The Complete Ice Schooner

by Michael Moorcock

  ‘Crevasse, captain. Looks like a wide one, too. We’ll never cross it.’

  Since the last chart had been made, a crack must have appeared in the surface of the ice at the bottom of the slope. Arflane cursed himself for not having anticipated something like it, for new crevasses were common enough, particularly in terrain like this.

  ‘And we’ll never stop in time at this speed.’ Arflane began to climb down the ratlines to the deck, trying to appear calm, hoping that the men would not see the crevasse. ‘Even the heavy anchors couldn’t stop us - we’d just flip right over and tumble into it wrong side up.’

  Arflane reached the deck, trying to force himself to take some action when he was full of a deeply apathetic knowledge that there was no action to be taken.

  Now the men saw the crevasse as the ship sped closer. A great shout of horror went up from them as they, too, realized there was no chance of stopping.

  As Arflane reached the companionway leading to the bridge, Manfred Rorsefne and the Ulsenns hurried on to the deck. Manfred shouted to Arflane as he began to climb the ladder.

  ‘What’s happening, captain?’

  Arflane laughed bitterly. ‘Take a look ahead!’

  He reached the bridge and ran across to the wheelhouse, taking over the wheel from the ashen-faced Hinsen.

  ‘Can you turn her, sir?’

  Arflane shook his head.

  The ship was almost on the crevasse now. Arflane made no attempt to alter course.

  Hinsen was almost weeping with fear. ‘Please, sir - try to turn her!’

  The huge, yawning abyss rushed closer, the deep green ice of its sides flashing in the sunlight.

  Arflane felt the wheel swing loose in his grasp; the front runners left firm ground and reached out over the crevasse as the ship hurtled into it.

  Arflane sensed a peculiar feeling, almost of relief, as he anticipated the plunge downward. Then, suddenly, he began to smile. The schooner was travelling at such speed that she might just reach the other side. The far edge of the crevasse was still on the incline, lower than the opposite edge.

  Then the schooner had leaped through the air and smashed down on the other side. She rolled, threatening to capsize. Arflane staggered, but managed to cling to the wheel and swing her hard over. She began to slow under her impact, the runners scraping and bumping.

  ‘We’re all right, sir!’ Hinsen was grinning broadly. ‘You got us across, sir!’

  ‘Something did, Mr Hinsen. Here - take the wheel again.’

  When Hinsen had taken over, Arflane went slowly out on to the bridge.

  Men were picking themselves up from where they had fallen. One man lay still on the deck. Arflane left the bridge and made his way to where the hand was sprawled. He bent down beside him, turning him over. Half the bones in the body were broken. Blood crawled from the mouth. The man opened his eyes and smiled faintly at Arflane.

  ‘I thought I’d had it that time, sir,’ he said. The eyes closed and the smile faded. The man was dead.

  Arflane got up with a sigh, rubbing his forehead. His whole body was aching from handling the wheel. There was a scuffle of movement as the hands moved to the rails to look back at the crevasse, but not one of them spoke.

  From the foremast, where he still clung, Urquart was roaring with laughter. The harsh sound echoed through the ship and broke the silence. Some of the men began to cheer and shout, turning away from the rails and waving at Arflane. Stern-faced, the skipper made his way to the bridge and stood there for a moment while his men continued to cheer. Then he picked up his megaphone from where he had dropped it earlier and put it to his lips.

  ‘All hands back aloft! Take in all sail! Jump to it!’

  In spite of their excitement, the crew leaped readily to obey him and the yards were soon alive with scurrying men reefing the sails.

  Petchnyoff appeared on the quarter deck. He looked up at his skipper and gave him a strange, dark look. He wiped his sleeve across his forehead and moved down towards the lower deck.

  ‘Better get those grapples in, Mr Petchnyoff,’ Arflane shouted at him. ‘We’re out of danger now.’

  He looked aft at the disappearing crevasse, congratulating himself on his good fortune. If he had not decided to go down at full speed they would have reached the crevasse and been swallowed by it. The ship had leaped forty feet.

  He went back to the wheel to test and judge if the runners were in good order. They seemed to be working well, so far as their responses were concerned, but he wanted to satisfy himself that they had sustained no damage of any kind.

  As the ship bumped to a gradual halt, all her sail furled, Arflane prepared to go over the side. He climbed down a rope ladder to the ice. The big runners were scratched and indented in places but were otherwise undamaged. He looked up admiringly at the ship, running his hand along one of her struts. He was convinced that no other vessel could have taken the impact after leaping the crevasse.

  Clambering back to the deck, he encountered Janek Ulsenn. The man’s lugubrious features were dark with anger. Ulrica stood just behind him, her own face flushed. Beside her, Manfred Rorsefne looked as amusedly insouciant as ever. ‘Congratulations, captain,’ he murmured. ‘Great foresight.’

  Ulsenn began to bluster. ‘You are a reckless fool, Arflane! We were almost destroyed, every one of us! The men may think you anticipated that crevasse - but I know you did not. You have lost all their confidence!’

  The statement was patently false. Arflane laughed and glanced about the ship.

  ‘The men seem in good spirits to me.’

  ‘Mere reaction, now that the danger’s past. Wait until they start to think what you nearly did to them!’

  ‘I’m inclined to think, cousin,’ Manfred said, ‘that this incident will simply restore their faith in their captain’s good luck. The hands place great store on a skipper’s luck, you know.’

  Arflane was looking at Ulrica Ulsenn. She tried to glance away, but then she returned his look and Arflane thought that her expression might be one of admiration; then her eyes became cold and he shivered.

  Manfred Rorsefne took Ulrica’s arm and helped her back towards the gangway to her cabin, but Ulsenn continued to confront Arflane.

  ‘You will kill us all, Brershillian!’ He was apparently unaware that Arflane was paying little attention to him. His fear had caused him to forget his humiliation of a few days before. Arflane looked at him calmly.

  ‘I will certainly kill somebody one day.’ He smiled, and strode towards the foredeck under the admiring eyes of his crew and the enraged glare of Lord Janek Ulsenn.

  With the plateau left behind, the ice became rough but easier to negotiate as long as the ship maintained a fair speed. The outline of the plateau was visible behind them for several days, a vast wall of ice rising into the clouds. The air was warmer now and there was less snow. Arflane felt uncomfortable as the heat increased and the air wavered, sometimes seeming to form odd shapes out of nothing. There were glaciers to be seen to all points ahead, and, in the heat, Arflane became afraid that they would hit an ice break. Ice breaks occurred where the crust of the ice became thin over an underground river. A ship floundering in an ice break, since it had not been built for any kind of water, often had little chance of getting out and could easily sink.

  As the ship moved on, travelling NW by N, and nearing the equator, the crew and officers settled into a more orderly routine. Arflane’s previous moods were forgotten; his luck was highly respected, and he had become very popular with the men.

  Only Petchnyoff surprised Arflane in his refusal to forgive him for his earlier attitude. He spent most of his spare time with Janek Ulsenn; the two men could often be seen walking along the deck together. Their friendliness irritated Arflane to some extent. He felt that in a sense Petchnyoff was betraying him, but it was no business of his what company the young first officer chose, and he performed his duties well enough. Arflane even began to feel a slight sympathy for Ulsenn; he felt h
e should allow the man one friend on the voyage.

  Urquart still had the habit of standing near him on the bridge and the gaunt harpooner had become a comfort to Arflane. They rarely talked, but the sense of comradeship between them had become very strong.

  It was even possible for Arflane to see Ulrica Ulsenn without attempting to force some reaction from her, and he had come to tolerate Manfred Rorsefne’s sardonic, bantering manner.

  It was only the heat that bothered him now. The temperature had risen to several degrees above zero and the crew were working stripped to the waist. Arflane, against his will, had been forced to remove his heavy fur jacket. Urquart, however, had refused to take off any of his clothing and stoically bore his discomfort.

  Arflane kept two look-outs permanently on watch for signs of thin ice. At night, he took in all sail and threw out grappling hooks so that the ship drifted very slowly.

  The wind was poor and progress was slow enough during the day. From time to time mirages were observed, usually in the form of inverted glaciers, and Arflane had a great deal of difficulty explaining them to the men, who superstitiously regarded them as omens that had to be interpreted.

  Until one day the wind dropped altogether, and they were becalmed.

  13 The Harpoon

  They were becalmed for a week in the heat. The sky and ice glared shimmering copper under the sun. Men sat around in bunches, disconsolately playing simple games, or talking in low, miserable voices. Though stripped of most of their clothes, they still wore their snow visors. From a distance they looked like so many ungainly birds clustered on the deck. The officers kept them as busy as they could, but there was little to do. When Arflane gave a command the men obeyed less readily than before; morale was becoming bad.

  Arflane was frustrated and his own temper was starting to fray again. His movements became nervous and his tone brusque.

  Walking along the lower deck, he was approached by Fydur, the ship’s bosun, a hairy individual with great dark beetling eyebrows.

  ‘Excuse me, sir, sorry to bother you, but any idea how long we’ll . . .’

  ‘Ask the Ice Mother, not me.’ Arflane pushed Fydur to one side, leaving the man sour-faced and angry.

  There were no clouds to be seen; there was no sign of the weather changing. Arflane, brooding again on Ulrica Ulsenn, stalked about the ship with his face set in a scowl.

  On the bridge one day he looked down and saw Janek Ulsenn and Petchnyoff talking with some animation to Fydur and a group of the hands. By the way in which some of them glanced at the bridge, Arflane could guess the import of the conversation. He glanced questioningly at Urquart, leaning against the wheelhouse; the harpooner shrugged.

  ‘We’ve got to give them something to do,’ Arflane muttered. ‘Or tell them something to improve their spirits. There’s the beginnings of a mutiny in that little party, Mr Urquart.’

  ‘Aye, sir.’ Urquart sounded almost smug.

  Arflane frowned, then made up his mind. He called to the second officer, at his post on the quarter deck.

  ‘Get the men together, Mr Hinsen. I want to talk to them.’

  ‘All hands in line!’ Hinsen shouted through his megaphone. ‘All hands before the bridge. Captain talking.’

  Sullenly the hands began to assemble, many of them scowling openly at Arflane. The little group with Ulsenn and Petchnyoff straggled up and stood behind the main press of men.

  ‘Mr Petchnyoff. Will you come up here!’ Arflane looked sharply at his first officer. ‘You too please, Mr Hinsen. Bosun - to your post.’

  Slowly Petchnyoff obeyed the command and Fydur, with equally poor grace, took up his position facing the men.

  When all the officers were behind him on the bridge Arflane cleared his throat and gripped the rail, leaning forward to look down at the crew.

  ‘You’re in a bad mood, lads, I can see. The sun’s too hot and the wind’s too absent. There isn’t a damned thing I can do about getting rid of the first or finding the second. We’re becalmed and that’s all there is to it. I’ve seen you through one or two bad scrapes already - so maybe you’ll help me sweat this one out. Sooner or later the wind will come.’

  ‘But when, sir?’ A hand spoke up; one of those who had been conversing with Ulsenn.

  Arflane glanced grimly at Fydur. The bosun pointed a finger at the hand. ‘Hold your tongue.’

  Arflane was in no mood to answer the remark directly. He paused, then continued.

  ‘Perhaps we’ll get a bit of wind when discipline aboard this ship tightens up. But I can’t predict the weather. If some of you are so damned eager to be on the move, then I suggest you get out on to the ice and pull this tub to her destination!’

  Another man muttered something. Fydur silenced him. Arflane leaned down. ‘What was that, bosun?’

  ‘Wanted to know just what our destination was, sir,’ Fydur replied. ‘I think a lot of us . . .’

  ‘That’s why I called you together,’ Arflane went on. ‘We’re bound for New York.’

  Some of the men laughed. To go to New York was a metaphor meaning to die - to join the Ice Mother.

  ‘New York,’ Arflane repeated, glaring at them. ‘We’ve charts that show the city’s position. We’re going to New York. Questions?’

  ‘Aye, sir - they say New York doesn’t exist on this world, sir. They say it’s in the sky - or - somewhere . . .’ The tall sailor who spoke had a poor grasp of metaphysics.

  ‘New York’s as solid as you and on firm ice,’ Arflane assured him. ‘The Lord Pyotr Rorsefne saw it. That was where he came from when I found him. It was in his will that we should go there. You remember the will? It was read out soon after the Lord died.’

  The men nodded, murmuring to one another.

  ‘Does that mean we’ll see the Ice Mother’s court?’ another sailor asked.

  ‘Possibly,’ Arflane said gravely.

  The babble that broke out among the men rose higher and higher. Arflane let them talk for a while. Most of them had received the news dubiously at first, but now some of them were beginning to grin with excitement, their imagination captured.

  After a while Arflane told the bosun to quiet them down. As the babble died, and before Arflane could speak, the clear, haughty tones of Janek Ulsenn came over the heads of the sailors. He was leaning against the mizzen mast, toying with a piece of rope. ‘Perhaps that is why we are becalmed, captain?’

  Arflane frowned. ‘What do you mean by that, Lord Ulsenn?’

  ‘It occurred to me to wonder that the reason we are getting no wind is because the Ice Mother isn’t sending us any. She does not want us to visit her in New York!’ Ulsenn was deliberately playing on the superstition of the hands. This new idea set them babbling again.

  This time Arflane roared to them to stop talking. He glowered at Ulsenn, unable to think of a reply that would satisfy his men.

  Urquart stepped forward then and leaned his harpoon against the rail. Still dressed in all his matted furs, his blue eyes cold and steady, he seemed, himself, to be some demigod of the ice. The men fell silent.

  ‘What do we suffer from?’ he called harshly. ‘From cold impossible to bear? No! We suffer from heat! Is that the Ice Mother’s weapon? Would she use her enemy to stop us? No! You’re fools if you think she’s against us. When has the Ice Mother decreed that men should not sail to her in New York? Never! I know the doctrine better than any man aboard. I am the Ice Mother’s pledged servant; my faith in her is stronger than anything you could feel. I know what the Ice Mother wishes; she wishes us to sail to New York. She wishes us to pay her court so that when we return to the Eight Cities we may silence all who doubt her! Through Captain Arflane she fulfils her will; that’s why I sail with him. That’s why we all sail with him! It’s our destiny.’

  The harsh, impassioned tones of Urquart brought complete silence to the crew, but they had no apparent effect on Ulsenn.

  ‘You’re listening to a madman talk,’ he called. ‘And another madman’s i
n command. If we follow these two our only destiny is a lonely death on the ice.’

  There was a blur of movement, a thud; Urquart’s great harpoon flew across the deck over the heads of the sailors to bury itself in the mast, an inch from Ulsenn’s head. The man’s face went white and he staggered back, eyes wide. He began to sputter something, but Urquart vaulted over the bridge rail to the deck and pushed his way through the crowd to confront the aristocrat.

  ‘You speak glibly of death, Lord Ulsenn,’ Urquart said savagely. ‘But you had best speak quietly or perhaps the Ice Mother may see fit to take you to her bosom sooner than you might wish.’ He began to tug the harpoon from the mast. ‘It is for the sake of your kind that we sail. Best let a little of your blood tonight, my tame little lord, to console the Ice Mother - lest all your blood be let before this voyage ends.’

  With tears of rage in his eyes, Ulsenn hurled himself at the massive harpooner. Urquart smiled quietly and picked the man up to throw him, almost gently, to the deck. Ulsenn landed on his face and rolled over, his nose bleeding. He crawled back, away from the smiling giant. The men were laughing now, almost in relief.

  Arflane’s lips quirked in a half smile, too; then all his humour vanished as Ulrica Ulsenn ran over the deck to her injured husband, knelt beside him and wiped the blood from his face.

  Manfred Rorsefne joined them on the bridge.

  ‘Shouldn’t you have a little better control over your officers, captain?’ he suggested blandly.

  Arflane wheeled to face him. ‘Urquart knows my will,’ he said.

  Hinsen was pointing to the south. ‘Captain - big clouds coming up aft!’

  Within an hour the sails were filled with a wind that also brought chilling sleet, forcing them to huddle back into their furs.

  They were soon under way through the grey morning.

  The crew were Arflane’s men again. Ulsenn and his wife had disappeared below and Manfred Rorsefne had joined them; but, for the moment, Arflane insisted that all his officers stay with him on the bridge while he ordered full canvas set and sent the look-outs aloft.