Silverhair could smell it: bone and meat, and even some hair and skin, bound together by fat and dung. One of the stone heaps was even crowned with a mammoth skull, devoid of flesh and skin and hair.
She recognized it immediately, and recoiled in horror and disgust. It was Eggtusk’s skull.
Foxeye was standing still, shuddering. The two calves were staring wide-eyed at the fires, crying.
'We can’t go through that,' growled Owlheart.
Silverhair was battling her own compulsion to flee this grisly horror. 'But we must. It’s just stones and fire. We can knock these piles down, and—'
'No.' Owlheart trotted back a few paces and stared into the mouth of a great ravine in the glacier. 'We’ll go this way. Maybe we’ll find a way through. At least the light-bird won’t be able to chase us there.' She prodded Foxeye. 'Come on. Bring the calves.'
In desperation Silverhair plucked at Owlheart’s tail. 'No. Don’t you see? That’s what they want us to do.'
Owlheart swiped at her with her tusks, barely missing Silverhair’s scarred cheek. 'This is a time to follow me, Silverhair, not to question.'
And she turned her back, deliberately, and led her Family into the canyon of ice.
Silverhair looked along the beach. One of the Lost was standing on a boulder before the others, waving his spindly forelegs in a manner of command. Silverhair could see the ice light glint from his bare scalp. It was Skin-of-Ice: the monster of the south, come to pursue her, even here beyond the End of the World. She felt a black despair settle on her soul.
She followed her Matriarch into the ravine.
Immediately the air felt colder, piercing even the mammoths’ thick coats. Immersed in ice, Silverhair felt the sting of frost in her long nostrils, and her breath crackled as it froze in the hair around her mouth.
Impatient to make haste, anxious to keep their footing, the mammoths filed through the chasm, furry boulder-shapes out of place in this realm of sculpted ice. The going was difficult; the ground was littered with slabs and blocks of cracked-off ice, dirty and eroded. With each step, ice blocks clattered or cracked, and the sharp noises echoed in the huge silence.
Walls of ice loomed above Silverhair, sculpted by melt and rainfall into curtains and pinnacles. The daylight was reduced to a strip of blue-gray far above. But it wasn’t dark here, for sunlight filtered through the ice, illuminating the blue-green depths.
It was almost beautiful, she thought.
Silverhair heard a clattering. She looked back to the mouth of the chasm. The light-bird hovered there, black and sinister. As Owl-heart had predicted, the light-bird couldn’t follow them here. Perhaps its whirling wings were too wide to fit within the narrow walls.
But on the ground she could see the skinny limbs of the Lost, the smoky light of their torches, as they clambered over ice blocks.
Owlheart had gone ahead of the others, deeper into the chasm. Now she returned, trumpeting her rage. 'There’s no way out. A fall of ice has completely blocked the chasm.' She growled. 'Our luck is running out, Silverhair.'
'Luck has nothing to do with it,' said Silverhair. She felt awe: she was sure the Lost — in fact, Skin-of-Ice himself — were behind every element of this trap — the burning fat and the skull, the driving of the mammoths into this chasm, and now the barrier at its rear. How was it possible for a mind to be so twisted as to concoct such complex schemes?
Owlheart rumbled, paced back and forth, struck the ground with her tusks. 'We aren’t done yet. Listen to me. In some places, at the back of the chasm, the ice lies thin over the rock. And the rock is rotten with frost there, Silverhair. Go up there and dig. See if you can find a way out. If there’s a way, take Foxeye and the calves. Get away from here and join up with one of the other Families.'
'Where?'
'Find them, Silverhair. It’s up to you now.'
'What about you?'
Owlheart turned to face the encroaching Lost, and their fire glittered in her deep-sunken eyes. 'The Lost will have to clamber over my bloated corpse before they reach our calves.'
'Owlheart—'
'It will make a good story in the Cycle, won’t it?' The Matriarch tugged at Silverhair’s trunk one last time, and touched her mouth and eyes. 'Go to work, Silverhair, and hurry; you might yet save us all.'
Then the Matriarch turned and faced the advancing Lost.
Silverhair turned to Foxeye, who stood over her terrified calves. 'They’re trying to suckle,' Foxeye said, her voice all but inaudible. 'But I have no milk to give them. I’m too frightened, Silverhair. I can’t even give them milk…'
'It’s all right,' Silverhair said. 'We’ll get out of here yet.' But the words sounded hollow to her own ears.
'They’ve come to destroy us, haven’t they? Maybe Snagtooth was right. Maybe all we can do is throw ourselves on the mercy of the Lost.'
'The Lost
Foxeye said bleakly, 'Then let them kill Owlheart, and spare me and my calves.'
Silverhair was shocked. 'You don’t mean that. Listen to me. I’m going to save you. You and the calves. It isn’t over yet, Foxeye; not while I have breath in my body.'
Foxeye hesitated. 'You promise?'
'Yes.' Silverhair shook her sister’s head with her trunk. 'Yes, I promise. Wait here.'
She turned and ran, deeper into the chasm.
The ravine became so narrow that it would barely have admitted two or three mammoths abreast, and the wind, pouring down from the glacier above, was sharp with frost crystals. But Silverhair lowered her head and kept on until she found the way jammed by the jumble of fallen ice Owlheart had described.
The blocks here were sharp-edged and chaotically cracked, as if they had been broken off the ice walls above by the scraping of some gigantic tusk. Silverhair stared at the impassable barrier, wondering how even the Lost could have caused so much damage so quickly.
She turned and worked her way back down the chasm. At last she found a patch of blue-black rock protruding through the ice walls. Perhaps the strength of the wind had kept this outcrop free of frost and snow. But the outcrop was some distance above her head.
Below it, on the ground, was a mound of scree — frost-shattered stone — mixed with loose snow and ice.
She stepped forward. The scree crunched and slithered under her feet. It was very tiring, like climbing up a snowbank. Small rocks began to litter the ice floor, broken off the rock face by frost, increasing with size, until she found herself climbing past giant boulders.
A thunder-stick cracked.
Its sharp noise rattled from the sheer walls of the chasm. And now the screams of terrified mammoths rattled from the walls.
Every fiber in her being impelled Silverhair to lunge back down the slope and return to her Family. But she knew she must stick to her task.
She turned and resumed her climb.
When she could reach the rock face, Silverhair dug into the rock wall with her tusks. The rock was loosely bound and easily scraped aside. As Owlheart had predicted, the exposed rock was rotten. Water would seep into the slightest crack and then, on freezing, expand, so widening the crack. Lichen, orange and green, dug into the friable rock face, accelerating its disintegration. Gradually the rock was split open, in splinters, shards, or great sheets, and over the years fragments had fallen away to form the slope of scree below her.
With growing urgency Silverhair ground her way deeper into the rotten rock. Soon she was working in a hail of frost-shattered debris, and she ignored the sharp flakes that dug into the soft skin of her trunk.
But the chasm was full of the screams of the calves, and she muttered and wept as she worked.
Then — suddenly — the wall fell away, and there was a deep, dark space ahead of her.
A cave.
Hope surged in her breast. With increased vigor she pounded at the rock face before her, using tusks, trunk, forehead to widen the hole. The rock collapsed to a heap of frost-smashed rubble before her.
She reached forward with her trunk. There was no wall ahead of her. But she could feel the walls to either side, scratched and scarred.
She felt a breath of air blowing the hairs on her face. Air that stank of brine. Owlheart had been right; there must be a passage here, open to the air. And that was all that was important right now; mysteries of tusk-scraped walls could wait.
But would the passage prove too narrow to get through? She had to find out before she committed them all to a trap.
Scrambling over the broken rocks, she plunged into the exposed cavern. It extended deep into the rock face. There was no light here, but she could feel the cool waft of brine, hear the soft echo of her footfalls from the walls. She pushed deeper, looking for light.
So it was that Silverhair did not see what became of Owlheart, as she confronted the troop of Lost.
The Lost advanced toward Owlheart, and their cries echoed from the walls.
The Matriarch reared up, raising her trunk and tusks, and trumpeted. Her voice, magnified by the narrow canyon walls, pealed down over the Lost, sounding like a herd of a thousand mammoths. And when she dropped back to the ground, her forefeet slammed down so hard they shook the very Earth.
But the Lost continued to advance.
After that first explosion of noise, the Lost had lowered their thunder-sticks and piled them on the ground. Now they raised up other weapons.
Here was a stick with a shard of rib or tusk embedded in its end. Here was a piece of shoulder blade, its edge sharpened cruelly, so huge it all but dwarfed the Lost who clutched it. And here were simple splinters of bone, held in paws, ready to slash and wound.
A chill settled around her heart. For they were weapons made of mammoth bone.
She put aside her primitive fear and assembled a cold determination. Whatever these Lost intended with this game of bones and sticks, this battle would surely take longer — win or lose — than if they used the thunder-sticks. If Silverhair stayed where she was and carried out her orders, they would have a chance.
Now one of the Lost came toward her. He was holding up a stick, tipped with a bone shard.
She lowered her head, eyeing him. 'So,' she told him, 'you are the first to die.'
She waited for him to close with her. That thin wooden stick would be no match for her huge curved ivory tusks. She would sweep it aside, and then -
The Lost hurled his stick as hard as he could.
Utterly unexpected, it flew at her like an angry bird. The bone tip speared her chest, unimpeded by the hair and skin and new summer fat there. She could feel it grind against a rib, and pierce
