Icerigger - Mission To Moulokin Part 14

The open corridor wound its way around the sunken sh.o.r.e. In one place the earth was so warm that the ice turned to black water nearby but the sailors refused to wade through it. Ethan and September had to use precious energy to cut a dry path upward through the ice, then down to the corridor again. They proceeded carefully. It wouldn't do to lose contact with solid land and start cutting their way out into the enormous ice sheet which covered the ocean.

They rested, some of the Tran feeling confident enough to express a desire for food. Hours later, Wil-liams said cautiously, "Here." He raised his left hand, pointed upslope at a modest angle. "Cut here.

If we melt our way upward at forty-five degrees we should come out beneath the ship."

"How sure are you, Milliken?"

The teacher looked glumly at Ethan. "Not very."

"An honest answer. I'll start the cut, feller-me-lad." September adjusted his beamer. After several tries he located the setting which best combined a fairly wide beam with enough power to melt the white ceiling overhead rapidly. Water ran beneath their feet, un-comfortable to Tran and human alike, if for different reasons.

Following immediately behind September, Ethan discovered his heart pounding harder than the climb demanded. His breathing was quick and heavy, his eyes darting around the circular tunnel. He found that shutting them relaxed his breathing and the hammering in his chest. Williams touched his booted foot and he jerked.

"Claustrophobic?" Ethan, looking back without opening his eyes, nodded vigorously. "Try not to think about it. Don't think about anything. Think music to yourself."

Ethan did so, dredging up a lilting popular tune from his adolescence. His heartbeat fell to near-normal and he discovered he could breathe without effort. Concentrate, he told himself. Concentrate on Merriw.i.l.l.ya night a burning, aburning, Merriw.i.l.l.ya ayearning. Not on the tons and tons and tons of ice over your head, below your hands and knees, pressing in on your sides, pressing, pressing-.

He couldn't take his turn at cutting. He didn't freeze or faint, but the sight of solid ice in front of him while knowing there were hundreds of anxious Tran blocking any retreat was too much to handle. They showed Hunnar how to use the beamer and he took Ethan's place, saying nothing as he crawled past the half-paralyzed salesman.

Fortunately, the tunnel lengthened as fast as they could climb. Intense energy kept the little stream flow-ing steadily around ankles and knees.

The time came when September turned off his beamer, started to trade places with Williams, and then paused to glance upward. "Light above? there's light coming through the ice!"

Joyful shouts rang deafeningly through the tunnel, until the knights and ship's officers thought to quiet their men. September looked sympathetically at Ethan.

"It'd be better, feller-me-lad, if we break surface after the sun's well down. If you can't take it, we can-."

Ethan settled his back against the tunnel wall, hands clasping knees, his head resting between them. "I can wait," he said curtly. September merely nodded.

The information was pa.s.sed back down the tunnel. Sailors settled themselves for fast sleep in awkward positions, while others worked overlong on cleaning claws and chiv, the only weapons they had.

Hunnar was talking in low tones with Elfa and be-low her, with Teeliam Hoh. Ethan, catching an occa-sional word, decided they were talking about what had transpired back in the castle. He turned his attention away from them, having no desire to learn the metho-dology of certain barbarisms. It was enough to have seen the scars and bruises on Elfa's face and body, to have listened to the mental scarring of the royal con-sort. Bad dreams enough plagued him already.

When darkness above was a.s.sured, the sleepers were shaken awake. All torches were extinguished.

"Let me." September looked appraisingly at him, then exchanged places.

"Keep your beam short and low, feller-me-lad."

"I'm not completely helpless, you know." Ethan turned to the ice above, began melting with barely a suggestion of blue issuing from the lens of the beamer. September did not reply, in doing so saying much.

A kind of petrified illumination showed ahead. Ethan turned off his beamer, raised both gloved hands, and pushed hard. Splinters fell past his face mask as he broke through the surface.

Cautiously, he raised his head out. Like a vacation-ing friend now returning, ever-present wind buffeted the back of his skull.

A low wooden wall lay ten meters or so to his right, lining the sh.o.r.e of Poyolavomaar. He twisted around. Piers lay ahead and behind him. A couple of small ice rafts were tied up to each. There was no movement, and lights on only one. With the tempera-ture already a brisk minus thirty C. and falling, sailors and merchants alike would seek refuge in warmer taverns and cabins.

Huddled together in the distance above the sh.o.r.e wall, the lights of the town flickered brightly. An occa-sional shout rose above the wind.

Ethan looked back, ducked down into the tunnel. Anxious faces, masked or furred, stared back up at him expectantly. "We're in the harbor, between the ends of two piers. But I don't recognize anything, and I don't see the ship."

"Let me through." With much squirming and wig-gling, Hunnar slipped past Ethan. Elfa, Teeliam, Tersund and another sailor followed him, their musk strong in the confined corridor. Hunnar looked back down at Ethan.

"My strangely clothed friends, you must remain here. Both you and your wondrous weapons are too conspicuous." Then Hunnar spread his dan, hunched over, and let the wind take him away.

Minutes became hours of worry. What if they were captured? Worse, what if some wandering Poyo sol-dier discovered the hole in the ice? These and a dozen other deleterious scenarios played on the stage of Ethan's mind before Hunnar's voice whispered above him.

"We've found the ship. 'Tis two piers over. There are but a few sentries aboard her and they sleep the dreams of the bored and ordered-about. Some sleep sounder than that. Come."

Remaining silent, but obviously glad to be back on the surface again, the crew of the _Slanderscree_ emerged from the tunnel. Ethan knew that the sentries who were "sleeping sounder than that" were the ones who had unwittingly provided Hunnar and his com-panions with the swords and lances they now carried.

The prisoners a.s.sembled beneath the low underside of a thirty-five-meter merchant raft. It was broad enough of beam to conceal the entire crew.

"We could do no better than to chivan as fast as possible for the ship and raise sail before the city pa-trols can react." Hunnar hefted his sword. "We have weapons enough."

" 'Tis so!" growled a sailor nearby, flexing furry fin-gers armed with sharp, stubby claws.

"This meets your approval, my friends?" Hunnar looked at the three humans.

September nodded. "I'm not much for subtle strat-egies either. Let's do it."

All three readied their beamers again, hoping they wouldn't have to employ the revealing energy weap-ons. Hunnar moved out into the moonlight, and then in groups of five the crew raced silently across the ice toward the waiting icerigger.

With their skates lockered aboard, the three humans used the simplest method of making the dash across the slippery surface. Sitting down, each extended his arms back over his head. A. sailor grabbed a wrist in one hand, a second the other. Spreading their dan, they took off across the open stretch of harbor.

Ethan could only lament his undignified position and pray the tough material of the survival suit held. It did so, but even the friction generated by such a short journey raised a portion of the suit's tempera-ture above what its compensators considered comfortable.

All boarding ladders were still draped invitingly over the railings. Spreading out beneath the vast underbody of the icerigger, her crew commenced a half hysteri-cal climb upward, utilizing every available ladder.

There wasn't a soul on board. "Apparently," September murmured, "they decided freezing out in the night a bad choice with so many inviting taverns nearby. But wouldn't they wonder at their companions whom you dispatched, Hunnar?"

"I imagine," the knight said with a wolfish grin, "that they left for warmth and drink because they as-sumed their absent fellows had already done so."

"The Landgrave has great confidence in his dun-geons." Ethan relaxed gratefully. There would be no fighting here.

"Why should he not?" said Teeliam, looking around for someone to kill and evidently disappointed at find-ing no one. "None have ever escaped from them in memory."

"No one has ever traveled through h.e.l.l before, either." Elfa spoke in a way that indicated she was re-ferring to more than just their journey through ice and ocean.

"Quick now!" Tahoding gave rapid orders to his crew. "Up sail and quiet about it!"

With the prospect of imminent freedom to energize them, the sparmen a.s.saulted the rigging like birds.

Sails began to unfurl, filling silently.

Spreading his dan, which in the light night breeze were barely adequate to carry his porcine body up the iceramp, the captain chivaned his way to the helmdeck. From there he shouted in low tones to the sail-ors astern to hurry in with the ice anchors. Other crewmembers were at work on the pier, quietly and with feverish efficiency slipping pikapina cables from cleat and capstan.

Though the Tran moved with the silence of a tribe of sock-footed ants, so much activity could not remain unnoticed forever. Before long a voice called out in the darkness.

"Who's there? Who's on board the prize?"

Sailors on deck and sh.o.r.e desperately tried to spot the caller. A minute pa.s.sed, and then it did not matter.

"Help! The prisoners have escaped!" There was as much astonishment as urgency in that cry. "Guard to the ships, guard to the ships, and ware devils the-."

There was a tw.a.n.g. One of the sailors had armed himself with a crossbow from the ship's armory.

Now he let fly from the mizzenmast and the alarming words changed to an indecipherable gurgling. There was the faint, distant _flump_ of something striking the ground.

Too late. Other voices sounded now on sh.o.r.e, called querulously to one another and to the unresponsive shapes moving about the great raft. Tahoding, drop-ping all pretense of concealment, moved to the helmdeck railing and roared instructions liberally laced with invective at the crew.

Ponderously, with adjustable spars turning, the _Slanderscree_ began to gain sternway and back clear of the pier. Sailors still on the dock saw armed figures chivaning at them, jumped aboard. There was not enough time to loosen all the cables.

A concatenation of bizarre clangings, rips and tears, groans and inanimate protests sounded from the dock. The incredible pikapina cables held, but the dock did not. Pinions and cleats ripped free of their sockets, flew toward the ma.s.sive raft, while Poyos on the pier turned about and tried to protect themselves from flying bone and wood.

On board the _Slanderscree_ the boarding ladders were brought in, several with sailors still clinging to them. Looking as if they would sweat if they could, Tahoding's helmsmen threw the great wheel hard over. The icerigger continued to move backward, her bow swinging steadily around to the north. As soon as it cleared the outermost pier, the spars would shift and the westwind would fill the sails from behind.

They could see oil lamps ma.s.sing along the sh.o.r.e, spilling out onto the ice. Shouts of outrage and confu-sion flared as unevenly and brightly as the flames. A few arrows and a couple of spears flew at the great, ghostly shape of the icerigger. Most fell short, a pair stuck into the rear of the helmdeck as it swung land-ward.

Within the waking city, horns were droning like un-dertakers. Drums howled more urgently, and edgy sol-diers loosed arrows at the moons.

"Over spars!" Tahoding bellowed. "Over spars!" echoed his mates. The _Slanderscree's_ sails came around, there was a whiplike crack, sheets plumped out like the prow of a woman September had once known, and the icerigger began to move ahead, pick-ing up speed with every second.

Her crew was much too busy to shout with joy.

Both moons were high adrift in a cloudless sky. The s.e.xtuple crags of Poyolavomaar's circling islands cast quilted shadows across the harbor as the foremast lookout yelled a warning.

"Pilot raft ahead!"

Tahoding looked grimly at Ethan. "Small pleasure would it be if Valsht the harbormaster, excrement in Trannish form, were to be aboard it."

Seconds later Ethan heard a faint crunching sound and rushed to the edge of the helmdeck. Shards of cut wood were sliding beneath the ship. The rear runners further reduced them to splinters. His gaze shifted aft, to show tumbling bits of wood and softer fragments strewn in the wake of the icerigger.

"The gate is closed!" shouted the lookout again.

Tahoding stood his place, simply reminding the helmsmen of their course. They held a touch tighter to the wheel, as everyone else on board braced himself as best he could for the expected collision.

Ethan imagined disapproving, forbidding faces frowning down at them from the flanking mountaintops.

He fell to one knee as the deck shimmied be-neath him. Then they were through, and he rushed back to the railing for a look astern.

Angry lights danced futilely on the walls linking the two isles. A pair of huge wooden gates lay smashed and fragmented on the moonlit ice. Four huge blocks of stone bounced lightly in the icerigger's wake, their unbroken pikapina cables still firmly secured to each.

Damage reports came back from the bow. The _Slanderscree_ would have to do without a bowsprit for awhile. If their maneuverability was slightly impaired, their speed was not. They were flying across the ice now, the powerful westwind shoving them with a gi-ant's hand from behind, their first attempt at initiating a union of Tran island-states a dismal failure that receded rapidly astern.

X.

"You must go after them, your highness." Calonnin RoVijar filled his voice with urgency as he addressed Rakossa of Poyolavomaar.

Crowded around him in the Landgrave's personal quarters were the high knights and generals of the city. Most of them would rather have been anywhere but within verbal range of their storming, bloodthirsty ruler.

Rakossa seemed not to hear his royal counterpart. "They _must_ have her! Her body is not in the dungeon or on the ice, not in the h.e.l.l place or the tunnel -the tunnel wrested by the devilweapons she stole."

A subordinate officer, in charge of the castle's ar-mory, was not present to confirm or deny what most in the room knew to be true. For his laxity in allowing himself to be seduced and then knocked unconscious by the absent royal consort, he had already been returned to his family. As the officer's family was scattered about five of Poyolavomaar's seven isles, it was necessary for him to be returned in the equivalent number of pieces.

"When we catch her this time, we will-" Rakossa unreeled a long list of imaginative and shuddersome proposals. While doing so he waved his longsword about with complete disregard for where it might impact, much to the discomfort of those officials in the forefront of the attending crowd.

"It seems incredible, my lord, that they dared travel out through the old bore," the chief jailer observed, wondering why he had not enjoyed the same fate as the armory guard.

One of the knights safely concealed near the back of the group murmured, " Tis unwise to pursue those who can kill demons in h.e.l.l."

"She will wish she stayed her hand from aiding them!" Rakossa swung his sword, destroying a priceless ivory carving adorning the back of a chair. "We are through playing with this one." He showed gleaming fangs. "She shall not return to embarra.s.s us further. We will make a h.e.l.l for her she will not have to climb down to, a new h.e.l.l every day, different and stimulating!"

"Would it not be simpler, my lord," asked the same knight who'd spoken a moment ago, "to take a new and more willing consort?"

"Who speaks? Who tells Rakossa what to do and how to judge?" The knight did not answer, bent his knees to sink a little lower into the crowd.

"No sheslug defies us or gains our better. We will instruct her in the meanings of h.e.l.l."

Another official whispered that after serving as consort to the Landgrave for several years, the van-ished woman no doubt knew the meanings of h.e.l.l al-ready. Fortunately, Rakossa did not hear or he might have been inspired to begin a ma.s.s murder of all a.s.sembled merely to insure the disposal of his single insulter.

"It is only just that you pursue her-and them," said a comfortingly acquiescent RoVijar. Rakossa's anger subsided somewhat, the Mad which had held him fully let clearer thoughts have room in his twisted brain.

"That is truth, friend RoVijar. We must follow her and those who aided her." How neatly, thought RoVijar with distaste, he changes things in his mind to fit his mind's bent. Now it is the escapees who are guilty of a.s.sisting the woman, not the other way around. Then he grew tense, aware that the madman was eye-ing him coldly.

"We have taken your word in much of this, Landgrave of Arsudun. Of the three offworld devils'

inten-tions and of their Tran friends."

"I tell only the truth, sire, of what needs doing. You defend all of us. Your name will be remembered as mighty."

"We wonder," Rakossa muttered calculatingly, while RoVijar strove to appear unaffected by his fer-ocious stare, "just whose purposes are truly being served in this.

"However," he said more briskly, taking his gaze from the silent RoVijar, "We will have that witch back. As she is served by those you believe need be de-stroyed, it seems to pursue one we must pursue all."

"They are devils and destroyers, Lord Rakossa."

"Devils they are. Destroyers seek destruction, not escape. Yet only a few died in trying to prevent their flight. We wonder-we _will_ have her back!"

He turned on a stiffly posed officer. "Talizeir, ready the fleet for pursuit. All ships, all officers, all crew to the ready, for we leave by first light."

"As my Landgrave commands," the tall, dignified Tran replied. He pushed through the others toward the door.