Stephen Baxter - Silverhair

The Lost seemed surprised by the ability of the mammoths to take the cage apart, and they were arguing, perhaps trying to decide whether to use their thunder-sticks.

Silverhair tugged Foxeye to the calves’ cage. The heavy chains at Foxeye’s neck and legs clanked, trailing in the mud, and as they approached, the Lost who had goaded Croptail ran off.

The calves were not chained up, and Silverhair and Foxeye simply lifted the cage up and off them. Croptail and Sunfire rushed to their mother; Sunfire immediately found a teat to suckle.

Silverhair made sure she threw the cage impressively far before letting it crash to the mud. It collapsed with a clatter of metal, sending more of the Lost fleeing.

She nudged Foxeye. "Come on. We can’t wait here."

Croptail poked his head out from under his mother’s belly hair. "What’s the plan, Silverhair?"

No plan, she thought. I’m no Lop-ear… "We’re just going to walk right out of here. Don’t be afraid."

She turned and faced the Lost. She looked around at their empty faces, their skinny bodies, their dangling jaws. She had the impression that these were not truly evil creatures — at least, not all of them. Just — Lost.

"Listen to me," she said. "Perhaps you can understand some of what I say. I am not going to permit you to take my Family away from their home. And if you try to stop us, I promise you, your families will have to perform many Rememberings."

But the Lost merely stared at her trumpeting, foot-stamping and rumbling, as if it weren’t a language at all.

She turned back to her Family. "Go," she said. "You first, Croptail. That way — out to the tundra. We won’t go through the City again. We’ll make for the shore."

"Then what?" demanded Croptail.

"Just do as I say."

Bemused, frightened, Croptail obeyed. Soon the little group of mammoths was gliding slowly toward the empty tundra.

As they walked steadily, Silverhair stared at the decrepit buildings, the rows of silent, staring Lost. "This is a hellish place," she said.

"Yes," said Foxeye. "I’ve been watching them. I think they want to turn the whole Earth into a gigantic City like this. Soon there will be nothing living but the Lost and the rodents that scurry for their scraps…"

She told Silverhair how the mammoths had been brought here.

After their capture in the ice chasm, they had been brought back to the beach and bound up tightly with ropes and chains. Harnesses had been fixed around them, and they had been attached to the light-bird with its whirling wings — and, one by one, lifted into the sky.

"Mammoths aren’t meant to fly, sister," said Foxeye, and Silverhair could hear the dread in her voice. "The Lost were taken away too. I think the ones who attacked us — Skin-of-Ice and the others — had been somehow stranded on the Island. The light-birds came for them when the storms cleared from the Mainland."

"What do the Lost intend now?"

"They don’t seem to want to kill us. Not right away. They have plenty to eat here, Silverhair; they don’t need our flesh, nor our bones to burn…"

"There was rope fixed to your cage."

"Yes. I think they were going to move us again. Fly us. Perhaps take us far from the tundra. Somewhere where there are many, many Lost, more Lost than all the mammoths who ever lived. And they would come and see us in our cages, and hit us with sticks, for they were never, ever going to let us out of there again."

"Foxeye—"

"I’d have given up my calves," Foxeye blurted. "If I could have spoken to the Lost, if I thought they would have spared me, I’d have given up the calves. There: what do you think of me now?"

Silverhair rubbed her sister’s filth-matted scalp. "I think I got here just in time."

The little group walked steadily onward, through the clutter of buildings, toward the tundra. Silverhair was dimly aware of more light-birds clattering over her head. She flinched, expecting an attack from that quarter. But none came. The birds seemed to be descending toward the City, and some of the Lost who had followed the mammoths were pointing up with their paws, muttering. Perhaps this was some new group of Lost, she thought; perhaps the Lost were divided amongst themselves.

It scarcely mattered. What was important was that still none of them tried to stop her.

Silverhair took one step after another, aware how little control she had over events, scarcely daring to hope she could take another breath. But they were still alive, and free. By Kilukpuk’s hairy navel, she thought, this might actually work.

But then there was a roar like an angry god, and everything fell apart.

A Lost came running forward, face red with rage. In one paw he held a glinting flask of the clear, inflaming liquid. And he carried a thunder-stick, which he fired wildly.

This was a new type of stick, Silverhair realized immediately: one that spoke not with a single shout, but with a roar, and lethal insects poured out in a great cloud. Even the other Lost were forced to scatter as those deadly pellets smacked into the mud, or turned the walls of the crude dwellings into splinters.

The newcomer seemed to be berating the others. And he was turning the spitting nozzle of his thunder-stick toward the huddled Family.

This Lost wasn’t going to let the mammoths go; he would obviously rather destroy them.

He was Skin-of-Ice.

Silverhair didn’t even think about it. She just lowered her head and charged.

Everything slowed down, as if she were swimming through thick, ice-cold water.

She lowered her tusks, and he raised his thunder-stick, and she looked into his eyes. It was as if they were joined by that gaze, as if total communication was passing between their souls, as if there were nobody else in the universe but the two of them.

She felt a stab of regret to have come so close to freedom. But in her heart she had known it would come to this moment, that she would not survive the day.

If Skin-of-Ice had held his ground and used his thunder-stick, he would surely have killed her there and then. But he didn’t. In the last heartbeat, as a mountain of enraged mammoth bore down on him, he panicked.

Even as he made his thunder-stick roar, he fell backward and rolled sideways.

Pain erupted in a line drawn across her face, chest, and leg, and she felt her blood spurt, warm. One of the projectiles passed clean through her mouth, in one cheek and out through the other, splintering a tooth.

The pain was extraordinary.

She could hear the screams of Lost and mammoths alike, smell the metallic stink of her own blood. But she was still alive, still moving.

Skin-of-Ice was on the ground, scrabbling for his thunder-stick. She stood over him.

Again, in the face of her courage and strength, he made the wrong decision. If he had abandoned the thunder-stick he might have escaped. But he did not. He had waited too long.

Silverhair lowered her tusk and speared him cleanly through the upper hind leg.

He screamed, and reached behind him to grab her tusk with his paws. She lifted her head, and Skin-of-Ice dangled on her tusk like a shred of winter hair, and she felt a fierce exultation.

But in one paw he held the thunder-stick. It sprayed its deadly fire in the air. And he kicked; his foot smashed into her forehead, and with remarkable strength he dragged his injured leg free of her tusk.

He fell more than twice his height to the ground.

But then he was moving again, firing his thunder-stick. The watching Lost fled, yelling.

Silverhair charged again.

Skin-of-Ice brought the thunder-stick round to point at Silverhair. But he wasn’t quick enough.

As she reared over him a hail of stings poured into her foreleg. She could feel bone shatter, muscles rip to shreds; when she tried to put her weight on that leg, she stumbled.