Alan Foster - The Icerigger Trilogy

“Perhaps they wish the ship for a prize,” Hunnar suggested.

“My beautiful Slanderscree ,” Ta-hoding moaned. “Everyone wants my ship. Truly it is the greatest prize on all Tran-ky-ky.”

The captain’s pride-filled exaggeration was pardonable, Ethan mused. There was nothing to be gained by pointing out that Tran who had access to laser cannon and hand beamers and skimmers didn’t need ice boats, no matter how great or graceful.

The long, slow tow offered those on the icerigger ample opportunity to study their captors. Despite access to advanced technology the Tran manning the skimmers didn’t look particularly prosperous. Some wore armor and attire that looked battered and worn while their distinctive headgear was more outré than impressive. The dichotomy was as puzzling as it was obvious. It was as if they had encountered a knight of old mounted on the most magnificent charger, only to discover on closer inspection that he was clad in rusty, broken armor and torn underwear.

They were much closer to the southern continent than they thought. They would long since have seen the expected hundred-meter high cliffs of the continental plateau but for one thing: there weren’t any. Not here, where the usual vertical walls of rock had given way to collapsed, eroded slopes. A few isolated granitic spires loomed like lonely sentinels surveying the results of millennia of erosion.

There was also much more vegetation than usual, due to their proximity to the equator. Disintegrated rock had collected in cracks and crevices to form soil. Even so, the land plants which clung to a subfreezing existence were a sorry lot, nowhere near as impressive as the pika-pina and pika-pedan which thrived out on the ice sheet itself.

They sailed parallel to the rubble-strewn slopes all that evening and through the night before morning saw them towed into a deep harbor much like that at Moulokin. Unlike Moulokin’s haven, no sheer walls towered above the ice here. Gentle slopes rose gradually from the edge of the ice.

Ethan knew from their previous journey that such harbors were actually subterranean river canyons which were submerged when the ice sheets melted during Tran-ky-ky’s warm cycle. In twenty thousand years, this inlet would be completely under water.

If not sooner. The new thought was as disturbing as the presence of the laser cannon.

Before long they found themselves in among other, much smaller ice ships. Poorly put together, scarred and battered by heavy use and poor weather, they clustered around the Slanderscree like jackals around a lion. Some of those on board conversed animatedly with the crews of the skimmers. No surprises there.

As they neared the harbor’s end the first cliffs hove into view. Thick clouds hid the edge of the continental shelf. Hunnar and the rest of the Slanderscree ’s crew were panting nonstop now. The water beneath the icerigger’s runners was nearly ten centimeters deep, and to those accustomed to normal temperate zone readings, the climate within the harbor was sweltering. According to Semkin, by high noon the thermometer might reach an astonishing two degrees above zero centigrade.

A city had taken root on the southwest rim of the harbor. Ethan hadn’t expected a real town, but the presence of so many small ice ships was sufficient to suggest a thriving community. It was a dull-looking place, the stone structures sprawling haphazardly along the shoreline and back up into the hills. Across, the harbor from this egalitarian community, a fairly steep slope climbed several hundred meters from the edge of the ice sheet, leveled off, and vanished into the clouds. This prompted him to query Jacalan, their resident geologist.

“Sorry. I know there’s a lot of cloud cover here, Ethan, but I’ve been watching my instruments closely and there’s no evidence of plutonic activity anywhere in the vicinity.” He nodded toward the mountain that rose from the north side of the harbor. “If that’s a volcano, it’s dead or dormant.”

“Then what about all this cloud cover? It’s not a rifs storm. Something has to be generating all that moisture.”

Jacalan shrugged. “Ask Hwang or Semkin. Weather’s their department.”

He did, but neither meteorologist had a ready explanation for the dense layer of clouds that hung over this area of the continent. It was part and parcel of what they’d come to investigate, and thus far their studies hadn’t produced anything particularly informative. Hal Semkin clung to the hot springs theory despite Jacalan’s counterarguments, while Hwang was trying to put together a theory allowing for warm subcrustal emissions of heat and moisture which would not conflict with the geologist’s findings.

Ethan moved to the quarterdeck. Ta-hoding still stood by his useless helm, “Know anything about this place?” Ethan asked him, fairly sure of the captain’s response.

“Nothing.” Next to the captain the great wooden wheel spun aimlessly.

“What about the sailors from Poyolavomaar?”

“The questions have been asked.” Ta-hoding sounded irritated but Ethan knew it was only frustration that made his replies short and sharp. “This land is as foreign to them as to those of us of Sofold. At this end of the world only Moulokin was spoken of, and as you know it, too, was unknown until we went there and made allies of its people.” He stared at the low-lying city they were approaching. “Would that the soldiers of that fine metropolis were here to aid us now.” He pointed toward the port.

“What a poor place this is. See, with all this broken stone lying loosely about, their homes and storehouses are still ineptly fashioned. There is no profit to be made trading with such a community. The wonder of it to me is that it exists in this place at all. Who do they trade with? We encountered nothing between here and Poyolavomaar.”

Indeed, the closer they drew and the better view they had, the more Ethan found himself wondering what this city was doing in this isolated region in the first place. There was little use of mortar or cement. Gaps between undressed stones were chinked with smaller rocks and pebbles or stuffed with raw pika-pina. Roofs were fashioned of large flat stone slabs instead of the dressed and cut slate common to developed communities like Wannome or Arsudun. Except for a single multistory structure which overlooked the town from off to the left and resembled an oversize hut with battlements, the entire city conveyed the impression of being nothing more than a hasty afterthought.

“No walls, either,” observed Ta-hoding professionally. “No gates. It is evident they do not expect to be attacked. There are no other city-states nearby to threaten them.”

“Who would want to?” Hunnar commented contemptuously. “What is there to plunder? New buildings that are already falling down? Citizens clad in rags and tatters? All the loot this place could offer would not be worth the life of a single warrior.”

None of which, Ethan reflected, squared with the presence of skimmers and energy weapons.

The skimmer with the cannon was moving inboard. Hunnar and September barely had enough time to debate the possibility of jumping her crew when it was already too late. Their captors were prepared to repel boarders not with swords and shields but with hand beamers. It hovered alongside the Slanderscree only long enough to let off a couple of its crew. Then it drew away to a safe distance again, the cannon muzzle still trained on the icerigger.

No one bothered the boarders. If they hadn’t been completely confident of their safety, they wouldn’t have exposed themselves to those on the icerigger in the first place. The pair wandered the deck, ignoring the surly stares of the sailors, inspecting rigging and woodwork. Despite their ownership of beamers and skimmers they were obviously impressed.