Icebones

by Stephen Baxter

  "Enough," Autumn said. "You are both making the calf unhappy. How does that show love...? Breeze, you must let the calf go to Spiral."

  "No!"

  "It is her right."

  Yes. Because Spiral is senior, Icebones thought, watching.

  "But," Autumn said, "you must let his mother feed him, Spiral."

  "I can feed him," Spiral protested.

  Autumn said gently, "No, you can't. He still needs milk. Come now." Deliberately she stepped between the two Cows, and wrapped her trunk around Woodsmoke's head, soothing him. And, with judicious nudges, she arranged the three of them so that the calf was in the center.

  The two competing Cows stood face to face. They laid their trunks over Woodsmoke's back, soothing and warming him.

  After a few heartbeats, now that the tussle was resolved, Woodsmoke snorted contentedly and lay down to nap, half buried under the Cows' heavy trunks.

  The wind picked up further, ruffling Icebones's hair. Far above, a bird hovered, wings widespread. Perhaps it was a skua.

  She looked to the west again. The light continued to seep slowly into the sky, but she could see that the band of darkness had grown heavier and denser, filling the canyon from side to side, as if some immense wave was approaching. But she could hear nothing: no rustling of trees or moaning of wind through rock.

  Autumn joined Icebones. "Taste this." She held up her trunk tip to Icebones's mouth.

  Icebones tasted milk.

  "I found it on Spiral's breast. She stole it from Breeze, to lure the calf." Autumn rumbled unhappily. "Of all of us, I think it is Spiral who suffers the most."

  Icebones wrapped her trunk around Autumn's. "Then we must help her, as much as we can."

  Icebones knew that Autumn's instinct had been good. In a Family, it was not uncommon for a senior Cow to adopt the calf of another — whether the true mother liked it or not. The whole Family was responsible for the care of each calf, and calves and adults knew it on some deep-buried level. But under the stifling care of the Lost these Cows had never learned to understand their instincts, and were now driven by emotions they probably could not name, let alone understand.

  But now Thunder came trumpeting. He was breathing hard, his eyes rimmed by white. "Icebones! Icebones!" He turned to face west, his trunk raised high.

  That wall of crimson darkness had grown, astonishingly quickly. It filled the Gouge from side to side, and towered high up the walls. And now Icebones could hear the first moans of wind, the crack of rock and wood, and she could feel the shuddering of the ground.

  Something hovered briefly before the storm front, hurled high in the air, green and brown, before being dashed to the ground and smashing to splinters. It was a mighty conifer tree, uprooted and destroyed as casually as a mammoth's trunk would toss a willow twig.

  "By Kilukpuk's eyes," Autumn said softly.

  Icebones trumpeted, "Circle!"

  The adults gathered around Breeze and her calf. Icebones prodded them until they all had their backs to the wind, with Autumn, Thunder and Icebones herself at the rear of the group.

  There was a moment of eerie silence. The ground's shaking stopped, and even the wind died.

  But still the storm front bore down on them. Its upper reaches were wispy smoke, and its dense front churned and bubbled, like a vast river approaching.

  Icebones, pressed between Thunder and Autumn, felt the rapid breathing of the mammoths, smelled their dung and urine and milk and fear. "Hold your places," she said. "Hold your places—"

  Suddenly the storm was on them.

  PERHAPS IT HAD SOMETHING to do with night and day.

  The Gouge was so long that while its eastern end was in day, its western extremity was still in night. Icebones imagined the battle between the cold of night and warmth of day, as the line of dawn worked its slow way along the great channel. Was it so surprising that such a tremendous daily conflict should throw off a few storms?

  But the why scarcely mattered.

  THE WIND WAS RED-BLACK and solid and icy cold. It battered at Icebones's back and legs. Dust and bits of stone scoured at her skin, working through her layers of hair and grinding at any exposed flesh, her ears and trunk tip and even her feet.

  Now a thick sleety snow began to pelt her back. Soon her fur was soaked through with icy melt, and the cold deepened, as if the wind was determined to suck away every last bit of her body heat. The ground itself was shuddering, making it impossible for her rumbles or stamping to reach the others.

  She risked opening one eye.

  It was like looking into a tunnel lined by soggy snow, rain, crimson dust and rock fragments that drove almost horizontally ahead of her. She could even see a kind of shadow, a gap in the driving storm, cast by the mammoths' huge bulk.

  She had seen this vast storm approaching since it was just a line on the bleak horizon. How was it she hadn't heard its howl, or even felt the rumble of its destruction? Perhaps the storm was so violent, so rapid, that it outran even its own mighty roar.

  But by standing together the mammoths were defeating the storm, she thought with a stab of exultation. However soaked and battered and cold, they would emerge from this latest crisis stronger and more united as a Family—

  There was a noise like thunder, a blow like a strike from Kilukpuk's mighty tusk.

  The world spun around, and she was flying, flying, though the driven snow and the dust. She could feel her legs and trunk dangling, helpless, not a single one of her feet in contact with the ground, lost in the air like poor Shoot. She could smell blood — no, she could taste it.

  But there was no pain, not even fear. How strange, she thought.

  A wall, dark red and hard, loomed before her.

  She slammed into rock. Pain stabbed in her right shoulder.

  She slid down the wall to the ground. Hard-edged rock ripped at her belly and legs and face.

  And then she fell into darkness.

  SHE COULD FEEL COLD rock beneath her belly.

  She opened her eyes.

  She glimpsed a dim sun through smoky dust, and the round shapes of mammoths, their hair licking around them. A gust battered her face, and she squeezed her eyes shut.

  But the storm had diminished.

  She was resting on her front, her legs folded beneath her, as a mammoth would lie when preparing to die. She tried to pull her forefeet under her, so she could rise. Pain exploded in her right shoulder, and she stumbled flat again, sprawling like a clumsy calf.

  But then there was a trunk under her, strong and supple. "Lean on me." Autumn stood over her, a massive silhouette against a crimson sky. "The storm has gone to find somebody else to torment. But you are hurt."

  High above Autumn, a bird wheeled through dusty red light.

  Icebones tried again to stand. The pain in her shoulder betrayed her once more. But this time Autumn's strong trunk helped her, and she managed to stay upright, shakily, her three good legs taking her weight.

  The mammoths shook themselves and tugged at their hair, trying to get out the worst of the grit and dust and water. The calf, none the worse for his experience, was trotting from one adult to another, his little trunk held up as he tried to help them groom. Icebones saw that crimson dust had piled up where the mammoths had been standing, making a low dune.

  The land showed the passing of the storm. Dust and gravel lay everywhere, and new red-black streaks along the rocky ground showing where the winds had passed. Bushes and bits of trees lay scattered. There was even the broken corpse of a small, young deer, Icebones saw, bent so badly it was almost unrecognizable.

  She wondered what damage this storm would have done in the Nest of the Lost. Surely no trace of the mammoths' footsteps in the littered dust would remain.

  A shadow arced over the mammoths. Icebones saw that bird still wheeling overhead, wings outstretched. She looked like a skua, hunting a lemming. Perhaps she nested in those great spherical caves in the cliff face. Icebones raised her trunk, but could smell nothi
ng but iron dust and her own blood.

  She took a step forward. Pain jarred in her shoulder, making her cry softly.

  "Everybody's safe," Autumn said sternly. "Everybody but you. Your shoulder is damaged. We will rest here, until your healing begins."

  "We must reach the Footfall—"

  "We cannot reach this Footfall of yours at all without you, Icebones. So we will wait, whether you like it or not."

  "I am sorry," Icebones said softly.

  "If you are sorry you are a fool. Maybe we should go back to the ponds. I bet Chaser-Of-Frogs was comfortable in her mud, with only the tip of her trunk sticking out into the storm. What do you think...?"

  The bird was descending, Icebones saw, curious despite her pain. Her body was stone gray, her beak bluish, and her wings had white flashes across them. She had webbed feet, spread beneath her, pointing at the ground — webbed, with claws.

  She was descending, and descending, and descending. Coming out of the storm, unperturbed by the remnant winds.

  Coming straight toward the mammoths.

  Growing huge.

  The calf was alone, grubbing at a fallen tree.

  Icebones roared, "Watch out!" She tried to run. Her shoulder seared and she fell sprawling, as if her leg had been cut away. Still the mammoths did not look up. And still Icebones tried to stand, pushing herself forward, for the shadow was becoming larger. "The bird!" she called again. "The bird...!"

  A roof of feathers and bone slid over her, rustling, and there was a smell like scorched flesh. She glimpsed a blue-gray beak, and black eyes, flecked with yellow, peered into hers. Those great wings beat once, lazily and powerfully, and air gushed.

  Icebones cringed. All the dust-stained mammoths were in the bird's shadow now, standing like blocks of sandstone.

  The webbed feet spread, talons reaching out of the sky. The calf ran for his mother, trunk raised, mewling.

  The talons closed. Woodsmoke trumpeted as the claws pricked his sides, and blood spurted, gushing over his spiky hair.

  The bird screeched, a sound like rock cracking, as she struggled to lift her prey. With every beat of the wings, dust and bits of rock were sent flying, and the ground shuddered. It was a nightmare of noise and dust, shadow and blood, the stink of feathers.

  If the skua succeeded in getting off the ground, she would surely carry the calf away to some high, remote nest, where he would be devoured alive, piece by bloody piece, by a clutch of monstrous chicks. Icebones roared her anguish. But, pinned by her injury to the ground, she could do nothing.

  Breeze came rushing in, tusks raised, trumpeting, utterly fearless. She got close enough to swipe at the bird with her tusks, and she grabbed a wing with her trunk. The bird screamed and beat her wings, pulling free, leaving long, greasy black feathers fluttering in the air. A beak the size of a mammoth's thigh bone slashed down.

  Breeze staggered back, trumpeting. Icebones saw that her back had been laid open. The Cow slumped to the ground, legs splayed.

  The bird was flapping harder now, and gushes of rock and dust billowed out from beneath her immense, rustling wings. At last she raised the struggling calf off the ground, and was straining for the sky.

  Thunder ran forward. He was waving an uprooted bush over his head, his trunk wrapped around its roots. A cloud of red dust flew around his head.

  The skua shrieked and stabbed with her beak, for the bush made Thunder look much larger than he was. He hurled the bush at her head and ran trumpeting into the shadow of her wings, slashing his tusks back and forth.

  The bird screeched again — and Icebones knew the Bull had reached flesh.

  The skua tried one last time to lift herself. But the calf continued to squirm, and Icebones could see Thunder whirling like a dust devil, striking over and over with blood-stained tusks at the soft feathers of the bird's chest.

  At last, with a final angry scream, the bird released Woodsmoke. The calf fell to the ground with a soft impact. The great wings beat, and Icebones saw that Thunder was knocked aside.

  But now the bird was rising, diminishing in the sky, becoming a small black speck that wheeled away toward the cliffs.

  The calf mewled. His mother rushed to him, uncaring of her own wounds.

  THEY SOUGHT SHELTER under an overhang of rock, a place where no more nightmares could come wheeling down from the sky.

  Thunder was sore from heavy bruises inflicted on his flanks by the beating wings of the bird. Breeze's back had been laid open so badly that the white of bone showed in a valley of ripped red flesh, and Autumn laboriously plastered it with mud. The calf had suffered puncture marks in his side left by the bird's talons, ripped wider by his struggles to get free. Spiral worked with his grandmother to clean them up for him, and to soothe his wailing misery.

  All the mammoths were subdued, bombarded as they had been by the storm and the attack of the bird so soon after. Icebones suspected it had been no coincidence. The bird must prefer to hunt after such a storm, when animals, dead or injured or simply bewildered, were most vulnerable to her mighty talons.

  Skuas on the Island had fed on rodents, like lemmings, and the chicks of other birds. There had been nothing like this monster. She recalled the birds she had seen nesting in the cliff hollows — but she realized now that she had totally misjudged their size, fooled by the vastness of the cliff. Perhaps such a cliff bred birds of this immense size to suit its mighty scale.

  Icebones felt a dread gather in her heart. Perhaps this is how Kilukpuk felt at the beginning of her life, she thought, when she lived in a burrow under the ground, and the Reptiles stalked overhead. But the mammoths had grown huge since those days. Nothing threatened them, for the mammoths were the greatest creatures in the world...

  But not this world, she thought.

  As the sun slid down the sky, Icebones limped up to the young Bull. "Walk with me, Thunder. Let me lean on you."

  Growling uncertainly, he settled in at her right side, and she leaned her shoulder on his comfortingly massive bulk. When they emerged from the shelter of the rock overhang, Thunder raised his trunk higher. "It is not safe," he rumbled. "The bird has blood on her talons now."

  "Yes," she said. "And I cannot run fast. But I have you to protect me. Don't I, Thunder?"

  "I did nothing," he growled.

  Standing awkwardly, she wrapped her trunk around his. "You defied your instincts. Mammoths are not used to being preyed upon — and certainly not by a bird, an ugly thing which flaps out of the sky. But you fought her off. You are brave beyond your years, and your strength."

  "I abandoned Shoot when the sea beast threatened. I would not walk onto the bridge after Spiral. You saw my fear—"

  "But you saved Woodsmoke. You are what you do, Thunder. And so you are a hero." He tried to pull away, so she slapped him gently. "I want you to call somebody now. I cannot, for I cannot stamp... There is a Bull I know. He is far from here, but I hope we will meet him someday. He is called Boaster."

  "Boaster?"

  "Call him now. Call him as deep and as loud as you can."

  So Thunder called, his massive chest shuddering and his broad feet slamming against the ground.

  After a time, Icebones heard the answering call washing through the rock. Icebones? Is that you?

  "Tell him you are Thunder."

  Hesitantly, Thunder complied.

  A Bull? Are you in musth? Keep away from Icebones, for she is mine. For myself, though Icebones calls me Boaster, my relatives and rivals, for obvious reasons, call me Long—

  "Never mind that," said Icebones hastily. "Tell him what you did today."

  Still hesitant, awkward, Thunder stamped out, "I killed a bird."

  After a long delay, the reply came: A bird? What did you do, sneeze on it?

  Thunder trumpeted his anger. "The bird was vast. So vast its wings spanned this Gouge through which we walk. It descended like a storm and grabbed a calf in its mighty talons..."

  While Boaster was listening respectfully,
Icebones limped away, leaving Thunder standing proud, telling of his deeds to other Bulls — which was just what Bulls were supposed to do.

  But as she withdrew she watched the darkling sky.

  6

  The Shining Tusk

  THE CHARACTER OF THE LANDSCAPE slowly changed. The walls became more shallow and broken. It was evident that they were, at last, rising out of the mighty Gouge.

  One morning the mammoths found themselves facing a valley that cut across the main body of the Gouge. The valley appeared to flow from the high, dry uplands of the southern hemisphere into the immense ocean basin that was the north, as if from higher ground to lower.

  The mammoths clambered down a shallow slope. The light of the rising sun cast long shadows from the rubble strewn on the surface, making the ground seem complex and treacherous.

  If walking along the flat ground had been difficult for Icebones, working down a slope like this — where she had to rest her weight on her forelegs and damaged shoulder — was particularly agonizing. And even on the floor of the outflow valley, she found she had to tread carefully: a flat surface layer of dust and loose gravel covered much larger rocks beneath, their edges sharp enough to gash a mammoth's foot.

  It didn't help that the day seemed peculiarly hot and bright. The rising sun was swollen and oddly misshapen, and the air was full of light.

  Icebones knew she should give a lead to the others. But it took all her strength just to keep moving. She plodded on in silence, locked in her own world of determination and pain: Just this step. Now just one more...

  She found a small, deep pond, frozen over. Impatiently she pressed on the ice until it cracked into thick, angular chunks, and she sucked up trunkfuls of cold, black water, ignoring the thin slimy texture of vegetation. Soon she had washed the dust out of her throat and trunk, and was trickling soothing water over her aching shoulder.

  The others still bore injuries. Breeze nursed the brutal slashes in her back. The calf was fascinated by his wounds, and his grandmother often caught him picking at the scabs that had formed there.