Stephen Baxter - Longtusk

Suddenly the ground shuddered under Longtusk’s feet, and the river water trembled.

More mammoths, a crowd of them, came spilling down the bank, pushing and jostling, clumsy giants. They were all about the same size, Longtusk saw: no Cows, no infants here.

It was a bachelor herd.

Longtusk was thrilled. He had rarely been this close to full-grown Bulls. The Bulls kept to their own herds, away from the Cow-dominated Families of mothers and sisters and calves; Longtusk had seen them only in the distance, sweeping by, powerful, independent, and he had longed to run with them.

And now, perhaps, he would.

The Bulls spread out along the river bank. Before passing on toward the water, one or two regarded Longtusk: with mild curiosity over his outside tusks, or blank indifference, or amused contempt.

Longtusk followed, avid.

For half a day, as the sun climbed into the sky, the Bulls moved on along the river bank, jostling, jousting, drinking and eating.

Their walk, heavy and liquid, was oddly graceful. Their feet were pads that rested easily on the ground, swelling visibly with each step. Their trunks, heavy ropes dangling from the front of their faces, pulled the mammoths’ heads from side to side as they swayed. Even as they drank they fed, almost continuously. They pulled at branches of the surrounding trees with their trunks, hauling off great leaf-coated stems with hissing rustles, and crammed the foliage into their small mouths.

The soughing of their footsteps was punctuated by deep breaths, the gurgle of immense stomachs, and subterranean rumbles from the sound organs of their heads. A human observer would have made little of these deep, angry noises. But Longtusk found it very easy to make out what these Bulls were saying to each other.

"…You are in my way. Move aside."

"I was here in this place first. You move aside."

"…This water is too cold. It lies heavy in my belly."

"That is because you are old and weak. I, however, am young and strong, and I find the water pleasantly cool."

"My tusks are not yet so old and feeble they could not crack your skull like a skua egg, calf."

"Perhaps you should demonstrate how that could be done, old one…"

Longtusk, following the great Bull Rockheart, was tolerated — as long as he didn’t get in anybody’s way — for he was, for now, too small to be a serious competitor. His tusks were, despite his youth, larger than many of the adults — but they only made him feel self-conscious, as if somehow he wasn’t entitled to such magnificent weapons. He walked along with his head dipped, his tusks close to the ground.

Being with the Bulls was not like being with his Family.

Even the language was different. The Cows in the Families used more than twenty different kinds of rumble, a basic vocabulary from which they constructed their extremely complex communications. The Bulls only had four rumbles! — and those were to do with mockery, challenge and boasting.

His Family had been protective, nurturing — a safe place to be. But the bachelor herds were looser coalitions of Bulls, more interested in contest: verbal challenges, head butts, tusk clashes. The Bulls were constantly testing each other, exploring each other’s strength and weight and determination, establishing a hierarchy of dominance.

This mattered, for it was the dominant Bulls who mated the Cows in oestrus.

Right now, Longtusk was at the very bottom of this hierarchy. But one day he would, of course, climb higher — why, to the very top…

"You have stepped on the hair of my feet."

Longtusk looked up at a wall of flesh, eyes like tar pits, tusks that swept over his head.

He had offended Rockheart.

The great Bull’s guard hairs — dangling from his belly and trunk, long and lustrous — rippled like water, trapping the light. But loose underfur, working its way out through the layers of his guard hair in tatters around his flanks, made him look primordial, wild and unfinished.

Longtusk found himself trembling. He knew he should back down. But some of the other males nearby were watching with a lofty curiosity, and he was reminded sharply of how the Matriarch had watched his humiliation by his infant sister earlier.

If he had no place in the Family, he must find a place here. His Family had taught him how to live as a mammoth; now he must learn to be a Bull. And this was where it would begin.

So he stood his ground.

"Perhaps you have trouble understanding," Rockheart said with an ominous mildness. "You see, this is where I take my water."

"It is not your river alone," Longtusk said at last. He raised his head, and his tusks, long and proud, waved in the face of the great Bull.

Unfortunately one curling tusk caught in a tree root. Longtusk’s head was pulled sideways, making him stagger.

There was a subterranean murmur of amusement.

Rockheart simply stood his ground, unmoving, unblinking, like something which had grown out of this river bank. He said coldly, "I admire your tusks. But you are a calf. You lack prowess in their use."

Longtusk gathered his courage. He raised his tusks again. They were indeed long, but they were like saplings against Rockheart’s stained pillars of ivory. "Perhaps you would care to join me in combat, so that you may show me exactly where my deficiencies lie."

And he dragged his head sideways so that his tusks clattered against Rockheart’s. He felt a painful jar work its way up to his skull and neck, and the base of his tusks, where they were embedded in his face, ached violently.

Rockheart had not so much as flinched.

Longtusk raised his tusks for another strike.

With a speed that belied his bulk Rockheart stepped sideways, lowered his head and rammed it into Longtusk’s midriff.

Longtusk staggered into icy mud, slipped and fell sprawling into the water.

He struggled to his feet. The hairs of his belly and trunk dangled under him in cold clinging masses.

The Bulls on the river bank were watching him, tusks raised, sniggering.

Rockheart took a last trunkful of water, sprayed it languidly over his back, and turned away. His massive feet left giant craters in the sticky mud as he walked off, utterly ignoring Longtusk and his struggles.

And now Longtusk heard a familiar, remote trumpeting… "Longtusk! Longtusk! Come here right now!…"

"There’s your mother calling you," brayed a young Bull. "Go back to her teat, little one. This is no place for you."

Longtusk, head averted, humiliated, stomped out of the river and through the stand of trees. Where he walked he left a trail of mud and drips of water.

That was the end of Longtusk’s first encounter with a bachelor herd.

He could not know it, but it would be a long time before he would see one of his own kind again.

Not caring which way he went, Longtusk lumbered alone over the steppe, head down, ripping at the grass and herbs and grinding their roots with angry twists of his jaw.

He couldn’t go back to the herd. And he wasn’t going back to his Family. Not after all that had happened today. Not after this.

He didn’t need his Family — or the Bulls who had taunted him. He was Longtusk! The greatest hero in the world!

Why couldn’t anybody see that?

He walked on, faster and farther, so wrapped up in his troubles he didn’t even notice the smoke until his eyes began to hurt.

Startled, he looked up, blinking. Water was streaking down the hairs of his face.

Smoke billowed, acrid and dark; somewhere nearby the dry grass was burning.

Every instinct told him to flee, to get away from the blaze. But which way?

If she were with him, his mother would know what to do. Even a brutal Bull like Rockheart would guide him, for it was the way of mammoths to train and protect their young.