Stephen Baxter - Longtusk

He poked at it with his trunk, raised a fragment to his tongue to taste. It was warm and soft, obviously very recent, and its smell was strong and pungent. But its texture was strange — thicker and more fibrous than the dung of his Family — and he could taste a heavy concentration of wood and bark.

Mammoths’ diets differ, according to individual taste, and what they eat affects the quality of their dung. But Longtusk knew no mammoth whose diet was quite so skewed as to produce waste like this.

He pushed on.

He found a place where the trees were broken, the branches stripped of their bark and leaf buds, the ground trampled. Another unmistakable sign: mammoths had fed here — more than one, judging by the scale of the damage.

…But, like the dung, the pattern of tree damage was odd. Many of the younger saplings’ trunks had been pushed aside, as if by animals who were shorter and squatter than he was. And he saw that bark and leaf buds had been taken extensively, even from above head height. Woolly mammoths will take a little bark and foliage in their diet, but they prefer the grasses and herbs of the open steppe.

Still he saw no mammoths: not so much as a silhouette glimpsed through the trees, the swish of a tail, or the curve of a trunk. He rumbled, but there was no reply.

If they were here, whoever they were, why did they not greet him?

He decided to return to the mouth of the Dreamers’ cave. From there he would follow the trail that would take him back up to the steppe. Surely there, on the open plain, he would be able to find the strange mammoths.

He reached the edge of the trees, close to the Dreamers’ cave — and, still in the shelter of the trees, he slowed to a halt.

Several of the Dreamers had emerged from their caves. But they were not alone.

Confronting them was a new group of creatures: standing upright like the Dreamers, but spindly, taller, much less robust.

The legs of these others were thin and taut — like those of a horse, meant for running and walking long distances. The newcomers had flat, delicate faces and high bulging skulls. They were covered in skins, like the Dreamers, but Longtusk could see that these garments were much more finely worked than the rough creations of the Dreamers. Their paws were delicate and they held things — pointed sticks and flakes of stone — and other, incomprehensible items, like a length of wood tied up with deer sinew so that it was bent over in an arc.

And they stalked among the Dreamers with arrogance and hostility.

Longtusk spotted Stripeskull. Blood still stained his shoulder where the strange stick had punctured it. But now the big Dreamer was crouching in the dirt. He was roaring defiance, trying to stand using one of his fire-hardened sticks as a prop — but one hind leg was dragging behind him. And Longtusk saw blood pulsing from a broad gash. He was surrounded by five or six of the newcomers, and they held sticks out toward Stripeskull, threatening him.

The Dreamer females and cubs had been brought out of the cave, driven like recalcitrant calves by prods with sticks and stones. The females huddled together in a group, surrounded by the newcomers, with their cubs at the center. They seemed bewildered as much as frightened, and their gaze slid over the newcomers that stalked amongst them — as if they were too strange even to be properly visible, as if the Clan was being overwhelmed by a party of ghosts.

Apart from Stripeskull, Longtusk could see no other Dreamer adult males. Perhaps they were off on one of their scavenging trips — or perhaps they had been driven away, by these cold, calculating others.

Longtusk watched, fascinated, repelled. He knew what he was seeing.

He had never before encountered these creatures, these distorted, hostile cousins of the Dreamers. But many of his kind had — and an understanding of the danger they posed was drummed into every young mammoth.

These were the most ferocious predators of all — more to be feared, despite their frail appearance, than even the great cats — and the only response to encountering them was flight.

For they had mastered fire itself.

And they were not content to let embers burn in shallow hearths, like the Dreamers; instead they used fire to drive their way across the land. Perhaps they had even been responsible for the fire which had separated him from his Family. Hadn’t he glimpsed slender running forms during his dreadful flight through the smoke?

He had been wrong before, when he had first encountered Willow. About these newcomers there could be no doubt, and black dread settled on his heart.

For these were Fireheads.

One of the newcomers turned and looked directly toward him.

This one was shorter than the others, with a broad, plump belly that glistened with grease. He sniffed loudly, his small, straight nose twitching. He was, thought Longtusk, like a fat, overgrown lemming, walking comically upright on two hind legs.

He knows I’m here, Longtusk thought, hidden as I am among these trees. Or he suspects so, anyhow. He is smarter than the rest.

Now Willow spotted Longtusk too. He called out and lunged forward.

A Firehead tripped him with a stick. Willow sprawled, howling.

One of the females pushed her way out of the group and ran to Willow. Perhaps it was his mother. A Firehead confronted her. She dodged his stick and swung one mighty fist at his long, delicate face. Longtusk heard the unmistakable crack of shattering bone, and the other fell back with a gurgling cry, clutching his face.

But more of the others joined the fray. They wrestled the female to the ground and pinned her there, a male’s weight pressing down on each of her mighty limbs.

Now, from the mouth of the cave, another emerged. He was dressed in skins, like the rest, but he wore a crown of what looked like bone — from which smoke streamed, as if he carried burning embers cupped in scrapings in the bone. Smoke rose even from his paws, and Longtusk realized he had taken ashes from the precious hearth which the Dreamers had preserved all winter long.

Seemingly oblivious to pain, this grotesque creature raised his paws to the air and howled a cry of thin triumph. He cast the ashes to the ground, scattered them with his feet, and extinguished them in the trampled mud. The others whooped and danced, jabbing their sticks into the air.

The Dreamers looked away, bewildered and defeated.

Burning-head stalked over to the Dreamer female, who was still pinned to the ground. His teeth showing white, he leaned over her. She bellowed and tried to twist her head away. But he came closer, as if to press his lips against hers.

She hawked and spat at him. He wiped his face and threw strings of greenish phlegm back at her.

Longtusk was baffled. Was this like a fight among mammoth Bulls for access to females? But it made no sense. Even Longtusk could see that the Dreamer female was not in oestrus. Perhaps the other did not want the female, but only to demonstrate his power and dominance.

But now the ugly tableau was disturbed. Another was emerging from the Dreamer cavern: taller even than Burning-head, his head adorned by a cap of yellow-white beads — beads of mammoth ivory, Longtusk realized queasily. This one looked oddly frail, his hair a grizzled white, his skin wrinkled and weather-beaten. But he carried the limp form of the yellow-haired cub in his arms.

The rest, even Burning-head, cringed away from this new one, deferring.

Burning-head was evidently a powerful figure. But it was obvious that this new male was the true power, like the strongest Bull in a bachelor herd.

"…What fine tusks you have, cousin. And yet they do you little good if you stand facing into the wind."

The voice had come from directly behind Longtusk. He whirled, trumpeting in alarm.