Mayer Alan Brenner - Spell of Intrigue

It was apparent that the captain was as good as his word when two crewmen appeared from the stern, balancing long docking gaffs, and took up positions on either side of the bow. With a shouted “One point to port!” a lookout on the mast made his presence known as well. The helmsman on the poop deck called an “Aye!” in response and the ship angled slightly to port, putting the latest ice floe on their starboard bow. The starboard gaffman caught it with his pole and leaned hard, the muscles in his back and arms standing out beneath his brief shirt, and the ice floe spun slowly around its center of mass and bore off. The captain, watching closely, said in a low voice to Shaa, “Those hunks get much larger and these gaffs won’t make any difference at all; they’ll just go snap.”

The truth of the captain’s words was evident. The icebergs were forming beneath the surface of the water and then bobbing to the top with a splash and a heave; this allowed an estimation of the mass of each new chunk to be made. Larger they were clearly continuing to become. With the ship’s sail deployed to take advantage of the breeze at their back, and the force of the river’s own flow added, the vessel had been making excellent time. “I know you folks want to make this a quick trip,” the captain announced, “and it’s a point of pride of my own to run the fastest transit on this part of the Oolvaan, but I don’t mind telling you I’d be happier if we heaved to for a bit. With us heading downstream faster than the current, you see, the current is what’s carrying yon ice drifting past us.”

Slowing down, in land-side parlance, or even stopping would thus keep the ice ahead of them. Should keep the ice ahead of them. “If some one is behind this ice visitation,” Shaa commented, “slowing us down may be what they had in mind. Still, captain, you are the captain, and happy we are to have you. Proceed as you choose.”

With an alacrity that underlined the captain’s relief, he ordered the sail taken in. “Now,” Shaa murmured, “we may see what is really going on. “

“You think -” said Karlini.

“Don’t you?” said Shaa.

Haddo had again turned and was scrutinizing them both. “Any idea have you each,” he said, “what about is talking the other one?”

“You are certainly one to comment,” Shaa told him. “Yet, somehow, communication still seems to occur. Hmm?”

Haddo, apparently having no appropriate response to that, swung back around in a huff. He renewed his scrutiny of the water ahead. “What see I, see you?”

“Our phenomenon does appear to be evolving,” Shaa agreed. The chunks of ice had been rising to the surface two ship’s-lengths or so in front of them from a spot that continued to move ahead of them, keeping roughly the same separation between it and the bow. As the ship had begun to slow, though, the place where the ice was appearing had starting drawing inescapably closer. Their speed was now perhaps two-thirds what it had been. The distance to the ice generation zone had shrunk by the same proportion, and was continuing to shrink at the same rate. “Captain, I trust you have been observing the same behavior as have I?”

“Aye, “ the captain said, squinting ahead in concentration.

Shaa glanced at Karlini. He was mumbling something beneath his breath and waving his hands around in tight patterns, the tips of his fingers glinting with a metallic sheen in the sunlight; perhaps it would be best not to bother him. “I believe it is a mathematically and geometrically sound proposition.” Shaa said to no one in particular, “considering the rates and angles involved, that when this ship reaches stationary rest and lies-to at anchor, these ice fragments will be trying to rise to the surface from a spot beneath the keel, and approximately at the midpoint of the ship. “

“Oh, dear me,” said Wroclaw, who had been watching the proceedings with silent alarm.

“Indeed, yes,” Shaa confirmed. “Not being a master mariner myself and having a fully qualified one close at hand, I hesitate to hazard an exact prediction of the outcome of such a situation, but I venture that it could represent significant morbidity, if not mortality, for a vessel of this type.”

“Raise sail!” the captain ordered. A brief chorus of “Raise sail!” echoed down the deck, followed by a few shouts of “Raise sail, aye!”, and with an almost equally brief flurry of activity from the crew the single square-rigged mainsail was once more hoisted into place. The ship immediately leapt ahead again, its bow wake increasing. The place of appearance of the ice hove to in the same spot relative to the bow, stopping its inexorable advance on the ship. It did not, however, retreat back to its previous location as the ship got back up to its previous speed.

The behavior of the ice generation zone certainly cast doubt on Shaa’s previous speculation that its goal might be to have them stop in place. “Perhaps someone with an interesting sense of humor is toying with us,” Shaa said. Karlini now had his hands on his hips and appeared to be examining something in the air that only he could see. “Do you have any pertinent insights to share, Great One?”

“No one seems to be running this,” Karlini said, raising a finger to tweak a slightly curdled section of the air in front of his face. “I’ve been running some tests, trying to figure out what mechanism’s operating here, and exactly how whatever-it-is is keyed to the ship. Like I said, there doesn’t seem to be anybody out there, at least at the moment.”

“Not unusual,” Shaa remarked.

“Right, of course; a preprogrammed trap or other physical-effect spell doesn’t necessarily need an active operator after it’s been set into place.”

“You think this ice-business is new, not an old spell-mine left floating in the Oolvaan from some war, or something of that sort?”

“What, “ said Karlini, “ you’re suggesting to me that all we’ve done is blunder into somebody’s else’s old business? You’re the one who sees plots under every bed.”

“That would be Maximillian, not me,” Shaa said. “I am content to take the world at its word. Just let us not forget the value of an occasional reality check. Perhaps a pirate engagement took place here recently, perhaps some river creature has picked up a new skill, perhaps an arctic nereid was on the way south and we’ve crossed her trail. Perhaps it’s one of those spontaneous manifestations one occasionally hears about, as something that someone somebody once knew had happen to their uncle. “

“Pirates?” said Wroclaw, his minty-colored skin going a shade further toward wintergreen. “Creatures?”

“No,” Shaa said, after a brief moment of contemplation, “probably not pirates.”

“ ‘Tain’t been pirates on the lower Oolvaan since I was a cabin boy,” commented the captain. “Starboard two points, there, now!”

The ice generation zone might have remained at the same distance off their bow, but the size of the icebergs had not stopped growing. The latest one was fully the size of a small boat itself, and not just a rowboat, either. If no unexpected eddies appeared in the current, and if their maneuver to starboard was executed smartly, it would miss them ... and there it went, churning past off the port quarter, close enough though to feel the frosty wave of condensation off its supercooled surface. They all turned again toward the front; the hunks of ice had been appearing at fairly regular intervals, about a minute apart, Shaa estimated. The next one would be due right about now.

Or now.

Now?

Shaa glanced at Karlini. He didn’t like the new look on Karlini’s face - a furrowed forehead and pursed lips. “Great One, what gives?”