Longtusk

now, in an instant, it is gone, vanished like a snowflake on the tongue, demolished by the Fireheads.'

'Demolished and remade,' growled Thunder. 'But that is their genius. These Dreamers lived here, as you say, for generation on generation, and it never occurred to a single one of them that there might be a different way to build a hearth.'

'But the Dreamers didn’t need a different hearth. The one they had was sufficient.'

'But that doesn’t matter, little grazer,' Thunder said. 'You and I must take the world as it is. They imagine how it might be different. Whether it’s better is beside the point; to the Fireheads, change is all that matters…'

The two Dreamer captives, Willow and the female, huddled together on the ground, bound so tightly they couldn’t even embrace. They seemed to be crying.

If Crocus recalled how the Dreamers had saved her life, Longtusk thought, she had driven it from her mind, now and forever.

That night, when Crocus came to feed him, as she had since she was a cub, Longtusk turned away. He was distressed, angered, wanting only to be with his mate and calf in the calm of the steppe.

Crocus left him, baffled and upset.

That night — at the Shaman’s insistence, because of his defiance over Willow — Longtusk was hobbled, for the first time in years.

The Fireheads stayed close to the caves for several days. Crocus sent patrols to the north, east and west, seeking Dreamers. They wished to be sure this land they coveted was cleansed of their ancient cousins before they brought any more of their own kind north.

Lemming became very ill. His wound turned swollen and shiny. The Shaman, who administered medicine to the Fireheads, applied hot cloths in an effort to draw out the poison. But the wound festered badly.

At last the bulk of the column formed up for the long journey back to the settlement. They left behind three hunters and one of the mastodonts. The captive Dreamers had to walk behind the mastodonts, their paws bound and tied to a mastodont’s tail.

The hunters were heavily armed, but there had been no sign of more Dreamers since that first encounter. Perhaps, like the mammoths, the Dreamers had learned that the Fireheads could not be fought: the only recourse was flight, leaving them to take whatever they wanted.

'Since you refused to kill the Dreamer buck,' growled Thunder as they walked, 'the Shaman has declared you untrustworthy.'

'He has always hated me,' said Longtusk indifferently.

'Yes,' said Thunder. 'He is jealous of your closeness to Crocus. And that jealousy may yet cause you great harm, Longtusk. I think you will have to prove your loyalty and trustworthiness. The Shaman is demonstrating, even now, what he does to his enemies.'

'What do you mean?'

'Lemming. The Shaman is letting him rot. His wound has festered and turned green, like the rest of his foreleg and shoulder. That is his way. The Shaman does not kill; he lets his enemies destroy themselves. Still, they die.'

'But why?'

Thunder snorted. 'Because Lemming is a favorite of Crocus’s — and so he is an obstacle to the Shaman. And any such obstacle is, simply, to be removed, as the Fireheads remove the Dreamers from the land they covet. The Fireheads are vicious, calculating predators,' the old mastodont said. 'Never forget that. The wolf’s first bite is his responsibility. His second is yours… Quiet.'

All the mastodonts stopped dead and fell silent. The Fireheads stared at them, puzzled.

'A contact rumble,' Walks With Thunder said at last. 'From the settlement.'

Longtusk strained to hear the fat, heavy sound waves pulsing through the very rocks of the Earth, a chthonic sound that resonated in his chest and the spaces in his skull.

'The calf,' Thunder said. 'The Cows have sung the birth chorus. Longtusk — Neck Like Spruce has dropped her calf.'

Longtusk felt his heart hammer. 'And? Is it healthy?'

'…I don’t think so. And Spruce—'

Longtusk, distressed, trumpeted his terror. 'I’m so far away! So far!'

Thunder tried to comfort him. 'If you were there, what could you do? This is a time for the Cows, Longtusk. Neck Like Spruce has her sisters and mother. And the keepers know what to do.'

'The best keeper is Lemming, and he is here, with us, bleeding in the dirt! Oh, Thunder, you were right. A mammoth should not mate a mastodont. We are too different — the mixed blood — like Fireheads and Dreamers.'

'Any calf of yours will be strong, Longtusk. A fighter. And Neck Like Spruce is a tough nut herself. They’ll come through. You’ll see.'

But Longtusk refused to be comforted.

Lemming was dead before they reached the settlement. His body, stinking with corruption, was buried under a heap of stones by a river.

And when they arrived at the settlement, Longtusk learned he was alone once more.

Neck Like Spruce had not survived the rigors of her birth. The calf, an impossible, attenuated mix of mammoth and mastodont, had not lasted long without his mother’s milk.

The Remembering of mother and calf was a wash of sound and smell and touch, as if the world had dissolved around Longtusk.

When he came out of his grief, though, he felt cleansed.

He had lost a Family before, after all. If it was his destiny to be alone, then so be it. He would be strong and independent, yielding to none.

He allowed Crocus to ride him. But she sensed his change. Her affection for him dried, like a glacial river in winter.

Thus it went for the rest of that summer, and the winter thereafter.

7 The Test

In the spring, seeking to feed the growing population of the settlement, the Fireheads organized a huge hunting drive.

It took some days’ preparation.

Trackers spotted a herd of horses on the steppe. Taking pains not to disturb the animals at their placid grazing, they erected drive lines, rows of cairns made of stone and bone fragments. The mastodonts were used to carry the raw materials for these lines, spanning distances it took a day to cross. The cairns were topped by torches of brush soaked in fat.

Then came the drive.

As the horses grazed their way quietly across the steppe, still oblivious of danger, the hunters ran along the drive lines, lighting the torches. The mastodonts waited, in growing anticipation. It fell to Longtusk to keep the others in order as they scented the horses’ peculiar, pungent stink, heard the light clopping of their hooves and their high whinnying.

The horses drifted into view.

Like other steppe creatures, the horses were well adapted to the cold. They were short and squat. Their bellies were coated with light hair, while their backs sprouted long, thick fur that they shed in the summer, and the two kinds of hair met in a jagged line along each beast’s flank. Long manes draped over their necks and eyes, and their tails dangled to the ground.

The horses could look graceful, Longtusk supposed, and they showed some skill at using their hooves to dig out fodder even from the deepest snow. But they were foolish creatures and would panic quickly, and so were easily hunted en masse.

At last the order came: 'Agit!'

Longtusk raised his trunk and trumpeted loudly. The mastodonts charged, roaring and trumpeting, with tusks flashing and trunks raised.

The horses — confused, neighing — stampeded away from the awesome sight. But here came Firehead hunters, whirling noise-makers and yelling, running at the horses from either side.

All of this was designed to make the empty-headed horses run the way the hunters wanted them to go.

The horses, panicking, jostling, soon found themselves in a narrowing channel marked out by the cairns of stone. If they tried to break out of the drive lines they were met by noise-makers, spear thrusts or boomerang strikes.

The drive ended at a sharp-walled ridge, hidden from the horses by a crude blind of dry bush. The lead horses crashed through the flimsy blind and tumbled into the rocky defile. They screamed as they fell to earth, their limbs snapped and ribs crushed. Others, following, shied back, whinnying in panic. But the pressure of their fellows, pushing from behind, drove them, too, over the edge.

So, impelled by their own flight, the horses tumbled to their deaths, the herd dripping into the defile like some overflowing viscous liquid.

When the hunters decided they had culled enough, they ordered the mastodonts back, letting the depleted herd scatter and flee to safety. Then the hunters stalked among their victims, many of them still screaming and struggling to rise, and they speared hearts and slit throats.

Later would come the hard work of butchery, and the mastodonts would be employed to carry meat and hide back to the settlement. It would be hard, dull work, and the stink of the meat was repulsive to the mastodonts’ finely tuned senses. But they did it anyhow — as did Longtusk, who always bore more than his share.

After the successful drive, the Fireheads celebrated, and the mastodonts were allowed a few days to rest and recover.

But Longtusk noticed the Shaman, Smokehat, spending much time at the stockade, arguing with the keepers and jabbing his small fingers toward Longtusk.

Walks With Thunder came to him. Thunder walked stiffly now, for arthritis was plaguing his joints.

Longtusk said, 'They seem to be planning another hunt.'

'No, not a hunt.'

'Then what?'

'Something simpler. More brutal… Something that will be difficult for you, Longtusk. The keepers are debating whether you should be allowed to lead this expedition. But the Shaman insists you go.'

'You still read them well.'

'Better than I like. Longtusk, this is it. The test. The trial the Shaman has been concocting for you for a long time — at least since that incident when you spared the life of the Dreamer.'

'I do not care for the Shaman, and I do not fear him,' said Longtusk coldly.

'Be careful, Longtusk,' Thunder quoted the Cycle. 'The art of traveling is to pick the least dangerous path.'

Longtusk growled and turned away. 'The Cycle has nothing to teach me. This is my place now. I am a creature of the Fireheads — nothing more. Isn’t that what you always counseled me to