Longtusk tm-2

by Stephen Baxter

  To obtain long, thin strips of ivory the apprentice had to cut channels in the tusk and then prize out the strips with chisels. Often the strips would splinter and break — an outcome which invariably won the apprentice abuse and mild beatings from his impatient master.

  But the apprentice could even bend ivory, making bracelets small enough to fit around the slim wrists of Fireheads. First he soaked a section of the tusk in a pit of foul-smelling urine. Then he wrapped the softened tusk in a fresh animal skin, soaked with water, and placed it in the hot ashes of a hearth. The skin charred and fell away in flakes. But the ivory — on extraction from the hearth with tongs made of giant deer antlers — was flexible enough to bend into loops tied off with thongs.

  Flamefingers, meanwhile, made a bewildering variety of artifacts from the ivory pieces.

  He made tools, whittling suitable sections into chisels, spatulas, knives, daggers and small spears. He engraved the handles of these devices with crosshatched cuts to ensure a firm grip when the tools were held in the paw, and returned the tools to the apprentice for arduous polishing with strips of leather.

  But Flamefingers also made many artifacts with no obvious purpose save decoration: for example thin disks, cross-sections from the fatter end of the tusks, with elaborate carvings, pierced through the center to take a rope of sinew or skin.

  But the most remarkable artifacts of all were the figurines, of Fireheads and animals.

  Flamefingers started with a raw, crudely broken lump of ivory that had been soaked for days. But despite this softening the ivory was difficult to work — easy to engrave along the grain, but not across it — and the artisan patiently scraped away at the surface with stone chisels, removing finer and finer flakes.

  And, slowly, like the sun emerging from a cloud, a form emerged from the raw tusk, small and compact, coated in hairs that were elaborately etched into the grain.

  Longtusk could only watch, bewildered. The artisan seemed able to see the object within the tusk before he had made it — as if the figure had always been there, embedded in this chunk of ancient ivory, needing only the artisan’s careful fingers to release it.

  The artisan held up the finished piece on his paw, blew away dust and spat on it, polishing it against his clothing.

  Then he looked up at Longtusk standing over him, with the usual gaggle of Firehead cubs clutching his belly hairs.

  Flamefingers smiled. He held up the figure so Longtusk could see it.

  Longtusk, drawn by curiosity, reached out with the pink tip of his trunk and explored the carving. Flamefingers watched him, blue eyes gleaming, fascinated by the reaction of the woolly mammoth to the toy.

  It was a mammoth, exquisitely carved.

  But, though it was delicate and fine, there was a faint, lingering smell of the long-dead mammoth who had owned this tusk, overlaid by the sharp stink of the spit and sweat of Firehead.

  Longtusk, intrigued but subtly repelled, rumbled softly and stepped away.

  On the day of Bedrock’s Remembering, Crocus at last emerged from her hut. Her bare skin was pale from her lengthy confinement. But her golden hair blazed in the light of the low sun.

  All the Fireheads — even the Shaman — bowed before her. She turned and surveyed them coldly.

  Today the Fireheads would do more than Remember Bedrock. Today, Longtusk had learned, the Fireheads would accept their new leader: this slim young female, Crocus, the only cub of Bedrock, and now the Matriarch of the Fireheads.

  Crocus stepped forward to Longtusk. She walked confidently, as a new Matriarch should. But Longtusk could see how fragile she was from the tenseness of her lips, the softness of her eyes.

  "Baitho," she said softly.

  Obediently he dipped his head and lowered his trunk to the ground. She climbed on his back with practiced ease. He straightened up, feeling invigorated by her gentle presence at his neck once more.

  He raised his trunk and trumpeted; the noise echoed from the silent steppe.

  He turned and, with as much grandeur as he could muster, he began to walk toward the grave. The Fireheads and mastodonts formed up into a loose procession behind him.

  And now, at a gesture from the Shaman, the music began.

  They had flutes made of bird bones, hollowed out and pierced. They had bull-roarers, ovals of carved ivory which they spun around their heads on long ropes. They had instruments made of mammoth bones: drums of skulls and shoulder blades to strike and scrape, jawbones which rattled loudly, ribs which emitted a range of notes when struck with a length of femur. And they sang, raising their small mouths and ululating like wolves.

  In all this noise, Longtusk and his passenger were an island of silence, towering over the rest. Her fingers twined tightly in his fur, as they had when she was a small and nervous cub just learning to ride him, and he knew that this day was extraordinarily difficult for her.

  The grave was on the outskirts of the settlement, a simple straight-sided pit dug into the ground by Walks With Thunder.

  Crocus slid to the ground and stood at the lip of the grave, paws folded. Longtusk stood silently beside her, the wind whipping the hair on his back.

  The body of Bedrock already lay at the bottom of the pit, a small and fragile bundle wrapped in rhino hide. Bedrock’s artifacts were set out around him: spears and knives and chisels and boomerangs, the tools of a home-builder and hunter, many of them made of mammoth ivory. And mammoth vertebrae and foot bones had been set out in a circle around him, as if protecting him.

  But now the Shaman was here in his ridiculous smoking hat, his skin painted with gaudy designs. He leapt into the pit and began to caper and shout. He had rattles of bone and wood that he shook over Bedrock’s inert form, and he scattered flower petals and sprinkled water, raising his face and howling like a hyena.

  As Crocus watched this performance she started to tremble — not from distress, Longtusk realized, but from anger. It was a rage that matched Longtusk’s own musth-fueled turmoil.

  At last, it seemed, she could stand it no more. She tugged Longtusk’s trunk. "A dhur," she said. Pick up that thing.

  Longtusk snorted in acquiescence. He knelt down, reached into the pit with his trunk, and plucked the Shaman out of the grave, burning hat and all. He set the Firehead down unharmed by the side of the pit.

  Smokehat was furious. He capered and jabbered, slapping with his small paws at Longtusk’s trunk.

  Crocus stepped forward, eyes alight, and she screamed at the Shaman.

  His defiance seemed to melt before her anger, and he withdrew, eyes glittering.

  There was silence now. Crocus stepped up to the grave once more. She sat down, legs dangling over the edge of the pit.

  Longtusk reached down to help her. But she pushed his trunk away; this was, it seemed, something she must do herself.

  She scrambled to the pit floor. She brushed away the dirt and petals that the Shaman had scattered over her father.

  She dug an object out of her clothing and laid it on top of the body. It was the rhino horn, the trophy of the last hunt — still stained with the creature’s blood, as raw and unworked as when it had been smashed from the rhino’s skull. Then she stroked the hide covering her father, and she picked up earth and sprinkled it over the body.

  She was Remembering him, Longtusk realized. Her simple, tender actions, unrehearsed and personal, were — compared to the foolish ritualistic capering of the Shaman — unbearably moving.

  Bedrock had been leader of the Fireheads from the moment Longtusk had first encountered these strange, complex, bewildering creatures. But here he lay, slain and silent, destroyed by a single arrow fired by a white-painted Firehead who had never known Bedrock’s name, had known nothing of the complex web of power and relationships which had tangled up his life. As he gazed on the limp, passive form in the pit, Longtusk was struck by the awful simplicity of death, the conclusion to every story.

  At last Crocus stood up. The Fireheads reached into the pit and lowered dow
n bones. They were mammoth shoulder blades and pelvises. Crocus used the huge flat sheets of bone to cover the body of Bedrock. Even in death he would be protected by the strength of the mammoths, which, through their own deaths, had sustained his kind in this hostile land.

  Crocus reached up to Longtusk. This time she accepted his help, and he lifted her out of the grave and set her neatly on his back. Then he began to kick at the low piles of earth which had been scooped out of the ground.

  When it was done, Longtusk made his way back to the hut Crocus had shared with her father, but now inhabited alone. She slid to the ground, ruffled the fur on his trunk with absent affection, and entered her hut, tying the skin flaps closed behind her.

  When she was gone, Longtusk felt a great relief, for he thought this longest and most painful of days was at last done.

  But he was wrong.

  The Fireheads, having completed their mourning of their lost leader, began to celebrate the ascension of their new Matriarch. And it was soon obvious that the celebrations were to be loud and long.

  As the sun dipped toward the horizon the Fireheads opened up a pit in the ground. Here, the butchered remains of several giant deer had been smoking since the previous day. They gathered around and ripped away pieces of the meat with their bare paws, and chewed on it until their bellies were distended and the fat ran down their chins.

  Then, as the cubs and females danced and sang, the males produced great pots of foul-smelling liquid, thick and fermented, which they pumped down their throats. Before long many of them were slumping over in sleep, or regurgitating the contents of their stomachs in great noxious floods. But then they would revive to begin ingesting more food and liquid, growing more raucous and uncoordinated as the evening wore on.

  The mastodonts watched this, bemused.

  At last, under the benevolent guidance of Walks With Thunder, the Cows gathered their calves and quietly made their way to the calm of the stockade, where all but the most trusted of the Bulls were kept.

  Longtusk, his emotions still muddled and raging, followed them.

  Lemming was here, bringing bales of hay from one of the storage pits. "Lay, lay," he said. Eat, eat. Longtusk had noticed before that this little fat Firehead seemed happier in the company of the mastodonts than his own kind, and he felt a surge of affection.

  All the mastodonts were in the stockade.

  …All save Jaw Like Rock.

  Agitated, disturbed by the throbbing noise and meat smells wafting from the Firehead settlement, Longtusk roamed the stockade. But he couldn’t find the great Bull. When he asked after Jaw, he was met with blank stares.

  Then — as the night approached its darkest hour, and the drumming and shouting of the Fireheads reached a climax — he heard a single, agonized trumpeting from the depths of the settlement.

  It was Jaw Like Rock.

  Longtusk bellowed out a contact rumble, but there was no reply.

  He sought out Walks With Thunder.

  "Didn’t you hear that? Jaw Like Rock called out."

  "No," said Thunder bleakly. "You’re mistaken."

  "But I heard him—"

  Thunder wrapped his trunk around Longtusk’s. "Jaw is dead. Accept it. It is the way."

  Again that trumpeting came, thin and clear and full of pain.

  Longtusk, confused, distressed, blundered away from the stockade and headed into the Firehead settlement.

  Tonight it had become a place of bewildering noise and stink and confusion. The Fireheads ran back and forth, full of fermented liquid and rich food — or they slept where they had fallen, curled up by the hearths in the open air. He saw one male and female coupling, energetically but clumsily, in the half-shadow of a hut wall.

  Few Fireheads even seemed aware of Longtusk; he had to be careful, in fact, not to step on sleeping faces.

  He persisted, pushing through the noise and mess and confusion, until he found Jaw Like Rock.

  They had put him in a shallow pit, scraped roughly out of the ground and surrounded by stakes and ropes. Fire burned brightly in lamps all around the pit, making the scene as bright as day, but filling the air with stinking, greasy smoke.

  It was a feeble confinement from which a great tusker like Jaw Like Rock could have escaped immediately.

  But Jaw was no longer in full health.

  Jaw was dragging both his hind legs. It seemed his hamstrings or tendons had been cut, so he could no longer bolt or charge. And there were darts sticking out of his flesh, over his belly and behind his ears. His skin was discolored around the punctures, as if the darts had delivered a poison. He was wheezing, and great loops of spittle hung from his dangling tongue.

  There were Fireheads all around the pit, all male, and they were stamping, clapping and hammering their drums of bone and skin. One of them was creeping into Jaw’s pit, carrying a long spear. It was Bareface, Longtusk saw, the young hunter who had distinguished himself on the fatal rhino hunt. He was naked, coated in red and yellow paint.

  Longtusk trumpeted. "Jaw! Jaw Like Rock!"

  Jaw’s answering rumble was faint, and punctuated by gasps for breath. "Is that you, grass chewer? Come to see the dead Bull?"

  "Get out of there!"

  "…No. It’s over for me. It was over the moment I tusked that spawn of Aglu. I planned it, after all, waited for my moment… But it was worth it. At least Spindle will torture no more mastodonts. Or mammoths."

  "You aren’t dead! You breathe, you hurt—"

  "I’m dead as poor Bedrock in his hole in the ground. Don’t you see? We belong to the Fireheads. They tend our wounds, and order our lives, and feed us. But we live and die by their whim. It is — a contract. And here, at the climax of this night of celebration, this one who creeps toward me on his belly, Bareface, will prove his courage by dispatching me to the aurora."

  "But they’ve already crippled you! Where is the courage in that?"

  "The ways of the Fireheads are impossible to understand… But, yes, you’re right, Longtusk. We must see some courage tonight." Jaw raised himself on his crippled legs and trumpeted his defiance. "Remember me, calf of Primus! Remember!"

  And with a roar that shook the ground, he hurled himself forward toward Bareface.

  The hunter, with lightning-fast reflexes, jammed the shaft of his spear into the ground.

  Jaw’s great body impaled itself. Longtusk heard flesh rip, and smelled the sour stink of Jaw’s guts as they spilled, dark and steaming, to the ground.

  The Fireheads roared their triumph. Longtusk trumpeted and fled.

  He was in a stand of young trees in the new, growing forest that bordered the Firehead settlement. It was still deep night, dark and cloudy.

  He couldn’t recall where he had run, how he had got here.

  But she was here — he could sense it through his rage, his grief and confusion, the musth that burned through his body — she, Neck Like Spruce, no calf now but a warm and musty presence, solid and massive as the Earth itself, here in the dark, as if she had been waiting for him.

  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.

  6

  The Cleansing

  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.