Alan Foster - The Icerigger Trilogy

“Tis not strong, Sir Skua. It will not stand against a determined rush.”

Ethan and the soldiers all had torches strapped to their waists. They were intended to provide light if the Brothers blew out lamps. Now they were put to a different use. A quick thrust into a hanging lantern and they were lit. Then they began the slow, dangerous job of trying to melt the trapped prisoners free.

Ethan was working on one side of the copper basin that held Colette.

“Hurry, please!” she pleaded. “I… I can’t feel my legs anymore.”

“How much time?” September asked Hunnar.

“One cannot say.” The knight stared at the bolted door. “These are not soldiers and do not react as such. Yet it will soon occur to the last of the escapees that we are far from supernatural in shape or form, and some might have recognized us.”

It took four of them to lift each metal coffin. Two tilted the heavy container upward. One at a time, the three prisoners slid free, each still encased in a block of ice. Now the melting could proceed at a decent pace.

“Tis a difficult decision for them,” Hunnar continued. “If we are truly servitors of the Dark One, as our ability to throw thunder and lightning might suggest, then I would not expect them to attack again at all. But they might consider us to be only mortal servants of the Dark One, deluded mortals, in which case—”

“Shove the Dark One! How much time’ve we got?”

There was a thump as someone tried the door, then a rattling of the latch. This was quickly followed by a series of heavy bumps, then silence.

“Well, that answers that,” the big man growled. He turned back to the center of the room.

The melting was nearing completion and Williams, Colette, and the motionless senior du Kane were almost free.

“You know,” said Ethan conversationally as he melted away the last of the clinging ice from her ankles, “you’d look absolutely awesome in a martini.”

“I could use one about that size right now,” she replied tightly. “Thank the Devices for these suits!” He started to rub her legs and she didn’t protest.

“I’m okay,” she said finally. “Help the teacher.” Ethan looked over at the senior du Kane, who lay still and quiet on the stone floor.

“Your father… is he…?”

“Watch.” She bent over him and Ethan heard her whisper in his ear. “Free credit…”

A hand twitched, then a leg. Stillness, and then the old man sat up, blinking, and looked up at his daughter. She put a big arm under his left and helped him to his feet.

“Well my dear, are we safe or are we dead?”

“It’s still a moot point, father, but we incline to the former.”

He sighed. “Ah well. Pity.” Click. “I was so wondering what kind of flowers they have in the next world.”

“Only flower-souls, I’ve told you that, father. Come on now, move around a little. That’s it.” At Ethan’s slack-jawed stare she replied, “Automatic protective trance. He goes into it whenever his system is overloaded. This isn’t the first time it’s saved his life.”

There was a loud crash and the door shook violently.

“We’ve overstayed our welcome,” suggested Ethan.

September stood facing the door, watching it silently. He held a small, tightly bound package of vol leather in one hand. It had a short, stubby fuse projecting from it and he nonchalantly tossed it from one palm to the other, back and forth, back and forth.

“Let’s step lively there, folks, what?” There was another crash and the door bulged inward alarmingly. Williams was being helped through the shattered skylight. Hellespont du Kane was halfway up the ladder and Ethan waited with Colette at the bottom.

“Let’s go,” he said finally.

She looked uncertainly at the swaying ladder. “I… I don’t know. I’m not built for this kind of exercise.”

“Would you rather be in that martini? Come on, go. I’ll help you.” She started up. He put a hand under her enormous rear—it felt like a cake of sherbet—and tried to give her weight a boost upwards. Then he mounted the ladder close behind. If she fell he didn’t know what he could do. While she climbed and grunted, he climbed and prayed. Hunnar was right behind him.

September walked to the bottom of the ladder. The crackle of splintering wood filled the room and the door exploded inward. A mob of howling, robed scholars piled into the entrance. They pulled up short at the sight of September standing calmly under the ladder.

A few carried knives this time, probably appropriated from the monastery kitchens. The Brothers were fast losing their intellectual detachment. September reached out and touched the fuse to a nearby lamp. He looked at it for a moment, then gently tossed it.

It landed at the feet of the unmoving Brothers. September continued to watch it with interest. The fuse shrank. Then in one motion he turned, leaped, and was halfway up the ladder before someone in the mob unfroze and threw the first club.

Ethan was peering anxiously down through the broken glass. He extended a desperate hand and Hunnar another. Together they yanked hard and Ethan fell backwards. September came out of the opening, tumbled onto the roof, and was followed by a geyser of dust and pulverized stone.

“Quite a banger,” he murmured, feeling his side where a thrown staff had grazed him. “Glad I saved that one for last.”

For the second time that night Ethan found himself running blindly over rooftops, dodging pillars and buttresses, dropping from level to level toward the stairway. Apparently the Brothers were too disorganized, or demoralized, to offer ready pursuit. Or maybe that last bomb had eliminated the sanctimonious Prior and several of his deputies.

At any rate, they met no opposition in their hectic scramble downwards. They reached the last roof above the stairway without being challenged.

To their left a long black streak extended back into the monastery, a charred wound. The results of Hunnar’s covering blaze set earlier that night. A large band of Brothers stood in front of the burnt entrance, armed with the usual clubs and staves.

They were expecting an attack from the front. Clearly no one had brought them the word about the return of the Dark One’s other servants. Not very military. Hunnar’s soldiers surprised them completely.

There was no pursuit as they started their second dash down the stairway.

“So much for rule by reason and logic,” September grunted. He was breathing heavily. The run down from the monastery had finally tired even him. But now they were safe on board the Slanderscree and there weren’t enough Brothers in the world to get them off it again. The big man was staring up at the monastery buildings, faint ghosts against the black crags.

“Well, it performed well enough—within their own tight little precepts,” Ethan countered. Behind him, Ta-hoding was sending the crew aloft, yelling dire threats at imagined slackers.

The Slanderscree began to move out of the harbor. Astern, a quartet of soldiers were ungently dumping the Brothers who’d taken the raft earlier. It was more humane than similar actions that had been performed on Terra ages ago, for there was no water for the captives to drown in.

On the other hand, the ice wasn’t especially soft.

The wind blew and the Slanderscree enslaved it, cutting west, then south, to take advantage of the slightest counter-breeze. Ta-hoding didn’t miss many.

A week later they saw the first smoke. It blew steadily to the east, black and sooty and well up in the atmosphere. From there Ta-hoding was able to ignore the compass and follow the black line. They made even better time. It was another two days before they had their first glimpse of The Place-Where-The-Earth’s-Blood-Burns, and another two before the base of the giant volcano came into view.