Longtusk

by Stephen Baxter

  The stink of smoke and ash was overwhelming. The steppe, as far as he could see, had turned to a plain of scorched cinders. Smoke still curled overhead... but it was a thinning gray layer which no longer covered the sinking sun.

  And there was no fire.

  He felt a surge of elation. He had done it! Alone, he had worked out how to survive, and had stuck to his resolve in the face of overwhelming danger. Let Rockheart see him now! — for he, Longtusk, alone, had today faced down and beaten a much more savage and ruthless enemy than any Bull mammoth.

  ...Alone. The word came back to haunt him, like the distant cry of a ptarmigan, and his elation evaporated.

  He turned and faced northward. The fire was a wall across the steppe, from the eastern horizon to the west. Smoke billowed up before it in huge towering heaps, shaped by the wind. It was an awesome sight, and it cut the world in two.

  He hammered at the ground with his feet, his stamps calling to the mammoths, his Family. But there was no reply, no rocky echo through the Earth. Of course not; the noise of the fire would overwhelm everything else, and before it all the mammoths must be fleeing — even the greatest of them all, the Matriarch of Matriarchs, fleeing north, even farther from Longtusk.

  He would have no chance to gloat of his bravery to Rockheart, or his mother, or anyone else. For everything he knew — the Family, the Clan, the bachelor herd, everything — lay on the other side of that wall of fire.

  He cried out, a mournful trumpet of desolation and loneliness.

  He looked down at himself. He was a sorry sight, his fur laden with mud and heavily charred. And he was hungry and thirsty — in fact he had no clear memory of the last time he'd eaten.

  The sun was dipping, reddening. Night would soon be here.

  The last of his elation disappeared. He had thought he had won his battle by defeating the fire. But it seemed the battle was only just begun.

  There was only one way for him to go: south, away from the fire. He lowered his head and began to walk.

  AS HE MARCHED INTO DEEPENING darkness, he tried to feed, as mammoths must. But the scorched grass and sage crumbled at his touch.

  His thirst was stronger than his hunger, in fact, but he found no free-standing water. He scraped hopefully at the ground with his tusks and feet. But only a little way down, the ground grew hard and cold. This was the permafrost, the deep layer of frozen soil which never thawed, even at the height of summer. He dug his trunk into the soil and sucked hopefully, but there were only drops of moisture to be had, trapped above the ice layer.

  He came across a willow. It hugged the ground, low and flat, not rising higher than his knees. He prized it up with his tusks, stripped off its bark and munched the thin, dry stuff, seeking to assuage his thirst.

  He knew there were places scattered around the steppe where free-standing water lay close to the surface, even in the depths of winter, and the mammoths could crack through snow and ice to reach it. The adults knew where to find such wells of life, using a deep knowledge of the land passed on from the generations before them — but Longtusk had only begun learning about the land. Now, scraping at the mud, adrift in this blackened landscape where even the trails had been scorched out of existence, he was learning how truly helpless he was.

  He walked farther. The trees grew more thickly, short, ancient willows and birches. Soon there were so many of them they covered the ground with a thick matting of branches. He was walking, in fact, on top of a forest. This dry, cold, wind-blasted land was not a place where trees could grow tall.

  ...He heard a hiss, deep and sibilant, somewhere behind him.

  Mammoths' necks are short and inflexible, and Longtusk had to turn all the way around — slowly, clumsily, heart hammering.

  The cat gazed at him, utterly still, silent.

  FOR AN INSTANT HE FELT overwhelmed, his mind reeling, his courage fragmenting. He was almost irritated. The bachelor herd, the smoke, the fire — wasn't that enough? Must he face this new peril as well?

  But he knew he was in deadly danger, and he forced himself to alertness.

  The cat was a female, he saw. She seemed huge to Longtusk: not much less than half his own height, rippling muscle under a smooth sheen of brown fur. Her ears were small and forward-pointed, her nose small and black.

  And her two saber teeth swept down from her mouth, stained by something dark and crusted. Blood, perhaps. She must already have made a kill, of some prey animal disoriented by the fire. He could smell rotten meat on her breath.

  Perhaps she had a family to feed, a brood of brawling sharp-toothed cubs. Cubs hungry for mammoth meat.

  The sun, reddened by the smoky air, touched the horizon. Shadows fled across the scorched plains, and ruddy light gleamed deep in the carnivore's eye sockets.

  And those eyes were fixed on Longtusk.

  He raised his trunk and trumpeted. The sound rolled across the anechoic plains, purposeless.

  The cat spread her claws, long and bright, and they sunk into the ground. Her muscles tensed in great sheets.

  Fear clamored in his mind, threatening to drown out thought.

  He tried to recall fragments of mammoth lore: that few mammoths are targeted by predators; that Bulls, not yet fully grown and yet driven to depart the Family — Bulls like himself — are the most vulnerable to predators like this cat; that the female cat, driven to provide for her family, is deadlier than the male.

  But through all this one stark thought rattled around his awareness: that it is at sunset that the predators hunt.

  She sprang. It was very sudden. Spitting, she soared through the air, a blur of muscle heading straight for his face, claws extended.

  Blindly he raised his tusks.

  She was knocked sideways, spitting and scratching.

  ...He was bleeding, he realized. There was a series of raked gashes across the front of his trunk, where a paw-swipe had caught him.

  Trumpeting, he turned again.

  She was crouched low, eyes on him once more, taking step after deliberate step toward him.

  The mammoths evolved on open plains, where there is little cover. Under threat from a predator they adopt a ring formation, with the calves and the weak huddled at the center.

  But now Longtusk was on his own, with nobody to cover his back, utterly exposed.

  He broke away and fled. He couldn't help it.

  She will try to slash your trunk. Avoid this. It will cause you agonizing pain and a great loss of blood. Use your tusks. Bring them down on her head to stun her, or stab her with the sharp tips. If she gets in closer, wrap your trunk around her and squeeze until her back breaks. If she gets beneath you, step on her and crush her skull. Never forget she is afraid too: you are bigger and stronger than her, and she knows it...

  It was a comforting theory, and he recalled how he had played with other calves, mimicking attacks and defenses, swiping miniature tusks back and forth. But the reality, of this spitting, stinking, single-minded cat, was very different.

  And now he felt a new sharp warmth on his right hind leg. She had gouged him again. The damage was superficial, but he could feel the blood pumping out of him, weakening him. He kept running, but now he was limping.

  It had been a deliberate cut. The cat was trying to shorten the chase.

  He ran toward a stand of tall trees, sheltered by an outcrop of rock, their branches green-black in the fading light. Perhaps there would be cover here. He ducked into the shadow of the trees, turned—

  Suddenly there was a weight on his back, a mass of spitting, squalling fur, utterly unexpected, and then stabs of sharp pain all across his back: long claws digging through his fur and into his flesh.

  He trumpeted in panic. He raised his trunk and tusks, but his neck was short and he could never reach so far. The trees, he realized. Their black branches loomed above him. She must have climbed into the branches and dropped down onto him.

  On the steppe most trees hugged the ground. Longtusk wasn't used to trees looming
over him. He hadn't even considered the possibility that the cat might do such a thing.

  He felt, through sharpening stabs of pain, that she was digging her claws deeper into him, and her weight shifted. He knew what she was intending; he had seen the cats at work. She was opening her gaping mouth and raising her down-pointing saber teeth. In a moment she would use them to stab down into his helpless flesh, laying open his spine, or even his skull.

  Then the pain would start.

  She would not kill him quickly, he knew, for that was not the way of the cats; he would lie in blood and black agony, longing for a release to the aurora, while this cat and her foul cubs tore at his flesh—

  He raised his trunk and bellowed defiance. No! He had beaten the fire. He would not be destroyed, in this dismal place, by a carrion-breathed cub of Aglu!

  He charged straight at the trees. One branch, black and thick, cut across the sky, only a little above his head height.

  As the branch struck her the cat yowled. The pain in his back deepened — her claws raked through his flesh as she tried to cling to him — but suddenly the pain's sharpness eased, and the weight of the cat was gone from his shoulders. Breathing hard, the wounds on his back cold, he whirled around, tusks raised, trunk tucked under his chin for protection.

  The cat had vanished.

  He trumpeted. His eyes, never strong, helped him little in this fading light. And he could smell nothing — nothing but the metallic stink of his own crusting blood. Probably she had gone downwind of him.

  How could she have moved so quickly, so silently? She was, he realized ruefully, much more expert at hunting than he was at being hunted.

  The dark was deepening quickly. His thirst seemed to burn at his throat, a discomfort deeper even than the ache of his wounds. And he longed for shelter.

  He recalled the outcrop of rock which had provided cover for these trees to grow. Clumsily, his torn leg and back aching, he lumbered around the trees. He came to a sheer wall of sandstone, perhaps twice as tall as he was, smoothly eroded, its base littered by frost-shattered scree, fallen branches and dead leaves. He moved as close to the rock face as he could, and turned to face the plains beyond.

  Perhaps he could last through the night here. He might hear the cat approach if she came across the scree or the leaves. And in the morning—

  There was liquid movement to his right. She had been hiding in the mound of broken wood and leaves. Now, gazing at him, she prepared to spring again.

  He felt trapped in this dark, glacial moment.

  He seemed to have time to study the cat's every detail: the sinuous beauty of her curved, taut muscles, the gaping, bloody maw of her mouth. Blood was crusted on her head, he noticed, a mark of his one minor victory, where he had managed to hurt her by driving her against the tree branch. But her eyes were on him, small and hard, and he could see that she knew she had won. In less than a heartbeat she would reach his soft belly with her claws, and his life would spill out on this lonely rock, far from those who had loved him.

  ...But the cat was hurled sideways and slammed into the rock face.

  She fell, limp.

  Time flooded over him again, and his heart hammered.

  CAUTIOUSLY, UNABLE TO BELIEVE he was still breathing, Longtusk crept closer. The cat lay where she had fallen, slumped in the leaves and the scree.

  Blood welled from a huge wound in her temple, dark and thick, as if seeking to water the trees that grew here. The stillness of the cat was sudden, startling; this creature of motion and purpose and deadly beauty had become, in a heartbeat, a thing of the rock and the earth, her beautiful muscles slack and useless forever.

  He felt no triumph, no relief: only numbness.

  Something protruded from her skull.

  It was wood, a long, straight branch. It had been stripped of bark, and one end narrowed to a sharp tip. The tip looked blackened, as if it had been in a fire; but it was evidently hard, hard as a tusk — for it had pierced the cat's skull, passing through a neat puncture in her temple and out the other side. The flying stick had knocked her out of her spring; she had probably been dead, he realized, even before she collided with the rock.

  There was a rustle a few paces away.

  Startled, he reared up and trumpeted.

  There was something out there on the darkling plain. Something small, purposeful.

  He was surprised to find he still had some fear left inside him, a small bubble of it that rose to the surface of his mind, despite his exhaustion.

  But this was no cat. It walked upright, on its hind legs.

  It was shorter than Longtusk, but it looked strong, with muscled legs and a broad chest. Its head was large with a wide fleshy nose, and a low brow made of caves of bone from which brown eyes peered suspiciously at Longtusk. Short black hair was matted on the creature's head, and it had fur over its body — not its own fur, Longtusk realized with a shock, but scraps of skin from animals, deer and bison and even fox, somehow joined together.

  The two of them stared at each other.

  Fragments of lore drifted through Longtusk's mind. They walk upright. They wear the skin of other creatures. There is no fighting them; only flight is possible...

  This creature walked upright, like a Firehead. Was it possible?...

  But Longtusk felt no fear now. He seemed exhausted, done with fear.

  The strange beast, cautiously, walked forward on its hind legs toward the cat. Longtusk wondered how it kept from toppling over. It wrapped its big front paws around the pointed stick, stepped on the cat's inert head, and pulled hard. With some reluctance, the stick slid out of the cat's skull.

  Then, watching Longtusk, the creature jabbed with the stick at the cat's head.

  Showing him what it had done.

  Slowly Longtusk understood. This creature had thrown the stick through the air, driven it by sheer strength and accuracy into the head of the cat — and thereby saved Longtusk's life.

  If this was a Firehead, it meant Longtusk no harm. Perhaps it was not a Firehead, but something else, something like a Firehead, a lesser threat.

  Longtusk seemed unable to think it through, to pick through bits of half-remembered lore.

  The creature walked closer to Longtusk. Its head moved back and forth, side to side, and its eyes were bright and curious, even though it was obviously nervous of the mammoth's great tusks. It worked its mouth and a strange complex growl emerged.

  Then it reached out with one of its bare front paws, and, leaning within the radius of the tusks, stroked the long furs on Longtusk's trunk. Longtusk flinched, but he was beyond fear now, and he submitted to the contact. The creature passed its fingers down through Longtusk's matted hair, the motion oddly soothing.

  But the paw came away sticky with blood, and the creature looked at Longtusk with renewed concern.

  It took its stick and began to walk away. A few paces from Longtusk, it paused and looked back.

  Longtusk looked down at the shadowy form of the dead cat. Though the rock would provide him with shelter, he had no desire to stay here. This sinuous corpse, still leaking blood, would surely soon attract more predators, hyenas and foxes and maybe even other cats, before the condors descended on what was left of the carcass.

  The light was all but gone, and the wind was rising.

  He looked up. The upright creature was still waiting, looking back. And Longtusk had no real choice.

  Slowly they walked into the night, the woolly mammoth following the Neanderthal boy.

  4

  The Dreamers

  THEY CAME TO A SHALLOW river valley, where running water — perhaps a tributary of the dried-out stream that had saved Longtusk from the fire — had cut its way into the hard black rock of the ground.

  The upright creature scrambled down a heap of frost-shattered scree. It reached a hole of deeper darkness cut into the hillside. It was a cave, Longtusk realized.

  And a glimmer of ruddy light came from within it.

  Longtusk was
baffled. How could there be light inside a cave, a place of shadows?

  ...And now Longtusk's sharp sense of smell detected the tang of smoke, carried on the light evening breeze, and he understood the source of that strange inner glow.

  Fire. His upright friend had walked into fire — maybe a nest of true Fireheads!

  Longtusk stood there on the river bank, torn by conflicting impulses. Should he flee, or should he rush down the bank and pull out his friend, saving the squat little creature as it had saved him from the she-cat?

  But his friend had gone into the cave willingly, with no sign of fear.

  The sun had not yet risen since Longtusk had been separated from his Family. And yet already he had endured a blizzard of new experiences. Perhaps this new vision, of fire within a cave, was simply one more strangeness he must strive to understand.

  But none of that mattered. It was almost completely dark now. He was hungry, tired, thirsty — and alone once more.

  Using his trunk to feel his way, he worked through the rocks to the edge of the river. He walked farther, following the stream. The river bed shallowed, and he sensed a lake opening out before him: a scent of cold fresh water, a soft sweep of wind across an expansive surface. At the edge of the lake, lying along the shallow beach, he found great linear heaps of feathers left by molting ducks and geese.

  When he waded into the water its icy cold struck through the layers of fur on his legs, and he almost cried out from the pain of the wounds inflicted by the cat. But as the water lifted off the caked blood and dirt, the sharp pain turned to a wider ache, and he sensed the start of healing.

  He took a trunkful of water and lifted it to his mouth; it was cool and delicious, and he drank again and again, assuaging a thirst he had nursed since the terrible moments of the fire.

  He retreated to the tumbled rocks of the shore. He found a gap between two tall rock faces. He nestled there and, trying to ignore the continuing cold ache of his back and legs, waited for sleep to claim him.