Brian Murphy - The Search For Magic

The sun broke through the thick clouds a while later, filling the translucent ice with fiery brilliance. Glowing like a diamond, the ice began to melt more rapidly.

Streams of water ran off the upper surfaces into the sea. Mixun cupped his hands under one stream and drank the runoff. It was good water.

With the warming, the gnomes’ devices suffered. Ice-block houses collapsed, and the paddling machines began to work loose from their mountings. One by one they had to be shut down and the axles reburied in firmer ice. The berg’s forward momentum was great, but it soon slowed down. Currents around the cape started pushing the berg toward land.

While the gnomes were busy repairing their paddle machines, more ships appeared out of Enstar. Mixun counted twenty vessels, luggers, galleons, even a captured caravel or two. They all wore dark blue sails, which marked them as pirates as surely as any formal ensign.

Raegel scrambled up the slippery slope and saw the flotilla coming. “This ought to be something,” he said.

“You seem mighty calm.”

“I don’t think we’re in much danger.”

“How can you say that? Look!”

Raegel smiled. “Relax, will you, Mix? Have faith in our little hosts.”

Scowling, Mixun slid down the north slope of the ridge and hurried east, to the stern of the iceberg. The pirate fleet was massing there. The largest ship, a caravel with a gilded figurehead, took the lead. Sunlight glinted from the caravel’s tops and forecastle. The pirates were inspecting them with spyglasses.

Mixun kept low, creeping along crevices and cracks in the ice. All were full of water, which made his progress uncomfortable. A few hundred paces from the end of the floe, he settled into a niche between two streaming ice boulders and watched the pirates close cautiously. Before long they were near enough for him to hear the thump of oarlocks, and the shouted commands of individual ship’s masters.

Where were the gnomes? They were about to be invaded, and not one of them was in sight!

Mixun watched anxiously as a single lugger under oars approached the tail of the iceberg. The mighty island of ice was riding easily in the waves, bobbing far less than the small ship coming up to it. The edge of the floe stood well above the lugger’s rail, a good seven feet above the surface of the ocean. At once Mixun saw the pirates’ dilemma-how would they get on the berg?

After some deliberation, the pirates resorted to ropes and grappling hooks. Mixun crept out from his hiding place, spear ready. Crouched low, he couldn’t see the pirates, but from the grunting he reckoned some of them were climbing the ropes. He used the dagger to chip out the tines of the imbedded hooks. Both ropes whipped free, and with loud cries, the pirates tumbled into the water.

Grinning, Mixun waited to see if they tried again. Sure enough, three hooks clattered onto the ice shelf and bit into the gleaming surface. He hurried to the first one. The three hooks were widely spaced. Mixun was hard pressed to dig out all three. The first pulled free and fell, then the second. Before he could reach the third, a pirate gained the top of the iceberg. Their eyes met.

“Ai!” the fork-bearded buccaneer cried. “There’s someone here!”

Mixun whacked the man on the chin with the shaft of his spear, sending him plummeting to the deck of the lugger below. In response, archers loosed arrows at Mixun. None hit, but they flicked disturbingly close. He dodged away, arrows splintering on the ice at his heels.

“Alarm! Alarm!” he shouted. “Pirates! Pirates on the iceberg!”

He didn’t think there was anyone to hear him, but he hoped to make the brigands wary to follow him. Back in his hidden vantage point, he saw more lines thrown up. In minutes, fifteen well-armed pirates were on the ice. Since they had bows, it was foolish for Mixun to try and fight them, so he beat a retreat over the slick, melting hillocks for help.

He hadn’t gone half a mile before he ran into Raegel and a band of gnomes laden with mysterious (and probably pointless) equipment.

“Pirates!” Mixun exclaimed, grasping his friend by the arms. “They’re here!”

“Hear that, boys? Go get ‘em,” Raegel said.

The gnomes broke ranks and streamed around the stationary men.

“You’re sending them to their deaths,” Mixun protested. “They aren’t even armed!”

“What do you mean? That’s the Emergency Committee for Iceberg Defense. They’re armed enough.” Raegel’s blue-gray eyes danced with inner laughter. “Come and see.”

On a plateau above the end of the berg, the gnomes deployed their strange hardware. Mixun saw canvas hoses and bright metal tubing, windlasses and bags of salt.

Gnomes circled the flattened area, tapping the ice with small brass hammers. Now and then one would crow, “Found one!” and another gnome would mark the spot with a colored stake hammered into place.

Looking beyond them, Raegel and Mixun saw the pirates, now more than thirty strong, massing at the eastern tip of the berg.

“Better get ready,” Raegel said. Thehoss of the Committee-their old savior Wheeler-waved and shouted orders to his helpers.

Augers bit into the ice where the colored stakes had been driven. The drills were withdrawn and bronze pipes six inches wide were shoved into the holes. Bags of salt were cut open and the contents dumped into the tubes. When that was done, hoses were clamped to the tube and attached to the windlass powered machines. More hoses protruded from the other side of the devices, and teams of gnomes grabbed onto them, pointing them at the oncoming foe.

“Begin!” cried Wheeler.

Gangs of small, sturdy arms turned the cranks. The machines wheezed and burped. Wheeler called for more speed, and the gnomes raced around the crankshafts. Gradually, the hoses bellied. Mixun looked to Raegel for an explanation. Raegel just pointed.

The center team fired first. A jet of water burst from the open end of their hose, arcing off the plateau and striking the ice ahead of the pirates. The men withdrew a few steps, unsure what they were facing. Then one pirate doffed his hat and caught some of the stream in it.

He tasted it and laughed. “It’s just seawater!”

It wasn’t seawater, but salted fresh water. Raegel explained the gnomes’ plan as Wheeler had explained it to him. The many hollows in the ice had, over the past few days, filled with melted water. By adding salt, the gnomes made sure the water stayed liquid while pumping it out.

“What good will spraying water at them do?” Mixun said, despairing. He didn’t have long to find out.

Laughing, the pirates advanced. More gnome pumps spewed forth, and they focused on the front rank of pirates. The flow was hard, but not hard enough to knock the men down. It didn’t have to. The pirates came on a few paces and began to fall. They couldn’t walk on ice doused with salt water. They fell, got up, fell again, and kept falling. The archers tried to pick off the gnomes with arrows, but once they were drenched, their weapons were useless. Mixun let out a whoop.

“You’ve not seen anything yet!” declared Wheeler. “Special Super Pumps, on!”

Levers were thrown and the machines almost leaped off the ground. Hoses bulged, and the gnomes holding them down danced madly to keep their feet. Water roared out at many times the previous pressure. Now the pirates were washed away. A pair of streams hit one man and carried him several yards. He hit the ice sitting down and continued to slide until he shot off the end of the berg, into the sea. He soon had plenty of company. A dozen more pirates were sluiced into the ocean. Wheeler and the gnomes cheered.

Then things went wrong. The pump on the far right burst apart under the pressure, soaking everyone in the vicinity and sending fragments of jagged metal whizzing dangerously through the air. The gnomes on the third hose lost their grip, and the tube began thrashing about wildly, like a living thing. A portion of its powerful stream hit Mixun in the chest and knocked him down bereft of breath. Raegel helped him stand.