Stephen Baxter - Longtusk

Nevertheless they were here. And everywhere he looked, they danced.

The settlement was alive, transformed by the minds and paws of the Fireheads, made vibrant and rich — as if the land itself had become conscious, full of reflections of itself. It was a transformation that could not even have been imagined by any mammoth or mastodont who ever lived. He trembled at its thin, strange beauty.

How could any creatures be capable of such wonder — and, at the same time, such cruelty? These Fireheads were strange and complex beings indeed.

Now Crocus dragged his face back to the wall of her own hut. Here was a row of stocky, flat-backed shapes, with curving tusks before them.

Mastodonts. It was a line of mastodonts, their tusks, drawn with simple, confident sweeps, proud and strong.

But Crocus was pointing especially at a figure at the front of the line. It was crudely drawn, as if by a cub — by Crocus herself, he realized.

It looked like a mastodont, but its back sloped down from a hump at its neck. Its tusks were long and curved before its high head, and long hairs draped down from its trunk and belly.

He growled, confused, distressed.

"Longtusk?" Neck Like Spruce called. "That’s you, Longtusk. Crocus made you on the wall. You see? She was trying to honor you."

"I understand. It’s just—"

"What?"

"I haven’t seen a mammoth since I was separated from my Family. Neck Like Spruce, I think I’ve forgotten what I look like."

"Oh, Longtusk…"

Crocus came to him, perceiving his sudden distress. She wrapped her arms around his trunk, buried her face in his hair, and murmured soothing noises.

Winter succeeded summer, frost following fire.

Sometimes, Longtusk dreamed:

Yellow plain, blue sky, a landscape huge, flat, elemental, dominated by the unending grind and crack of ice. And mammoths sweeping over the land like clouds -

He would wake with a start.

All around him was order: the mastodont stockade, the spreading Firehead settlement, the smoke spiraling to the sky. This was the reality of his life, not that increasingly remote plain, the mammoth herds that covered the land. That had been no more than the start of his journey — a journey that had ended here.

Hadn’t it?

After all, what else was there? Where else could he go? What else was there to do with his life, but serve the Fireheads?

Troubled, he returned to sleep.

And five years wore away.

The hunting party of Fireheads and mastodonts — and one woolly mammoth — marched proudly across the landscape. The high summer cast short shadows of Longtusk and his rider: Crocus, of course, now fully grown, long-legged and elegant, and as strong and brave as any of the male Firehead hunters. She was equipped for the hunt. She carried a quartz-tipped spear, and wore a broad belt slung over her shoulder, laden with stone knives and hammers, and — most prized of all — an atlatl, a dart thrower made of sculpted deer bone.

"…Ah," Walks With Thunder said now, and he paused. "Look."

Longtusk looked down at the ground. At first he saw nothing but an unremarkable patch of steppe grass, with a little purple saxifrage. Then he made out scattered pellets of dung.

Walks With Thunder poked at the pellets with his trunk tip. "See the short bitten-off twigs in there? Not like mastodonts; we leave long twisted bits of fiber in our dung. And we produce neat piles too; they kick it around the place as it emerges…" He brought a piece of dung into his mouth. "Warm. Fresh. They are close. Softly, now."

Alert, evidently excited, he trotted on, and the party followed.

Over the years Longtusk had been involved in many of the Fireheads’ hunts. Most of them targeted the smaller herbivores. The Fireheads would follow a herd of deer or horse and pick off a vulnerable animal — a cow slowed by pregnancy, or a juvenile, or the old or lame — and finish it quickly. Then they would butcher it with their sharpened stones and have the mastodonts carry back the dripping meat, skin and bones.

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.