Stephen Baxter - Longtusk

But even while Stripeskull’s body continued to spill its blood on the trampled dust, the Fireheads were moving onward, driven, busy, eager to progress.

Crocus beckoned to Longtusk. She led him to the dark mouth of the cave. "Bowl, bowl!" Speak…

With a growing feeling of unease, he raised his trunk and trumpeted. The noise echoed within the cramped rock walls of the cave, where it must have been terrifying.

A Dreamer came running out — a female, Longtusk saw, young, comparatively slim, long brown hair flying after her. She saw the mammoth, skidded to a halt and screamed.

She did not know him. The Dreamers grew quickly, as Thunder had said; perhaps this one had been an infant, or not even born, during his time here.

She tried to retreat — but the Shaman, grinning, had moved behind her, blocking her from the cave. Her eyes widened, and for a brief moment Longtusk saw the Shaman through her eyes: ridiculously tall, with a forehead that bulged to smoothness, willow-thin legs, a nose as small and thin as a spring icicle…

Firehead warriors threw a net of hide rope over the female, as if she was a baby rhino, and they wrestled her to the ground. But she was strong, and was soon ripping her way through the net. So they tied more rope around her, leaving her squirming in the dirt.

The hunters fell back, panting hard; one of them was missing a chunk of his ear, bitten off by the Dreamer female. They seemed to be studying her body as she writhed and struggled.

"Perhaps they will mate with her," Longtusk said.

"If they do it will be for pleasure only," said Walks With Thunder. "Their pleasure, not hers. Something else you need to know, Longtusk. Firehead cannot seed Dreamer with cub. They are alike, you see, cousins."

"Like mastodonts and mammoths."

Thunder growled, oddly. "But their blood does not mix. And so they compete, like — like two different species of gulls, seeking to nest on the same cliff face. To the Fireheads, the Dreamers are just an obstacle, something to be cleared out of the way."

"Then what will become of the Dreamers?"

"Though they are strong, they are no match for the cunning Fireheads. If they are lucky, the other Dreamers will have seen what happened here, and scattered."

"And if not?"

Thunder snorted. "The Fireheads are not noted for their mercy to their kin. The Dreamers will be butchered, the survivors enslaved and taken to the settlement where they will work until they die."

Now there was a howl from the cave.

Another Dreamer emerged — this time a male. He was young and strong, and he had a stone knife in his free paw — crude, but sharp and potent. And he had taken a captive. It was Lemming, the mastodont keeper. The Dreamer’s foreleg was tight around Lemming’s neck. Lemming was whimpering, and blood dripped from a wound in his upper foreleg.

The Dreamer’s small eyes, glinting in their caves of bone, swiveled this way and that. He seemed to be trying to get to the female on the ground. Perhaps that was his sister, even his mate.

Crocus stepped forward. She was obviously concerned for Lemming. She held out her paws and said something in her high, liquid tongue.

The Dreamer, not understanding, jabbered back and slashed with his knife.

Longtusk acted without thinking. He slid his trunk around the Dreamer’s neck and yanked so hard the Dreamer lost his grip on Lemming, and he fell back into the dirt at Longtusk’s feet. The mammoth pinned him there with a tusk at the throat.

Lemming fell to the ground, limp. Crocus ran to him and called the others for help.

The Shaman stalked toward the fallen Dreamer. "Maar thode," he snapped at Longtusk. "Maar thode!"

Break. Kill.

Longtusk leaned forward, increasing the pressure on the Dreamer’s throat.

But the Dreamer was saying something too, calling in a language that was guttural and harsh, yet seemed strangely familiar.

On the Dreamer’s face, under a crudely shaved veneer of stubble, there was a mark, bright red, jagged like a lightning bolt. It had faded since this Dreamer was a cub, but it was still there.

Willow, thought Longtusk. The first Dreamer I found, grown from a cub to an adult buck.

And he recognizes me.

Crocus was close by.

Once again the three of us are united, Longtusk thought, and he felt a deep apprehension, as if the world itself was shaking beneath him. He had long forgotten the raving of the strange old Dreamer female when he had first brought Crocus here, her terror at the sight of the three of them together… Now that terror returned to him, a chill memory.

The Shaman hammered Longtusk’s scalp with his goad, cutting into his skin. "Maar thode!"

Longtusk stepped back, lifting his tusk from the Dreamer’s throat. Willow lay at his feet, as if stunned.

With a hasty gesture, Crocus ordered other hunters forward. They quickly bound Willow with strips of hide rope. He did not resist, though his massive muscles bulged.

The Shaman glared at Longtusk with impotent fury.

Now Crocus, accompanied by more hunters, made her way into the cave. There seemed to be no more Dreamers present, and with impunity the hunters kicked apart the crude central hearth. Under Crocus’s orders, two of the hunters began to dig a pit in the ground.

"It seems we will stay here tonight," Walks With Thunder growled. "The cave will provide shelter. And see how the hunters are making a better hearth, one which will allow the air to blow beneath and—"

"The Dreamers have lived here for generations," Longtusk said sharply. "I saw it, the layers of tools and bones in the ground. Even the hearth may have been a Great-Year old. Think of that! And now, in an instant, it is gone, vanished like a snowflake on the tongue, demolished by the Fireheads."

"Demolished and remade," growled Thunder. "But that is their genius. These Dreamers lived here, as you say, for generation on generation, and it never occurred to a single one of them that there might be a different way to build a hearth."

"But the Dreamers didn’t need a different hearth. The one they had was sufficient."

"But that doesn’t matter, little grazer," Thunder said. "You and I must take the world as it is. They imagine how it might be different. Whether it’s better is beside the point; to the Fireheads, change is all that matters…"

The two Dreamer captives, Willow and the female, huddled together on the ground, bound so tightly they couldn’t even embrace. They seemed to be crying.

If Crocus recalled how the Dreamers had saved her life, Longtusk thought, she had driven it from her mind, now and forever.

That night, when Crocus came to feed him, as she had since she was a cub, Longtusk turned away. He was distressed, angered, wanting only to be with his mate and calf in the calm of the steppe.

Crocus left him, baffled and upset.

That night — at the Shaman’s insistence, because of his defiance over Willow — Longtusk was hobbled, for the first time in years.

The Fireheads stayed close to the caves for several days. Crocus sent patrols to the north, east and west, seeking Dreamers. They wished to be sure this land they coveted was cleansed of their ancient cousins before they brought any more of their own kind north.

Lemming became very ill. His wound turned swollen and shiny. The Shaman, who administered medicine to the Fireheads, applied hot cloths in an effort to draw out the poison. But the wound festered badly.

At last the bulk of the column formed up for the long journey back to the settlement. They left behind three hunters and one of the mastodonts. The captive Dreamers had to walk behind the mastodonts, their paws bound and tied to a mastodont’s tail.