Stephen Baxter - Icebones

The mammoths still grumbled, but the noise was subdued, and suffused by the soft pads of their feet, the growls of their bellies, gentle burps and farts. Even the little calf trotting at Icebones’s side listened intently. Woodsmoke was still too young to understand much of what she said. But he was responding to the rhythm of her language, as she hoped they all would.

The Ragged One continued to keep apart.

"At last," Icebones went on, "the mammoths had nowhere else to go. The land gave way to a great frozen ocean where nothing could live but seals and other ugly creatures. It seemed that soon the mammoths would be overwhelmed by the Lost.

"But Longtusk found a way. There was a bridge of land that spanned the ocean, from one great steppe to another. And, on the far side of the bridge, there were no Lost — only open steppe, where the mammoths could grow and breed and live. So Longtusk gathered the mammoths of his Clan, and said to them—"

Something dropped before her, huge and heavy and dark. It opened a cavernous mouth and screamed. She glimpsed rows of sharp teeth.

Without thinking she lunged forward — she felt the rasp of fur on her tusks, the squelch of soft flesh breaking — and the creature screamed louder yet.

And then, in an instant, it was gone, leaving her with the stink of blood in her nostrils, and the echo of that deadly scream rattling from the walls around her.

She stood there, shaking like a frightened calf.

The mammoths had scattered. The calf had been left alone, and he was turning back and forth, little trunk raised, mewling pitifully. "Scared… scared…"

Icebones said, "We must stay together. That — thing — was probably after the calf."

Spiral was stiff with rage and fear. "Enough of your talk," she said. "The Ragged One is right. This is not your world, Icebones. You did not know we would meet such a creature here, did you?"

"If we squabble it will pick us off one by one." Icebones raised her tusks, which still dripped red blood. "Is that what you want?"

At last Autumn rumbled, "She is right. The calf is probably its main target, for he is weakest, and slowest. Breeze, come to him."

Breeze stepped forward and tucked her calf beneath her legs. Woodsmoke tried to suckle, but Breeze pushed him back. The rest of the mammoths clustered around mother and calf.

"We will go on," insisted Icebones. "This warren of chasms will not last forever. If everyone keeps their trunk high, we will survive."

They were reluctant, fretful, afraid. But nobody had a better suggestion. And so they began to move forward once more. The calf’s mewling was muffled by the legs and belly fur of its mother, and the adult mammoths rumbled uneasily, their deep sounds echoing heavily from the sheer ravine walls.

Thunder walked beside Icebones. "What do you think it was?"

"Perhaps it was some kind of cat. There are stories of great cats in the Cycle — Longtusk himself fought such a beast. Perhaps it has grown fat by destroying everything else living here, like the whale in the Ocean of the North. But I have never seen a cat, for none lived on the Island. Many of the animals mentioned in the old Cycle stories are long gone…"

Icebones saw that the stripe of sky visible far above her head was already fading to a deep orange-pink.

"Soon it will be dark," the Ragged One said softly. "And then we will make a story of our own. Won’t we, Matriarch?"

They came to another branch in the chasm system. This time Icebones faced three intersecting ravines, each sheer-walled and littered with loose rock, each leading only to further complexity — and each empty, as far as she could see.

We must continue east, she told herself. If we don’t achieve that much, everything else is lost. She stepped forward and led them into the central chasm.

There was a bellow. The mammoths stumbled back, trunks raised in alarm.

This time the creature had dropped from above, onto Autumn’s back. The mammoth was pawing the ground and trumpeting. She lifted her head in a vain effort to reach her tormentor with her tusks or trunk.

The creature was only dimly visible in the shadows, but Icebones glimpsed hard, front-facing yellow eyes, that black bloody mouth, and claws that gleamed white and dug deep into Autumn’s flesh, causing blood to well and drip down her heavy hair.

Autumn blundered against the chasm wall. The cat creature yowled its protest. But it was ripped away from her back, its claws leaving a final set of gouges.

Icebones lunged forward, trumpeting, tusks held high.

The cat raised itself to its full height, yellow eyes fixed on Icebones. It was spindly, but its body was a sleek slab of muscle. It opened its huge mouth and hissed. And it leapt with astonishing agility up the chasm wall.

Again the mammoths were left in sudden silence.

"It lives on the walls," Shoot said, wondering.

Spiral had her head dipped, her trunk wrapped over her forehead. "I can’t stand it," she whimpered. "I am so afraid."

Icebones herself was shaken to her core. Mammoths were used to facing predators, but as a creature of the open steppe, Icebones had no experience of threats dropping down on her from out of the sky.

She walked up to Autumn. "Your back is hurt." She probed with her trunk fingers at the slash wounds. The covering hair was matted with blood. "We will find mud to bathe your wounds."

"No," Autumn growled, pulling back. "We must get out of this place before dark."

Thunder said softly, "Which way?"

For a terrible moment Icebones realized that she did not know — the chasm looked identical before her and behind her — she had been turned around several times, and the stripe of pink sky above her gave no clues as to the direction of the sun.

The Ragged One was watching her, waiting for her to fail.

At last Icebones spotted a small heap of mammoth dung, still steaming gently, a few paces away. "That is the way we have come. So we will go the other way — to the east."

Thunder growled, "But that is the way the cat went."

A high-pitched yowl echoed from the chasm walls. The mammoths peered that way fearfully, raising their trunks to sniff the air. "Where is it?" "Is it close?" "I think it came from that way." "No, that way…" But the echoes thrown by the complex walls of the chasm system masked the source of the call — as perhaps the cat intended, Icebones thought.

The Ragged One stood before Icebones. "It can track us by our dung, and our footprints, and our scent. How can we throw it off? You don’t know what to do, do you? You are no Matriarch. You have not told us the truth — not since the moment you woke up inside your cave of darkness. And now you have led us into deadly peril."

Icebones, desperate, her head full of alarm, thought, Not now… But she was tired of strangeness, of unpredictable dangers, of dragging this recalcitrant group across a barren rocky world, of the Ragged One’s unrelenting hostility.

"All right," she said sharply. "You want the truth — then here it is. I am no Matriarch. I think my mother intended me to come here to this place and lead you someday… but not yet. Not until I was grown, and had calves of my own, and had become a true Matriarch. I don’t’ know what happened — I don’t know why I found myself here, now. I don’t want to be here. But here I am."

The mammoths rumbled, tense, unhappy.

Thunder reached to her hesitantly. "You lied? But you named us, Icebones."

She glared at them all. "Yes, I lied. I had no choice. If I hadn’t, you would have died on the shore of that salt-filled ocean."

Autumn’s rumble was tinged with pain. "Enough of this. It won’t make any difference if Icebones is a liar or not if we are all dead by sundown. Which way?"