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 become?"
Thunder was aghast. "Longtusk, you are part of the Cycle. We all are. Forty million years—"
But Longtusk, the perennial outsider, had spent the long winter since the death of Neck Like Spruce and her calf building his solitary strength. "Not me," he said. "Not any more."
Thunder sniffed the air sadly. "Oh, Longtusk, has your life been so hard that you care nothing for who you are?"
"Hard enough, old friend, that the Shaman with all his machinations can do nothing to hurt me. Not in my heart."
"I hope that’s true," said Thunder. "For it is a great test that lies ahead of you, little grazer. A great test indeed…"
A few days later the keepers assembled the mastodonts for the expedition. Longtusk accepted pack gear on his back, and took his customary place at the head of the column of mastodonts.
The party left the settlement, heading north. Though Crocus still sometimes participated in the drives and other expeditions, this time she was absent, and the expedition was commanded by the Shaman.
Though they followed a well-marked trail that cut across the steppe, showing this was a heavily traveled route, Longtusk had never come this way before. He did not yet know the destination or purpose of the expedition — but, he told himself, he did not need to know. His role was to work, not to understand.
The Dreamer Willow, enslaved by the Fireheads, was compelled to make the journey too. Willow’s clothing was dirty and in sore need of repair, and his broad back was bent under an immense load of dried food and weapons for the hunters. The pace was easy, for the mastodonts could not sustain a high speed for long, but even so the Dreamer struggled. It was obvious his stocky frame was not designed for long journeys — unlike the taller, more supple Fireheads, whose whip-thin legs covered the steppe with grace and ease.
Over the year since his capture Willow had grown increasingly wretched. During the winter, the female Dreamer taken with him had died of an illness the Fireheads had been unable, or unwilling, to treat. Willow was not like the Fireheads. He had grown up in a society that had known no significant change for generations, a place where the most important things in all the world were the faces of his Family around him, where strangers and the unknown were mere blurs, at the edge of consciousness. Now, alone, he was immersed in strangeness, in constant change, and he seemed constantly on the edge of bewilderment and terror, utterly unable to comprehend the Firehead world around him.
It was said that no matter how far the Fireheads roamed they had not come across another of his kind. Longtusk supposed that just as the mammoths had been scattered and driven north by the Firehead expansion, so had the Dreamers; perhaps there were few of them left alive, anywhere in the world.
Longtusk could not release Willow from his mobile prison of toil and incomprehension. But he sensed that his own presence, a familiar, massive figure, offered Willow some comfort in his loneliness. And now, out of sight of the keepers, he let Willow rest his pack against his own broad flank and hang onto his belly hairs for support.