Alan Foster - The Icerigger Trilogy

The big human seemed only amused by the intent scrutiny the knight was giving him.

“Then,” he continued casually, “would you object to our making some use of it?” He waited tensely. He didn’t wish to spill blood here, but for so much worked metal…

He did not bother to point out that they were in no position to deny it. Even so, Ethan’s ready answer surprised him.

“Sure. Help yourselves.” Even Suaxus looked startled.

“One thing you ought to know, though,” added September. “I don’t think your people will be able to work it.”

“Our smiths,” replied Suaxus, drawing himself up to his full height, “can work bronze, brass, silver, gold, copper, junite, iron, visiron, and good steel.”

“Very impressive. Believe me, I wish them only the best of luck. If they can mold duralloy in your local version of a manual forge, I’ll be the first to applaud. Now, if you could train a Droom to manhandle the stuff…”

That was one several of the soldiers could not keep from laughing at. It lightened the atmosphere, lessened the tension born of acquisition.

“If we could do that ,” smiled Hunnar, “we wouldn’t need the metal.”

“There are some bits and scraps already torn free that you might be able to make some use of,” September continued. “Like the acceleration-couch frames, heating units, and such. I’d like to offer you a couple of miles of wire, but I’m afraid there just isn’t much in the boat.” He wasn’t about to try and explain solid- and fluid-state mechanics. A frustrated warrior could become an angry warrior, apt to relieve his frustration by making short choppy motions with sharp objects.

“We shall see,” said Hunnar. He looked at Ethan. “You surely have no objections then, friend Ethan?”

“No, the boat’s all yours, uh, friend Hunnar.”

“Fine. Now I think it be time to go meet his Lordship.” He was exhilarated. Not a drop of blood shed to win such a prize! And mayhap some allies as well. Tiny allies, ’twas true.

“We’re ready as you,” said Ethan. He took a step forward, then stopped. A look of consternation came over his features.

“Um… how do you propose to get to this castle of yours?”

Hunnar reconsidered. Perhaps he’d been wrong. Maybe these really were children, or at least adolescents.

“We will simply chivan over,” he said patiently. “It is only a short ’lide. Fifteen minutes out, perhaps three times that back, against the wind.”

“By ‘chivan’ I guess you mean to skate?” Hunnar said nothing, confused. “I’m afraid we can’t do that.”

“Why not?” blurted Suaxus, hand moving slowly toward his sword-hilt again.

“Because,” Ethan continued, opening his coat and raising his arms, “we don’t have any wings and,” resnapping the coat and lifting a foot, removing the boot, “we haven’t any claws, or skates.” He replaced the boot hastily as the cold bit at his heel.

Hunnar stared at the now-covered foot and rapidly made some astonished reappraisals. Firstly, his pet theory that these people were but slimmer varieties of his own vanished like a sweetclub down a cub’s gullet. And then the full alien-ness of them—the way they moved, talked, their impossible sky-ship—all came down on him at once with a solid mental crunch.

Invincible knight of Sofold though he be, he was still shaken.

“If… if you have neither dan nor chiv,” he asked helplessly, “how do you move about? Surely you do not walk all the time?”

“We do a lot of that,” Ethan admitted. “Also, we have small vehicles that move from place to place.” He demonstrated a walk, feeling ridiculous. “We also run.” He forbore demonstrating this other human activity.

“We too ‘walk,’ with our chiv retracted,” muttered Hunnar a little dazedly. “But to have to walk to cover any distance… how terrible!”

“There are plenty of humans who feel exactly the same way. They do as little of it as possible,” confessed Ethan. “On our world there are few places to chivan, anyway. Our oceans are not solid, like this, but liquid.”

“You mean, like the inside of the world?” Hunnar gaped.

“That’s interesting.” Williams spoke for the first time. “Clearly they have seen or have memory of occasional breaks in the ice. Since it’s as much a part of their surface as these islands, it’s easy to see how their wise men would conclude that the world was hollow and filled with water.”

“What a sad place your home must be,” commiserated Hunnar, honestly sympathetic. “I do not think I should like to visit it.”

“Oh, there are places on many of our worlds, including Terra, where you’d feel right at home,” Ethan assured him.

“Can you not chivan at all ?” pressed the knight. It was hard to accede to such a monstrous abnormality.

“Not at all. If I were to try and chivan… We do have artificial chiv of metal on some worlds, but brought none with us. It’s not standard survival gear on our lifeboats. And I wouldn’t know how to use them, anyway. I think I could make a few meters from here into the wind before falling flat on my face.”

“Couldn’t hurt,” said Colette. He ignored her.

“I will call for a sled,” Hunnar said decisively. “Budjir, you and Hivell see to it!” The squire indicated acknowledgment and headed for the ice, the soldier following.

The humans watched their departure with fascinated stares. Williams in particular was utterly enraptured.

Once on the ice, the squire dug into the soldier’s backpack and drew out a highly polished mirror about a third as big as his torso. It was set in a dark wooden frame and had what looked like a large metal screw set in the base of the wood.

While the squire aligned it with the sun and balanced it, the soldier jammed it into the ice and began twisting until it was screwed in tightly. It was facing those same western islands Ethan had spotted from his treetop vantage.

There was a simple baffle-shutter arrangement that slipped over the mirror. While the soldier steadied it against the wind, Budjir began opening and closing the baffles in a distinct pattern. Almost immediately there was an answering series of bright flashes somewhere along the horizon, at which the squire began fluttering his shutters more rapidly and for some time.

“Clearly, any kind of aural communication,” September mused, “like drums or horns, are out of the question here. This wind would swallow up a good drum inside a half-kilometer or less.”

Williams asked Hunnar, “What do you do at night?”

“Torchlight reflected by mirror serves well enough,” the knight replied. “For long distances we have developed a system of relay stations with bigger mirrors. Except, of course, where they have been destroyed.”

“Destroyed?” said Ethan. It was the inflection in Hunnar’s voice and not the word itself that prompted his curiosity.

“Yes. The Horde burns them so that no word can be given of their passage. Indeed, it forbids their construction. But many feign ignorance and rebuild them.”

“Horde?” probed September disinterestedly. “What Horde?”

“I fear you will have chance to discover,” replied Hunnar. “We have a while to wait. I should like to learn more about you, and your amazing sky-raft, in that time.”

“There isn’t a great deal you would under… find interesting, Sir Hunnar,” said Ethan. “But I’ll be happy to show you around. Now, if I had my damned sample case with me…”

In the discussion that preceded the arrival of the sled-raft, Hunnar revealed a fair knowledge of basic astronomy. Tran-ky-ky rarely had cloudy weather for any length of time, Ethan reflected thoughtfully.