It was Jaw Like Rock.
Longtusk bellowed out a contact rumble, but there was no reply.
He sought out Walks With Thunder.
"Didn’t you hear that? Jaw Like Rock called out."
"No," said Thunder bleakly. "You’re mistaken."
"But I heard him—"
Thunder wrapped his trunk around Longtusk’s. "Jaw is dead. Accept it. It is the way."
Again that trumpeting came, thin and clear and full of pain.
Longtusk, confused, distressed, blundered away from the stockade and headed into the Firehead settlement.
Tonight it had become a place of bewildering noise and stink and confusion. The Fireheads ran back and forth, full of fermented liquid and rich food — or they slept where they had fallen, curled up by the hearths in the open air. He saw one male and female coupling, energetically but clumsily, in the half-shadow of a hut wall.
Few Fireheads even seemed aware of Longtusk; he had to be careful, in fact, not to step on sleeping faces.
He persisted, pushing through the noise and mess and confusion, until he found Jaw Like Rock.
They had put him in a shallow pit, scraped roughly out of the ground and surrounded by stakes and ropes. Fire burned brightly in lamps all around the pit, making the scene as bright as day, but filling the air with stinking, greasy smoke.
It was a feeble confinement from which a great tusker like Jaw Like Rock could have escaped immediately.
But Jaw was no longer in full health.
Jaw was dragging both his hind legs. It seemed his hamstrings or tendons had been cut, so he could no longer bolt or charge. And there were darts sticking out of his flesh, over his belly and behind his ears. His skin was discolored around the punctures, as if the darts had delivered a poison. He was wheezing, and great loops of spittle hung from his dangling tongue.
There were Fireheads all around the pit, all male, and they were stamping, clapping and hammering their drums of bone and skin. One of them was creeping into Jaw’s pit, carrying a long spear. It was Bareface, Longtusk saw, the young hunter who had distinguished himself on the fatal rhino hunt. He was naked, coated in red and yellow paint.
Longtusk trumpeted. "Jaw! Jaw Like Rock!"
Jaw’s answering rumble was faint, and punctuated by gasps for breath. "Is that you, grass chewer? Come to see the dead Bull?"
"Get out of there!"
"…No. It’s over for me. It was over the moment I tusked that spawn of Aglu. I planned it, after all, waited for my moment… But it was worth it. At least Spindle will torture no more mastodonts. Or mammoths."
"You aren’t dead! You breathe, you hurt—"
"I’m dead as poor Bedrock in his hole in the ground. Don’t you see? We belong to the Fireheads. They tend our wounds, and order our lives, and feed us. But we live and die by their whim. It is — a contract. And here, at the climax of this night of celebration, this one who creeps toward me on his belly, Bareface, will prove his courage by dispatching me to the aurora."
"But they’ve already crippled you! Where is the courage in that?"
"The ways of the Fireheads are impossible to understand… But, yes, you’re right, Longtusk. We must see some courage tonight." Jaw raised himself on his crippled legs and trumpeted his defiance. "Remember me, calf of Primus! Remember!"
And with a roar that shook the ground, he hurled himself forward toward Bareface.
The hunter, with lightning-fast reflexes, jammed the shaft of his spear into the ground.
Jaw’s great body impaled itself. Longtusk heard flesh rip, and smelled the sour stink of Jaw’s guts as they spilled, dark and steaming, to the ground.
The Fireheads roared their triumph. Longtusk trumpeted and fled.
He was in a stand of young trees in the new, growing forest that bordered the Firehead settlement. It was still deep night, dark and cloudy.
He couldn’t recall where he had run, how he had got here.
But she was here — he could sense it through his rage, his grief and confusion, the musth that burned through his body — she, Neck Like Spruce, no calf now but a warm and musty presence, solid and massive as the Earth itself, here in the dark, as if she had been waiting for him.
He searched out, sensing and hearing her, and found her. Her secretions were damp on the tip of his trunk. Tasting them, he knew that she, too, was ready: in oestrus, bearing the egg that might grow into their calf.
He heard her urinate, a warm dark stream, and then she turned to face him. He found her trunk, and intertwined it with his, tugging gently, seeking its tip; the soft fingers of her trunk, so unlike his own, explored the long hairs that dangled from his belly.
For a last instant he recalled the warnings of Walks With Thunder: stay away from Neck Like Spruce. Stay away…
Then his mouth found hers, warm tongues flickering, and the time for thinking was over.
6
The Cleansing
Winter and summer, winter and summer…
As she approached the second anniversary of her father’s death and her own accession to power, Crocus assembled a great war party of mastodonts and Firehead hunters. It was a time of preparation, and gathering determination — and dread.
The artisans had worked all winter, manufacturing, repairing and sharpening knives and spear points and atlatls. And every time the weather cleared sufficiently the hunters had gone out to hurl spears and boomerangs at rocks and painted animal figures — and, when they spotted them, live targets, the animals of the winter like the Arctic foxes. There were days when the settlement seemed to bristle with the Fireheads and their weapons, spears, darts and knives as dense as the spiky fur of a mastodont. But all the weapons were small and light — not designed for big game, like the giant deer or the rhino, but to pierce the flimsy hides of other Fireheads: weapons of war, not hunting.
When the preparations were complete, Crocus called for a final feast.
The Firehead hunters gorged themselves on food and drink. Longtusk watched cubs crack open big animal bones to suck out the thick marrow within, the bones returned by hunting parties that roamed north. Not for the first time Longtusk wondered what animal provided those giant snacks.
Longtusk spent his time with Neck Like Spruce, who was now heavy with calf — his calf.
It was unusual for a Bull, mammoth or mastodont, to remain close to his mate so long after the mating; usually a Bull would stay around just long enough to ensure conception by his seed had taken place. But Neck Like Spruce’s case was different.
The calf was already overdue. Like mammoths, the oestrus cycle of these mastodonts was timed so that the calves would be born in early spring, maximizing the time available for them to feed and grow strong before the calves faced the rigors of their first winter.
And throughout it had been a difficult pregnancy, despite the best attention of Lemming, the keeper, and his array of incomprehensible medicines: salves of water and hot butter for wounds, blood-red deer meat to treat inflammations, drops of milk for sore eyes… Spruce had become a gaunt, bony shadow, and her hair had fallen out in clumps.
It disturbed Longtusk that there was absolutely nothing he could do — and it disturbed him even more that Lemming, the undisputed Firehead expert on mastodonts and their illnesses, was at this crucial time preparing to leave, accompanying the Bulls on their northern march.
Through that last night, Longtusk stayed with Neck Like Spruce. She slept briefly. He could see the calf in her belly struggle fitfully, pushing at the skin that contained it.