Alan Foster - The Icerigger Trilogy

The crowd was deafening. On Terra his movements would have seemed slow and clumsy. But here their alienness seemed to verge on the magical.

Sir Hunnar sat up, holding his middle. He smiled. “I could see that one, I think. Will you teach me that last trick, Sir Ethan?”

“Sure. Here, you start like this…” But he didn’t have a chance to continue, because a moment later massive palms were literally pounding congratulations into him. If it continued he’d be asking for mercy from their admiring assault.

Even worse, he noticed that Elfa was staring across at him with gleaming, almost worshipful eyes.

Someone in the crowd pressed a tankard of reedle into his hand. His left leg hurt where he’d pulled something. He drained several swallows. He did not notice Colette du Kane, who was staring at him with a most peculiar expression.

HE WOKE IN THE middle of the night, and it wasn’t from cold. The icy night air was sharp enough to keep him from falling asleep again, though. After several futile attempts, he put his hands under his head and stared up at the canopy which covered the bed. His suit crinkled under him and he edged up against the bulk of his survival parka.

Something was going to have to be done about the attentions of the Landgrave’s daughter before a fatal misunderstanding occurred.

He knew next to nothing of local custom in such matters. But if someone should develop the wrong idea or walk in on them at another moment like that first one, it could be very awkward indeed. They’d be reminded very quickly of their alienness. Even Hunnar’s friendship might evaporate with surprising speed.

Finally he rolled over and felt under the blankets for the parka. It was difficult to put it on in the light from the single remaining candle. The thermometer had plunged to regions where no human should have stirred from bed. But with his mind thinking furiously on other matters, he hardly noticed.

Once he’d donned the parka, he unbolted the door and slipped out into the hall. He had a fair idea of the location of the Landgrave’s rooms. Tracing the proper steps and turns in the sub-freezing, windswept hallways was something else again. Only a few candles and oil lamps lit the way.

At night, with the wind moaning through the corridors and everyone but a few uncommunicative guards asleep, the castle seemed as forlorn and empty-cold as the mountains of the moon.

The whole thing was ridiculous. What was he going to do, rouse the Landgrave in the middle of the night? On the other hand, it might be the best time. In secret, without nosy courtiers around. An unguarded, unwatched discussion. It might also help minimize his embarrassment. And it was something that ought to be dealt with soonest.

Ah, the Landgrave’s quarters were just around that turn, there. He would tell the guards…

He looked down the hall, peered harder. The flickering, uncertain light made it hard to be sure, but there didn’t seem to be any guards. That was odd. He slowed as he approached the door to the inner chambers.

The guards were there, it turned out Both of them. Immaculately clad in inlaid armor and leather. One was pinned neatly to the wall by a pair of long pikes. His expression was frozen in shock and surprise. The other’s head lolled on the floor at an unnatural angle. His blood flowed over the smooth stones.

Several possibilities suggested themselves right away. None of them made any sense. In the shock of the moment he didn’t stop to consider that where two competent armed guards had been neatly dispatched, he might prove singularly ineffective. He stuck his head inside the open door and looked into the room.

The tableau that greeted his eyes might have been drawn from an ancient Terrussian opera. It was crowded enough.

In the great canopied carved bed, the Landgrave lay pinned to the blankets by two husky tran wearing simple masks. A third stood over him with a standard ship-issue survival knife poised to strike. Hellespont and Colette du Kane sat to one side, securely gagged. They were tied to a couple of chairs much too big for them. A fourth tran, wielding a bloody saber, watched them.

Ethan turned, reached down, and hefted the pike of the fallen guard. Two courses of action suggested themselves. He could charge in and dispatch the four assassins, free the du Kanes, and earn the eternal admiration of all. Or he could turn and run down the hall screaming like a broker whose credit had submarined until he’d roused enough help to be effective.

Logic, plus the fact that he could handle a garden hoe more readily than a pike, inclined him toward the latter course. Not as glorious, but more practical. He turned and took several steps down the hall.

“Alarm, murder most foul, assassins, cutthroats! Rouse yourselves! Help, help, the Landgrave is being murdered! Guards, knights, priests, depression, devaluation, competition!”

Confused murmurs sprang up throughout the castle as the cold walls bounced Ethan’s cries up corridors, around turns, down iceways. The pile of stone started to stir like a beehive poked with a stick.

Replies also came from within the room in the form of a string of curses. One of the assassins, a huge burly fellow with a sword slash on one arm and fur knotted like an old rug, came out with weapon at the ready. He looked to his left. This was a fatal mistake, since Ethan was waiting on his right.

It took little skill to skewer the killer through the middle.

The tran screamed like a girl, which added a satisfying note to the growing pandemonium. At one end of the hall, figures could be seen running toward them. Ethan started for them.

And tripped over the prone guard in the half-dark.

He rolled over on his back, stunned. Above him a tall, shadow-garbed figure raised a red saber over its head. Fangs glowed in the oil-light. The saber descended. He could hear the air it cut. The wielder grunted questioningly and Ethan heard the steel hit the stone floor at his side, so close that it cut his shirt and struck sparks from the rock. Something blunt hit him in the stomach.

It was the feathered end of the arrow that was buried in the other’s gut. Another millisecond and he was buried in an avalanche of blood and fur.

It might be lighter than it should, but it was dead weight. In a minute, though, there were hands to help him. He stared into the gloom. Hunnar was among the crowd. Feet ran past him. Shouts rang like bells from the hallway walls.

“Very close, Sir Ethan,” said the knight, giving him a muscular arm up. “Our thanks.”

“Mine to you,” he replied breathlessly. He fingered his middle where the back of the arrow had struck before snapping in half.

“Not to me. Hunnar pointed to another figure standing in the twilight beside them.

Suaxus-dal-Jagger was holding a bow half again as tall as himself, an arrow notched in the gut-string. He nodded curtly, turned, and started down the hall.

Hunnar knelt and rolled the body of the saber-holder over. He examined the silent face while Ethan tried to wipe some of the blood from his parka.

“Do you recognize him?” he asked curiously.

“No, but that is not surprising strange. Such men take care of their anonymity. What happened?”

Without replying, Ethan turned and led him into the room he’d seen so briefly. At least twenty armed tran were now clustered inside. Their faces were not pleasing to look upon. Right now they were giving the room a thorough search, even hunting for hollow places in the walls.

The du Kanes had been released. Colette was rubbing her wrists. In the freezing air Ethan could imagine how painful the ropes must have been. When she saw Ethan, she took a step in his direction, caught herself, and stared at the floor.