Icebones

It seemed to Icebones that Cold-As-Sky was about to respond. But then she turned away, and the Ice Mammoths returned to their deep holes in the ground.

Icebones said, 'Let’s go, let’s go.' And, with one determined footstep after another, she began the steady plod toward the southeast, where distant mountains cast long jagged shadows.

4 The Dust

I know it is hard, little Icebones. But you have walked your mammoths around the world. And there is only a little further to go.

'But that last ‘little further’ may be the hardest of all, Boaster.'

Don’t call me Boaster! Tell me about the land…

And she hesitated, for this land was like nothing she had experienced, either in her old life before the Sleep, or even here in this strange, cold world. For this land had been warped by the great impact which had created the Footfall of Kilukpuk itself.

She stood at the head of an ancient water-carved channel. The ground was broken into heaped-up fragments, as if the water, draining away, had left behind a vast underground cavern into which the land had collapsed. But the fallen rocks were very old, heavily pitted and eroded and covered with dust. And when the mammoths dug deeper into the ground they found it riddled with broad tunnels — but they were dry, hollowed out like ancient bones, as if the water that made them had long disappeared.

All around her there were hills, great clumps of them, grouped into chains like the wrinkles of an ancient mammoth. But the mountains were eroded to a weary smoothness, and they were extensively punctured and smashed by younger, smaller craters.

Thunder, his listening skills developing all the time, said he thought that around the central basin there were — not the single chain of rim mountains that surrounded most craters — five concentric rings of mountains, vast ripples in the rock thrown up by the giant primordial splash. Lacing through these rim-mountain chains were vast, shallow channels, apparently cut by water in the deep past. The channels themselves were covered in crater punctures, or pierced by sharper, litter-filled channels.

Around Icebones, the Family was rooting desultorily at the unpromising, hummocky ground. Icebones felt an unreasonable stab of impatience with this little group of gaunt, helpless mammoths.

She thought of the Clan gatherings Silverhair had told her of, when Families and bachelor herds would congregate on great green-waving steppes, so many mammoths they turned the air golden with their shining hair, and for days on end they would talk and fight and mate…

But such gatherings had been even before Silverhair’s time. This starving group was perhaps the only true mammoths in half a world, and Icebones knew she had no choice but to accept her lot.

Boaster rumbled softly, still waiting for her reply.

'It is a very old land, Boaster,' she said at last. 'And, like an old mammoth, it is ill-tempered when disturbed.'

It is an old world, I think, much disturbed by the Lost.

But now Thunder was calling, his voice a deep uncomfortable growl.

'I must go. Graze well, Boaster.'

And you, little Icebones…

Thunder was standing on a slight rise, staring to the south, trunk raised. She saw that wind, blowing from that direction, was ruffling the hair around his face. 'Can you taste it?'

Peering south, she made out a hard black line that spread right along the horizon, separating the crimson land from the purple sky. The wind touched her face. It was harsh and gritty. She raised her trunk, exposing its sensitive tip. When she put the tip in her mouth she could taste iron.

'Dust,' she said. 'Like the storm in the Gouge.'

'Yes. It is a storm, and it carries a vast cloud of dust. And it is coming toward us.'

Icebones felt her strength dissipate, like water running into the dust. No more, she thought: we have endured enough.

'You are alert, Thunder. We rely on your senses.'

But this time her praise made little impact, for his worry was profound.

The light grew muddled, as if the day itself was confused. Gradually the wind picked up, blustering in their faces and whipping dust devils before it.

The storm front grew into a towering hall, a curtain that was deep crimson-black at its base and a wispy pink-gray at the top, hanging from the sky like the guard hairs of some vast mammoth. Icebones could hear the crack and grumble of thunder, and the ragged wisps at the top of the sheet of air whipped and churned angrily. It was an awesome display of raw power.

Icebones had decided that the mammoths should not try to move. They were already badly weakened by hunger and thirst and cold. She tried to ensure they rested, gathering their energy, just as the storm did.

The mammoths had nothing to say to each other. They merely stood, bruised, dismayed, waiting for the storm to break on them.

There was a moment of stillness. Even the wind died briefly. Icebones could see her own shadow at her feet.

When she looked up she could see the sun. It shone fitfully through veils of black cloud and dust that raced across the sky, churning and thrashing.

And then the sun vanished, and the air exploded.

Gusts as hard as rock battered at Icebones’s face and legs and neck, and the dust they carried scoured mercilessly at her hair and exposed flesh. It was as if she was in a bubble inside the dust, a bubble that was flying sideways through the air. The sun showed only in glimpses between tall, scudding clouds, and lightning crackled far above her, casting deep purple glows through layers of cloud and dust.

She was immersed in vast layers of noise: the crack of thunder, the howl of the air over the rock, the relentless scraping of the dust. Her sound impressions broke up into chaotic shards. She lost her deep mammoth’s sense of the land, and she felt lost, bewildered.

And — unlike the storm they had endured in the Gouge — this wind was dry, as dry as the dust it carried, and it seemed to suck the moisture from her blood.

The mammoths were around her, and she felt the tension of their muscles as they fought the storm. But she knew she was burning her last reserves of strength just to stay standing against the pressure of the wind.

Autumn was beside her, trumpeting: 'It will take half a day for this storm to wash over us, for it stretches deep into the southern lands.'

'I did not imagine it could be so bad. If we stay here our bones will be worn to dust…'

'We must find shelter.' That was Thunder, his Bull’s growl almost lost in the howl of the air. 'There is a crater rim, some way to the south.'

'We must try,' Icebones said. 'But how will we find it?'

'The storm comes from the south. If we head into it, we will find our ridge.'

Autumn rumbled, 'It is hard enough just to stand. To walk into that horror—'

'Nevertheless we must,' Icebones said. 'Thunder, you go first. The next in line grab his tail. If anyone loses hold we stop immediately. Thunder, you will not have to lead for long. We will take turns.'

Thunder said, 'I will endure—'

'We will do it the way I say. And be wary of the blood weed.' Trying to project confidence, she trumpeted, 'Let us begin. Let’s go, let’s go…'

To break their huddled formation, to expose themselves to the wind, was hard. No matter how she tucked her trunk under her face, no matter how tightly she squeezed shut her eyes, still the dust lashed at her as if it was a living thing, malevolent, determined to injure. The calf was deeply unhappy, trumpeting his discomfort into the wind, continually trying to push his way back under his mother’s guard hairs.

As if from a vast distance she heard Thunder’s thin, readying trumpet cry.

A few heartbeats later, Spiral began to move, her steady footsteps determined, her buttocks swaying. At the end of the line, Icebones, keeping a careful hold on Spiral’s tail, followed behind.

They walked into howling darkness. Icebones could tell nothing of the land around her, smell nothing but the harsh iron tang of the dust that clogged her nostrils and mouth. It was a shameful, selfish relief to shelter behind Spiral’s huge bulk.

Spiral stopped abruptly. Icebones’s head rammed into her thighs.

Icebones felt her way along the line to sniff out the problem.

It was the calf. Wailing, terrified, Woodsmoke had slumped to the ground.

With much cajoling and lifting by the strong trunks of Autumn and Icebones, Woodsmoke finally got to his feet. But Icebones could feel how uncertain his legs were, as weak as if he was a newborn again.

They managed only a few more steps before the calf collapsed once more.

Icebones had the mammoths form up into a wedge shape facing the storm, with one of the adults at the apex, and the calf and his mother sheltered at the rear.

'His strength is gone, Icebones,' Breeze cried through the storm’s noise. 'He is hungry and thirsty and I have no milk to give him. We must stay here with him until the storm is over.'

'But,' Thunder growled, 'we cannot stay here. This foul dust sucks the last moisture out of my body.'

'We can’t stay and we can’t go on,' Spiral said. 'What must we do, Matriarch?'

Battered by the storm’s violence, blinded, deafened, her own strength wearing down, Icebones knew how she must answer. And she knew that she must test her new Family’s resolve as it had not been tested before.

…But I am just Icebones, she thought desperately. I am little more than a calf myself. Who am I to inflict such pain on these patient, loyal, suffering mammoths? How do I know this is right? Oh, Silverhair, if only you were here!

But her mother was not here. And her course was clear. She was Matriarch. And, like generations of Matriarchs before her, she reached into the Cycle, the ancient wisdom of mammoths who had learned to survive.

'Autumn, Thunder — do you think we could reach the crater rim, if not for the calf?'

Thunder seemed baffled. 'But we have the calf—'

'Just tell me.'

'Yes. We are strong enough for that, Matriarch.'

Icebones said gravely, 'The mammoth dies, but mammoths live on.'

Spiral understood first. She wailed, 'Do you see what this monster is saying? She wants us to abandon the calf. We must go to the crater rim, and save ourselves, while he dies alone in the