Stephen Baxter - Longtusk

There are many stories about Longtusk (said Silverhair).

There is a story that Longtusk flew over the ice, carrying his Clan to safety in a place called a nunatak.

There is a story that Longtusk dug his huge tusks into the ground, as we do when we search for water, only to find — not water — but warmth, coming out of bare rock, sufficient to drive back the ice and keep his Clan alive.

There is a story that he stamped his mighty feet and made his refuge of rock and heat fly off into the sky, carrying the mammoths with it, and the rock became the Sky Steppe, the last refuge of all. But Longtusk had to stay behind, here on Earth, to face his death…

Or perhaps Longtusk never died. Some say he returns, from out of the north, a hero come to save us when we face great danger. Perhaps it was he who brought our Family to the Island, before the sea rose and trapped us there. (But perhaps that was somebody else, another hero whose name we have lost, somebody inspired by Longtusk’s legend…)

How can all the stories be true?

Can any of them be true?

Oh, Icebones, I understand. You want to know. And, more than that, you want the stories to be true. I was just like you as a calf!

Longtusk is a wonderful hero. But we’ll never know for sure. You understand that, don’t you?

…What do I think?

Well, stories don’t come out of thin air. Perhaps there’s a grain of truth. Perhaps there really was a Longtusk, and something like the stories really did happen, long ago.

Perhaps. We’ll never know.

If I could know one thing about Longtusk, though, it would be this.

How he died.

Under a gray sunless sky, without shadows, every direction looked the same. Even the land was contorted, confusing, the rock bare, littered here and there by gravel and loess, lifeless save for scattered tussocks of grass.

Longtusk, trunk raised, studied the vast, empty landscape around them. There were no Fireheads, he realized: no storage pits, no hearths, no huts, not even a mastodont, none of it in his vision for the first time for half his lifetime.

The Fireheads had filled and defined his world for so long. Their projects — predictable or baffling, rewarding or distressing — had provided a structure to every waking moment, even when he had defied them. Now the future seemed as blank and directionless as the land that stretched around him.

He felt disoriented, like a calf who had been spun around until he was dizzy.

"I don’t think they are coming after us." He almost wished the Fireheads would follow him. At least that was a threat he could understand.

But it seemed he would not be given that much help. And, for the first time since his capture as a calf, he had to learn to think for himself.

"Of course not," Rockheart was saying. "They have no need to — save revenge, perhaps. And those dwarfish pals of yours were making trouble."

"They aren’t dwarfs," said Longtusk. "They are mastodonts."

"It doesn’t matter," growled Rockheart. "You won’t be seeing them again."

…Could that be true?

"You’re the leader of this strange little herd of ours, Longtusk," Rockheart said sourly. "But I strongly suggest we head north and east."

"Why?"

"Because we might find something to eat and drink. Although we may have to fight for it." He eyed Longtusk. "You aren’t in your Firehead camp now, being fed hay and water by your masters…"

Perhaps. But Longtusk didn’t want to think about a future in which he became like the mammoths he had seen at the mud seep, fighting over dribbles of brackish mud, pushing away the weak and old and young.

"North and east," he said.

"North and east."

So they moved on.

After a time they found a place where grass grew a little more thickly. Longtusk pulled tufts of the coarse grass into his own mouth, and helped Splayfoot to feed. Her eyes half closed, Splayfoot ground up the grass with slow, feeble movements of her jaw, but he could see her tongue was spotted with black, and she was sucking at the grass as much as eating it.

He said, "She’s very weak. She needs drink as much as food."

Rockheart growled, "There’s no drink to be had here."

It struck Longtusk that Rockheart himself was barely in better condition than Splayfoot. But where Splayfoot was subsiding toward death, Rockheart was still functioning, working. At the mud seep he had even been prepared to challenge Longtusk — and now here he was playing his part in this unexpected journey, which looked as if it would prove long and difficult.

His respect grew for this indomitable, arrogant Bull.

Willow, too, was hungry and thirsty. There was no water here, and the little Dreamer couldn’t eat grass, like the mammoths. He prowled around the area until he found a stunted dwarf willow, clinging to the ground. He prized up its twisted branches and studied them, eventually dropping them with scorn.

Rockheart said, "What’s it doing?"

Longtusk replied, "It — he — is looking for long, straight bits of wood. I expect he wants to make a spear, maybe even a fire. He might catch a lemming or a vole."

Rockheart snorted in disgust, indifferent.

Rockheart and Splayfoot soon stopped eating, evidently having taken their fill.

Longtusk had barely scratched the surface of his hunger. He had been used to much more fodder than this at the Firehead settlement, and if he didn’t take more he would soon be as scrawny and ragged as the others — and ill-prepared for the winter to come, when the mammoths would have to live off their stores of fat.

But to gorge himself was hardly a way to gain trust. So he took care to eat no more than Rockheart’s shrunken stomach could manage.

Having fed as best they could, they moved on.

The sun was already sinking in the sky when they reached the trail.

It was just a strip of trampled land that cut across the gravel-littered rock barrens, passing roughly east to west. Longtusk, instincts dulled by captivity, might not have seen it at all. But Rockheart turned confidently onto the trail and began to head east.

Longtusk — supporting his sister, and occasionally allowing Willow to ride on his back — followed his lead.

They passed a stand of forest. The trees were firs, still young but already tall, growing fast and dense in a green swathe that stretched to the south. The forest had grown so thickly, in fact, that it had already overrun the old trail, and the mammoths had to divert north until the forest was behind them and they were cutting across open land once more.

Longtusk said, "It’s a long time since I was here. But I don’t recall the land being like this."

"Things have changed here, Longtusk — within the lifetime of calves a lot younger than you or me. I recall when this was all steppe, with grass, herbs, shrubs. Now look around: to the south you have the spreading forest, and to the north the bare rock. No place left for the steppe, eh?

"And even where there is steppe — though you might not think it — the climate is wetter than it used to be. There is more rain, more thick snow in the winter. Sometimes the land is waterlogged and boggy. In the summer nothing can grow but grass and lichens, and in the winter we struggle to keep out of snowdrifts so thick they cover our bellies. The land isn’t right for us any more. Deer and moose can chew the trees, and reindeer and musk oxen browse on lichen and moss, dull cloddish brutes… but not us.

"But there are still a few places where the old steppe lingers, pockets of it here and there."

"And that’s where you’re taking us."

"That’s where the mammoths live, yes — if we’re lucky, friendly ones. That was the way we were heading, when we reached the mud seep. But we were weak, and…