He grunted and sighed, seeming to respond to the rhythms of the ancient story…
She woke with a start. She hadn’t meant to sleep.
Eggtusk, still wedged tight in his kettle hole, was chewing on something. "This grass is fine. Isn’t it, Wolfnose? The finest I ever tasted. And this water is as clear and fresh as if it had just melted off the glacier."
But she could see that only blood trickled from his mouth, and all that he chewed was a mouthful of his own hair, ripped from his back.
"Eggtusk—"
He raised his head, and the stumps of his tusks gleamed in the sun. "Wolfnose? Remember me, Wolfnose. Remember me. I see you. I’m coming now…"
His great head dropped to the earth, and it did not rise again.
Silverhair felt the deepest dark of despair settle over her, an anguish of shame and frustration that she hadn’t been able to help him.
Soon she must start the Remembering. She could not reach Eggtusk, or touch his body; but at least she could cover his corpse -
Suddenly there was a band of fire around her neck: a band that dug deep into her flesh. She trumpeted her shock and pain.
And the Lost were here: dancing before her, two of them, and they held sticks in their paws, sticks attached to whatever was wrapped around her neck.
Snagtooth was standing before her, apparently in no distress.
Silverhair, shocked, agonized, tried to speak. When the Lost tugged at their sticks the fire burned deeper in her neck, and it got so tight she could barely breathe. "Snagtooth… Help me…"
But Snagtooth kept her trunk down. "I brought them here."
"You did what?"
"Don’t you see? They are smarter than we are. Submit to them, Silverhair. It isn’t so bad."
"No—" Silverhair struggled to stay on her feet, to ignore the pain in her throat.
Beyond Snagtooth, she saw Skin-of-Ice himself. His damaged foreleg was strapped to his chest.
Light as a hare, he hopped over the mud of the kettle hole, and came to rest on Eggtusk’s broad, unmoving back. He raised his head to the sky and let loose a howl of triumph.
Then he raised an ice-claw in his paw, and drove it deep into Eggtusk’s helpless back.
The thing around Silverhair’s neck tightened. A red mist filled her vision.
She was forced to her knees.
13
The Captive
The Lost threw more loops and lassos at her. Many of them missed, or she shook them off easily, but gradually they caught on her tusks or trunk or around her legs. Soon her head was so heavy with ropes that she could not lift it.
Now the Lost — five or six of them, under the supervision of Skin-of-Ice — began to run around her, whooping and beating at her flanks and legs with sticks. She tried to reach them with her tusks — she knew she could disembowel any of these weak creatures with a flick of her head — but she was pinned, and they were too clever to come close enough to give her the chance to hurt them.
She could not even lift her head to trumpet, and that shamed her more than anything else.
At last Skin-of-Ice himself came forward. His small teeth showed white in his loathsome, naked face as he bent to peer into her eyes. His mouth, a soft round thing, was flapping and making noises.
She managed to haul herself back through a pace or two. But he stood his ground, and the weight dragging at her forced her into submission once more.
He raised a stick, about as long as his foreleg, in the tip of which he had embedded one of his gleaming ice-claws. He held it up before her, waving it before her eyes, as if to demonstrate to her what it was.
One of the other Lost came up. He pawed at Skin-of-Ice, as if trying to restrain him. But Skin-of-Ice shook him off.
Then, with brutal suddenness, Skin-of-Ice lashed out.
He slammed the stick against her face, and the claw penetrated her cheek. The pain was liquid fire.
She kept her gaze on Skin-of-Ice, refusing even to flinch as tire pain burned into her.
He threw down his goad and reached forward to her cheek. His paw came away smeared with her blood — and it cupped a brimming pool of her tears, tears she could not help but spill.
Skin-of-Ice threw the tears back in her face, so that they stung her eyes.
As the sun sank toward the horizon, the Lost gathered loose branches and twigs into a rough heap. The heap somehow erupted into flame, as if at the command of the Lost. They did not seem to fear the fire. Indeed, they fed it with more branches, which they boldly threw onto the embers, and stayed close to it, rubbing their paws as if dependent on the fire for warmth.
After a time a knot of hunger gathered in Silverhair’s stomach, but the Lost would not let her feed. Even when she passed dung, which the Lost could scarcely prevent, they would kick and prod at her so that her stomach clenched, and they picked up the dung and threw it in her face.
Mammoths need a great deal of food daily, and in fact spend much of each day feeding and drinking. To be kept from doing that was a great torment to Silverhair, and she weakened rapidly.
The Lost were not organized. They were careless, lethargic, and seemed to spend a lot of their time asleep.
All save Skin-of-Ice. It was Skin-of-Ice who drove on the others, like a lead Bull, making them work when they would rather sleep or feed or squabble, maintaining the slow cruelty inflicted on Silverhair. All the Lost were repulsive. But it was Skin-of-Ice, she saw, who was the source of evil.
Meanwhile, as the shadows stretched over the tundra, a group of the Lost worked in the pit that had trapped and killed Eggtusk.
Eggtusk was still upright in the pit, his legs trapped out of sight, his head supported by the stumps of his tusks. The blood that had seeped out of his wounds had soaked the ground around the pit, making it black. His body was already rigid with death, and perhaps half-frozen too.
Now the Lost slung ropes around Eggtusk and hauled. At first they could not budge the passive carcass, but they made a rhythmic noise and concerted their efforts.
At last they managed to drag Eggtusk out of the hole.
Silverhair could hear the crackle of frost-ridden fur as Eggtusk was rolled onto his back, exposing his softer underbelly, and then the more ominous crack of snapping bone. His head settled back to the cold earth, and his mouth gaped. Silverhair could see how the dried blood and dirt matted the great wounds in his chest and belly, and his stomach was swollen and hard.
It was Skin-of-Ice himself who began it.
He took an ice-claw and thrust it into Eggtusk’s lower belly. Then, bracing himself and using both paws, he dragged the claw up the length of Eggtusk’s body, cutting through hair and flesh, in a line from anus to throat. Silverhair felt the incision as if it had been made in her own body.
Then, under the direction of Skin-of-Ice, the Lost reluctantly gathered to either side of Eggtusk. They dug their forelimbs into the new wound in his belly, grabbed his rib cage, and hauled back. The rib cage opened like a grotesque flower, the white of bone emerging from the red-black wound.
Eggtusk was opened up, splayed.
Skin-of-Ice now climbed inside the body of Eggtusk. He reached down, and, with his forelegs, began to dig out Eggtusk’s internal organs: heart, liver, a great rope of intestine.
Another of the Lost turned away, and vomit spilled from his mouth.
When Skin-of-Ice was done, the Lost took hold of Eggtusk’s legs and hauled him away from the steaming pile of guts they had removed from the carcass. Then they turned Eggtusk over again; this time he slumped, almost shapeless, against the ground.