Across the ridge it advanced, nodding slowly, and near his side it appeared to stop and turn, as if casting about in the growing blizzard. He grew deadly afraid that it might start down the slope, and clutched at his swordhilt, though unsure what effect it could have. He had seen something like this once before upon the Great Ice, and in evil company; but whether it was material enough for any blade to bite on…
The wind howled impatiently; the shadow floated on behind the swirling snow, and vanished behind the arm of the pass. Elof waited only long enough to be sure it had really gone before hurling himself down that steep ice-slope, not stopping to climb but skidding so fast he had visions of overshooting the ship and sliding into the sea. But his furs snagged and tore and slowed him, and he arrived at the shore on unsteady feet, caught up the line he had wound around the stanchions and plunged unhesitating into the water, drawing Gorthawer to support himself. Up the hull he clambered, and so great was the release when his feet left the Ice that he almost fell back in. Roc, roused by the booming of his climb, came staggering up on deck to help him in.
"'Mazing what a little rest'll do for a weary man…" he began, but Elof cut him short.
"Take this a turn around the stern capstan, Roc, and back here quick! We've got to get off - they're coming!"
"Are they, by Hella!" exploded Roc, and rolled off along the deck. Elof hung gasping for the minute it took him to return, and together they looped the line around the winch.
"Now!" snarled Elof, and began to crank the winch. It wound freely a moment, taking up the slack, and then it stopped dead as it encountered the weight of the hull; Roc threw his weight upon it, the winch creaked, and they felt the hull quiver and shift a little under them.
"Shall I… get overside… and shove?" wheezed Roc, the veins starting out under his thick fringe. The hull lurched upright, the line slackened a moment and hummed taut.
"No… not much use… a good-sized boat!" gasped Elof, feeling as Roc had that his arms would not obey. "Just keep…"
There was a sudden grating rasp beneath them, too like the sound they had made grounding in the first place; the boat heaved and they hauled harder before they realised it was sliding of its own accord. Next moment they were hurled to the deck as it bucked and bounced under them. "Sail -" gurgled Elof, clutching at his side where his sword-hilt had bruised a rib, and together they crawled forward to raise the headsail they had rigged ready. The blast of the blizzard shook it and filled it, and swung them violently around; jubilantly Elof seized the tiller and let the sail out further and further till it goose-winged out. The Sea/ire sprang forward, frisky as a tired horse let loose among fresh green meadows, and went skipping across the troubled waters as if it had never been aground, running brisk and easy before the wind off the Ice. The water slapped resoundingly at the hull, but there was no ominous sound of filling, and the little craft rode level and true.
"We're away!" said Roc, as if he hardly believed it, and then, exulting, "Kerys' Gate, we are away!"
"Not yet," said Elof absently, for he had to concentrate on controlling the cutter. "We've yet to see if we can raise the mainsail. Then we've got a good three leagues of pack-ice to get through - and in the dark…" Roc caught his arm, and pointed so vehemently astern he had to risk a look. The high cliffs were walls of shadow now, as darkly cold beneath the rising moon as they were pale and chill by day. But above their summits the Iceglow burned, and shooting through it in bands of furious colour blazed the North-Lights, a banner and a challenge. Fiercest they burned above the promontory the cutter had escaped from, and by their eerie glow Elof and Roc saw something move. Yet this was nothing above the Ice, such as Elof had encountered, nor even on it; something was within it, as bruise beneath raw skin; a patch of shadow, a pool of dark liquid that flowed beneath the glinting surface of the Ice, freely and swiftly. Down the slope that Elof had climbed it poured, and out across the promontory, one long portion stretched out in front of it like an arm. Suddenly the shore lit up with an appalling flash of green light, and they saw green flames leap like lightning between the steel stanchions Elof had left, saw the strong metal sag and melt like candles of tallow, and metal run in spitting rivulets across the ice. It cracked explosively, and again, filling the air with bright shards, and suddenly the crack was racing across the whole promontory, wider and wider, till with a rumbling roar the whole mass of it split free and dropped like an avalanche into the sea.
"No more, if you please!" said Roc hastily. "We're leaving, believe you me, we're leaving!"
And indeed, though perils enough yet lay in their path, from those blazing crags no further assault came. In the first clear stretch of channel they uncovered their lantern and hoisted the mainsail, mending its battered tackle as best they could and holding their breath while the remounted mast took the strain of the snow-laden wind. But it held firm as ever, save for some stretching of the stays which they foresaw and dealt with. Thus, as the long night wore to its close, they were scudding back along the channels as easily as they had come. Elof steered with nervous precision, but he could not avoid every encounter, and they winced at each judder in the bows, each rasp and scrape along the cutter's flank. Every hour or so one or the other would check the hull, but, though it creaked and groaned more loudly than before, the Seafire was shipping only a little more water than was usual through the working seams. To right and left of them the tall ice-islands glided, but, being blown southward by the same wind, they were more easily avoided or out-paced. As the stars faded and pale light crept up along the ocean's rim they cast about anxiously for any trace of black sails; but there were none.
"You took us a good way further east, as well as north," said Roc thoughtfully. "I guess we've passed a cordon, and left any other searchers behind."
"As I hoped," said Elof quietly, keeping a wary eye on the thinning ice round about. "But what was that cordon guarding, I wonder? And how far have we yet to sail - if we can?"
Roc made no reply to that; for though the little cutter bestrode the waves as lightly as ever, they were both aware they could no longer rely on it as they had. Sound it might seem, yet it had been most terribly stressed, and probably damaged in a dozen ways they could not hope to detect - not, at any rate, until the constant warring of wind and water around every sailing boat had worked upon the weaknesses, and made them serious. And then there would be little or nothing that could be done afloat; only on a boatyard slip, or at worst a favourable beach, was there a chance of repair. The two travellers sailed forth from the clutches of the Ice, yet they were not free. It had laid a sentence upon them more implacable than any edict of a human king; find land within a certain span, or find their last long rest beneath the Seas of the Sunrise. And what that span was they were not told.
That day and night the snow pursued them, and, fearing it would grow to a storm, they set their course southeastward in all haste. Those were hard hours, for the seas waxed high and rough, the wind gusty and fierce, and the little cutter juddered alarmingly in that double embrace. Wild flurries of snow came lashing across the deck, coating the rigging, caking in every cranny, rushing across their faces till they could scarcely breathe, let alone see. They could feel and hear the working of the hull timbers, and it was no cause for comfort; yet for all her wounds the Seafire rode out the weather gallantly. As the sun arose the snow faded, as if in disgust, and they fell to baling and caulking anew.
Yet there were distractions enough from their concerns, in the days following. As they quitted the marches of the Great Ice life seemed to return to the sea, and they no longer felt quite so isolated from the world of warm blood. Seabirds were still rare, yet from time to time fine-winged shapes could be seen against the clouds, gliding high beyond the reach of any. Seals of all kinds were common, bobbing up in the seas or sunning themselves on wide floes; by night their cries could be heard for many long sea miles, eerie and yet strangely melodious, and with a yearning quality that spoke deeply to Elof. Once or twice, too, they saw the
huge white bears that hunted them, padding across the floes with their low heads swinging, or actually swimming between them; they seemed too much creatures of the land to be able to survive in that appalling cold. Strangest sight of all, though, was a group of creatures that Elof at first took for some kind of large porpoise, from their grey backs and speed of swimming. But as they cut across the Sea/ire's bow he saw that those backs were dappled, that the tall flukes were rounded to the shape of a fan, and, more strange than any, that they had a single long spear of a horn set slightly to one side of their heads which rose and fell at a vicious angle as they swam. Elof and Roc found it only too easy to imagine one crashing through the Seafire's distressed timbers, with many tons weight of whale behind it; curious as they were, they kept a respectful distance, and never saw the beasts again.
High winds still blew, constantly, but they scoured the skies clear; Elof and Roc looked eagerly astern as each night fell, for they hoped to see the Ice-glow fading from the sky. So it did, astern; yet it seemed to linger curiously in the eastward sky off their port flank, glinting on the grey clouds that rolled imperiously by, till Elof, alone and gloomy on night-watch, wondered despairingly if it were not somehow reaching out to bar their path. He knew the idea was idiotic; it could not move so far, so fast, and would have crushed them directly if it could. Yet there it was, reaching out like the pallid tentacle of some seabeast… Something flickered by him, a thought almost too swift to grasp…
He had it. Always, always the Ice strove furiously to reach as far south as it could, so those cliffs he had trodden must have been the limit of the glaciers' reach, out here at sea. In which case, what were they seeing to port? There were still ice-islands about; could a great mass of them make such a glow? Surely not; so if the Ice there reached further than it could at sea___
"Then by Hel, it's not at sea!" said Roc forcefully, when he came on deck near dawn. "There's land over there!"
"Land under the Ice," Elof reminded him dryly. "It may still be far away; the Ice might curve in towards it, as it does north of Morvanhal, only further. The tales say that east of the oceans it did reach further south; that was why Kerys the Great was founded, when the Ice drove out the ancient kingdoms of men in the old North, forgotten now in the deeps of time. And then its advance on Kerys drove folk from there to settle in Brasayhal, to found Morvan there, and our own homelands." He frowned, feeling suddenly slight before that creeping, inexorable advance. "Roc, that was some four or five thousand years past. Who knows how far it's come now? There may be no land there at all… "
"There's something!" shouted Roc, springing up and squinting into the growing light eastward. "See there! Breakers! A shoal! It's land, right enough!"
"It couldn't be so close!" objected Elof, puzzled, and he clambered up onto the unsteady rail beside Roc. But he could not deny what he saw. All over the wide seas eastward spread a great turbulence, white water and spray spurting like breakers over some rough coast of black rocks, and behind it a low line of shadow that might indeed be distant hills. Then they both saw at the same time that the shoal was moving, that the apparent rocks were shining serpentine backs, glossy and wrinkled, rearing and plunging with the strength of living waves; the spray was the jetting vapours of their breath, blasted from cavernous lungs. They had seen whales before, but never so many and so large all together. Like breakers indeed churned the bow waves around their blunt-walled heads, and the foam about their flukes. Elof eyed them suspiciously, but when he saw that they would pass well south of the cutter he grew thoughtful. "One piece of good tidings they may bring us, Roc; I've heard that the great whales never herd so in cold waters. We may be coming to warmer climes at last."
"Not before time, then!" Roc grunted, and waved a hand at the hatchway. He had no need to say more; they could both hear the heavy slopping of water below, and yet they had baled it out with great labour only the evening before. "And all their news may not be so good; if those aren't hills behind them, they're clouds. And filthy black ones, too…" Elof glanced at him, and read in his lined brow the same fear; it was early summer now. A time when, along the coasts of their own country, where the cold air off the Ice met the warm winds from southern lands, fierce storms were common.
Elof stood silent awhile, but at last he shrugged. "Well, what can we do but endure it? We'll have to turn in towards the land, storm or no storm - Ice or no Ice." As if to punctuate his words the sea beneath the clouds glittered grey a moment, and a full minute later a rumb-ling rolled across the waves, like a cascade of stones. Elof breathed deeply; he could almost smell the lightning on the racing breeze. "Come, we'd better go batten down all, reef the sails. And gather some gear together." Such things as they might need on shore, such things as they might risk drowning to save; but that he left unsaid. The slow complaint of the timbers was eloquent enough.
The storm advanced like a dark mantle drawn up the sky. "You see?" Roc pointed out. "Smith's clouds, right enough .;." Elof smiled wryly at the old Nordeney folk-name, only too apt; the high crests of the thunderclouds were flattened and peaked like vast anvils, their bases hidden by the rainclouds that rolled and boiled like sooty forgesmoke. Flashes leaped among the peaks, and he thought of the image of Ilmarinen in the duergar halls, Master of Masters, Smith of the Powers who smote out the very mountains; on such anvils might he work, with such storms for a fire. His hand crept to the precious gauntlet of mail at his belt, the sword slung opposite. Once he had dared to intrude upon that forge, to use some fragment of its strength; sheer presumption, like so much else he had done. Now he must hope to dash through its midst. "Ready about!" he called, and saw Roc wind the winches furiously. They had sailed as far south as they could; to sail across the storm would only lengthen their time within it, increase their chance of being sunk. As well head straight into it, and hope that somewhere beneath it lay the land. Slowly, smoothly he swung the tiller across.
It was as fierce a storm as they had faced in all their time at sea; all around them, closer and closer, the lightning stabbed and flickered through the driving rain. The wind's sharp gusts raised ever greater waves that plucked up the cutter's bows, bursting athwart them in vast wings of spray that were lit molten silver by the levin-bolts. Down their steep slopes it plunged as if to dash its bows into the trough, while the thunder drummed like harsh laughter overhead. But due rather, as Elof suspected, to her fair shaping than his own Seamanship, the little ship rode out each trough and climbed each crest anew. Even over the bellow of the storm they could hear her timbers creak and moan, as from the pain of old wounds reopened, now and then cracks like snapping bone. Yet for all those wounds she held firm, even when they were forced at last to strike the sails altogether from the tortured mast, and struggling and slipping with ropes along the storm-lashed deck, toss out an improvised sea anchor to hold the bows into the wind. Then they could do no more than lash themselves at their posts by tiller and rail, and bow their heads to the wind and their destiny.
But that was the worst, after which the storm soon slackened; and as it passed, and the heaving waters turned from black to grey, they found themselves blinking in the light of a cloudy afternoon. "Two or three hours, that was!" gasped Roc indignantly. "That's all!"
Elof sagged down over the tiller. "Seemed like an eternity, didn't it?" Then he pulled himself weakly up. "Roc, we've got to check the hull -"
Roc pushed him back with a grimace. "Sit tight; you had the worst of it at the helm there. I'll check; you gather your strength. Maybe you'll be needing it," he added as he undogged the hatch and disappeared below.
He emerged a short while later, fouled and grim. "You'd better come. I've never seen the seams work so, there's no getting the caulking to hold and we're shipping water faster by the minute…"
Elof glanced up at the sails, racked the tiller and staggered past Roc and down. All the seams were indeed working loose, the more so the lower down he checked. "It shouldn't be so… Unless…" He stooped into the blackened slime at the bow and
ran his hands slowly and carefully along the huge timber that was the keel. Some third of the way along he stopped, pressed his fingers down and felt back along. His hands were half numbed by the filthy water; but his blood ran colder yet. "Roc!" he said, when he could "I know why she's working so much; the keel's cracked."
"What?" roared Roc. "Can't be! She'd have broken up at once -"
"Not right through; but with every wave… The Ice did it; it did get us, after all."
"We can't brace it? Patch it?"
"It's past that! She's filling, faster by the minute. Within the hour, a few minutes maybe -"
"Back on deck!" growled Roc. "This stench softens my brain!"
Elof sighed as he climbed up after him. "As you will, though there's little enough to think on now -"
"That so, hey?" Roc's red thatch was thrust back down the companionway. "Up here with you a minute -now, tell me truly, what d'you think that is?"
Elof scrambled up into the grey light, and peered the way Roc was pointing. Upon the eastern horizon there lay a smoky-hued smudge no different from a hundred other cloudbanks, save that its high crests… He had to swallow hard ere he could speak.
"It's land," he said softly. "A league and a half, at least, two if those are mountaintops…"
"Can we make it?" demanded Roc bluntly.
Elof shook his head mutely, choking down the bitterness rising in his throat. "She'd pull apart the moment we hoisted sail. We might make it on a raft or swimming with floats, a spar or a hatchcover -"
"Scant chance of that, with it so freezing and us weary! We'd never last long enough! Hel, but it galls me! To have got this far, and… There's no other way?" They could feel the little cutter settling under them now with every passing second.
"There is, by the High Gate!" blazed Elof. "Roc, take up your gear, and swiftly!"
The Hammer of the Sun Page 12