Alan Foster - The Icerigger Trilogy

He stuck a foot under the corpse and shoved. It rolled over onto its back. Ethan could see the stubby hilt of one of Willams’ crossbow bolts protruding from the soldier’s chest. It had gone right through the thin layer of bronze and the double leather backing.

“Twas not so much the greater range of your wizard’s weapon, though that was important, but the fact that it carries so much striking power. Even, yea, into the wind!”

“You’ve lost that surprise now, though,” September commented pointedly. “Next time they’ll know what to expect.”

“All the anticipation in the world will not slow one of these,” the knight observed. He prodded the hilt of the bolt. A little blood oozed out as he moved it around in the dead tran’s chest.

“And Mulvakken and his craftsmen are turning out new bows and many dozens of bolts constantly. Though we still have four trained men for every crossbow that is finished. That is our greatest weakness.”

“Will they attack again today?” asked Ethan curiously.

Hunnar glanced at the sun, then looked down at him. “No, friend Ethan, I think not. The Horde,” he explained with relish, “are not used to retreating. It will take their leaders some time to absorb what has happened to them. Tis completely foreign to their experience. For the first time they will have to ponder a real strategy. I cannot guess what that may be, except that it will not be another open frontal attack!” He smiled ferociously. “The ice is sick with their bodies.”

“Well, I’m glad to hear we can rest awhile,” said Ethan, “because I am completely and totally finished. Out of it. Tired.” His right hand was resting in a pool of ice water. He raised it and patted a little gently under his eyes, wiped it free with the back of a gloved hand before it could… wait a minute. Ice water? At this temperature?

He looked down. His hand had been resting in a large pool of rich red blood, which was just now beginning to congeal and thicken in the sub-freezing air. His survival glove and jacket sleeve had been soaked to a point halfway up his forearm. It looked like a scrap from a slaughterhouse.

“Darn! Now I’ll have to find a fire and melt this out.” Then he fell over in a dead faint.

THE FOLLOWING MORNING DAWNED clear and lovely—and windy. It was so beautiful that it was almost impossible to imagine the horror of the previous day. It was not necessary to call on the mind, however. All one had to do was glance over the harbor wall. The ice was littered for hundreds of meters in all directions with tiny clumps of fur and wide frozen ponds of dark red.

Warriors on this world, he reflected, were spared at least one of the great horrors of war. Since every engagement took place in a perpetual deep-freeze, there would be no lingering stink of moldering corpses.

“How do you feel, young feller?” asked September. “You keeled over so quick-like yesterday you had me worried a second.”

“I’m sorry about that,” Ethan replied.

“No need to apologize…” began September, but Ethan halted him.

“No, I’ve seen men killed before. And these aren’t even humans or thranx. I thought I’d seen quite a bit, but this…” He indicated the ghastly litter on the ice before them.

September put a great hand on his shoulder. “In the universe, my young friend, it’s always the familiar sights that shock the most. We’re always expecting the unfamiliar.”

Hunnar joined them, but his eyes were on the ice. Come to think of it, so were those of most of the men-at-arms stationed along the wall.

“What will they try today?” asked Ethan, aware that he was missing something.

“Don’t you hear it?” the knight replied.

“Hear what?”

“It has been sounding for several minutes now. Listen.”

Ethan waited, straining to hear something from across the ice. As usual, there was only the eternal infernal wind. Then there seemed to be something more.

“I hear it,” growled September. “Sounds like singing.”

“Yes,” Hunnar agreed. “Singing… Ah.” He pointed. “There.”

Far out across the solid sea, a strange object of truly monstrous proportions was moving toward them. Four long lines of nomad warriors were harnessed to four thick cables of woven pika-pina. Ethan could make out individual words now. The singing was accompanied by a deep-throated thrumming from smaller versions of the great Margyudan.

“Hayeh, chuff… hayeh, chuff!” intoned the straining barbarians. “Haryen abet hayeh chuff… hoo, hoo, chuff!…”

They swayed in rhythm to the song, pulling first to the left, then the right, left, then right. After they’d moved another dozen meters closer, the design of the engine they were dragging became clear even to Ethan’s untrained eye.

Hunnar said quietly, “That’s the biggest moydra… catapult… I’ve ever seen.”

Both singing and machine halted a few minutes later. The long lines of warriors rolled up their green cables. A crew of busy nomads began working about the base of the great war engine.

“Throwing out ice anchors,” said September, staring into the distance, “and blocking down the skates. I don’t wonder. The recoil on that thing must be terrific.”

The singing resumed, on a much smaller scale this time. Ethan could see the huge Cyclopean arm gradually sinking toward its base. It was hard to get a true sense of scale at this distance, but the crossbeam of the catapult was many times the height of a man.

There seemed to be a lapse in the activity. “What are they doing now?” he asked anxiously.

Hunnar yelled, “Get down!”

The cry was echoed by dozens of other voices along the wall. Ethan dropped as he had yesterday. Nothing happened. He raised his head slightly. There was a loud whistle in the sky and it wasn’t arrows, and it wasn’t the wind. Something went crunch in the distance, behind them.

Without waiting for an “all clear” he was on his feet, across the ice-path, and looking into the harbor. He almost stumbled on the ice.

Across the harbor, near the second tower down from the harbor gate, a section of wall at least five meters wide and three deep had been knocked from the back section of stone as though by the bite of a giant shovel.

Several twisted tran-shapes sprawled on the ice among the broken stone. From both walls troops were converging on the spot. A few started to scramble down the open break onto the ice.

There was a line in the harbor ice formed by three successive gouges, each about twenty meters apart. They lay in line from the broken section of wall. Twenty meters beyond the last gouge lay an enormous chunk of solid basalt. It sat placid and innocent in a slight depression of its own making.

Hunnar uttered something vicious that Ethan couldn’t translate and started running toward the castle. From several towers, Sofoldian catapults began to twang in response. Their smaller stones fell far short of the huge barbarian war engine.

A broad crescent of nomads had assembled next to the catapult. When it became clear that their own machine was impregnable they set up a great cheering and screaming that didn’t stop until the next stone was released.

This one landed short of the wall, took one bounce, and slammed into the masonry not ten meters down from where Ethan was standing. The concussion threw everyone stationed on that section off his feet.

Immediately, Ethan was standing and leaning over the side to inspect the damage.

A respectable portion of rock had been smashed free. Now it lay scattered on the ice like so many pebbles, the boulder a colossus among them.

“It’s a damn good thing it takes them so long to wind that thing up,” said September. “Just the same, Hunnar’s going to have to do something about that toy—and fast. Otherwise, near as I can figure, Sagyanak can sit out there and enjoy the party while that one piece of oversized artillery slowly turns these walls into gravel.”