The strange Fireheads didn’t even seem to see it coming — they scattered as it flew among them, like mice disturbed by an owl — but the boomerang flew unerringly to the temple of one of them, knocking him to the ground.
Jaw growled his approval. "The one who struck down Bedrock. He will not live out the day…"
"Whiteskins," Thunder muttered. "I never thought I’d see their ugly, capering forms again."
Longtusk said, "You’ve met them before?"
"Oh, yes. Many times. But never so far north."
Now Crocus came running to Longtusk. Her face was contorted with rage, and her blonde hair blew around her. She held the stone chisel which Bedrock had driven into the rhino’s spine. "Baitho! Baitho!" He lowered his head and trunk, and she grabbed his ears and scrambled onto his back. "Agit!"
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 arrows. The Whiteskins have bows — never mind, grazer! Just keep your head high when you run. You can take an arrow or two — but not your rider."
And, as if in response to Thunder’s warning, a small flint-tipped spear — no, an arrow — plunged out of nowhere into Longtusk’s cheek. The pain was sharp and intense; the small blade had reached as far as his tongue.
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 mêlée, 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… Jaw!"
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.