Staggering, she tried to take a breath. But it was impossible, and there was a sucking feeling at her chest.
Oddly, there was little pain: just a cold, clean sensation.
But her shock was huge. The Lost hadn’t even closed with her yet — but she knew she had taken her last breath. As suddenly as this, with the first strike, it was over.
The Lost who had injured her knew what he had done. He jumped up and down, waving his paws in the air in triumph.
Well, she thought, if this breath in my lungs is to be my last, I must make it count.
She plunged forward and twisted her head. The sharp tip of her right tusk cut clean through the skin and muscle of the throat of the celebrating Lost.
He looked down in disbelief as his blood spilled out over his chest and fell to the ice, steaming. Then he fell, slipping in his own blood.
Owlheart charged again, and she was in amongst the Lost.
She reached out with her trunk and grabbed one of them around the waist. He screamed, flailing his arms, as she lifted him high into the air. While she held him up, another bone-tipped stick was hurled at her chest. It pierced her skin but hit a rib, doing little damage. Impatiently she crashed her chest against the ice wall. There was an instant of agonizing pain as the embedded sticks twisted in her wounds, opening them further, but then they broke away.
She tightened the grip of her mighty trunk until she felt the Lost’s thin bones crack; he shuddered in her grip, then turned limp. She dropped him to the ice.
She longed to take a breath, but knew she must not try.
Two dead. She knew she would not survive this encounter, but perhaps it wasn’t yet over; if she could destroy one or two more of the Lost, Silverhair and the others might still have a chance.
She looked for her next opponent. They were strung out before her, wary now, shouting, raising their sticks and shoulder blades.
She selected one of them. She raised her trunk and charged. He dropped his stick, screamed, and ran. She prepared to trample him…
But now another came forward. It was the hairless one, the one Silverhair called Skin-of-Ice.
He hurled a stick.
It buried itself in her mouth with such venomous power that her head was knocked sideways.
She fell. The stick caught on the ground, driving itself farther into the roof of her mouth. The agony was huge.
She tried to get her legs underneath her. She knew she must rise again. But the ground was slippery, coated with some slick substance. She looked down, and saw that it was her own blood; it soaked, crimson and thick, into the broken ice beneath her.
Now the hairless Lost stood before her. He held up a shard of bone, as if to show it to her.
She gathered her strength for one last lunge with her tusk. He evaded her easily.
He stepped forward and plunged the bone into her belly, ripping at skin and muscle. Coiled viscera, black with blood, snaked onto the ice from her slashed belly. She tried to rise, but her legs were tangled in something.
Tangled in her own spilled, gray guts.
She fell forward. She raised her trunk. Perhaps she could raise a final warning. But her breath was gone.
Within her layers of fat and thick wool, Owlheart had spent her life fighting the cold. But now, at last, all her layers of protection were breached. And the cold swept over her exposed heart.
In a cloud of rock dust, Silverhair burst out of her cavern, back into the chasm.
She was overwhelmed by the noise: the screams and trumpets of terrified mammoths, the calls and yelps of the Lost, the relentless clatter of the light-bird, all of it rattling from the sheer ice walls.
Owlheart had fallen.
Silverhair could see two of the Lost climbing over her flank. They were hauling bone-tipped sticks out of her side, and then plunging them deep into her again, as if determined to ensure she was truly dead.
But Owlheart had not given her life cheaply. Silverhair could see the unmoving forms of two of the Lost, broken and gouged.
Silverhair mourned her fallen Matriarch, and her courage. But it had not been enough. For the rest of the Lost were advancing toward Foxeye and the calves.
And Skin-of-Ice himself, bearing a giant stick tipped with sharpened bone, was leading them.
Foxeye seemed frozen by her fear. Sunfire, the infant, was all but invisible beneath the belly hairs of her mother. And Croptail, the young Bull, stepped forward; he raised his small trunk and brayed his challenge at the Lost.
Skin-of-Ice made a cawing noise and looked to his companions. Silverhair, anger and disgust mixing with her fear, knew that the malevolent Lost, already stained with the blood of the Matriarch, was mocking the impossible bravery of this poor, trapped Bull.
Silverhair raised her trunk and trumpeted. She started down the scree slope. "Croptail! Get your mother. We can escape. Come on—"
The Lost looked up, startled. Some of them looked afraid, she thought with satisfaction, to see another adult mammoth apparently materialize from the solid rock wall.
Perhaps that pause would give her a chance to save her Family.
The young Bull ran to his mother. He tugged at her trunk until she raised her head to face him.
But the Lost were closing, raising their sticks and claws of bone. Silverhair saw one of them break and run to the thunder-sticks at the mouth of the cave. But Skin-of-Ice barked at him, and he returned. Silverhair felt cold. This was a game to Skin-of-Ice, a deadly game he meant to finish with his shards of bone and wood.
Silverhair tried to work out what chance they had. The ground was difficult for the Lost; Silverhair saw how they stumbled on the slippery, ice-coated rock, and were forced to clamber over boulders and ice chunks that the mammoths, with their greater bulk, could brush aside. And once the Family were safely in the tunnel, Silverhair would emulate Owlheart. She would make a stand and disembowel any Lost who tried to follow…
But the shadows flickered, and an unearthly clatter rattled from the ice and exposed rock. She looked up and flinched. The light-bird was hovering over the chasm.
Two of the Lost were leaning precariously out of the bird’s gleaming belly. They were holding something, like a giant sheet of skin. They dropped it into the cavern. It fell, spreading out as it did so. Silverhair saw that it was like a spiderweb — but a web that was huge and strong, woven from some black rope.
And, as the Lost had surely intended, the web fell neatly over Foxeye and her calves.
Foxeye’s humped head pushed upward at the web, and Silverhair could see the small, agitated form of Croptail. But the more the mammoths struggled, the more entangled they became. Sunfire’s terrified squealing, magnified by the ice, was pitiful.
Silverhair started forward, trying to think. Perhaps she could rip the web open with her tusks -
But now there was a storm of thunder-stick shouts, a hail of the invisible stinging things they produced. Instinctively she scrambled up the scree slope to the mouth of her cave.
The fire came from the Lost leaning out of the belly of the light-bird. They were pointing thunder-sticks at her. Bits of rock exploded from the ground and walls.
Down in the chasm, the Lost walked over the fallen webbing, holding it down with their weight where it appeared the mammoths might be breaking free. Skin-of-Ice himself clambered on top of Croptail’s trapped, kneeling bulk. Almost casually, he probed through the net with his bone-tipped stick. Silverhair saw blood fount, and heard Croptail’s agonized scream.
Her heart turned to ice.
…But the thunder-stick hail still slammed into the frost-cracked rock around her. Great shards and flakes flew into the air. She had no choice but to stumble back into her cave.