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.

She trumpeted her defiance at the light-bird. As soon as the lethal hail diminished she would charge.

But she heard a deeper rumbling, from above her head.

A great sheet of rock fell away from the chasm wall above the cave opening. Dust swirled over her. Then a huge chunk of the cave’s roof separated and fell. She was caught in a vicious rain of rocks that pounded at her back and head, and the air became so thick with dust, she could barely breathe.

Still she tried to press forward. But the falling rock drove her back, pace by pace, and the light of the chasm was hidden.

The last thing she heard was Foxeye’s desperate, terrified wail. "You promised me, Silverhair! You promised me!…"

Then, at last, Silverhair was sealed up in darkness and silence.

Alone in the dark, Silverhair dug at the fallen boulders until she could feel the ivory of her tusks splintering against the unyielding rock, and blood seeped along her trunk from a dozen cuts and scrapes.

But the rocks, firmly wedged in place, were immovable.

She sank to her knees and rested her tusks on the invisible, uneven ground.

The calves had been captured — perhaps even now they were being butchered by the casually brutal Skin-of-Ice and his band of Lost. What was left for her now?

In the depths of her despair, she looked for guidance. And she found it in the last orders of her Matriarch.

She must seek out her Cousins: the other Families that had made up the loose-knit Clan of the Island, a Clan that had once been part of an almost infinite network of mammoth blood alliances that had spread around the world. Her way forward was clear.

But what, a small voice prompted her, if there were no more Families to be found? What if the worst fears of Wolfnose and Lop-ear had come true?

She tried to imagine discovering such a terrible thing: how she would feel, what she would do.

She would simply have to cope, find a way to go on. For now, she had her orders from the Matriarch, and she would follow them. And besides, she had a promise to her sister to keep.

But first she had to get out of this cave.

With new determination she got to her feet, shook off the dust that had settled over her coat, and turned her head, seeking the breeze.

The cave was utterly dark.

She moved with the utmost caution, her trunk held out before her. Her progress was slow. The floor was broken and uneven, the passage narrow and twisting, and she was afraid she might stumble over jagged rock or tumble into an unseen ravine.

And fear crowded her imagination. Mammoths, creatures of the open tundra, are not used to being enclosed; Silverhair tried not to think about the weight of rock and ice and soil that was suspended over her head.

But the echoes of her footsteps, crunching on ancient gravel, gave her a sense of a passageway stretching ahead of her. And there was the breeze: the slightest of zephyrs, laden with the sour stink of brine, somehow worming its way through cracks in the ground to this buried place.

And the breeze grew stronger, little by little, as she progressed.

But the passageway took her downward.

As she moved deeper into the belly of the Earth, the air began to grow warmer. She heard the slow dripping of water from the walls, felt the channels those tiny drips had carved in the rock at her feet over the Great-Years. She licked the droplets from the wall. The water was cool and only a little salty, but there wasn’t enough of it to quench her thirst.