He gave up, panting, longing for water. "Who did this?"

"Our keepers. The Fireheads."

"I am mammoth. I have no keeper."

"You do now, little grazer."

"They have tied me up so I will not run away?"

"That’s right."

"…But why you?"

Walks With Thunder emitted a deep snort from his trunk. "To show you it isn’t so bad."

Now a Firehead was coming toward them. It was the little fat one Longtusk had called Lemming — the one who had, with stealth, slipped that first loop of rope around Longtusk’s leg. He was carrying a skin bag, some dry grass.

Longtusk rumbled and lunged at the little Firehead. All over his body, the ropes creaked and tightened cruelly.

Lemming yelped and staggered backward. He dropped his skin bag, which landed with a thick gurgle.

"Let him feed you," Walks With Thunder urged.

"I feed myself."

"Not any more. Watch…"

Lemming retrieved his dropped bag, opened it up and held it out to Walks With Thunder. With a noisy slurp the mastodont sucked up a trunkful of water, draining the bag.

The smell of the water filled Longtusk’s head.

Now the little Firehead started stuffing hay into Walks With Thunder’s accepting mouth. The mastodont rumbled, "It isn’t so bad, Longtusk. Just accept it. You’re lucky. Lemming likes you. He’s one of the better ones. He goes easy with the goads. Some of the others take it too far. Like Spindle — the one Jaw farted over—"

"I won’t give in."

"You’re special, are you? Different from us, smarter, stronger?"

"Yes."

"Sniff the air, little grazer."

Longtusk did so — and found he was surrounded by mastodonts: ten, eleven, twelve of them, all males, presumably the same herd who had circled him earlier. Some were pulling branches from the low trees here; but most were feeding on heaps of smashed wood left for them by the Fireheads. One mastodont was wallowing in the mud of a shallow water hole, its fringe crusted with late-winter ice. He was rolling on his side and lifting his squat feet, letting a Firehead scrape mud off his delicate soles with a piece of sharpened stone.

And now a mastodont walked past with a heavy gait. He had a passenger, a skinny Firehead who sat astride the mastodont’s neck. His bare feet kicked at the animal’s ears, and he struck the mastodont’s broad scalp with a stick tipped with sharpened bone.

The mastodont had a broad, ugly scar across his face, eclipsing one eye.

It was Jaw Like Rock. And his rider was the keeper who had beaten him before, Spindle.

"Why does he accept that? He could throw off that creature and crush him in a moment."

"You don’t understand. Jaw has no choice. I have no choice. You have no choice, but to submit."

"No."

Walks With Thunder’s trunk drooped. "I was like you, once. Make it easy on yourself."

"I won’t listen to you."

And Longtusk began to push against his ropes once more. They tightened around his neck and legs and belly, but still he struggled, until he was exhausted.

The Firehead keeper came to him again, with water and food; again Longtusk ignored him.

And so it went on, as the sun worked its path around the sky.

Night fell. But it was not dark, not even quiet.

The Fireheads set up huge fires in improvised hearths all around the steppe. Longtusk could feel their uncomfortable heat. The fires sent sparks up into the echoing night, and the Fireheads sat close, their faces shining in the red light, eating and drinking and laughing.

Longtusk — hungry, thirsty, exhausted, his muscles cramped from immobility — now longed for sleep. But sleep was impossible. The Fireheads would come to him and shout in his ears, or whirl pieces of bone on ropes around their heads, making a noise like a howling wind.

Walks With Thunder was still with him. "Give in," he urged. "They won’t stop until you do."

"No," mumbled Longtusk.

"Let me tell you a story," Walks With Thunder said. "A story from the Cycle. This is of a time deep in the past — oh, thousands of Great-Years ago, long before the ice came to the earth. In those days there were no mammoths and mastodonts; we were a single kind, and we lived in a land of lush forests, far to the south of here.

"But the Earth cooled. The forests follow the weather, as every mastodont knows. Year by year the land became cooler and drier, and great waves of trees moved north across the Earth—"

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Just listen. Now our Matriarch, the Matriarch of all mastodonts, was called Mammut. She was a descendant of Probos, of course, but she lived long before the mother of the mammoths."

"Ganesha."

"Yes. Now Mammut was wise—"

"They always are in Cycle stories."

Walks With Thunder barked his amusement at that. "Yes. It’s always easy after the fact, isn’t it?… Mammut could see the way the forests were migrating to the north. And she said, ‘Just as the forests must follow the weather, so my calves must follow the forests.’ And so, under her leadership, her Clan followed the slow march of the forests, seeking out the marshy places beneath the great trees, for that is what mastodonts prefer. And her calves prospered and multiplied, filling the land.

"Now, much later, long after Mammut had gone to the aurora, another forest came marching across the land. A different kind of forest."

"I don’t know what you’re talking about," Longtusk mumbled.

"It was a forest of Fireheads, little grazer. And the mastodonts fled in panic."

"That is because they were cowards."

Walks With Thunder ignored that. "So the mastodonts called up to the aurora, ‘What should we do, great Matriarch?’

"Mammut was wise. She understood.

"As the weather washes over the land, the trees must follow. As the trees wash over the land, the mastodonts must follow. And now, as the Fireheads wash over the land, the mastodonts must follow again. That is what Mammut said. And that is what we accept."

"It isn’t much of a story."

"Well, I’m sorry. I was trying to make a point. I left out the fights and the sex scenes."

"Anyway the Fireheads are not trees."

Thunder growled irritably. "The point is that the Fireheads feed us, as the trees do. They even care for us — when they choose. And we cannot be rid of them, little grazer. Any more than the land can rid itself of the trees. Accept them. Accept their food."

Once again, Longtusk saw blearily, the Firehead, Lemming, was before him. He held up a paw, full of grasses and herbs, fragrant, freshly gathered. But Longtusk turned his head away.

It lasted three more days, three more nights.

Walks With Thunder and Jaw Like Rock were both with him.

"Your courage is astonishing, little grazer. Nobody else has ever lasted so long before."

Longtusk, beaten down by hunger and thirst and sleeplessness, could barely see through milky, crusted eyes. "Leave me alone."

Jaw reached out and, with the pink tip of his trunk, smoothed the filth-matted fur of Longtusk’s face. "Don’t let them kill you," he said softly. "That way they will have won."

Longtusk closed his eyes.

After a time he felt a pressure at the side of his mouth. It was the paw of Lemming, the keeper, once more holding out sweet grasses.

"Take it, grazer. It’s no defeat."

"My name is Longtusk."

Walks With Thunder and Jaw Like Rock thumped the ground with their trunks. "Longtusk," they said.

Lemming was staring at him, his eyes round, as if he understood.

Longtusk opened his mouth and took the food.

More days passed. Gradually his strength returned.

His ropes loosened. They had burned and cut him painfully. Lemming treated the wounds with salves of fat and butter, and with water heated in the hearths. He squeezed droplets of milk from an aurochs cow into Longtusk’s eyes, soothing their itching.