Her intention was unmistakable.
Without thought — despite rumbles of warning from the mastodonts, cries of alarm from the hunters — Longtusk charged toward the Whiteskins.
Longtusk expected the Whiteskins to flee. But they held their ground. They dropped to their knees and raised weapons of some kind.
Suddenly there were more small spears of the type that had felled Bedrock flying through the air around him, fast and straight.
'They are not spears,' puffed Thunder as he ran after the mammoth, 'but
And, as if in response to Thunder’s warning, a small flint-tipped spear — no, an
Without breaking stride, he curled his trunk and plucked the arrow out of his cheek. Blood sprayed, but immediately the pain lessened.
Jaw Like Rock was charging past him, the keeper Spindle clinging to Jaw’s hair as if for life itself, his mouth drawn back in a rictus of terror. Jaw called, 'Had a mosquito bite, grazer?'
'Something like that.'
The big tusker trumpeted his exhilaration and charged forward.
Still the strange Fireheads did not break and run.
An arrow lodged in the foreleg of Jaw Like Rock. Longtusk could smell the sharp, coppery stink of fresh blood. Jaw screamed and pulled up, despite repeated beatings from Spindle on his back. Jaw knelt down, snapping away the arrow. Then, bellowing with rage and pain, he plunged on.
Still Spindle continued to beat him and scream in his ear.
Now they were on the Whiteskins. Mastodonts, Whiteskins and Fireheads flew at each other in a crude, uncoordinated melee, and trumpets, yells and screams broke the dust-laden air.
Longtusk lunged at the Whiteskins around him with his tusks and trunk. But, nimble and light on their feet, they stayed out of his reach. They jabbed at him with their spears and rocks, aiming to slash at his trunk or belly, or trying for his legs.
Calmly, Thunder called to Longtusk: 'Watch out for those knives. These brutes have fought us before. They are trying for your hamstrings. Recall that rhino, grazer. I’ve no intention of carrying you back to the stockade.'
Longtusk growled his gratitude.
Jaw Like Rock, enraged by pain, feinted at a fat Whiteskin. The Firehead, evading the lunge of those tusks, got close to Jaw with his spear. But Jaw swung his tusks sideways and knocked the Whiteskin to the ground. Then, with a single ruthless motion, he placed his foot on the head of the scrambling Whiteskin.
Jaw pressed hard, and the head burst like an overripe fruit, and the Whiteskin was limp.
Through all of this Spindle clung to Jaw’s back, white-eyed, obviously terrified.
But for Longtusk there was no time for reflection, or horror; for now one of the Whiteskins came directly at him, jabbing with a long spear. He was a big buck, shaven-headed and stripped to the waist, and the whole of his upper body was coated with the acrid white paste. He had a wound on his temple, a broad cut sliced deep into the greasy flesh there — as if made by a boomerang.
Crocus, on his back, yelled her anger. With a screech like a she-cat, her blonde hair flying around her, she leaped off Longtusk’s back. She landed on the big Firehead, knocking him flat. She raked her nails down his bare back, leaving red gouges. The Whiteskin howled and twisted — and, despite Crocus’s anger and determination, he soon began to prevail, for Crocus’s strength and weight were no match for this big male.
Walks With Thunder, surrounded by his own circle of assailants, called breathlessly, 'Protect her, Longtusk. She’s important now. More than you know…'
Longtusk had every intention of doing just that, but while the two Fireheads flailed in the dirt, he could easily harm Crocus as much as her opponent. He stood over them, trumpeting, waiting for an opportunity.
At last the Whiteskin wrestled Crocus flat on her back. He straddled her, sitting astride her belly, raising his fists to strike.
Now was Longtusk’s chance.
The mammoth reached out with his trunk, meaning to grab the Whiteskin around his neck…
The Whiteskin jerked upright, suddenly. His paws fluttered in the air around his face, like birds, out of his control. Then he fell backward, twitched once, and was still.
Longtusk reached down and pulled the corpse off Crocus.
He saw immediately how the Whiteskin had died. The chisel that had destroyed the rhino — still stained by the great beast’s blood — had been driven upward into the Whiteskin’s face, through the soft bones in the roof of his mouth, and into his brain.
The girl got to her feet. She stared down at the creature she had killed. Then she anchored one foot on the Whiteskin’s ugly, twisted face, and yanked the chisel out of his skull. The last of his blood gushed feebly.
She stepped on his chest and emitted a howl of victory — just as her father had on bringing down the rhino.
Then she fell to her knees and buried her face in her paws.
Longtusk reached out his trunk to her. She curled up, pulling the long hairs close around her, as she had as a cub, lost and alone on the steppe.
The Whiteskins were fleeing. The mastodonts trumpeted after them, and the Firehead hunters hurled their last spears and darts.
In all, four Whiteskins had fallen. Under the watchful, contemptuous eyes of Jaw Like Rock — whose leg wound still leaked blood — the trainer, Spindle, walked from one Whiteskin corpse to the next, jabbing his spear into their defenseless cooling bodies.
Walks With Thunder came up to Longtusk. He was dusty, blood-spattered, breathing hard. 'I’m getting too old for this. Bedrock came north to find a place to live without war… But the world is filling up, it seems.
'Now we must attend to business. We must collect Bedrock’s body. And we will walk back the way we came and retrieve the spears that were thrown. Then we will return to the settlement. Now, everything will be different…
Longtusk looked up in time to see it happen.
He had heard of this before. A mastodont, cruelly treated by a Firehead keeper, would not lash out in anger. Instead he would bide his time, enduring the insults and punishment, waiting for the right opportunity.
Now here was Spindle, without his goad, dancing on the bodies of already dead Whiteskins; and here was Jaw Like Rock, calmly watching him, unrestrained, not even hobbled.
In the very last instant Spindle seemed to understand the mistake he had made. He raised his paws, as if pleading.
Jaw lunged forward with a single clean, strong motion, a thrust born of experience and training, and his tusk punctured Spindle’s heart.
5
The Remembering
The hunting party returned to the Firehead settlement, subdued, all but silent. They moved slowly, for Jaw Like Rock was forced to walk hobbled, armed Firehead hunters shadowing his every step.
Walks With Thunder, meanwhile, moving with slow dignity, bore the bodies of Bedrock and Spindle, wrapped in fur blankets. The long nasal horn of the rhino, Bedrock’s last trophy, was laid on top of his body, still caked with dried blood.
Crocus walked beside Thunder, clutching her father’s cold paw.
'And then comes the battle.
'It can be magnificent, Longtusk! We charge into the ranks of the enemy, all but invulnerable to their arrows and axes, and scatter their ranks. We stab with our tusks and crush with our feet. If the enemy has never seen mastodonts before they are terrified, awed out of their wits.
'But it never lasts.
'As warriors we are clumsy beasts, Longtusk. The Firehead fighters learn to step aside and assail us from the sides, encircling us and separating us, striking with arrows and spears, slashing our trunks and hamstrings, killing our riders.
'And sometimes — despite the training, despite the intoxicating brews — we recall who we are. Then we panic and retreat, even trampling our own warriors.' He closed his small eyes, deep in their pits of wrinkled skin. 'I thought I had put it all behind me. Now it is coming again.'
When they reached the Firehead settlement, Bedrock’s body was immediately claimed by the Shaman, Smokehat, who had it brought into his own hut of bone and turf. The Shaman berated the Firehead hunters who had been with Bedrock when he died, and even Longtusk and the mastodonts.
As for Crocus, she retreated into Bedrock’s hut — hers, now — carrying the rhino horn.
As the days wore on, Crocus was forced to receive a string of visitors: older males of the Firehead tribe, there to consult, Thunder told Longtusk, about the meaning of the sudden appearance of these other Fireheads, the Whiteskins, on the steppe. But she did not emerge from her hut, refusing even to see Longtusk.
Longtusk felt bereft. He hadn’t realized how much he had come to rely on Crocus’s companionship, which seemed to fill a need not satisfied even by the mastodonts.
He threw his great muscles into the work of heavy lifting and hauling, and his companions treated him with a bluff respect. And when he wasn’t working he spent much of his time in the Firehead settlement.
It was unusual for Bull mastodonts to be allowed to wander without keepers through the Firehead community, but after his long association with Crocus — during which time not a hair on her head had been harmed — Longtusk seemed to be regarded as a special case.
But he remained the only mammoth in the captive herd, and adults gaped at him or cowered from his immense tusks, and he was constantly followed around by a small herd of goggling Firehead cubs. They collected the hair he shed, and used it to stuff their moccasins and hats and pillows. He learned to endure the perpetual tugs and strokes of the cubs, and he took great care not to step on one of those stick-thin limbs or eggshell skulls.
Work went on for Fireheads and mastodonts: hunting game for food, building and rebuilding the huts, extending and filling the storage pits for meat and hay — for the cycle of the seasons was not slowed even by death, and the inevitable approach of winter was never far from the thoughts of anybody in the community.
