"What do the Lost intend now?"
"They don’t seem to want to kill us. Not right away. They have plenty to eat here, Silverhair; they don’t need our flesh, nor our bones to burn…"
"There was rope fixed to your cage."
"Yes. I think they were going to move us again. Fly us. Perhaps take us far from the tundra. Somewhere where there are many, many Lost, more Lost than all the mammoths who ever lived. And they would come and see us in our cages, and hit us with sticks, for they were never, ever going to let us out of there again."
"Foxeye—"
"I’d have given up my calves," Foxeye blurted. "If I could have spoken to the Lost, if I thought they would have spared me, I’d have given up the calves. There: what do you think of me now?"
Silverhair rubbed her sister’s filth-matted scalp. "I think I got here just in time."
The little group walked steadily onward, through the clutter of buildings, toward the tundra. Silverhair was dimly aware of more light-birds clattering over her head. She flinched, expecting an attack from that quarter. But none came. The birds seemed to be descending toward the City, and some of the Lost who had followed the mammoths were pointing up with their paws, muttering. Perhaps this was some new group of Lost, she thought; perhaps the Lost were divided amongst themselves.
It scarcely mattered. What was important was that still none of them tried to stop her.
Silverhair took one step after another, aware how little control she had over events, scarcely daring to hope she could take another breath. But they were still alive, and free. By Kilukpuk’s hairy navel, she thought, this might actually work.
But then there was a roar like an angry god, and everything fell apart.
A Lost came running forward, face red with rage. In one paw he held a glinting flask of the clear, inflaming liquid. And he carried a thunder-stick, which he fired wildly.
This was a new type of stick, Silverhair realized immediately: one that spoke not with a single shout, but with a roar, and lethal insects poured out in a great cloud. Even the other Lost were forced to scatter as those deadly pellets smacked into the mud, or turned the walls of the crude dwellings into splinters.
The newcomer seemed to be berating the others. And he was turning the spitting nozzle of his thunder-stick toward the huddled Family.
This Lost wasn’t going to let the mammoths go; he would obviously rather destroy them.
He was Skin-of-Ice.
Silverhair didn’t even think about it. She just lowered her head and charged.
Everything slowed down, as if she were swimming through thick, ice-cold water.
She lowered her tusks, and he raised his thunder-stick, and she looked into his eyes. It was as if they were joined by that gaze, as if total communication was passing between their souls, as if there were nobody else in the universe but the two of them.
She felt a stab of regret to have come so close to freedom. But in her heart she had known it would come to this moment, that she would not survive the day.
If Skin-of-Ice had held his ground and used his thunder-stick, he would surely have killed her there and then. But he didn’t. In the last heartbeat, as a mountain of enraged mammoth bore down on him, he panicked.
Even as he made his thunder-stick roar, he fell backward and rolled sideways.
Pain erupted in a line drawn across her face, chest, and leg, and she felt her blood spurt, warm. One of the projectiles passed clean through her mouth, in one cheek and out through the other, splintering a tooth.
The pain was extraordinary.
She could hear the screams of Lost and mammoths alike, smell the metallic stink of her own blood. But she was still alive, still moving.
Skin-of-Ice was on the ground, scrabbling for his thunder-stick. She stood over him.
Again, in the face of her courage and strength, he made the wrong decision. If he had abandoned the thunder-stick he might have escaped. But he did not. He had waited too long.
Silverhair lowered her tusk and speared him cleanly through the upper hind leg.
He screamed, and reached behind him to grab her tusk with his paws. She lifted her head, and Skin-of-Ice dangled on her tusk like a shred of winter hair, and she felt a fierce exultation.
But in one paw he held the thunder-stick. It sprayed its deadly fire in the air. And he kicked; his foot smashed into her forehead, and with remarkable strength he dragged his injured leg free of her tusk.
He fell more than twice his height to the ground.
But then he was moving again, firing his thunder-stick. The watching Lost fled, yelling.
Silverhair charged again.
Skin-of-Ice brought the thunder-stick round to point at Silverhair. But he wasn’t quick enough.
As she reared over him a hail of stings poured into her foreleg. She could feel bone shatter, muscles rip to shreds; when she tried to put her weight on that leg, she stumbled.
But she had him.
She wrapped her strong trunk around his waist and, trumpeting her rage, hurled him into the air. Skin-of-Ice sailed high, twisting, writhing, and firing his thunder-stick. He fell heavily, and she heard a cracking sound.
Still he pushed himself up with his forelegs. She felt a flicker of admiration for his determination. But she knew it was the stubbornness of madness.
She grabbed his hind foot with her trunk. She twisted, and heard bone crunch, ligaments snap. Skin-of-Ice screamed.
She flipped him onto his back, like a seal landing a fish on an ice floe. He still had his thunder-stick, and he raised it at her. But the stick no longer spat its venom at her. She could see that it was twisted and broken.
Skin-of-Ice hurled the useless stick away, his small face distended with purple rage. Her strength and endurance had, in the end, defeated even its ugly threat.
He tried to rise, but she pushed him back with her trunk. Still he fought, clawing at her trunk as if trying to rip his way through her skin with his bare paws. She leaned forward and rested her tusk against his throat.
For a heartbeat, as Skin-of-Ice fought and spat, she held him. She thought of those who had died at his hands: Owlheart, Eggtusk, Snagtooth, Lop-ear. And she remembered her own hot dreams of destroying this monster.
A single thrust and it would be over.
She released him.
"You Lost are the dealers of death," she said heavily. "Not the mammoths."
Still Skin-of-Ice tried to rise up to attack her. But other Lost came forward and dragged him back.
There were Lost all around Silverhair now, and they were raising their thunder-sticks.
She struggled to rise, to use her one good foreleg to lever herself upright. She could feel the wounds in her chest and leg tear wider, and the pain was sharp. But she would die on her feet.
She wished she could reach her Family, entwine trunks with them one last time.
She wondered why the Lost hadn’t destroyed her already. She looked down at them. She saw they were hesitating; some of them had lowered their thunder-sticks.
"…Silverhair. Stay still. They won’t harm you now. It isn’t your day to die, Silverhair…"
It was — impossibly — the voice of an adult Bull.
She turned. A Lost was coming toward her: a new kind, all in white. He held his cupped paws up to his mouth, and he was shouting at the other Lost, making them turn their thunder-sticks away.
"…Don’t be afraid. The Family will be safe. Nobody else will die today…"
And with the Lost was a mammoth, without chains or ropes or any restraints, a mammoth who walked unhindered through the circle of thunder-sticks with this strange, posturing Lost.
It was a Bull, with one limp and damaged ear.