now another mastodont bearing a young, keen-eyed hunter called Bareface drew alongside the rhino. The hunter took careful aim and hurled his dart — not at the rhino's injured torso, but at his hind legs.
The dark sliced through fur and flesh. The rhino fell flat on the ground and rolled over, snapping off the dart that protruded from his side.
Still defiant, the rhino tried to rise. But his hind leg dangled uselessly, pumping blood, and he fell again in dirt already soaked with his own blood. Urine and dung gushed, liquid, adding to the mess in the dirt.
The mastodonts halted. The Fireheads jumped down, approaching the rhino warily.
The rhino thrashed in the dirt and bellowed his rage, slashing the air with his long horn. But he was already mortally wounded; a spray of red-black liquid shot from his mouth.
Defying the swings of that cruel horn, Bedrock leaped nimbly onto the rhino's broad back, grabbing great pawfuls of fur. With grim determination, already covered in dirt and blood, Bedrock crawled forward until he reached the base of the rhino's neck. Then he pulled from his belt a long, sharp chisel of rock. Defying the thrashings of the rhino, he stabbed the chisel into the creature's flesh, at the top of his spine. Then he produced a hammer rock from his belt.
Under Bedrock's single blow, the stone blade slid easily through the rhino's hide.
As his spine was severed the rhino's eyes widened, startled, almost curious. Then he slumped flat against the blood-stained dirt, his magnificent body reduced to a flaccid, quivering mound.
He raised his head to face Longtusk. He breathed in short sharp gasps, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh.
Walks With Thunder said grimly, "He's trying to speak to you. Who are you? Why are you doing this?"
"How can you understand him?"
"We are all Hotbloods, grazer."
Then, mercifully, Bedrock drove another blade into the rhino's spine.
The rhino's head slumped to the ground. His body rumbled and shuddered as its huge, complex processes closed down.
When life was gone, panting mastodonts and blood-spattered Fireheads stood away from the corpse. They seemed united by the vivid moment, stilled, as if the world pivoted on the death of this huge, defiant animal.
Then Bedrock climbed onto the rhino's back, his furs stained with blood. He raised his paws in the air and hollered his triumph, and his hunters yelled in response. They sound like wolves, Longtusk thought; it is the feral cry of the predator.
And I have run with them. For an instant an image of his mother came into his mind, her smell and warmth and touch, as clearly as if she was standing before him. Oh, Milkbreath, I have come on a long journey since I last saw you!
Bedrock jumped down and walked to the rhino's slumped head. He gripped his hammer rock and swung it against the base of that huge horn. With a sharp crack, the horn split away from a shallow depression in the rhino's face. Bedrock raised the horn to the sky, then tucked it into his belt.
The hunters gathered around the rhino, producing their knives of stone, and began to slice through skin and fur.
Longtusk said, "Now what? It will take a while to butcher this huge animal."
"Oh, they aren't going to butcher it," said Jaw Like Rock. "It's too big a beast to haul across the steppe, too much meat to eat and store. They will dig out the liver and consume that. And, of course, Bedrock has his horn..."
"The horn?"
Walks With Thunder rumbled, "Bedrock has a dozen horns already. He will take this one and have it shaped into a dagger or a drinking cup, and he will treasure it forever, a token of his bravery. This wasn't about gathering meat. Today the Fireheads have proved, you see, what brave hunters they are... Look up there."
Condors wheeled overhead, their wings stretched out, cold and black.
"They know," said Thunder. "They have seen this before, and—"
A Firehead cried out.
It was Bedrock. He stood upright, but a look of puzzlement clouded his face. And his body was quivering.
A thin, small spear protruded from his skull.
Then his eyes rolled back in his head, blood gushed from his mouth, and he collapsed as if his bones had dissolved.
Crocus rushed forward and began to keen, her voice high and thin.
WALKS WITH THUNDER SAID grimly, "Circle."
Longtusk immediately obeyed, taking his place with the others in a rough protective ring around the fallen Firehead. It was an ancient command, millions of years old, so old it was common to both mastodonts and mammoths.
Now Longtusk could smell and hear the assailants who had so suddenly struck down Bedrock. They were Fireheads, of course — but not from the settlement. They were some way away, and they danced and stamped their delight. The skin of their small faces was coated with a fine white powder — perhaps rock flour, sieved from the shallow pools of this strange landscape — a powder that stank sharply of salt.
The young hunter, Bareface, his shaven-smooth visage twisted into an unrecognizable snarl, whipped his foreleg with suppleness and speed.
A boomerang went flying. It spun, whistling, as it soared through the thin air. It was a piece of mammoth ivory carved smooth and curved like a bird's wing, with one side preserving the convex surface of the original tusk, the other polished almost flat.
The strange Fireheads didn't even seem to see it coming — they scattered as it flew among them, like mice disturbed by an owl — but the boomerang flew unerringly to the temple of one of them, knocking him to the ground.
Jaw growled his approval. "The one who struck down Bedrock. He will not live out the day..."
"Whiteskins," Thunder muttered. "I never thought I'd see their ugly, capering forms again."
Longtusk said, "You've met them before?"
"Oh, yes. Many times. But never so far north."
Now Crocus came running to
Longtusk. Her face was contorted with rage, and her blonde hair blew around her. She held the stone chisel which Bedrock had driven into the rhino's spine. "Baitho! Baitho!" He lowered his head and trunk, and she grabbed his ears and scrambled onto his back. "Agit!"
Her intention was unmistakable.
Without thought — despite rumbles of warning from the mastodonts, cries of alarm from the hunters — Longtusk charged toward the Whiteskins.
Longtusk expected the Whiteskins to flee. But they held their ground. They dropped to their knees and raised weapons of some kind.
Suddenly there were more small spears of the type that had felled Bedrock flying through the air around him, fast and straight.
"They are not spears," puffed Thunder as he ran after the mammoth, "but arrows. The Whiteskins have bows — never mind, grazer! Just keep your head high when you run. You can take an arrow or two — but not your rider."
And, as if in response to Thunder's warning, a small flint-tipped spear — no, an arrow — plunged out of nowhere into Longtusk's cheek. The pain was sharp and intense; the small blade had reached as far as his tongue.
Without breaking stride, he curled his trunk and plucked the arrow out of his cheek. Blood sprayed, but immediately the pain lessened.
Jaw Like Rock was charging past him, the keeper Spindle clinging to Jaw's hair as if for life itself, his mouth drawn back in a rictus of terror. Jaw called, "Had a mosquito bite, grazer?"
"Something like that."
The big tusker trumpeted his exhilaration and charged forward.
Still the strange Fireheads did not break and run.
An arrow lodged in the foreleg of Jaw Like Rock. Longtusk could smell the sharp, coppery stink of fresh blood. Jaw screamed and pulled up, despite repeated beatings from Spindle on his back. Jaw knelt down, snapping away the arrow. Then, bellowing with rage and pain, he plunged on.
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