“Who?” said Thing, looking back at him. “The border fellas?” A grimace passed over Monsieur Pichon’s face, but he said nothing as he bent to pick up Sasha’s coat, which he threw over his arm. He dropped to his knees beside her and looked up at Thing.
“Please help me,” he said. Grabbing handfuls of Sasha’s dress, they lifted her as gently as they could. She was still unconscious, a dead weight in their arms.
“We must go to the right here,” said Monsieur Pichon when they got to the end of the walkway, his voice sounding strained. “The craft is this way.” Thing nodded, turning. The walkway continued all around the circumference of the room, its narrowness helped a little by the handrail that ran beside it. About a hundred yards away stood a sturdy-looking set of steps, and Thing guessed they were headed for it.
“So, what is this craft thing, anyway?” The words were barely out of his mouth before a third gigantic boom made him stumble.
“We are out of time!” yelled Monsieur Pichon, trying his best to drag Sasha along. “Help me!” Thing slipped his shoulder beneath her arm and gritted his teeth as he and Monsieur Pichon ran, stumbling, down the walkway, carrying her between them. After a few yards he felt the old, familiar clutching pain in his chest, and his breaths began to get thick.
“Stop!” roared a voice from right behind them, making them clatter to a halt. “I am armed, and I will shoot!” Thing looked at Monsieur Pichon, whose eyes were bulging in red-rimmed terror.
“We shall see your friend receives the medical attention she needs,” continued the voice. “But you must stop and give yourself up.” Thing’s heart thudded like someone had kicked it, and his knees began to wobble. I didn’t feel ’em comin’! He looked over his shoulder, straining to see. All he could make out was a shadowy figure and the glint of a gun.
Beside him, Monsieur Pichon started whispering.
“Boy—you must run. Run fast! Take the ship and go north. That is where the girl will be brought, if you are right about Bauer. Go north!” Thing stared at him for a couple of seconds. He licked his lips as his brain started whirring, faster and faster. He glanced at Sasha, still out cold.
Then he blinked and met Monsieur Pichon’s eyes again. He nodded, just once.
The wind was whipping the moisture from Emmeline’s eyes before she had a chance to blink it away. She’d never traveled at this sort of speed before—not even in her dreams. There was no sign of the giant, loping creatures, nor even of the other horses in the herd she’d seen bursting from the ice, but still her steed ran on, sure and strong, as if it knew where it was going. It was hard to tell in the darkness and the vastness of the flat, empty place, but Emmeline felt that they’d left the sea at their backs and were headed inland.
Why didn’t I just go back to Igimaq’s village? she thought, every muscle in her body beginning to throb with a deep, rattling ache. I should never have left in the first place! She buried her face in the horse’s red mane, realizing as she did so that it flowed over her skin like warm bathwater, soft and fragrant and comforting. She sank her nose into it and breathed deeply, her face tingling as it started to thaw.
Feeling calmer, she sat back a little and looked around. To either side there was nothing but emptiness. Miles above, in a thick greenish-purple stream like a river made of starlight, the aurora flowed. It strained and crackled as it tried to escape the pull of whatever was drawing it down toward the ground, tendrils of light peeling away as it struggled, but nothing seemed to have an effect. It looked so sickeningly wrong that Emmeline couldn’t drag her eyes away from it. Her mouth fell open and her grip on the horse began to loosen.
“Whiiinnnnnn!” Emmeline snapped out of her trance at the sound of the horse’s warning. Quickly she flattened herself against its neck once more and glued herself to its smooth back, as high above their heads, the lights blazed.
She was so focused on staying on the horse—and on keeping herself warm in its mane—that she didn’t see what was lurking on the horizon like a huge black claw, and toward which they were galloping, full pelt, like there was a fire at their back.
Thing ran, his chest and throat burning, reminding him with every step: You left her behind! You left her to die! The crack of a gunshot, and voices that were raised but somehow unclear—like the words were being yelled through water—made his feet move faster, even though he hated himself for doing it.
His lungs felt like someone had tied his neck in a knot.
“Whoop,” came a noise, unasked for, out of his mouth. “Whoop.” He shook his head, angry with himself.
“Don’t stop!” shouted Monsieur Pichon from behind him. “Get to the ship! You must—” The words were snipped off suddenly, but Thing knew he couldn’t look back. Please be all right, please be all right, he begged.
Every muscle Thing had was focused on getting to the steps. They led upward, very steeply, into the curved ceiling of this strange spherical room. An open door, made of the same brightly polished metal as the stairway, stood at the top.
He reached the stairs and flung himself onto them. The rhythmic clang-clang-clang noise of a lot of heavy boots, all following him at once, made him race up the steps two at a time.
A tall, brown-skinned woman at the head of the gang of armed pursuers, some of whom were still wearing their fake border guard uniforms, raised a gloved hand, and the chase stopped dead. Her eyes followed his progress with amusement.
“Ma’am, I can take him,” called a heavily muscled man, nudging his way past.
“Not yet,” she replied, her voice calm.
“Ma’am.” The soldier stood to attention, slamming the butt of his weapon against the metal floor with a loud bang. The tall woman glanced back up at Thing, whose terrified gaze met her cool, mocking eyes as he vanished through the open door. He remembered to swing it shut behind him, though his sweating hands almost lost their grip.
“Let the little fool think he’s outsmarted us,” murmured the woman, watching the closed door with what looked like glee. “Let him think he’s escaped.”
Beyond the door Thing was frozen in place. His eyes couldn’t move fast enough to take in everything he needed to see, but even if they could have, his brain wouldn’t have been able to think fast enough to understand.
“Okay,” breathed Thing. “Okay.” He gnawed on his lip, looking at the giant chain in front of him. A second chain, equally huge, rose from the far side of the platform Thing was standing on. They vanished into the sky, piercing the heaving belly of the gray clouds trapped above. The chain nearest Thing was attached by a complicated-looking series of locks and levers to a strut sticking out of the platform, which ran all the way around the sphere. Thing had a head for heights, but even he felt a bit ill as the wind sucked at him, threatening to toss him off the platform and down to the ground.
He glanced around one more time, but there was nothing else up there. No ladders, no stairways, no escape. The chain ground and wailed as it shifted in its moorings, moving so slowly and heavily that Thing knew the object being held captive, whatever it was, had to be huge. Monsieur Pichon’s voice whispered in his mind: Get to the ship!
“But how’m I goin’ to get up there?” he muttered. He peered out over the edge of the platform and saw the old lorry they had made their escape in parked in the mud miles below. In a ring around it were several more vehicles, large and black and shiny, like they were guarding it, or keeping it captive.
“No time for this,” he muttered to himself. He stared at the chain for a second or two, and his brain began to tick over. Very carefully he caught hold of the lowest link. He ran his hand over the cool metal, seeing in it his slightly distorted reflection gazing back out at him as if wondering what he thought he was doing, but he ignored that.
“Watch yer fingers, yeah? One sudden move by this chain and yer goin’ to be no good to anyone, least of all Ems.” Lightly he hopped onto the chain and crouched low as he got a feel for its movement, sizing it up, keeping himself well away from al
l the pinch points.
He let his gaze travel up the length of the chain again. Each link was as thick as his torso and longer than he was tall. “Easy peasy,” he whispered, half believing it. Then, taking a deep breath, he bounced elegantly to his feet. He swung Emmeline’s satchel around to his front and took a firm hold of it with one hand. He catapulted himself toward the second link, and then the third, his feet finding their way as though he’d done this a thousand times before. He leaped from link to link never, ever looking down.
Within a few moments the gray clouds loomed right above his head. Thing took another deep breath, ignoring the tight band of pain that wrapped itself around his lungs. Just as he prepared to make his final move, a flash of light burst from deep within the strange gray mist. His foot stumbled, and he lost his grip, and he began to fall.
The green light overhead was growing thicker and brighter the farther Emmeline rode, and the whole sky was slowly swirling like a gathering storm. In the near distance Emmeline could make out some shadowy shapes moving in the strange glow from the sky, and she wondered if she’d finally caught up with the horse’s lost herd—but then, just like that, they vanished again, as if the glacier had swallowed them up. Emmeline blinked in surprise.
“Hmfff!” snorted the horse, and Emmeline looked down. The ice was slick underfoot here, running with meltwater so deep it almost reached the tops of the horse’s hooves. The sight of it made her uneasy. The glacier is breaking, she thought, remembering what Igimaq had told her in his kitchen. They came to a halt, and the horse whuffed as it lowered its head. It seemed as confused as she was.
“All right, boy,” she whispered to it, rubbing its neck again. “It’s all right.” The horse calmed a little, and it shook out its mane, showering Emmeline with warm, fragrant air.
“If only I still had my satchel,” she muttered, blinking. She could have found something in there to help, she knew it.
Without any command from Emmeline, the horse began to move once again. It picked up its head, and its ears flicked this way and that, like it was listening to something Emmeline couldn’t hear.
“Hey!” she said, wiping at her face with her mitten. “Hey! Where are we going?” She pulled a little on the rope, but it had no effect whatsoever. Emmeline realized that all this time she’d thought she was the one in charge—but now she knew better.
“Fnnnnhmmm!” said the horse, throwing back its head.
And then, all around them, horses burst out of the ice.
Emmeline had never seen so many horses in one place before. She clung to the back of her own mount as it skittered around like a newborn foal. All the fully grown horses seemed to be staring at her, rolling their great, shining eyes, as if wondering who or what on earth she was.
Then, with a cry, the horses reared as one, and like a white-and-red river, they turned and started to gallop—Emmeline’s included. All she could do was hold on to its neck and try to breathe. The noise was deafening.
The flood of horses reached a crevasse. Its edges looked soft, and snowy meltwater trickled into it from many different streams, but it was still deep and dark and terrifying.
Before she could think, let alone do anything to stop it, her horse took its turn to leap straight into the chasm. Emmeline gripped it with all her might and screamed as loudly as she dared, waiting for the ice to swallow her up.
Thing’s arms throbbed, but he didn’t let go. He kept his focus firmly on the chain, not on the mud hundreds of feet below, and he locked his fingers together, hugging the massive link, barely able to feel what he was doing through the pain and numbness. Emmeline’s satchel hung from him like a sack of rocks, its one unbroken strap digging into his neck, and he tried not to think about what would’ve happened if his fingers had missed when he’d grabbed the chain to stop his fall.
Come on, he muttered inside his head. His brain felt like it was bursting out of his skull.
Gritting his teeth, he swung his body in a desperate attempt to get a foothold. Every muscle screamed, but this time his left foot found the link.
Several seconds passed, and Emmeline was not dead. At least, she didn’t think she was dead. She sat astride the horse with her eyes closed listening to trickling and gushing and cracking noises, some of them close by and others—sounding like distant thunder—far away. There was whinnying, and stamping, and harrumphing, and the clacking of hooves on ice.
“Fnnnhh!” objected her horse, startling Emmeline so much that she flung her eyes open. A split second later she shut them again, her mind reeling.
Hundreds of horses stood in the depths of an icy cavern. Standing beyond them, with their limbs extended, was a group of the huge, shaggy creatures Emmeline had seen falling from the sky. Dotted in among them were more…things—Emmeline didn’t have a better word than that—which were short, ugly, and slightly moldy-looking and stared up at her with their lower lips sticking out and their foreheads wrinkled. She was pretty sure there were some big, four-legged shapes moving around, grumbling in dark voices, but she hadn’t given herself long enough to look at them.
Emmeline took a few deep breaths, despite the strange and slightly pungent smell that clogged the air. I can’t sit here forever with my eyes shut, she told herself, and so, slowly, she opened them. It looked more impossible than she remembered. She shrank against her horse, trying pointlessly to blend in.
One of the small, wrinkled creatures lifted its head and sniffed sharply at the air before turning in her direction. It jerked, surprised, when its gaze met Emmeline’s, then it started to shamble toward her, rolling its legs in a most peculiar way. It fixed her with a stare, mumbling under its breath. The horse whickered, taking a step or two backward, as the strange little figure approached, but the creature simply swatted its hand through the air as though waving away a fly, and soon it was standing, critically, in front of Emmeline. Raising one of its impressively tangled eyebrows, it spoke—but in a language she’d never heard before. It sounded like the noise a rock would make if it could talk, full of booms and creaks.
“S-sorry—” she began, but she didn’t have a chance to continue.
“Inglish?” said the creature, its eyes opening wide. It cleared its throat and spat on the ice before looking back up at Emmeline. “You speak English?” it said, its words slightly clearer but its voice now sounding like a piece of metal being hit with a heavy hammer.
“Yes,” ventured Emmeline.
“What are you doing astride the son of Hófvarpnir, you can tell me?”
“The son of what?”
The creature frowned. “Did you not wonder what manner of steed you had, child?”
“Well, yes, I—I mean—”
It waved its hand again irritably. “You ride the descendant of the Hoof-Thrower,” it interrupted in a grand tone. Emmeline merely gaped at it as though it were speaking Greek. “An Æsirsmount?” it continued, slightly deflated.
Emmeline closed her mouth. “I have no idea what that is,” she said.
Through the wispy clouds shrouding him, Thing could see the chain to which he clung disappearing into a hole in the hull of a huge vessel. Beyond the hole was nothing but darkness, but he knew one thing for sure: inside had to be better than where he was. He hurried to the opening and climbed in. Now he could clearly see a winch, securely bolted to a metal panel in the floor, and a narrow, dark doorway, which gave way to a narrow, dark hallway to his right.
“Fortune favors the brave, an’ all that,” he said, making for it. He found himself in a curved corridor lit at intervals by small, square windows cut into the left-hand wall. Up ahead he saw a larger window, and outside that was something Thing couldn’t explain. It looked like a circular chamber through which clouds and lightning and (if the creaking of the window was anything to go by) extremely high winds were being channeled. All of this was flowing down the center of the ship toward the metal sphere at the top of the tower far below.
“Unbelievable,” he muttered, pressing his nose to t
he glass.
A sudden bucking nearly knocked Thing off his feet. He slammed into the window just as a lightning bolt as thick as a tree trunk burst down the chamber. It struck the sphere with a deafening boom, crackling around it for a few seconds before fizzling out. The shock wave made the entire ship strain against its chains. A noise overhead drew Thing’s gaze upward, and he saw a ball of pulsating light, like a trapped sun, gathering at the top of the chamber. His ears felt funny suddenly, and he realized—just in time—that the ball of light was about to explode into another lightning bolt. He flung himself backward, hitting the ground hard, and covered his eyes as the lightning let loose. It roared past the window, making every hair on Thing’s body stand on end and his mouth taste like he’d swallowed a spoon.
Got to get this thing figured out quick, he told himself once his teeth had stopped tingling. I hardly think whoever’s after me is goin’ to give up jus’ because of a locked door an’ a chain—an’ that’s if the ship don’t tear itself in bits first.
He clambered to his feet and carried on. He hadn’t gone far when a pair of large, important-looking doors met his eye. Control room, he thought. Bound to be!
He pushed the doors open and strode through, Emmeline’s satchel at his side.
“Look, I don’t understand,” Emmeline protested, her voice barely audible in the clamor of the ice cavern. “Please! You’ve got to help me. I’m here to—”
“She rides an Æsirsmount and thinks it of no importance?” interrupted the tiny, wrinkled thing in front of her. “What matter why you are here, human? We have larger things to occupy us than you.”
“Like—like what?” asked Emmeline. “Does it have anything to do with the ice? M-melting, I mean?”
The creature frowned. “What concern is it of yours?”
“Nothing, only my parents—”
The Eye of the North Page 15