Alan Foster - The Icerigger Trilogy

Fascinating as the extraordinary fauna of the pika-pedan forest was to Williams, it soon began to pale for Ethan. By the fourth day, he was as ready as any of the common sailors to be moving again.

But when full sail had been put out, the worst fears of the experienced icemen were realized.

“We’re not moving,” Ethan observed, concerned. He turned to the captain. “What’s wrong?”

“I worried much on this, friend Ethan.” Ta-hoding’s expression was glummer than usual. “We had no choice, though. The runner had to be repaired.”

“Of course it did.” Ethan indicated the gently billowing sails low on the masts, the gustily taut ones higher up, above the roof of the forest. “You mean, we don’t have the momentum necessary to get us started?”

He saw the problem now. While the Slanderscree was traveling at a respectable speed, she had enough energy to plow easily through the soft pika-pedan. But once stopped, with the thick green pseudopods practically growing over the railings, she couldn’t get moving.

“So what can we do about it?”

“We cannot back up,” said Ta-hoding solemnly, gesturing behind them. “The pika-pedan has grown too tall and thick behind us while we have waited here.”

“What about sending out a crew with axes and swords to cut a clear path ahead of us?”

“We may have to try precisely that, friend Ethan. But I wish I could think of another way. By the time our people could cut a path wide enough for the ship, a decent distance ahead of us, the pika-pedan they first felled would be growing up stiff behind them.

“However,” he said, executing a Tran gesture indicative of hopelessness mixed with resignation, “I confess I see nothing else to be done.” He waddled off to give instructions to Hunnar.

Everyone not immediately concerned with the operation of the icerigger was sent over the side and was soon frantically hacking away at the forest ahead of the ship with axes, kitchen cleavers, anything that would cut. The huge stalks fell easily, squirting water and sap over the frenzied group of foresters, who knew they were racing against the growing time of the stumps behind them.

Even Ethan, using his sword, could cut down a ten-meter tall column of pika-pedan in ten minutes or so, though the constant swinging was wearying to muscles not used to such activity. To provide a path expansive enough for a ship the size of the Slanderscree, it was necessary to fell a great many pika-pedan. They couldn’t stop. When the pika-pedan behind them reached underbelly deck level of four meters, they would have to retreat and try to break out as best they could.

As it turned out, they had to quit before they wanted to.

All eyes, on board and in the work party, went to the main-mast observation basket, whose wicker-enclosed lookout was screaming while pointing frantically to the east.

“ Stavanzer !”

“How far?” roared Ta-hoding, cupping thick paws to his lips.

“Twenty, maybe thirty kijat,” the reply came back from the lookout.

“Coming this way?”

“It is difficult to tell, Captain, at this distance.”

“How many?”

“Again hard to tell. I am sure of only one.” A pause, then, “Still only one.”

There was no need to give the order to abandon cutting and return to the ship. At the news of a stavanzer in the vicinity, a retreat to the raft was a matter of instinct, not debate. Everyone was chivaning or running through the maze of felled pika-pedan stalks without having to be told.

“What now, Captain?” Ethan asked Ta-hoding when he’d made his breathless way back to the helmdeck.

Eer-Meesach was standing at the railing, peering forward out of old eyes. “To most it hints of death’s proximity, friend Ethan. But it could also be our salvation.”

“How can that be?”

“Consider if the thunder-eater passes close to us, Ethan. You know how the stavanzer travels by pushing itself across the ice. In so doing it smoothes everything in its path as flat as a metalworker’s forge.”

“I see. So we can go out the way it comes in?”

“More than that, friend Ethan.” Ta-hoding, overhearing, elaborated. “Once we build up enough speed traveling back down the thunder-eater’s trail, we can then turn the ship and continue in any direction we wish.”

“It is the building up of enough speed that is critical,” Eer-Meesach finished.

“Kinetic energy,” Ethan murmured, and then had to try and explain the unfamiliar-sounding Terranglo term in Trannish.

“It will be not easy.” Ta-hoding was talking as much to himself as to his listeners. “Even if we do pass successfully into the trail, there are other dangers to be considered.” Ethan didn’t press him for an explanation.

“We must make a decision. We do have a choice.” He gestured within an arm toward the bow, his dan momentarily billowing with wind. “We have cut a path a kijat or two ahead of us. We can reset sail and make a run at the forest wall. If that fails, we will then have no room to maneuver, and it will be most difficult to try and back up for another run. Also, I should like to keep that option open, should the thunder-eater swerve and bear down on us.”

“Seems pretty obvious to me what we do,” said a new voice. September mounted to the helmdeck. “We wait and try to slip in behind it.”

Ta-hoding’s gaze traveled around the little knot of decision-makers. His usual jollity was absent now. He was all business. “It’s settled, then,” and he moved to the railing to issue instructions.

Twenty minutes of waiting followed the final preparations. All sailors were at their posts, knights and squires ready to assist when and where they could. The quns had vanished into their holes, and a last meworlf battered itself like a crazed mechanical toy against the stalks as it sought to race out of the area.

Presently, a deeper sound rose above the wind-choir, a periodic breathy grumble like a KK-drive slipping past lightspeed. From his single previous encounter, Ethan knew the noise was caused by the stavanzer’s method of locomotion. Expelling air through a pair of downward-facing nozzles set in its lower back, it could also pull itself slowly forward across the ice on its lubricated belly by means of the two down-thrust tucks protruding from its upper jaw—though that rubbery formation could hardly be called a jaw.

The rumble grew deeper. The Slanderscree quivered steadily as the ice beneath it shook to the rhythm of a monstrous metabolism.

Ethan experienced an unlikely urge to climb into the rigging, to get above the wavering crowns of pika-pedan so he could see. But he stayed where he was, out of the sailors’ way.

Murmurs drifted down from those in the highest spars, their eyes focused on something unseen. Their companions hushed them. Ethan let his gaze travel forward.

At the far end of the crude pathway they’d so laboriously hacked from the rusty forest a great mass slid into view. It stood perhaps twelve meters above the ice, a black maw inhaling felled pika-pedan with Jobian patience as the horny lower lip/jaw sliced off the nutrient-rich stalks flush with the ice.

Once, the upper jaw lifted and the huge tusks came slamming down into the ice hard enough to make the kijat-distant Slanderscree rock unsteadily. Ice, roots, protein-rich nodules were vacuumed indiscriminately into the Pit: proteins and nodules and bulk to be converted into fuel and cells, ice to be melted and flushed throughout the vast metabolic engine.

Tearing unconcernedly into the wall of fresh pika-pedan ahead of it, the massive head vanished from sight. Like an ancient snowbound train, the dark gray bulk slid across their path. Parasites and other growths of respectable size formed a fantastic foliage of their own on the leviathan’s sides and back, a private jungle none dared explore. The fluctuating howl from the intake and expulsion of air was deafening now.