The Icerigger Trilogy: Icerigger, Mission to Moulokin, and The Deluge Drivers (66 page)

The first touch of the rifs fumbled for the ship. Not violent yet, but not like the steady, friendly every-day winds of Tran-ky-ky. No longer did they blow steadily to the west. Disturbed zephyrs slid in confusion around Ethan. Idle gusts scudded dismally past him, twisting and darting in and upon themselves like frightened rabbits hunting for a hidey-hole.

“We’re going to cut it mighty close, feller-me-lad,” said September in as grim a voice as Ethan had ever heard him use. The giant had both arms wrapped tightly around a pair of mainstays. Ethan chose the more solid wooden railing, locking a leg around one supportive post, arms around the railing top.

As the
Slanderscree
came full around onto a southerly heading, the rifs, in a desperate grab for its prey, jumped onto them.

The sky turned from blue to black. Thunder battered ears curved and pointed. Great shafts of electric death hunted for the fleeing raft. They reminded Ethan of nothing so much as the pulpy, luminous cyclops-creature they’d fought below the surface when escaping from the dungeon of Poyolavomaar. Glowing eye, gigantic black mouth filled with jagged teeth. Only now the teeth were kilometers high and yellow-gold instead of transparent.

Ethan’s gaze turned with difficulty from the nearing ice ridge to the helmdeck. Looking more like a chunk of gray granite than their fat captain, Ta-hoding stood braced against the center of the huge wheel, struggling to aid his two helmsmen. They were already racing along at close to a hundred twenty kph, he guessed. Another blast of the full body of the rifs struck the ship, punching the sails still further outward and accelerating the craft’s motion.

If they missed the gap at this speed, they wouldn’t have to worry about the rifs any longer. The icerigger would smash itself against the ridge. There wouldn’t even be smears left of her crew. Even if they struck the gap but angled too far to one side or the other, jagged ice boulders could tear away stays, bring down the masts on top of them, or even shatter the sides of the hull.

There was black overhead and white rushing toward them; Windborne particles of ice and snow whizzed like projectiles from a million tiny guns across his mask, making vision difficult. By then the roar of the storm seemed to originate somewhere between his ears, numbing his senses, playing tricks with perception. Hadn’t they reached the ridge yet?

A chalcedony tunnel obliterated much of the blackness as the
Slanderscree
entered the gap. He braced himself for the ultimate impact as did everyone else on board. There was a horrible crunching noise. Whether the ship had struck the jagged walls speeding past on either side or had been struck by lightning, he couldn’t tell. The icerigger rocked crazily for a second.

Then they were through, the white ramparts gone, clear ice vanishing beneath the ship’s runners. Fighting the wind, he looked astern and saw the pressure ridge from its southern side, receding behind them. His gaze went forward, toward what he knew he would see. Somewhere, the fates had determined the
Slanderscree
should not travel with a bowsprit. Otherwise the icerigger seemed to have handled the impact well. Masts had not fallen, no crevasse had appeared in the deck.

Something irritated his mouth. He parted his lips, sucked in salty fluid. With his face shielded from the wind, he nudged open the mask. Icy-gloved fingers probed at bare skin, felt the flow of blood from his nose. It did not feel broken. It felt worse, and the blood was making a mess inside his suit.

Looking around he saw other members of the crew picking themselves off the deck where they’d fallen or been thrown by the impact of smashing through the remaining ice blocks. How those aloft had kept from being thrown from the rigging was a miracle he chose not to question.

Sails straining to hold to the spars, spars to masts, masts creaking in their deck sockets, deck groaning on its five runners, and crew straining in prayer to whatever personal gods they worshipped that the whole should not return to the parts of its sum, the
Slanderscree
flew southward at a hundred sixty kilometers per hour.

A Tran knelt in the gap in the pressure ridge. Furry fingers collected several nonwhite, nonice fragments. They were mostly slim and irregular. One pricked his finger and he cursed. He had enough anyway. Raising his arms parallel to the ice, he tacked his way back to the group of Tran waiting impatiently at the far end of the passage.

There he dropped his arms, closed his dan, and slid to a neat stop. It would not do to stumble or fall before so many important ones.

“These were a few of what I found, sirs. There are many other such fragments at the far end of this passageway.”

Tonx Ghin Rakossa, Landgrave of Poyolavomaar, accepted the several bits of shattered wood. He studied them, avoiding the one which had pierced the scout’s finger.

“Many such fragments? Enough to comprise part of a large ship?”

“No, sire. I saw no such large amounts of debris.”

Rakossa threw the splinters angrily to the ice. “They have escaped the rifs, then.” He gently fingered the bandage over his left eye. “Though not undamaged.”

“The five grooves of their runners continue southward outside this passage, sire,” the scout added helpfully, currying favor.

Rakossa ignored him. “Would that we knew the extent of their damage. Yet it took them time to make their way through this ridge.” The masses of ice nearby showed how the icerigger had made that passage, and Rakossa marveled greedily at the power of a ship that could move such weight.

“They are delayed.” He knelt, brushed at the powdery ice lining the runner grooves. “This has not blown away completely, even with the force of the rifs. They are very near, and yet will now widen the distance between us once more.”

“Nevertheless, we will catch them, your highness,” said Calonnin Ro-Vijar.

“Yes. We will catch them, and the mocking strumpet as well.”

Rakossa turned to gaze at the ships waiting behind them. They were a reassuring sight, with sails half-furled and pennants flying. They pursued with a small forest of masts—those that hadn’t been torn away by the storm. And they had caught only the fringe of the rifs.

“But we will catch them with thirty ships instead of thirty-five. Three are so badly damaged their captains inform me they will never sail again. Two are nearly as bad off, but they can limp home with the crews of the abandoned three. Five ships lost already, Ro-Vijar.”

“All the reason more to seek revenge upon those responsible, my friend,” responded the Landgrave of Arsudun, trying to turn calamity to mental advantage. It was Rakossa’s emotional state that was critical, not the condition of his ships.

“Perhaps.” Rakossa spoke thoughtfully. “We waste time here.” One foot descended, three chiv sectioned a fragment of wood the scout had recovered and marked the ice beneath.

Two weeks after leaving the pressure ridge, the
Slanderscree
came upon the plateau. A hundred meters of sheer cliff, it stretched off to east and west in unbroken basaltic glory. It was a barren-looking place, devoid of rim-clinging trees such as decorated the cliffs of Arsudun.

Teeliam was brought on deck, shown the impenetrable ramparts reaching across the ice ocean. “There lies Moulokin,” she said with evident satisfaction.

“Moulokin? Where?” Hunnar didn’t try to hide his sarcasm. “I see naught but ice, rock and sky. In that order, without exception.”

“Nevertheless, this is the region of Moulokin.”

“And where is the fabled city?”

“Could it be atop the plateau somewhere, Teeliam?” asked Ethan softly.

“No, that is absurd.” The former royal consort of Poyolavomaar took little notice of Ethan’s courtesy, as opposed to Hunnar’s skepticism. “How could a state famed for the ships it builds be located many kijat above the ocean?”

“The thought had occured to me,” said Ethan drily. “I was just pointing out that I see no sign of any city.”

“Moulokin is here somewhere.” Teeliam’s conviction was unfazed. She faced the stone barrier. “Somewhere within this land.”

Ethan and Hunnar exchanged glances. Then Ethan asked, “Which way? We must be off in our calculations.”

Teeliam considered stories and rumors and legends. “ ’Tis told the sun sets late in Moulokin,” she muttered to herself. Then she pointed westward. “I would suppose that way.”

“As you will.” Hunnar executed a Tran shrug. “ ’Tis this way or that, as well one as the other.” He relayed instructions to a mate, who conveyed them to another, who shouted them to the helmdeck.

The icerigger turned laboriously to the west, commenced making difficult progress into the wind.

Despite Ta-hoding’s best efforts, their progress was slow. Cliffs grew near, then receded as the
Slanderscree
tacked away from them, though never so far that land was out of sight. It wouldn’t do to slip past their destination while making distance into the wind.

Occasionally there would be a sharp dip in the crest of the plateau where a hanging valley emerged. When the icerigger was on a starboard tack, the lookout in the mainmast basket could see into such gaps in the rock wall. Some held trees that apparently shunned the top of the plateau itself, but none showed any sign of habitation, not of the fabled ship building city of Moulokin or of a single Tran hermit.

Days became a week, the week two, without a break in the cliffs. From time to time the plateau would reach outward or ripple inward, forcing them to alter their heading slightly. But never did it vanish or vary its general east-west orientation.

By the beginning of the third week, however, the plateau began to curve gradually southward. Ethan mused on the distance they had come to the west. Nor was there any way of telling how far the cliffs extended westward.

“According to the mestapes I took long ago, back on the ship traveling here,” Ethan was telling September, “survey work had been very limited on this world. Arsudun was the largest populated island the first team found, so they put the humanx station there. But this,” and he gestured expansively at the towering ramparts, “it’s either an island-sized continent, or a continent-sized island.”

“It’s plain enough, feller-me-lad,” the giant commented, “that we’ve found no mere mountaintop stickin’ its head above the ocean.”

Hunnar joined them, braking to a halt on the starboard icepath, turning his chiv at the last moment so as not to shower them with ice. His excitement was evident from his expression and the fact that he almost forgot to lower his dan. September caught him as he stumbled forward, nearly fell. He was so preoccupied he forgot to produce an excuse for his clumsiness.

“We have found the tracks of a ship! They travel parallel to this high land also, but they approach from the east before turning south.”

“Maybe someone else’s calculations were a little off,” said an equally animated Ethan.

“Mayhap.” Hunnar regained some of his usual dignity. “This may mean only that another raft is exploring or lost.”

“Sure. But if the Moulokinese do most of their trading with peoples to the south and west away from that pressure ridge we crossed, it would explain why we’ve encountered no tracks before now, and why they’re so little known in Poyolavomaar.” Hunnar’s excitement had proven infectious. “Not to mention in far-off Arsudun.”

“All possible, all possible.” The knight’s eyes flashed in the midday light. “We shall see.”

The next day they came across two additional sets of ship tracks. Like the first, these approached from the east before turning south.

“If Moulokin does lie along this plateau,” Ethan was saying, “then any shipmaster knows he only has to encounter it before turning south or north.”

The actual discovery, when it occurred, was anti-climactic. One moment the
Slanderscree
was racing southward, its speed faster now that it wasn’t running into the wind. The next, the fore lookout was yelling loudly to any who could hear.

Off-duty crew rushed to the port rail for a glimpse of a myth become real. From the day they had first encountered the cliffs of the plateau, it had taken them nearly a standard month to reach their present position. Ethan couldn’t estimate how far they’d come. But it was far enough to convince him that Tran-ky-ky could now boast at least one true continent in addition to its thousands of islands scattered spice-like across its endless ice seas.

At the same time he understood why those islands rather than this landmass of considerable but inexact extent were chose by the Tran for their towns and cities. Islands offered easy access to fields of pika-pina and pedan, access to the ice ocean on which all commerce moved. Everything they had seen of the broad plateau hinted at an interior as barren as the lowliest tundra.

Like everyone else, the cries had roused Ethan from his cabin and sent him running to the deck to learn what all the shouting was about. As he snapped his suit closed he noticed sailors up in the rigging taking in sail.

“What is it, Skua?” he shouted at the giant as he ran to the railing. Then he didn’t have to ask because he saw it for himself.

As though cleft by the axe of a god, the cliffs had been split from rim to ice just off the port bow. As they drew nearer, the extent of the chasm could be estimated. Ethan guessed it was not quite two hundred meters across. It maintained that width as far down the canyon as he could see.

There was no sign of a city, but there were numerous signs of its nearness. September leaned over the railing, pointed wordlessly down to the ice.

Despite the light dusting of ice particles and snow, Ethan could clearly make out many sets of parallel grooves running through the smooth surface. They were the tracks of ships which had passed this way. While they crossed and cut over one another, all converged on the chasm in the plateau wall.

September, had his tiny monocular out. He’d flipped up the protective mask of the survival suit and was holding the compact telescope to one eye.

“What do you see, Skua?”

“Sheer rock, feller-me-lad. Rock no different from that forming the cliffs we’ve been pacing for weeks. Not a sail, not a building, nothing. Maybe the canyon takes a tight turn and hides the town.” He slipped the monocular back into the sealocket in his suit, squinted at the plateau. “One thing’s certain … all these tracks lead somewhere popular. I wonder at the clouds inland, though. Even if the wind’s less there, you wouldn’t think they’d linger so thick in one place.”