Alan Foster - The Icerigger Trilogy

“I’m not completely helpless, you know.” Ethan turned to the ice above, began melting with barely a suggestion of blue issuing from the lens of the beamer. September did not reply, in doing so saying much.

A kind of petrified illumination showed ahead. Ethan turned off his beamer, raised both gloved hands, and pushed hard. Splinters fell past his face mask as he broke through the surface.

Cautiously, he raised his head out. Like a vacationing friend now returning, ever-present wind buffeted the back of his skull.

A low wooden wall lay ten meters or so to his right, lining the shore of Poyolavomaar. He twisted around. Piers lay ahead and behind him. A couple of small ice rafts were tied up to each. There was no movement, and lights on only one. With the temperature already a brisk minus thirty C. and falling, sailors and merchants alike would seek refuge in warmer taverns and cabins.

Huddled together in the distance above the shore wall, the lights of the town flickered brightly. An occasional shout rose above the wind.

Ethan looked back, ducked down into the tunnel. Anxious faces, masked or furred, stared back up at him expectantly. “We’re in the harbor, between the ends of two piers. But I don’t recognize anything, and I don’t see the ship.”

“Let me through.” With much squirming and wiggling, Hunnar slipped past Ethan. Elfa, Teeliam, Tersund and another sailor followed him, their musk strong in the confined corridor. Hunnar looked back down at Ethan.

“My strangely clothed friends, you must remain here. Both you and your wondrous weapons are too conspicuous.” Then Hunnar spread his dan, hunched over, and let the wind take him away.

Minutes became hours of worry. What if they were captured? Worse, what if some wandering Poyo soldier discovered the hole in the ice? These and a dozen other deleterious scenarios played on the stage of Ethan’s mind before Hunnar’s voice whispered above him.

“We’ve found the ship. ’Tis two piers over. There are but a few sentries aboard her and they sleep the dreams of the bored and ordered-about. Some sleep sounder than that. Come.”

Remaining silent, but obviously glad to be back on the surface again, the crew of the Slanderscree emerged from the tunnel. Ethan knew that the sentries who were “sleeping sounder than that” were the ones who had unwittingly provided Hunnar and his companions with the swords and lances they now carried.

The prisoners assembled beneath the low underside of a thirty-five-meter merchant raft. It was broad enough of beam to conceal the entire crew.

“We could do no better than to chivan as fast as possible for the ship and raise sail before the city patrols can react.” Hunnar hefted his sword. “We have weapons enough.”

“’Tis so!” growled a sailor nearby, flexing furry fingers armed with sharp, stubby claws.

“This meets your approval, my friends?” Hunnar looked at the three humans.

September nodded. “I’m not much for subtle strategies either. Let’s do it.”

All three readied their beamers again, hoping they wouldn’t have to employ the revealing energy weapons. Hunnar moved out into the moonlight, and then in groups of five the crew raced silently across the ice toward the waiting icerigger.

With their skates lockered aboard, the three humans used the simplest method of making the dash across the slippery surface. Sitting down, each extended his arms back over his head. A sailor grabbed a wrist in one hand, a second the other. Spreading their dan, they took off across the open stretch of harbor.

Ethan could only lament his undignified position and pray the tough material of the survival suit held. It did so, but even the friction generated by such a short journey raised a portion of the suit’s temperature above what its compensators considered comfortable.

All boarding ladders were still draped invitingly over the railings. Spreading out beneath the vast underbody of the icerigger, her crew commenced a half hysterical climb upward, utilizing every available ladder.

There wasn’t a soul on board. “Apparently,” September murmured, “they decided freezing out in the night a bad choice with so many inviting taverns nearby. But wouldn’t they wonder at their companions whom you dispatched, Hunnar?”

“I imagine,” the knight said with a wolfish grin, “that they left for warmth and drink because they assumed their absent fellows had already done so.”

“The Landgrave has great confidence in his dungeons.” Ethan relaxed gratefully. There would be no fighting here.

“Why should he not?” said Teeliam, looking around for someone to kill and evidently disappointed at finding no one. “None have ever escaped from them in memory.”

“No one has ever traveled through Hell before, either.” Elfa spoke in a way that indicated she was referring to more than just their journey through ice and ocean.

“Quick now!” Ta-hoding gave rapid orders to his crew. “Up sail and quiet about it!”

With the prospect of imminent freedom to energize them, the sparmen assaulted the rigging like birds. Sails began to unfurl, filling silently.

Spreading his dan, which in the light night breeze were barely adequate to carry his porcine body up the iceramp, the captain chivaned his way to the helm-deck. From there he shouted in low tones to the sailors astern to hurry in with the ice anchors. Other crewmembers were at work on the pier, quietly and with feverish efficiency slipping pika-pina cables from cleat and capstan.

Though the Tran moved with the silence of a tribe of sock-footed ants, so much activity could not remain unnoticed forever. Before long a voice called out in the darkness.

“Who’s there? Who’s on board the prize?”

Sailors on deck and shore desperately tried to spot the caller. A minute passed, and then it did not matter.

“Help! The prisoners have escaped!” There was as much astonishment as urgency in that cry. “Guard to the ships, guard to the ships, and ware devils the—”

There was a twang. One of the sailors had armed himself with a crossbow from the ship’s armory. Now he let fly from the mizzenmast and the alarming words changed to an indecipherable gurgling. There was the faint, distant flump of something striking the ground.

Too late. Other voices sounded now on shore, called querulously to one another and to the unresponsive shapes moving about the great raft. Ta-hoding, dropping all pretense of concealment, moved to the helm-deck railing and roared instructions liberally laced with invective at the crew.

Ponderously, with adjustable spars turning, the Slanderscree began to gain sternway and back clear of the pier. Sailors still on the dock saw armed figures chivaning at them, jumped aboard. There was not enough time to loosen all the cables.

A concatenation of bizarre clangings, rips and tears, groans and inanimate protests sounded from the dock. The incredible pika-pina cables held, but the dock did not. Pinions and cleats ripped free of their sockets, flew toward the massive raft, while Poyos on the pier turned about and tried to protect themselves from flying bone and wood.

On board the Slanderscree the boarding ladders were brought in, several with sailors still clinging to them. Looking as if they would sweat if they could, Ta-hoding’s helmsmen threw the great wheel hard over. The icerigger continued to move backward, her bow swinging steadily around to the north. As soon as it cleared the outermost pier, the spars would shift and the westwind would fill the sails from behind.

They could see oil lamps massing along the shore, spilling out onto the ice. Shouts of outrage and confusion flared as unevenly and brightly as the flames. A few arrows and a couple of spears flew at the great, ghostly shape of the icerigger. Most fell short, a pair stuck into the rear of the helmdeck as it swung landward.