He turned and, with elaborate care, began his descent from the summit.
"We have no choice but to abandon the nunatak." He looked down at the Family — the fat, complacent Cows, their playful calves, all gazing up at him, trunks raised to sniff his mood. "We have been safe here. The nunatak has served us well. But now it is a refuge no more. And we must go."
"You’re being ridiculous," Horsetail said severely. "You’re frightening the calves."
"They should be frightened," he said. "They are in danger. Mortal danger. The Fireheads are on the western horizon. I could see their trail, and their fire. They will overrun this place, enslave you, ultimately kill you. And your calves." He eyed them. "Do you understand? Do you understand any of this?"
The Cows rumbled questions. "Where should we go?" "There is nowhere else!" "Who is he to say what Cows should do? He is a Bull. And he’s old. Why, if I—"
He had expected arguments, and he got them. It was just as it had been when he had argued with Milkbreath, his own mother, trying to convince her that the flight in search of the nunatak was necessary.
He was too old for this.
One more effort, Longtusk. Then you can rest. Think of Rockheart. He had kept going, despite the failure of his huge body. He pulled his shoulders square and lifted his tusks, still large and sweeping, so heavy they made his neck muscles pull.
Horsetail, the Matriarch, said sadly, "I’m trying to understand, Longtusk. I truly am. But you must help me. How can they come here? We are protected by the ice."
"But the ice is receding."
"Where would we flee?"
"You must go south and east. At first you will cross the ice" — a rumbling of fear and discontent—"just as your grandmothers did. Just as I did. But then you will reach a corridor. A passage through the ice sheets, to the warmer lands beyond, that has opened up in the years we have lived here. It won’t be easy—"
"But Longtusk, why? Why would the Fireheads come here? On this rock, we are few. Even if these Fireheads are the savage predators you describe, why would they go to such efforts, risk their own lives, just to reach us?"
Now Threetusk, dominant Bull of the bachelor herd, loped toward Longtusk. He said grimly, "Perhaps the Fireheads come because there is no room for them in the old lands. Perhaps they are seeking mammoths here because there are none left where they come from."
There was a general bray of horror.
"Or perhaps," Longtusk said sadly, "it is me."
Horsetail rumbled, "What do you mean?"
"I defied her," he said, unwelcome old memories swimming to the surface of his mind.
"Who?"
"The most powerful Firehead of them all. She thought I was hers, you see. And yet I defied her…"
He knew it was hard for them to understand. All this was ancient history to the other mammoths, an exotic legend of times and places and creatures they had never known — maybe just another of Longtusk’s tall stories, like his tales of she-cats and rhinos and Fireheads with caps of mammoth-ivory beads…
It was not their fault. He had wanted to bring his Clan to a safe place, and these generations of fat, complacent mammoths were what he had dreamed of seeing. It wasn’t their fault that he had succeeded too well — that their lives of comfort and security had prepared them so badly for the ordeal ahead.
But he recalled Crocus.
He recalled how she had hunted down the Firehead who had killed her father. He knew she would not have forgotten, or forgiven.
As long as he was alive, nobody was safe here.
Horsetail and Threetusk approached him and spoke quietly so the others couldn’t hear.
Horsetail said, "You aren’t the only one who has seen the corridor to the south. But it is harsh, and we don’t know how long it is, or what lies at its end. Perhaps it is cold and barren all the way to the South Pole."
"When we set off for the nunatak," he said evenly, "we didn’t know how far that was either. We went anyway. You know, Threetusk — you’re the only one left who does. You will have to show them how to survive."
Horsetail said severely, "We have old, and sickly, and calves. Many of us will not survive such a trek."
"Nevertheless it must be made."
"And you?" asked the Matriarch. "Do you believe you could walk through the corridor?"
"Of course not." He brayed his amusement. "I probably wouldn’t last a day. But I’m not going."
Threetusk said, "What?"
Briefly, briskly, he stroked their trunks. "I know the Fireheads. You don’t. And I have thought deeply on their nature. And this is what I have concluded. Listen closely, now…"
Saxifrage watched this, fascinated, the rumbling phrases washing over her.
Later, boldly, she stepped forward from under her mother’s belly and tugged her trunk. "What did he say? What did he say?"
But Horsetail, grave and silent, would not reply.
They filed past him, down the sloping rock face and onto the ice, bundles of confusion, fear and resentment — much of it directed at him, for even though the smoke columns from the Fireheads’ hearths were now visible for all to see, they still found it impossible to believe they represented the danger he insisted.
Nonetheless, they were his Clan. He wanted to grab them all, taste each one with his trunk. For he knew he would not see them again, not a single one of them.
But he held himself back. It was best they did not think of him, for the ice and the dismal corridor to the south would give them more than enough to occupy their minds.
And besides, he still had company: the little Dreamer, Willow. He had tried to push the Dreamer, gently, off the rock and after the column of mammoths. But Willow had slapped his trunk and dug his old, bent fingers in Longtusk’s fur, his intentions clear.
Company, then. And a job to complete.
Longtusk waited until the long column of mammoths had shrunk to a fine scratch against the huge white expanse of the ice.
And then he turned away: toward the west, and the Fireheads.
5
The Corridor
It was, Threetusk decided later, an epic to match any in the long history of the mammoths.
But it was a story he could never bear to telclass="underline" a story of suffering and loss and endless endurance, a blurred time he recalled only with pain.
It was difficult even from the beginning. Away from the warmth of the nunatak, the hard, ridged ice was cold and unyielding under their feet — crueler even than he recalled from the original trek so long ago. Where snow drifted the going was even harder.
The land itself was unsettling. The mammoths could hear the deep groaning of the ice as it flowed down from its highest points to the low land and the sea. A human would have heard only the occasional crack and grind, perhaps felt a deep shudder. To the mammoths, the agonized roar of the ice was loud and continuous, a constant reminder that this was an unstable land, a place of change and danger.
And — of course — there was nothing to eat or drink, here on the ice. They had barely traveled half a day before they had used up the reserves of water they carried in their throats, and the calves were crying for the warm rocks they had left behind.
But they kept on.
After a day and a night, they came to a high point, and they were able to see the way south.
To the left the ice was a shallow dome, its surface bright and seductively smooth. To the right, the ice lay thick over a mountain range. Black jagged peaks thrust out of the white, defiant, and glaciers striped with dirt reached down to the ice sheet like the trunks of immense embedded animals.