Page a Day: Twenty-Nine

            First came the herd-scent of all the other mastodons, anxious but subsiding, but the personal smell of the matriarch almost too overpowering to stand beside. Beneath it came the grass scent, acrid and dry and aged by the exposure of a day. Then the wall of the strange musk-sweat of all the men that I call the Never-born. Twilight itself comes laden with the mint of evergreens and the cold of flint. The water of the lake bears its own aroma – silvery and heavy, with some grass-scent because of the algae it bears. Behind us, the forest was an odorous cacophony of wary waking deer and scurrying earth-tinged rodents and the small swift smells of birds which fell, in human terms, like singular strokes of a brush across a canvas.

            “The mastodons will sleep though the night,” said Jerem Cozak, from atop the matriarch, “but post their own sentries. Did you know that?”

            “There are many things I do not know,” I said. 

            He laughed, then. “I will tell you something no one knows but me. None of this was written. Tonight I will cleanse my armor by the lake, because when the matriarch bellowed truly I was terrified.”  

            “You mean we could have failed,” I said. “She could have gored you, and a dozen mastodons gone charging through our ranks. But we would not have succeeded in any other way.”

            “Just so,” he nodded, and I guessed that he’d been preoccupying me so that I would not be overwhelmed. Sound came then, as a smilodon snarled, soft and low, across the lake, away by the edge of the forest on that side, and thirty heads turned briefly in that direction. The waters of the lake lapped the shore with quick plashes. The wind waved the grass in soft susurrations. Three different kinds of birds trilled from the timberline; six sang in the grasses closer to us; two cried mournfully and dove the waters of the lake.  The army of men that I called the Never-born creaked and clanked in their awkward armor, their voices like the crashing of stones into a stream. Field mice peeped and burrowed through the tall grass, but even mastodons could not hear the fox that hunted them, though of course they smelt it.

            “I have questions,” I said at last. “I’ll not let you leave again.”

Page a Day: Twenty-Eight

            Then, slowly, awkwardly, as though she had never done it before to drink from a lake or stream, the matriarch knelt. Jerem Cozak walked to her shoulder and then, grabbing handfuls of her long, coarse  fur, climbed up her side. Weaving from side to side, he balanced as she stood again.

            “Come, Del Tanich of Ariel,” he said aloud, and gestured to his right. “It is time you held the reigns.” The other mastodons were drawing up alongside – not only the warriors, but the whole herd was  crossing the field to line up across from us, thirty beasts in all, as I counted them.

            A large young mastodon, with tusks even longer than the matriarch’s, came to her right side.

            “The oldest daughter,” said Julius. “You will ride second-in-the-line.”

            My wave of dread had not diminished. My heart raced. I felt cold all over. But I would be able to ask more questions if I rode next to him. I stepped forward. I could her hear great breaths from two paces away.

            “Let her smell you, just as you saw him do,” said Julius again.

            I held out my hand. She reached out with her trunk, and with a touch as light as a feather’s, flitted the tip of her trunk across my hand. She sniffed, and I knew she inhaled the White Swarm that was with us always –now, it was very bright and dense around me.

            She knelt, and climbing I followed the example of Jerem Cozak. The coarse lank hair, I found, only hid the softer, denser fur closer to her body. And the fur only softened the steel-corded muscles of her flank. I could not imagine the strength such a creature must possess.  

            When she stood, I struggled to stay on, just as he had. And I found that not only did mastodons carry machines which could bind them to your will; they also carried machines which make you feel as they do and sense what they sense. The machines had been beginning this as I climbed. Now, the world of the mastodons entered me entirely.  

Page a Day: Twenty-Seven

             We waited, perhaps, for the space of thirty breaths. Then Jerem Cozak stepped forward, apart from the lines. He motioned the Never-born to remain, but they unsheathed their swords. He walked on alone across the grass.

            First the whitened tips of tusks appeared flashing in the darkness at the edge of the trees. Then came trunks hung low to the ground, then great broad heads as long as any man standing. Then their shoulder humps emerged, and finally all of them, the great and singular shapes of a dozen adult mastodons, doubtless all the warriors of whatever herd that had approached us from that side.

            One in particular stood taller and broader than the others, with heavier tusks and longer trunk than all the rest. It came forward toward Jerem Cozak, sniffing the air. Behind it, the other mastodons intensified their trumpeting, and now and then gave bellows I had not heard before.

            “The matriarch,” said Julius, who stood beside me. “The leaders of a herd are female.”

            She herself now bellowed and trotted across the clearing. She reached Jerem Cozak in a breath. I shuddered to think of the whole herd following. We would be destroyed. The Never-born had shown with the smilodon their resolve and their solidarity. But Cratyus and Meno had also shown their mortality. Even they, living memories of humanity’s time amidst the gods, men grown for the purpose of this war, could die. Two had fallen to one smilodon. What could be said of me, a seller of seeds against these great beasts?

            The matriarch flared her ears and bellowed at Jerem Cozak from three paces away. He did not flinch. She reared her head back and tossed her trunks from side to side. All the mastodons grew more agitated. They came trotting forward across the clearing.

            Jerem Cozak held out his hand. For the first time since we had left the city, the White Swarm thickened around him. Indeed, it grew more solid around all of us. For a moment, I laughed to think that the mastodon now smelt a summer storm.

Page a Day: Twenty-Six

           “Fear not,” Marcus said. “Beasts have no mind. But we are one mind.”

            I shook my head, and would have questioned him. But Jerem Cozak gave an order, and Marcus joined Jerem in getting the Never-born into formation. This was not our usual long and trailing column, but three spread apart, flank from flank, with wide gaps between. I followed Jerem Cozak’s short column down the center. Marcus and Julius spread the rest of the Never-born on either side.

            We marched. Julius had taught me that this was the formation desired for infantry taking a long and difficult approach toward battle. Now I saw why this was so, as a column of more than three hundred Never-born responded to the commands of each  of them, and flowed right or left around a field of boulders or copse of trees – but never so far that one column could not move quickly to aid another. 

            For a long time there was only the tramping of steel on grass and ground and gravel. Down, and down, and down we marched. Or I should say the Never-born marched. In the rear of the column, I resorted to the shuffling jog to which I had become accustomed. The front of my thighs burned, but that ache, at least, was now familiar. Our shadows lengthened through the afternoon.

            When the sun reached the line of peaks behind us, the first mastodons trumpeted. They had seen the last of the light glinting on our armor, or scented us when the cooler winds of evening came downhill. Soon came a din all around the lake, as the mastodons communicated news of our intrusion. I reminded myself that these were not the warring mastodons of the veilmen of Sepira. This valley had not been found or trod by humans since the time of the first Faith, four hundred years before.

            But my cold black wave of dread returned. Abruptly and with shouted commands, the whole formation pivoted to face the dark line of a forest to the south. We had been flanked. Marcus and Julius and Jerem spread the columns out. We made those four ranks which, I have learned, only ever face a charge of mastodons. 

Page a Day: Twenty Five

            I asked him again how he knew. “This is part of the myths of the first Faith, the valley where the mastodons were reborn. But I never expected...there’s so much exaggeration in the stories of the people. Mastodons eat grasses that grow only in Sepira.”

            He smiled; I believe it was for the first time that day. “So says the Temple of the History of the Profusion. But when you are lost in the mountains, you follow the sun, as we have done from Ariel, and as the first Faith would have coming to it. To the west the mountains are higher and more impassable.”

             “And this place specifically?”

            “We have followed the easiest paths to descend, though we ourselves were going uphill.”

            “And if any part of the legend was wrong?”

            He smiled again. “Then we would have failed. But we would not have succeeded in any other way.”

            I closed my eyes, let the sun glow against my lids. “And what is this success? What have we accomplished?”

            But Jerem Cozak had already turned to rouse the Never-born. Our midday break had passed, and I had spent it standing. He had made all the Never-born sit down, but I had wanted answers.

            Marcus and Julius had the men break out their armor. Far below us, some of the mastodons trumpeted. Surely we were not going to fight them. We only had modern metal, cursed with all the limitations of the new. It did not mend itself, and weighed on limbs and body. Our swords did not pulse with the energy of the Profusion, and would be lucky to cut through our own plain steel.

            I went to the rear and clad myself. Or I tried to, before Marcus scowled and began to tie straps and grips in place. I felt I couldn’t move, but he had carried my armor all this way regardless. I soon began to sweat. I could not imagine, now, being one of his officers, who marched always in this fashion.