Silverhair

by Stephen Baxter

  "It's a thing of death," said Silverhair.

  Eggtusk raised the thunder-stick and smashed it against a rock outcrop until it was bent in two, and small parts tumbled from it. He hurled the wreckage far into the grass. Then he wiped his tusk against the outcrop, to free it of blood and scraps of flesh.

  "Now come," said Eggtusk. "We will honor the body of this Lost I have killed." He bent down, wincing slightly, and ripped yellow tundra flowers from the ground. He lumbered over to the corpse and sprinkled the flowers there. He was a fearsome sight with his face masked in blood, one of his eyes concealed by blood-matted hair, and thunder-stick punctures over his legs and chest. Even his trunk had a bite taken out of it.

  After a few heartbeats Silverhair and Snagtooth joined in. Soon the carcass of the Lost was buried in grass and flowers. They stood over the corpse as the sun wheeled through the icy sky, Remembering the fat, ugly creature as best they could.

  "Let that be an end of it," growled Eggtusk. "Once I destroyed a wolf that had come stalking the Family. We never saw that pack again. The Cycle teaches that mammoths should kill only when we have to. We have frightened the Lost so badly they'll respect us, and never come near us again..."

  Silverhair wanted to believe that was true. But she was unsure. She had watched the way the Lost had carved slices out of that fox. There had been a joy in their behavior. An evil triumph.

  She couldn't help but feel that a world free of Skin-of-Ice would be a better place. And, she feared, the killing wasn't done yet.

  Silverhair tried to treat Eggtusk's many wounds. They found a stream, and she bathed him with trunkfuls of cold, clear water, washing away the matted blood and dirt in his fur, and she plastered mud over the worst wounds in his flesh. But the pain of the wounds was very great. And she could see that some of the wounds were becoming infected, despite her best ministrations with mud and leaves.

  But Eggtusk was impatient to move on. "I don't think that other worm will pose any threat to us. He can't have got far. Come on. We'll follow him."

  Silverhair was startled. "We aren't wolves to track prey, Eggtusk."

  "And he still has the thunder-stick," Snagtooth said, her voice without expression.

  "That Lost was wounded," Eggtusk said firmly. "If he's died in some hole, we'll honor him. Maybe, if he's alive, we'll be able to help him."

  That seemed extremely unlikely to Silverhair. Besides, there were the other Lost to think about; what had become of them while the mammoths had chased Gull-Caw? Perhaps Eggtusk's thinking was muddled by pain...

  But there was no more time to debate the issue, for already Eggtusk was limping off to the south, the direction Skin-of-Ice had fled.

  AS BROWSING GRASS-EATERS, mammoths are poor trackers. As the Cycle says, It doesn't take the skill of a wolf to sneak up on a blade of grass. Nevertheless, it was surprisingly easy to track the progress the Lost, Skin-of-Ice, had made toward the southern coast.

  Eggtusk charged ahead over the plain. "Here is grass he crushed," he said. "Here is a splash of his blood, on this rock. You see? And here is a dribble of urine... I can still smell it..."

  Silverhair and Snagtooth followed, more uncertainly. All Silverhair could smell right now was the stink of Eggtusk's decaying wounds.

  "Of course," said Snagtooth softly to Silverhair, "it may be that this Lost wants us to find him."

  Silverhair was startled. "But Eggtusk nearly killed him."

  "I know," said Snagtooth. "But who knows what goes on in the mind of a Lost?"

  Silverhair kept her counsel. Perhaps Eggtusk was launching himself into this quest to take his mind off his wounds. Maybe, when Eggtusk's injuries had healed sufficiently for him to start thinking more clearly, she could persuade him to return to the Family, and then...

  Suddenly Eggtusk trumpeted in triumph.

  Silverhair slowed and stood beside him.

  The Lost, Skin-of-Ice, was lying on the ground, face down, still some distance away. He wasn't moving. There was no sign of his thunder-stick. The ground between the Lost and the mammoths was hummocky, broken, tufted with grass and sprinkled with residual ice scraps.

  There was no sound, no scent, and she could see the Lost only indistinctly.

  The gray cap of hair on Silverhair's scalp prickled. "I wish I knew where his thunder-stick is," she murmured. "We ought to be careful..."

  But Eggtusk was already lumbering ahead, his trunk raised in greeting to the Lost he intended to help.

  He approached a patch of ground strewn with grass and broken bushes — even a few broken spruce branches. Silverhair stared at the patch of ground, wondering what could have made such a mess. Wolves? Birds? But there was no scent; no scent at all.

  Suddenly she was alarmed. "Eggtusk! Take care—"

  Eggtusk, his massive feet pounding at the ground, reached the debris-strewn patch.

  With a cracking of twigs and branches, the ground opened up beneath his forefeet. He fell into a pit, amid an explosion of shattered branches and clumps of grass.

  SILVERHAIR CHARGED FORWARD. "Eggtusk! Eggtusk!" She could see the dome of his head and the hair of his broad back protruding from the hole. His trumpeting turned to a roar of anguish.

  But Snagtooth was tugging at her tail. "Keep back! It's a kettle hole..."

  Silverhair, despite her impatience and fear, knew that Snagtooth was right. It would help no one if she got trapped herself.

  She slowed, and took measured steps toward the hole in the ground, testing each footfall. Soon she was walking over the leaves and twigs and grass that had concealed the hole.

  Eggtusk was embedded in the hole, a few blades of muddy grass scattered over his back. His trunk lay on the ground, and his great tusks, stained by mud and blood, protruded uselessly before him. He was out of her reach.

  As she approached he tried to lift and turn his head. He said, "Don't come any closer."

  "Are you stuck?"

  Eggtusk growled wearily. "By Kilukpuk's snot-crusted nostril hair, what a stupid question. Of course I'm stuck. My legs are wedged in under me. I can't even move them."

  A kettle hole was a hazard of their warming times, Silverhair knew. It formed when a large block of ice was left by a retreating glacier. Sediment would settle over the ice, burying it. Then, as the ice melted, the resulting water would seep away and the sinking sediment, turning to mud, would subside to form a sticky hole in the ground.

  Deadly, for any mammoth foolish enough to stray into one. But—

  "Eggtusk, kettle holes are easy to spot. Only a calf would blunder into one."

  "Thank you for that," he snorted. "Don't you see? It's your friend, Skin-of-Ice. Snagtooth was right. That wretched worm did want us to follow him. While we honored his fallen comrade, Skin-of-Ice was preparing this trap for us. And I was fool enough to charge right in..."

  He subsided. His breath was a rattle, and he seemed to be weakening. He tried to raise his trunk, then let it flop back feebly to the ground.

  Silverhair tried to step forward, but her feet sank deeper into the mud that surrounded the hole. She felt an agitated anger; she had seen too much death this blighted summer. "You aren't going to do this to me," she cried. "Not yet, you old fool!"

  She scrambled back to firm ground and forced herself to think.

  She threw branches and twigs over the ground and walked forward on them. Spreading the load helped her keep out of the mud and get a little closer, but in the end her weight was just too great, and each time she got near to Eggtusk she was forced to back up.

  Well, if she couldn't reach Eggtusk, maybe he could get himself out.

  She gathered branches and threw them toward Eggtusk's head. If he could pull them into the pit he might be able to use them to get a grip with his feet.

  But even when he managed to grab the branches he seemed too weak, too firmly stuck, to do anything with them.

  Despairing, she looked for Snagtooth, seeking help. But Snagtooth was gone: there was no trace of her musk on the
wind, no echo of her voice.

  But, Silverhair admitted, it wasn't important. Snagtooth's mind was almost as impenetrable as a Lost's, and since her injury that had only worsened. She would be no help anyhow.

  And Skin-of-Ice, she noticed, was gone too. Perhaps he had crawled away to die at last. Somehow she suspected it would not be so easy. But she had no time, no energy for him now.

  Silverhair brought Eggtusk food, grass and twigs and herbs. But the wind scattered the grass, and Eggtusk's trunk fingers seemed to be losing their coordination and were having increasing difficulty in grasping the food.

  But she kept trying, over and over.

  "Do not fret, little Silverhair," he said to her, his voice a bubbling growl. "You've done your best."

  "Eggtusk..."

  He reached out with his trunk as if to stroke her head, but it was, of course, much too far to reach. "Give it up. That Lost has trapped me and killed me. I am already dead."

  "No!"

  "You have to go back to the Family, tell them what has happened. Owlheart will know what to do... Tell her I'm sorry I didn't keep my promise to bring you home. And you must tell Croptail that he is the dominant Bull now. Tell him I'm sorry I won't be there to teach him anymore... Do it, Silverhair. Go..."

  "I won't leave you," she said.

  "By Kilukpuk's mold-choked pores, you always were stubborn."

  "And you've always been so strong—"

  "Should take more than a little hunger to kill old Eggtusk, eh? But it isn't just that. Watch now."

  With infinite difficulty, he rolled his trunk toward him and pushed it below his chin and into the pit, below his body. She could see the muscles of his upper trunk spasm, as if he was pulling at something.

  Painfully, carefully, he pulled his trunk out of the pit. He was holding something.

  It was a bone, she saw. A rib. It was crusted with dried, blackened blood — and stained with a fresher crimson.

  A mammoth rib.

  "The bottom of the pit is littered with them," gasped Eggtusk. "They stick up everywhere. Mostly into me. And I think Skin-of-Ice put some kind of poison on them."

  "They took it from the yedoma," she said. Or — worse still — from Lop-ear... She felt bile rise in her throat. "They are using our own bones to kill us."

  "Oh, these Lost are clever," he said. "Snagtooth was right about that. I couldn't have dreamed how clever." He let the rib fall to the mud. "Well, little Silverhair. If you're determined to hang around here, you can help me. There's something I must do while I still have the strength."

  "What?"

  "Fetch a rock. As big as you can throw over to me."

  She went to an outcrop of rock and obeyed, bringing back a big sandstone boulder. She stood at the edge of the kettle hole, dug her tusks under the rock, and sent it flying through the air toward Eggtusk. It landed before his face, splashing in the mud.

  He raised his head, turned it sideways. And then he brought his misshapen tusk crashing against the rock. The tusk cracked, but he showed no awareness of the pain at all.

  "Eggtusk! What are you doing?"

  "You needn't try to stop me," he said, breathing hard.

  "Why?"

  "Better I do it than the Lost. Didn't you tell me how they robbed the ancient mammoth in the yedoma? I don't want them doing the same to me."

  And again he began to smash his magnificent deformed tusk against the rock, until it had splintered and cracked at the base.

  At last it tore loose, leaving only a bloody spike of ivory protruding from the socket in his face.

  "Take it," he told Silverhair, his voice thick with blood. "You can reach it. Take it and smash it to splinters."

  She was weeping openly now. But she reached out over the mud of the kettle hole, wrapped her trunk around the tusk, and pulled it to her. It was immense: so massive she could barely lift it. Once again she appreciated the huge strength of Eggtusk — strength that was dissipating into the cold mud as she watched.

  She lugged the tusk to the outcrop of sandstone, and pounded it until it had splintered and smashed to fragments.

  Eggtusk rested for a time. Then he lifted his head again, and started to work on his other tusk.

  WHEN HE WAS DONE, his face was half-buried in the mud, the breath whistling through his trunk; there was blood around his mouth, and pulp leaked from the stumps of his tusks.

  "Eggtusk—"

  "Little Silverhair. You're still here? You always were stubborn... Talk to me."

  "Talk to you?"

  "Tell me a story. Tell me about Ganesha."

  And so she did. Gathering her strength, staying the weakening of her own voice, she told him the ancient tale of Ganesha the Wise, and how she had prepared her calf Prima to conquer the cold lands.

  He grunted and sighed, seeming to respond to the rhythms of the ancient story...

  SHE WOKE WITH A START. She hadn't meant to sleep.

  Eggtusk, still wedged tight in his kettle hole, was chewing on something. "This grass is fine. Isn't it, Wolfnose? The finest I ever tasted. And this water is as clear and fresh as if it had just melted off the glacier."

  But she could see that only blood trickled from his mouth, and all that he chewed was a mouthful of his own hair, ripped from his back.

  "Eggtusk—"

  He raised his head, and the stumps of his tusks gleamed in the sun. "Wolfnose? Remember me, Wolfnose. Remember me. I see you. I'm coming now..."

  His great head dropped to the earth, and it did not rise again.

  Silverhair felt the deepest dark of despair settle over her, an anguish of shame and frustration that she hadn't been able to help him.

  Soon she must start the Remembering. She could not reach Eggtusk, or touch his body; but at least she could cover his corpse—

  Suddenly there was a band of fire around her neck: a band that dug deep into her flesh. She trumpeted her shock and pain.

  And the Lost were here: dancing before her, two of them, and they held sticks in their paws, sticks attached to whatever was wrapped around her neck.

  Snagtooth was standing before her, apparently in no distress.

  Silverhair, shocked, agonized, tried to speak. When the Lost tugged at their sticks the fire burned deeper in her neck, and it got so tight she could barely breathe. "Snagtooth... Help me..."

  But Snagtooth kept her trunk down. "I brought them here."

  "You did what?"

  "Don't you see? They are smarter than we are. Submit to them, Silverhair. It isn't so bad."

  "No—" Silverhair struggled to stay on her feet, to ignore the pain in her throat.

  Beyond Snagtooth, she saw Skin-of-Ice himself. His damaged foreleg was strapped to his chest.

  Light as a hare, he hopped over the mud of the kettle hole, and came to rest on Eggtusk's broad, unmoving back. He raised his head to the sky and let loose a howl of triumph.

  Then he raised an ice-claw in his paw, and drove it deep into Eggtusk's helpless back.

  The thing around Silverhair's neck tightened. A red mist filled her vision.

  She was forced to her knees.

  13

  The Captive

  THE LOST THREW more loops and lassos at her. Many of them missed, or she shook them off easily, but gradually they caught on her tusks or trunk or around her legs. Soon her head was so heavy with ropes that she could not lift it.

  Now the Lost — five or six of them, under the supervision of Skin-of-Ice — began to run around her, whooping and beating at her flanks and legs with sticks. She tried to reach them with her tusks — she knew she could disembowel any of these weak creatures with a flick of her head — but she was pinned, and they were too clever to come close enough to give her the chance to hurt them.

  She could not even lift her head to trumpet, and that shamed her more than anything else.

  At last Skin-of-Ice himself came forward. His small teeth showed white in his loathsome, naked face as he bent to peer into her eyes. His mouth, a soft ro
und thing, was flapping and making noises.

  She managed to haul herself back through a pace or two. But he stood his ground, and the weight dragging at her forced her into submission once more.

  He raised a stick, about as long as his foreleg, in the tip of which he had embedded one of his gleaming ice-claws. He held it up before her, waving it before her eyes, as if to demonstrate to her what it was.

  One of the other Lost came up. He pawed at Skin-of-Ice, as if trying to restrain him. But Skin-of-Ice shook him off.

  Then, with brutal suddenness, Skin-of-Ice lashed out.

  He slammed the stick against her face, and the claw penetrated her cheek. The pain was liquid fire.

  She kept her gaze on Skin-of-Ice, refusing even to flinch as tire pain burned into her.

  He threw down his goad and reached forward to her cheek. His paw came away smeared with her blood — and it cupped a brimming pool of her tears, tears she could not help but spill.

  Skin-of-Ice threw the tears back in her face, so that they stung her eyes.

  AS THE SUN SANK toward the horizon, the Lost gathered loose branches and twigs into a rough heap. The heap somehow erupted into flame, as if at the command of the Lost. They did not seem to fear the fire. Indeed, they fed it with more branches, which they boldly threw onto the embers, and stayed close to it, rubbing their paws as if dependent on the fire for warmth.

  After a time a knot of hunger gathered in Silverhair's stomach, but the Lost would not let her feed. Even when she passed dung, which the Lost could scarcely prevent, they would kick and prod at her so that her stomach clenched, and they picked up the dung and threw it in her face.

  Mammoths need a great deal of food daily, and in fact spend much of each day feeding and drinking. To be kept from doing that was a great torment to Silverhair, and she weakened rapidly.

  The Lost were not organized. They were careless, lethargic, and seemed to spend a lot of their time asleep.