Alan Foster - The Icerigger Trilogy

The Dantesque scene in the harbor was revealed as the smoke was borne away by the wind. There was no dust, but stinging, blinding particles of ice still hung in the air, and Ethan was grateful for the goggles.

Below, an awful cacophony had begun, not of defiance this time, but of pain and fear and terror. The two humans watched, completely oblivious to the antics of Hunnar. Usually dignified to the point of coldness, the solemn young knight had shed his reserve and was leaping about like a cub, hugging every man-at-arms within reach and whooping with joy.

Uncountable multitudes of barbarian soldiers, who had stood within the harbor a moment ago, now lay dead or dying from terrible wounds. The ice sheet had cracked from the hundreds of charges but had not broken through to the freezing depths below. Eer-Meesach and Williams’ estimates had been proven correct. The ice was much too thick here to be affected by such ancient explosives.

Not as sound was the harbor wall, which had been subjected to another violent shaking. Several sections looked dangerously near collapse. The schoolmaster’s fuse and firing mechanism, cannibalized from the wrecked lifeboat, had done its task efficiently. The hundreds of charges had gone off within seconds of one another.

During the night, funnel-shaped holes had been melted in the ice, then filled with glass, metal, bone, and wooden fragments, and a year’s accumulation of bronze, iron, and steel filings originally destined for re-melting in the volcanic forges. Filled with anything that could cut or rend or tear.

Water had been poured over the pockets of crude shrapnel and allowed to refreeze during the early morning. The barbarians had been cut down like grass.

Now the battered, weakened army of Sofold came boiling out from behind its barriers and temporary ramparts, howling and shouting as barbarically as their supposedly less civilized tormentors. Axes, swords, and spears fell indiscriminately among healthy and wounded alike.

Ethan stood shakily and turned away from the sickening slaughter.

Many of those who’d survived were in shock. They were completely incapable of putting up effective resistance to the ready, prepared Sofoldians. It must have seemed like a hundred lighting bolts had landed among them.

Now archers and crossbowmen broke from the castle and the stone barrier at the other end of the wall, began retaking their positions atop the ancient masonry. Only now they were firing into the harbor, picking off those still fighting and any trying to retreat.

The still considerable body of enemy warriors surged dazedly back and forth, with dozens dropping every minute.

Ethan stared out over the now cleared ice. Then he turned and got September away from his survey of the massacre.

The enemy raft fleet was burning. Some were raising sail and struggling to escape even as they went up in flames. Fanned by the uncaring, indiscriminate wind, the blaze spread rapidly from one raft to its neighbor, thence to three or four others. Ethan saw one sail rigged, only to be struck by a ball of flame blown from a burning storage craft. Pika-pina and mast went up like match and paper in the thirsting wind.

Distant screams drifted over the ice to Ethan and chills raced up his spine. He put his hands over his face and sank in stunned silence to the ground. September put a gentle hand on his head and tried to comfort him.

“I know what you’re thinking, young feller-me-lad,” he muttered softly. “But you’ve got to consider what these folk have suffered. The only difference between them and their traditional enemies out there is a little book learning and another philosophy of life. Underneath, they’re very much the same animal… just like most humans are, when we’re pushed. To them the nomad women and cubs are as dangerous as the menfolk. Not because of what they can do, but because of what they represent. Do you understand that?”

Ethan sat still as the stones. He looked up.

“No.”

September grunted and walked away. To the end of his days, Ethan would hear the far-away shrieking.

Confronted with a murderous, unstunned enemy in front of them and fire behind, the once proud, invincible Horde of the Death dropped helmets, weapons and armor, broke, and fled toward their flaming homes. September was trying to get Hunnar’s attention. The knight finally calmed down enough to listen.

“Your tane-Anst did his job well, what? Will he have enough sense to watch for those who escape? They’re scared and many are weaponless, but hysterical humans, and probably tran, have little regard for their own lives. Makes for difficult fighting.”

“Tane-Anst is a good soldier,” said Hunnar thoughtfully. “He’ll take care to keep his men together.”

Finally Ethan stood and had a look at the retreating mob of surviving nomads. “This tane-Anst only took about six hundred men with him, Skua. Won’t they be badly outnumbered by these?”

“No group of well-organized, disciplined soldiers is ever outnumbered by a mob, Ethan. Remember that.”

Ethan turned and looked down into the harbor again. The ice was literally blotted out by a vast array of twisted, broken furry forms and a small lake of rapidly freezing blood. Hunnar came up to him. The knight was trembling now and Ethan thought he saw a little of what September had meant reflected in Hunnar’s face. After hundreds of years of helpless genuflection, reaction to what he and his people had done today was beginning to sink in.

“The Landgrave watches from his rooms and can see well for himself what has been wrought this hour,” said the knight, his voice slightly shaky. “I go to give him official word of his troops… and to remind him of his promise to you, my friends. Will you come?”

“No, this is your moment, Hunnar,” said September.

The knight exchanged breath and shoulder clasps with both of them, then departed at a run into the castle. September strolled to the edge of the parapet and looked down into the harbor. The fighting had degenerated into a bloodcurdling mopping-up operation, with Sofoldian soldiers and militia examining each corpse and methodically slitting the throat of any who lived.

“It may not be a gesture of the morally highest,” he began, “but for better or worse, by introducing gunpowder here we’ve brought a whole new kind of warfare to this decidedly bellicose people. And you know?” He turned and glanced at Ethan. “Try as I might, I can’t convince myself we’ve done a bad thing.”

“Bad or not,” replied Ethan drily, dabbing at his cut cheek, “it’s always one of humanity’s first gifts, isn’t it?”

There was a ball to end all balls in the great castle that evening. It served to cover the fact that many of Sofold’s finest young men had passed to the Warm Regions that day. Sadly, the brave and methodical tane-Anst had been among them, felled as he personally led a squad in pursuit of just one more fleeing raft.

At least three quarters of the barbarian fleet had been burnt or captured, together with a province’s ransom in armor, weapons, and treasure. And those ships which had escaped had not departed overcrowded.

To everyone’s intense disappointment, Sagyanak had been among the successful escapees.

The Scourge’s power, however, was forever broken. From a near god, the Death had been reduced to simply another annoying pirate, whose strength had been scattered with the wind.

By way of partial compensation, the head of Olox the Butcher was prominently on display atop a jeweled pike at the dinner table. It was joined by the crania of assorted companion warriors.

The little knot of humans sat in an honored position, far up the table near the Landgrave himself. But they’d seen too much blood to fully enter into the merriment of the night. Only September, sitting next to him, seemed able to throw himself into the spirit of the occasion with honest gusto.