Alan Foster - The Icerigger Trilogy

She sneered at him. “Better to waste days than the ship.”

“Perhaps,” put in Ta-hoding, desirous of serving as peacemaker while keeping one eye on the rapidly nearing storm, “But I think Sir Hunnar has another suggestion.”

“I do.” The knight gestured back aft. “We must move off, gather our speed, and try to break through.”

“’Twill be the ship that breaks, not the ice.” She noticed Ethan watching nearby, changed her tone completely. “What do you say, Sir Ethan?”

Abruptly he was aware of many eyes on him, sailors and captain, squires and knights. They did not cease their frenzied work, but they listened for his reply nonetheless.

Good. They’d all hear. “I think we should do,” he said loudly enough for everyone to understand clearly, “whatever Sir Hunnar decides. The rifs is a foe to be fought, and in matters of battle his judgment is always best.”

Hunnar stared at him for a long moment, mumbled almost as an afterthought, “We have no choice. We must try to break through.”

“’Tis settled, then!” Ta-hoding looked relieved, set about giving the appropriate orders. The crowd which had edged its way to the helmdeck scattered to stations. Hunnar and Ethan continued to eye each other for several minutes, until Hunnar half-smiled and broke for his own favored position.

Was he grateful—or angry at some suspected condescension? Ethan had no time to reflect on the knight’s state of mind. There were cables to stow, lines to straighten, sailors to reassure.

Commands reverberated around the deck. The icerigger commenced making a wide circle. Their course would take them in a curve eastward, then north, into the front wave of the storm. With its wind at their backs, they would hurtle back toward the nearly completed gap in the ridge and smash through the remaining ice blocks.

There were other scenarios, other possibilities, which Ethan preferred not to consider.

As raftsmanship, the plan made excellent sense. Emotionally, it did not, for the storm seemed to reach out for them as they neared the halfway point of the circle.

So close to the bore front the sky was a vast sheet of black cast iron looming ominously on their left, ready to tumble down and smash soft wood and softer creatures to multicolored smears against the ocean. If they had miscalculated and the rifs struck the ship broadside, it would surely capsize her, splintering masts, cabins, deck and crew.

Like gold thread in a velvet cape, lightning found its way downward through the boiling darkness. Rumbles and crashes, the war cries of inimical weather reached the crew and impelled them to faster work, stronger efforts to bring the ship around.

The first touch of the rifs fumbled for the ship. Not violent yet, but not like the steady, friendly every-day winds of Tran-ky-ky. No longer did they blow steadily to the west. Disturbed zephyrs slid in confusion around Ethan. Idle gusts scudded dismally past him, twisting and darting in and upon themselves like frightened rabbits hunting for a hidey-hole.

“We’re going to cut it mighty close, feller-me-lad,” said September in as grim a voice as Ethan had ever heard him use. The giant had both arms wrapped tightly around a pair of mainstays. Ethan chose the more solid wooden railing, locking a leg around one supportive post, arms around the railing top.

As the Slanderscree came full around onto a southerly heading, the rifs, in a desperate grab for its prey, jumped onto them.

The sky turned from blue to black. Thunder battered ears curved and pointed. Great shafts of electric death hunted for the fleeing raft. They reminded Ethan of nothing so much as the pulpy, luminous cyclops-creature they’d fought below the surface when escaping from the dungeon of Poyolavomaar. Glowing eye, gigantic black mouth filled with jagged teeth. Only now the teeth were kilometers high and yellow-gold instead of transparent.

Ethan’s gaze turned with difficulty from the nearing ice ridge to the helmdeck. Looking more like a chunk of gray granite than their fat captain, Ta-hoding stood braced against the center of the huge wheel, struggling to aid his two helmsmen. They were already racing along at close to a hundred twenty kph, he guessed. Another blast of the full body of the rifs struck the ship, punching the sails still further outward and accelerating the craft’s motion.

If they missed the gap at this speed, they wouldn’t have to worry about the rifs any longer. The icerigger would smash itself against the ridge. There wouldn’t even be smears left of her crew. Even if they struck the gap but angled too far to one side or the other, jagged ice boulders could tear away stays, bring down the masts on top of them, or even shatter the sides of the hull.

There was black overhead and white rushing toward them; Windborne particles of ice and snow whizzed like projectiles from a million tiny guns across his mask, making vision difficult. By then the roar of the storm seemed to originate somewhere between his ears, numbing his senses, playing tricks with perception. Hadn’t they reached the ridge yet?

A chalcedony tunnel obliterated much of the blackness as the Slanderscree entered the gap. He braced himself for the ultimate impact as did everyone else on board. There was a horrible crunching noise. Whether the ship had struck the jagged walls speeding past on either side or had been struck by lightning, he couldn’t tell. The icerigger rocked crazily for a second.

Then they were through, the white ramparts gone, clear ice vanishing beneath the ship’s runners. Fighting the wind, he looked astern and saw the pressure ridge from its southern side, receding behind them. His gaze went forward, toward what he knew he would see. Somewhere, the fates had determined the Slanderscree should not travel with a bowsprit. Otherwise the icerigger seemed to have handled the impact well. Masts had not fallen, no crevasse had appeared in the deck.

Something irritated his mouth. He parted his lips, sucked in salty fluid. With his face shielded from the wind, he nudged open the mask. Icy-gloved fingers probed at bare skin, felt the flow of blood from his nose. It did not feel broken. It felt worse, and the blood was making a mess inside his suit.

Looking around he saw other members of the crew picking themselves off the deck where they’d fallen or been thrown by the impact of smashing through the remaining ice blocks. How those aloft had kept from being thrown from the rigging was a miracle he chose not to question.

Sails straining to hold to the spars, spars to masts, masts creaking in their deck sockets, deck groaning on its five runners, and crew straining in prayer to whatever personal gods they worshipped that the whole should not return to the parts of its sum, the Slanderscree flew southward at a hundred sixty kilometers per hour.

A Tran knelt in the gap in the pressure ridge. Furry fingers collected several nonwhite, nonice fragments. They were mostly slim and irregular. One pricked his finger and he cursed. He had enough anyway. Raising his arms parallel to the ice, he tacked his way back to the group of Tran waiting impatiently at the far end of the passage.

There he dropped his arms, closed his dan, and slid to a neat stop. It would not do to stumble or fall before so many important ones.

“These were a few of what I found, sirs. There are many other such fragments at the far end of this passageway.”

Tonx Ghin Rakossa, Landgrave of Poyolavomaar, accepted the several bits of shattered wood. He studied them, avoiding the one which had pierced the scout’s finger.

“Many such fragments? Enough to comprise part of a large ship?”

“No, sire. I saw no such large amounts of debris.”

Rakossa threw the splinters angrily to the ice. “They have escaped the rifs, then.” He gently fingered the bandage over his left eye. “Though not undamaged.”