Stephen Baxter - Icebones

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.

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.

But the one who slowed them down the most was Icebones herself, to her regret and shame.

Thunder stood very still, listening carefully to the deep song of the rocks, as she had taught him. "This is a damaged country," he said.

"Yes." She forced herself to raise her head.

To the north, the valley branched into a series of smaller channels, like a delta. The waters must once have flowed that way. The valley floor was smoothly carved, textured with sandbars that followed the path of the vanished flood. She saw what must have been an island in the flow, flat-topped, shaped like the body of a fish to push aside the water. To the south, where the water must have come from, the landscape was quite different: littered with blocks and domes and low hills, all of them frost-cracked, water-eroded and streaked with lichen, their outlines softened by layers of windblown dust. But many of these blocks were immense, much larger than any mammoth. It was just like the bottom of a huge dried-up river.

All this was drenched in a pink-white glow, and she could feel the sun’s heat on her back. She squinted up, wondering if she would find the sun misshapen again, as she had seen it days before, close to the canal’s terminus. But the light was too bright, and it dazzled her. She turned away, eyes watering.

Thunder said, "There is water under the ground. A great lake of it, trapped under a cap of ice. I can feel it. Can you?"

"Yes—"

"But it is very deep." He seemed excited as his awakened instincts pieced together the story of this land. "Perhaps the water broke out in a huge gush, as the waters broke out of Breeze’s belly when Woodsmoke was ready to be born. Then it flooded over the land, seeking the sea to the north. The water carved out this valley. See how it washed across the ground here, shaping it, and surged around that island… Perhaps the land to the south simply collapsed. If you suck the water out of a hole in the ice on a frozen pond, sometimes the ice will crack and fall, under its own weight…"

Maybe he was right. But whatever water had marked this land was vanished a long time ago. She saw craters punched into the ancient valley floor, themselves eroded by wind and time.

Thunder was still talking. But his words blurred, becoming an indistinguishable growl. The air was now drenched by a dazzling light that picked out every stray dust mote around her.