Icerigger

by Alan Dean Foster

  “It's not our home,” said Ethan, unconsciously avoiding the other's neat trap. “Just a single settlement our folk have established on your world.”

  “To be sure,” Hunnar murmured. “In any case, the full Council should debate it.” Actually, with the Horde only a malet or two away, any request for so much as a sword blade or scrap of spare sail was apt to be treated with kindly indifference at best. He didn't say that, of course. Possibly these people could be of some help. There was no point in discouraging them early.

  Now, if they voluntarily agreed to contribute the wreck of their boat, that would surely be a point in their favor. A point he ought to bring up about now.

  “Is your vessel truly no longer capable of flight?”

  “That is so,” said Ethan sadly.

  “Can it not be repaired?”

  “I fear not,” September put in. “It would take the facilities of a full 0-G dock. The nearest is parsecs away.”

  Hunnar looked across at him. He already felt at ease with Ethan. Less certain was he with this stranger who was nearly as big as himself and whose accent was even more abominable than Ethan's.

  The big human seemed only amused by the intent scrutiny the knight was giving him.

  “Then,” he continued casually, “would you object to our making some use of it?” He waited tensely. He didn't wish to spill blood here, but for so much worked metal...

  He did not bother to point out that they were in no position to deny it. Even so, Ethan's ready answer surprised him.

  “Sure. Help yourselves.” Even Suaxus looked startled.

  “One thing you ought to know, though,” added September. “I don't think your people will be able to work it.”

  “Our smiths,” replied Suaxus, drawing himself up to his full height, “can work bronze, brass, silver, gold, copper, junite, iron, visiron, and good steel.”

  “Very impressive. Believe me, I wish them only the best of luck. If they can mold duralloy in your local version of a manual forge, I'll be the first to applaud. Now, if you could train a Droom to manhandle the stuff...”

  That was one several of the soldiers could not keep from laughing at. It lightened the atmosphere, lessened the tension born of acquisition.

  “If we could do that,” smiled Hunnar, “we wouldn't need the metal.”

  “There are some bits and scraps already torn free that you might be able to make some use of,” September continued. “Like the acceleration-couch frames, heating units, and such. I'd like to offer you a couple of miles of wire, but I'm afraid there just isn't much in the boat.” He wasn't about to try and explain solid- and fluid-state mechanics. A frustrated warrior could become an angry warrior, apt to relieve his frustration by making short choppy motions with sharp objects.

  “We shall see,” said Hunnar. He looked at Ethan. “You surely have no objections then, friend Ethan?”

  “No, the boat's all yours, uh, friend Hunnar.”

  “Fine. Now I think it be time to go meet his Lordship.” He was exhilarated. Not a drop of blood shed to win such a prize! And mayhap some allies as well. Tiny allies, 'twas true.

  “We're ready as you,” said Ethan. He took a step forward, then stopped. A look of consternation came over his features.

  “Um ... how do you propose to get to this castle of yours?”

  Hunnar reconsidered. Perhaps he'd been wrong. Maybe these really were children, or at least adolescents.

  “We will simply chivan over,” he said patiently. “It is only a short glide. Fifteen minutes out, perhaps three times that back, against the wind.”

  “By ‘chivan’ I guess you mean to skate?” Hunnar said nothing, confused. “I'm afraid we can't do that.”

  “Why not?” blurted Suaxus, hand moving slowly toward his sword-hilt again.

  “Because,” Ethan continued, opening his coat and raising his arms, “we don't have any wings and,” resnapping the coat and lifting a foot, removing the boot, “we haven't any claws, or skates.” He replaced the boot hastily as the cold bit at his heel.

  Hunnar stared at the now-covered foot and rapidly made some astonished reappraisals. Firstly, his pet theory that these people were but slimmer varieties of his own vanished like a sweetclub down a cub's gullet. And then the full alienness of them — the way they moved, talked, their impossible sky-ship — all came down on him at once with a solid mental crunch.

  Invincible knight of Sofold though he be, he was still shaken.

  “If ... if you have neither dan nor chiv,” he asked helplessly, “how do you move about? Surely you do not walk all the time?”

  “We do a lot of that,” Ethan admitted. “Also, we have small vehicles that move from place to place.” He demonstrated a walk, feeling ridiculous. “We also run.” He forbore demonstrating this other human activity.

  “We too ‘walk,’ with our chiv retracted,” muttered Hunnar a little dazedly. “But to have to walk to cover any distance ... how terrible!”

  “There are plenty of humans who feel exactly the same way. They do as little of it as possible,” confessed Ethan. “On our world there are few places to chivan, anyway. Our oceans are not solid, like this, but liquid.”

  “You mean, like the inside of the world?” Hunnar gaped.

  “That's interesting.” Williams spoke for the first time. “Clearly they have seen or have memory of occasional breaks in the ice. Since it's as much a part of their surface as these islands, it's easy to see how their wise men would conclude that the world was hollow and filled with water.”

  “What a sad place your home must be,” commiserated Hunnar, honestly sympathetic. “I do not think I should like to visit it.”

  “Oh, there are places on many of our worlds, including Terra, where you'd feel right at home,” Ethan assured him.

  “Can you not chivan at all?” pressed the knight. It was hard to accede to such a monstrous abnormality.

  “Not at all. If I were to try and chivan... We do have artificial chiv of metal on some worlds, but brought none with us. It's not standard survival gear on our lifeboats. And I wouldn't know how to use them, anyway. I think I could make a few meters from here into the wind before falling flat on my face.”.

  “Couldn't hurt,” said Colette. He ignored her.

  “I will call for a sled,” Hunnar said decisively. “Pudjir, you and Hivell see to it!” The squire indicated acknowledgment and headed for the ice, the soldier following.

  The humans watched their departure with fascinated stares. Williams in particular was utterly enraptured.

  Once on the ice, the squire dug into the soldier's backpack and drew out a highly polished mirror about a third as big as his torso. It was set in a dark wooden frame and had what looked like a large metal screw set in the base of the wood.

  While the squire aligned it with the sun and balanced it, the soldier jammed it into the ice and began twisting until it was screwed in tightly. It was facing those same western islands Ethan had spotted from his treetop vantage.

  There was a simple baffle-shutter arrangement that slipped over the mirror. While the soldier steadied it against the wind, Budjir began opening and closing the baffles in a distinct pattern. Almost immediately there was an answering series of bright flashes somewhere along the horizon, at which the squire began fluttering his shutters more rapidly and for some time.

  “Clearly, any kind of aural communication,” September mused, “like drums or horns, are out of the question here. This wind would swallow up a good drum inside a half-kilometer or less.”

  Williams asked Hunnar, “What do you do at night?”

  “Torchlight reflected by mirror serves well enough,” the knight replied. “For long distances we have developed a system of relay stations with bigger mirrors. Except, of course, where they have been destroyed.”

  “Destroyed?” said Ethan. It was the inflection in Hunnar's voice and not the word itself that prompted his curiosity.

  “Yes. The Horde burns them so that no word can
be given of their passage. Indeed, it forbids their construction. But many feign ignorance and rebuild them.”

  “Horde?” probed September disinterestedly. “What Horde?”

  “I fear you will have chance to discover,” replied Hunnar. “We have a while to wait. I should like to learn more about you, and your amazing sky-raft, in that time.”

  “There isn't a great deal you would under ... find interesting, Sir Hunnar,” said Ethan. “But I'll be happy to show you around. Now, if I had my damned sample case with me...”

  In the discussion that preceded the arrival of the sled-raft, Hunnar revealed a fair knowledge of basic astronomy. Tran-ky-ky rarely had cloudy weather for any length of time, Ethan reflected thoughtfully.

  After Williams had answered several pointed questions about his home world and the ship, Hunnar asked if the little schoolteacher was a wizard. When informed that he was a teacher, the knight shrugged off the difference. No doubt, he reflected, Williams and Malmeevyn Eer-Meesach, wizard to the Landgrave himself, would have things to say to one another. Certainly Williams did not try to hide his own enthusiasm at the prospect of such a meeting.

  Williams tried to explain a full-sized KK-drive ship to the knight. Hunnar would have none of it. Nothing that big could be made out of metal.

  “Why does it not land to pick you up?” he asked.

  “Little reasons aside,” answered Williams, “it can't. No KK-drive ship could. It would make an awful mess of this part of your world.”

  “Ha!” grunted Hunnar. A ship of metal that large. Did they take him for a complete fool?

  Likewise he could not grasp the concept of weightlessness. But gravity he understood. When you cut a man's head off, it fell down. Colette looked a little ill when September helpfully translated this for her. Also, he knew of the gutorrbyn and krokim and other flying things that were odd but clearly not weightless. He'd killed enough of them to know that.

  The tran examined the inert body of the dead Kotabit with interest. In the icebox climate it hadn't decayed at all, for which Ethan was grateful. An experienced warrior might have been able to tell that the human's broken neck had not come from, say, being thrown against the console. But corpses, even alien ones, were not the items of prime interest. The control board, with its now frosted knobs and dials; drew longer stares. At the same time, Ethan and September were learning about Tran-ky-ky from Hunnar.

  Wannome, it developed, was the capital and only near-city of a large island named Sofold. Sofold lay oh-so-many kijat to the west. It also claimed sovereignty over a number of smaller nearby islands. This tiny islet they'd smashed up against was one. A few, larger than this, were garrisoned and settled.

  Wannome Sound was an excellent natural harbor and supported a flourishing commerce. There were active hot springs on the island crest. These provided a natural location for the small but vital foundry and the smithies. The island was also rich in deposits of certain metals but had to trade for others.

  Cultivation was widespread. Like most inhabited islands, Sofold was virtually self-sufficient foodwise. Gathering of wild pika-pina, which grew back as fast as it could be harvested, was also a major industry.

  When Ethan asked if they also harvested the much larger pika-pedan, Sir Hunnar threw him an odd stare. Suaxus whined mirthfully.

  Only the foolishly brave or the ignorant tried to make a living gathering the pika-pedan, he explained. It was on the pika-pedan that the stavanzer grazed.

  “Stavanzer? What's a stavanzer?” asked September interestedly.

  Again Ethan's mestaped memory came up with a blank on fauna. “I don't remember. I get the feeling I should, but there's nothing ... It's all on the edge ... must be a mental block. Won't come. Why? You planning on starting a ranch?”

  September smiled. “Farming isn't one of my multitude of talents,” he said.

  “Oh, wait a sec. I do remember what the name means.”

  “Yeah?” prompted the big man.

  “Thunder-eater.”

  September pursed his lips. “Sounds harmless enough. Okay, so we don't volunteer for any pika-pedan pruning expeditions, what? Ask him about the local thieves ... government.”

  The much-mentioned Council, it seemed, was composed of local dignitaries and nobles who served as administrators, mayors, and justices-of-the-peace of the countryside. The Council was presided over by the hereditary Landgrave, whose word was final but could be challenged in Council.

  The Landgrave's hereditary power was rooted in his ancestry. A great portion of his personal wealth and treasury was derived from customs fees and commerce taxes.

  “What sort of bird is your Landgrave?” asked September.

  “Fearless, brilliant, a genius at administration and a true wizard of decision,” replied Hunnar. He leaned over and whispered to the two humans. “He's as tough as a year-old piece of vol jerky, but if you talk true with him from the first, you'll do well enough.”

  “He sounds most imposing ... a true leader,” replied Ethan loudly. Then he lowered his voice in return.

  “I understand. We've one like that ourselves ... sometimes.”

  Hunnar nodded, then looked uncertain. “Sometimes?”

  “I do not fully understand myself, Sir Hunnar. Some day soon, perhaps... He has a disease of age ... and something more, I think.” He looked up, smiled, stopped when he noticed Hunnar draw away.

  “Sorry. I forgot that showing one's teeth is not a sign of friendship among meat-eaters.”

  “Truly a strange custom of yours,” agreed the knight.

  “That's something else we've got to attend to.” He looked evenly at Hunnar. “While I'm sure your chefs are the noblest practitioners of their art on the planet, we do have a certain amount of our own foodstuffs we'd like to bring along.”

  “If the quantity is not great, there should be plenty of space on the raft.”

  “And it's about time we set to moving it outside,” said September.

  “I was afraid you might bring that up,” Ethan sighed.

  The sled-raft was awkward-looking but solid. Twenty meters long by ten wide, a bluff, no-nonsense triangular shape in hard wood, it was built from heavy timbers. There was a matted floor of some vegetable material and a wooden rail running around it at waist level. Tran waist level.

  There was a crew of four. The owner, a merchant named Ta-hoding, stared at the ruined lifeboat with an open and unabashed greed that Ethan found positively homey.

  A single mast was set about a third of the way back from the pointed bow. This supported a single large square sail held between two sturdy crossbeams top and bottom. The raft rested on three sharpened runners of gray stone, two at the rear corners and a slightly smaller one at the front. The two at the stern were connected to a double wheel that took two sailors to handle.

  “A handsome ship,” Ethan said to the captain.

  “My ancestors are forever honored to have you on board my pitiful craft, great visitors from the stars! My sire is forever in your honor. My family shall bask in the glow of your radiances forever. My cubs and mate...”

  Ta-hoding continued to heap suffocating praise on his passengers until September whispered something to Hunnar that Ethan missed.

  “No, it wasn't supposed to be made known to the general public,” replied the knight. “Actually, the Landgrave desired it be kept as quiet as possible. However, where money is concerned...” He shrugged, a very human gesture. Ethan was beginning to get an inkling of just how much wealth their ruined lifeboat represented hereabouts.

  “I see,” said September. He caught another crate of survival rations the soldiers were passing up and stacked it on the wooden deck. It took two soldiers considerable effort to lift the box up to him. Hunnar watched the operation silently. September wasn't sure whether or not the knight had caught the ease with which he'd handled the first crate. Damn! The big man strained almost theatrically on the next ones.

  “A beacon that will shine...” Ta-hoding was following t
he other humans around, still spouting hosannas.

  “Pardon me,” began Williams, and Ethan gratefully slipped away as the schoolteacher rescued him from the seemingly endless assault of frozen platitudes.

  “Why are your vessel's runners made of stone?” Williams asked.

  “Alas,” said the captain, “wood wears away too quickly and metal is beyond the reach of even wealthy men, which I assuredly am not... There is a great raft, owned in whole by the people of Vad Ozero, six times the size of my poor craft. Its sails would cover a large inn and it has runners made from solid stavanzer backbone.” He shook his head mournfully. “The ease with which it turns, yea, even into the wind. The maneuverability, the sensuous glide of it under full sail, the speed, the profits ... ah, the profits!”

  Yes, alien though he may be, here was a being that was one with him in spirit, Ethan reflected. A race of philosophers with long beards who scorned material wealth might exist in the galaxy — somewhere. Thus far they remained undiscovered.

  “I think that's it,” said September with satisfaction, and it was. Ethan found himself looking forward to the sight of Hunnar's home.

  Hunnar watched the last of the humans clamber aboard. “We are ready then?” He turned to the captain.

  “Let out, Ta-hoding! We are aboarded!”

  “As your boldness commands,” effused the skipper. “I bask in the light of—”

  “I'm not one of your customers, Hoding,” Hunnar barked in reply. “The Landgrave is paying you, so don't waste any of your flattery on me.” He turned to his first squire.

  “Suaxus, take Smjor and report in for us. If the wind blows true, we should follow you by ten tuvits. Make also a report to the Longax and see that the wizard is aroused. If he awaits you not already with slavering tongue. Straight this time, with none of your bloodthirsty embellishments, mind.”

  “Done, sir,” acknowledged Suaxus, a bit coldly, Ethan thought. “Thou canst depend on me.”

  Hunnar replied with another of those tight-lipped smiles. He exchanged breath with the other. Although there was no obvious difference in their age, Hunnar seemed to Ethan years the eldest.