Alan Foster - The Icerigger Trilogy

As Ethan predicted, they reached the first of the low but steep-sided hills that evening. They decided to make a semi-permanent camp in the sheltering lee of the tallest minimount. Scouts would be sent out on the morrow in wheeled lifeboats to try and find a passage to the west that the icerigger could negotiate. Both scout groups would be gone a maximum of five days. In that time, the crew would busy themselves with making minor but bothersome and necessary repairs to the ship, and try to keep busy until the scouts returned.

Sinahnvor was patrolling his foredeck position, cold in the near cloudless night, when something flickering on the hillside caught his eye. He blinked double lids, but the flickering remained. It looked like a fat eye winking in the night.

Fortunately Sinahnvor was not particularly imaginative. Nevertheless he shivered with something other than cold. Who would be off the ship this time of no-light? There’d been rumors of one of the humans and the Landgrave’s daughter, but such tales propelled more rafts than did the winds.

The watchman lifted his oil lamp slightly higher, extending the pole to which it was slung over the side of the raft. It was his imagination after all—no, there it was again! A definite intermittent gleam part way up the steep slope, no higher than the topmost spar of the foremast.

Rumors of a less amusing kind filtered through his brain. If this were truly a land of spirits, might that not be some nightwraith come to snatch him from the deck? And who would know the manner or time of his abduction?

It made him glance around anxiously. The two moons were high aloft, an indication that it was nearer morning than eve-time. He saw no movement anywhere. Would his relief find only lamp pole, clothing, and weapons? Surely a spirit would be interested only in his body.

Monont should be on center deck watch now. He could remain silent and confront that mysterious glint, waiting for his soul to mayhap be stolen out his mouth, or he could seek the comfort of a comrade’s company. Lamp pole swinging, he descended from the bowsprit to the deck and moved past the fore cabins.

“Clean ice and wind on your neck,” came a husky voice in the darkness. Sinahnvor swung his pole around. It lit the face of a curious Tran.

“What are you doing away from your post, Sinahnvor?” asked Monont, concerned. “Should the night-mate catch you, he could make you—”

“Be silent, Monont!” Sinahnvor whispered hastily. “There is an eye in the mountain!”

The other lookout studied his colleague carefully. “You have been chewing too much bui extract.”

There was conviction in Sinahnvor’s voice, however. “As you doubt me, come and see for yourself.”

“I should not leave my post.”

“Who is to know? The night-mate will not appeal until watch-change time, and our nearest enemies are at least a hundred satch behind us.”

“That is true. I will come, but only for a moment. Foolishness,” Monont muttered as he followed the other sentry to the foredeck.

Motioning his companion to silence, Sinahnvor extended his light pole over the railing, moved it about slowly as he searched the mountainside. For several seconds there was no sign of the shining and he was more afraid of the story Monont would tell the others come the morn than he was of any spirit they might arouse. But then the spark showed once more, unmistakably. It remained as steady as the lamp pole. “See? Did I not tell you?”

The more prosaic Monont eyed the speck of light. “Truly is there something, but I think it is no spirit. Who ever heard of a spirit with only one eye? They have at least four each.”

“Shssh! Do not insult it!”

“That is no spirit, idiot-friend.” Monont mounted the railing, swung a clawed foot over the side. Sinahnvor watched him worriedly.

“Where are you going?”

“To that hillside.”

“You are mad! Don’t do it, Monont. The spirits will draw you into the mountain and drown you in dirt.”

“I thought the spirits of Hell would take us when we went under the ice and down to the inside of the world. The humans and Sir Hunnar Redbeard said such tales were mere superstition. Then they killed the devil that came up from the waters of the night. It stunk like a slaughtered hessavar. I find it hard now to believe as I once did in spirits and daemons.”

He slipped over the side, used a boarding rope to drop quickly to the ice.

“Monont— Monont !” Sinahnvor raised his lamp higher. In its shallow glow he saw the dim outline of his friend reach the hillside and begin an awkward ascent. The outline faded to shadow, then a memory of a shadow. Moments passed, silent moments broken only by the moan of the tired wind. But while he heard no cries of triumph, neither did any screams drift back to him.

It was with considerable relief that he picked out the returning figure of the other sentry, apparently unharmed.

“What was it, then?” He extended an arm and helped Monont back on deck.

“Here is your spirit eye. I had to dig it out.” Sinahnvor, much to his surprise, recognized the object immediately. “Why, ’tis only a purras, a common mixing bowl much as my own mate uses. Odd how it shines. The wood must take a very high polish.”

“Take it,” urged Monont. “’Tis not wood.”

Sinahnvor accepted the object… and nearly dropped it. It was made of thick, dense metal, badly tarnished in places, still flashy in others. He did not recognize the metal.

Both sentries exchanged glances. What people lived here in this iceless desert who could afford to make common, everyday kitchen utensils out of solid metal? Metal was hoarded for use in weapons and nails and tools, not mixing bowls.

Sinahnvor did not understand. Not understanding, he said, “I think we had best wake the night-mate early.”

The officer was no less startled by the bowl than the two lookouts had been. He chose to wake the second mate, who in turn roused Ta-hoding, who alerted the three humans and Sir Hunnar and the others of the icerigger’s informal decision-making body.

Before long most of the crew was awake and hacking at the nearby hillside, their lamps looking to those remaining on the Slanderscree like a convocation of stultified fireflies.

None of the humans took part in the digging. Their survival suits could barely cope with the nighttime temperature of seventy below, with a wind-chill factor nearing instant death. A crude digging tool could make a substantial gash in a survival suit. Insinuating itself into the cut, the outside air could freeze human skin solid almost as efficiently as a spray of liquid helium.

With such a large party working, it wasn’t long before several bags of trophies were being examined on deck. Peering through his mask (no need of the secondary goggles during the night), Ethan saw spread out among wood and soil a treasure trove of metal objects. On most worlds these would have been dismissed as nothing remarkable, but on metal-poor Tran-ky-ky they hinted at a vanished civilization of immense wealth. There were knives, utensils of all kinds, buckles and braces, engraved and broken drinking vessels, even metal buttons and pins. Hunnar fingered several of the last. Until now he’d never seen a pin made of anything but bone.

“Enormously rich or enormously wasteful,” he murmured, letting oil lamp light create argent patterns on the ornamental steel. “We will dig with more discipline in the morning.”

“Who could have lived here?” Ethan wondered aloud.

“Not Tran nor Saia.” The knight turned his attention to a delightfully intricate metal bottle wrapped in fine wire scrollwork. “’Tis too desolate and iceless for us and too cold for the Saia. But this is not spirit work.” Cat-eyes strove to penetrate windswept darkness. “Someone lived here…”