Stephen Baxter - Longtusk

He searched out, sensing and hearing her, and found her. Her secretions were damp on the tip of his trunk. Tasting them, he knew that she, too, was ready: in oestrus, bearing the egg that might grow into their calf.

He heard her urinate, a warm dark stream, and then she turned to face him. He found her trunk, and intertwined it with his, tugging gently, seeking its tip; the soft fingers of her trunk, so unlike his own, explored the long hairs that dangled from his belly.

For a last instant he recalled the warnings of Walks With Thunder: stay away from Neck Like Spruce. Stay away…

Then his mouth found hers, warm tongues flickering, and the time for thinking was over.

Winter and summer, winter and summer…

As she approached the second anniversary of her father’s death and her own accession to power, Crocus assembled a great war party of mastodonts and Firehead hunters. It was a time of preparation, and gathering determination — and dread.

The artisans had worked all winter, manufacturing, repairing and sharpening knives and spear points and atlatls. And every time the weather cleared sufficiently the hunters had gone out to hurl spears and boomerangs at rocks and painted animal figures — and, when they spotted them, live targets, the animals of the winter like the Arctic foxes. There were days when the settlement seemed to bristle with the Fireheads and their weapons, spears, darts and knives as dense as the spiky fur of a mastodont. But all the weapons were small and light — not designed for big game, like the giant deer or the rhino, but to pierce the flimsy hides of other Fireheads: weapons of war, not hunting.

When the preparations were complete, Crocus called for a final feast.

The Firehead hunters gorged themselves on food and drink. Longtusk watched cubs crack open big animal bones to suck out the thick marrow within, the bones returned by hunting parties that roamed north. Not for the first time Longtusk wondered what animal provided those giant snacks.

Longtusk spent his time with Neck Like Spruce, who was now heavy with calf — his calf.

It was unusual for a Bull, mammoth or mastodont, to remain close to his mate so long after the mating; usually a Bull would stay around just long enough to ensure conception by his seed had taken place. But Neck Like Spruce’s case was different.

The calf was already overdue. Like mammoths, the oestrus cycle of these mastodonts was timed so that the calves would be born in early spring, maximizing the time available for them to feed and grow strong before the calves faced the rigors of their first winter.

And throughout it had been a difficult pregnancy, despite the best attention of Lemming, the keeper, and his array of incomprehensible medicines: salves of water and hot butter for wounds, blood-red deer meat to treat inflammations, drops of milk for sore eyes… Spruce had become a gaunt, bony shadow, and her hair had fallen out in clumps.

It disturbed Longtusk that there was absolutely nothing he could do — and it disturbed him even more that Lemming, the undisputed Firehead expert on mastodonts and their illnesses, was at this crucial time preparing to leave, accompanying the Bulls on their northern march.

Through that last night, Longtusk stayed with Neck Like Spruce. She slept briefly. He could see the calf in her belly struggle fitfully, pushing at the skin that contained it.

The next morning, the Fireheads nursing sore heads and crammed bellies, the party assembled in a great column and began its sweep to the north. With Crocus on his back, Longtusk led the slow advance.

Since that first encounter with the Whiteskins two years before there had been several skirmishes with other bands of Fireheads. Crocus’s tribe, settled for several years in their township of mammoth-bone huts, were well-fed, healthy and strong, and were able to fend off the attacks — mounted mostly by bands of desperate refugees, forced north from the overcrowded southern lands.

But this wouldn’t last forever, predicted Walks With Thunder.

"There is no limit to the number of Fireheads who might take it into their heads to come bubbling up from the south. We can defend ourselves and this settlement as long as the numbers are right. But eventually they will overrun us."

"And then?" said Longtusk.

"And then we will have to flee — go north once again, as we have done before, and find a new and empty land. And this is what Crocus, in her wisdom, knows she must plan for; it is surely going to come in her time as Matriarch."

So it was that Crocus was remaking herself. Still young, already skilled in hunting techniques, she had learned to use the tribe’s weapons with as much skill and daring as any of the buck male warriors. And she had learned to command, to force her tribe to accept the harshest of realities.

But Longtusk thought he detected a growing hardness in her — a hardness that, when he thought of the affectionate cub who had befriended him, saddened him.

As for himself, Longtusk was now bigger and stronger than any of the mastodonts. He was no longer the butt of jokes and taunts in the stockade; no longer did the mastodonts call constant attention to his differences, his dense brown hair and strange grinding teeth. Now he was Longtusk, warrior Bull, and his immense tusks, scarred by use, were the envy of the herd.

Only Walks With Thunder still called him "little grazer" — but Longtusk didn’t mind that.

And, such was Crocus’s skill in riding Longtusk — and so potent was the mammoth’s own intelligence and courage — that the stunning, unexpected combination of warrior-queen and woolly mammoth leading the column could, said Walks With Thunder, prove to be the Fireheads’ most important weapon of all.

During the long march, Longtusk’s days were arduous. He was the first to break the new ground, and he had to be constantly on the alert for danger — not just from potential foes, but also the natural traps of the changing landscape. He paid careful attention to the deep wash of sound which echoed through the Earth in response to the mastodonts’ heavy footsteps, and avoided the worst of the difficulties.

And, of course, he had to seek out food as he traveled. Firehead Matriarch on his back or not, he still needed to cram the steppe grasses and herbs into his mouth for most of every day. But the mastodonts preferred trees and shrubs, and if he found a particularly fine stand of trees he would trumpet to alert the others.

A few days out of the settlement a great storm swept down on them. The wind swirled and gusted, carrying sand from the frozen deserts at the fringe of the icecap, hundreds of days’ walk away, to lash at the mastodonts’ eyes and mouths, as if mocking their puny progress. Crocus walked beside Longtusk, blinded and buffeted, clinging to his long belly hairs.

At last the storm blew itself out, and they emerged into calmness under an eerie blue sky.

They found a stand of young trees that had been utterly demolished by the winds’ ferocity. The mastodonts browsed the fallen branches and tumbled trunks, welcoming this unexpected bounty.

Walks With Thunder, his mouth crammed with green leaves, came to Longtusk. "Look over there. To the east."

Longtusk turned and squinted. It was unusual for a mastodont to tell another to "look," so poor was their eyesight compared to other senses.

The sun, low in the south, cast long shadows across the empty land. At length Longtusk made out something: a blur of motion, white on blue, against the huge sky.

"Birds?"

"Yes. Geese, judging from their honking. But the important thing is where they come from."

"The northeast," Longtusk said. "But that’s impossible. There is only ice there, and nothing lives."