‘Hush!’ she said, and cradled him in her arms. ‘I’ll get you ashore, to hospital – in just a minute –’ And then abruptly they huddled together like frightened night creatures. Through the heart of the flames, jolted free by the explosion, the fishing smack came gliding. Flames curled around its hull, smoke spouted from its wheelhouse and through its deck planking. And out of the flame-wreathed water, clinging to its gunnel, rose an immense dark arm. They saw it strain, flex, the boat dipped violently, and a great black figure, dripping flame, surged upward onto its deck. But the superstructure was already ablaze, and the new fire touched off the rest. The King stumbled on the deck, glanced against the mast; the fire raced up it, the sail vanished with a puff and roar and the tackle glowed in lines of red. The wheelhouse became an inferno, the mast cracked at its root and toppled, flames raced along the splitting deck seams and engulfed the King. A single shriek rent the air and echoed off the distant cliffs, a mad yell of greater agonies than pain – defeat, decline, unending darkness. Hal bowed his head. For an instant a shadow stood amid the fire, erect, defiant, and then crashed forward like a felled tree onto the erupting deck. A plume of fire shot skyward as the boat’s own fuel tank caught, and it spun into midstream a vessel of flame.
Jess found herself giggling weakly, in a kind of feeble hysteria. ‘Back – the bastard’s back where he should’ve been all along … Just like Balder – or Beowulf …’
Hal sighed, and clutched her hand.
A warm wind was rising from the land, heavy and humid, rich with promises of autumn. It caught up the boat and the corona of blazing fuel, and swept it downstream, away from the dam, out into the estuary, out to sea. Along the line of the distant horizon the first faint colours of sunrise were showing; but above them clouds were massing, and the lightning flickered.
Then the warriors began to kindle
That greatest of funeral fires; smoke rose
above the flames, black and thick,
And while the wind blew and the fire
Roared, they wept, and the King’s body
crumbled and was gone …
No man can say where that strange-laden ship at last found harbour …
Beowulf
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Also By Michael Scott Rohan
The Winter of the World
1. The Anvil of Ice (1986)
2. The Forge in the Forest (1987)
3. The Hammer of the Sun (1988)
4. The Castle of the Winds (1998)
5. The Singer and the Sea (1999)
6. Shadow of the Seer (2001)
Spiral
1. Chase the Morning (1990)
2. The Gates of Noon (1992)
3. Cloud Castles (1993)
4. Maxie’s Demon (1997)
Other Novels
Run to the Stars (1982)
The Ice King (1986) (with Allan J. Scott)
A Spell of Empire (1992) (with Allan J. Scott)
The Lord of Middle Air (1994)
Michael Scott Rohan (1951 – )
Michael Scott Rohan, born in Edinburgh in 1951, writes both fantasy and science fiction. Whilst studying law at Oxford, Rohan joined the SF group and met the president, Allan J Scott, who started him writing for the group’s semi-professional magazine SFinx alongside names such as Robert Holdstock and Ian Watson. His first novel, Run to the Stars, was published in 1983 and he collaborated with Allan J Scott on The Hammer and the Cross, a non-fiction account of how Christianity arrived in Viking lands. Rohan is best known for his acclaimed The Winter of the World sequence, an epic fantasy set in and ice-bound world.
Allan J. Scott (1952 – )
Born in 1952, Allan James Julius Scott began writing at a very early age. His first published work of genre interest was “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner”, which appeared in the 1982 edition of Peter Davison’s Book of Alien Monsters anthology. As editor of the Oxford University Science Fiction Group’s magazine SFinx, Scott met Michael Scott Rohan, with whom he later collaborated on a number of titles, including The Hammer and the Cross, The Ice King and A Spell of Empire.
Copyright
A Gollancz eBook
Copyright © Michael Scott Rohan and Allan J Scott 1983
All rights reserved.
The right of Michael Scott Rohan and Allan J Scott to be identified as the authors
of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This eBook first published in Great Britain in 2013 by Gollancz
The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
Orion House
5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane
London, WC2H 9EA
An Hachette UK Company
A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978 0 575 09234 1
All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance
to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
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The Ice King Page 28