The Complete Ice Schooner

by Michael Moorcock

  Hinsen and Petchnyoff waited expectantly until he turned his attention back to them. He looked at Petchnyoff sombrely for a time; tension grew between them before he turned away, shrugging. ‘All right, you’re dismissed.’

  With Urquart a silent companion beside him, Arflane laughed quietly as the ship gathered speed.

  Two nights later Arflane lay in his bunk unable to sleep. He listened to the slight bumping of the runners over the uneven surface of the ice, to the sleet-laden wind in the rigging and the creak of the yards. All the sounds were normal; yet some sixth sense insisted that something was wrong. Eventually he swung from his bunk, climbed into his clothes, buckled his flenching cutlass around his waist, and went on deck. He had been ready for trouble of some kind ever since he had watched Petchnyoff, Ulsenn, and Fydur talking together. Urquart’s oratory would have had little effect on them, he was certain. Fydur might be loyal again, but Ulsenn certainly wasn’t; on the few occasions when he had showed himself above decks it had been invariably with Petchnyoff.

  Arflane looked up at the sky. It was still overcast and there were few stars visible. The only light came from the moon and the lights that burned dimly in the wheelhouse. He could just make out the silhouettes of the look-outs in the crosstrees, high above, the bulky forms of the lookouts forward and aft. He looked back at the wheelhouse. Petchnyoff should be on watch; he could see no one but the helmsman on the bridge.

  He climbed up and strode into the wheelhouse. The helmsman gave him a short nod of recognition. ‘Sir.’

  ‘Where’s the officer of the watch, helmsman?’

  ‘He went forward, sir, I believe.’

  Arflane pursed his lips. He had seen no one forward but the man on watch. Idly he walked over to the compass, comparing it with a chart.

  They were a full three degrees off course. Arflane looked up sharply at the helmsman. ‘Three degrees off course, man! Have you been sleeping?’

  ‘No, sir!’ The helmsman looked aggrieved. ‘Mr Petchnyoff said our course was true, sir.’

  ‘Did he?’ Arflane’s face clouded. ‘Alter your course, helmsman. Three degrees starboard.’

  He left the bridge and began to search the ship for Petchnyoff. The man could not be found. Arflane went below to the lower deck where the hands lay in their hammocks. He slapped the shoulder of the nearest man. The sailor grunted and cursed.

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Captain here. Get on deck with the helmsman. Know any navigation?’

  ‘A bit, sir,’ the man mumbled as he swung out of his hammock, scratching his head.

  ‘Then get above to the bridge. Helmsman’ll tell you what to do.’

  Arflane stamped back through the dark gangways until he reached the passengers’ quarters. Janek Ulsenn’s cabin faced his wife’s. Arflane hesitated and then knocked heavily on Ulsenn’s door. There was no reply. He turned the handle. The door was not locked. He went in.

  The cabin was empty. Arflane had expected to find Petchnyoff there. The pair must be somewhere on the ship. No lights shone in any of the other cabins.

  His rage increasing with every pace, Arflane returned to the quarter deck, listening carefully for any murmur of conversation which would tell him where the two men were.

  A voice from the bridge called to him.

  ‘Any trouble, sir?’

  It was Petchnyoff.

  ‘Why did you desert your watch, Mr Petchnyoff?’ Arflane shouted. ‘Come down here!’

  Petchnyoff joined him in a few moments. ‘Sorry, sir, I - ‘

  ‘How long were you gone from your post?’

  ‘A little while, sir. I had to relieve myself.’

  ‘Come with me to the bridge, Mr Petchnyoff.’ Arflane clambered up the companionway and pushed on into the wheelhouse. He stood by the compass as Petchnyoff entered. The two men by the wheel looked curiously at the first officer.

  ‘Why did you tell this man that we were on course when we were three degrees off?’ Arflane thundered.

  ‘Three degrees, sir?’ Petchnyoff sounded offended. ‘We weren’t off course, sir.’

  ‘Weren’t we, Mr Petchnyoff? Would you like to consult the charts?’

  Petchnyoff went to the chart table and unrolled one of the maps. His voice sounded triumphant as he said, ‘What’s wrong, sir? This is the course we’re following.’

  Arflane frowned and came over to look at the chart. Peering at it closely, he could see where a line had been erased and another one drawn in. He looked at the chart he had consulted earlier. That showed the original course. Why should someone tamper with the charts? And if they did, why make such a small alteration that was bound to be discovered? It could be Ulsenn, making mischief, Arflane supposed. Or even Petchnyoff, trying to cause trouble.

  ‘Can you suggest how this chart came to be changed, Mr Petchnyoff?’

  ‘No, sir. I didn’t know it had been. Who could have . . .’

  ‘Has anyone been here tonight - a passenger, perhaps? Any member of the crew who had no business here?’

  ‘Only Manfred Rorsefne earlier, sir. No one else.’

  ‘Were you here the whole time?’

  ‘No, sir. I went to inspect the watch.’

  Petchnyoff could easily be lying. He was in the best position to alter the chart. There again, the helmsman could have been bribed by Manfred Rorsefne to let him look at the charts. There was no way of knowing who might be to blame.

  Arflane tapped his gloved fingers on the chart table.

  ‘We’ll look into this in the morning, Mr Petchnyoff.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir.’

  As he left the wheelhouse, Arflane heard the look-out shouting. The man’s voice was thin against the sounds of the wind-blown sleet. The words, however, were quite clear.

  ‘Ice break! Ice break!’

  Arflane ran to the rail, trying to peer ahead. An ice break at night was even worse than an ice break in the day. The ship was moving slowly; there might be time to throw out grapples. He shouted up to the bridge. ‘All hands on deck. All hands on deck, Mr Petchnyoff!’

  Petchnyoff’s voice began to bellow through a megaphone, repeating Arflane’s orders.

  In the darkness, men began to surge about in confusion. Then the whole ship lurched to one side and Arflane was thrown off his feet. He slid forward, grabbing the rail and hauling himself up, struggling for a footing on the sloping deck as men yelled in panic.

  Over the sound of their voices, Arflane heard the creaking and cracking as more ice gave way under the weight of the ship. The vessel dipped further to port.

  Arflane swore violently as he staggered back towards the wheelhouse. It was too late to drop the heavy anchors; now they might easily help push the ship through the ice.

  Around him in the night, pieces of ice were tossed high into the air to smash down on the deck. There was a hissing and gurgling of disturbed water, a further creaking as new ice gave way.

  Arflane rushed into the wheelhouse, grabbed a megaphone from the wall, and ran back to the bridge.

  ‘All hands to the lines! All hands over the starboard side! Ice break! Ice break!’

  Elsewhere Petchnyoff shouted specific orders to hands as they grabbed mooring cables and ran to the side. They knew their drill. They had to get over the rail with the cables and try to drag the ship back off the thin ice by hand. It was the only chance of saving her.

  Again the ice creaked and collapsed. Spray gushed; slabs of ice began to groan upward and press against the vessel’s sides. Water began to creep along the deck.

  Arflane swung his leg over the bridge rail and leaped down to the deck. The starboard runners were now lifting into the air; the Ice Spirit was in imminent danger of capsizing.

  Hinsen, half dressed, appeared beside Arflane. ‘This is a bad one, sir - we’re too deep in by the looks of it. If the ice directly beneath us goes, we don’t stand a chance . . .’

  Arflane nodded curtly. ‘Get over the side and help them haul. Is someone looking after the passe
ngers?’

  ‘I think so, sir.’

  ‘I’ll check. Do your best, Mr Hinsen.’

  Arflane slid down towards the door below the bridge, pushing it open and stumbling down the gangway towards the passengers’ cabins.

  He passed both Manfred Rorsefne’s cabin and Ulsenn’s. When he reached Ulrica Ulsenn’s cabin he kicked the door open and rushed in.

  There was no one there.

  Arflane wondered grimly whether his passengers had somehow left the ship before the ice break had come.

  14 The Ice Break

  The monstrous ship lurched heavily again, swinging Arflane backwards into the doorframe of Ulrica Ulsenn’s cabin.

  Manfred Rorsefne’s door opened. The young man was dishevelled and gasping; blood from a head wound ran down his face. He tried to grin at Arflane, staggered into the gangway, and fell against the far wall.

  ‘Where are the others?’ Arflane yelled above the sound of creaking and shattering ice. Rorsefne shook his head.

  Arflane stumbled along the gangway until he could grab the handle of the door to Janek Ulsenn’s cabin. The ship listed, this time to port, as he opened the door and saw Ulsenn and his wife lying against the far bulkhead. Ulsenn was whimpering and Ulrica was trying to get him to his feet. ‘I can’t make him move,’ she said. ‘What has happened?’

  ‘Ice break,’ Arflane replied tersely. ‘The ship’s half in the water already. You’ve all got to get overboard at once. Tell him that.’ Then he grunted impatiently and grabbed Ulsenn by the front of his jacket, hauling the terrified man over his shoulder. He gestured towards the gangway. ‘Can you help your cousin, Ulrica - he’s hurt.’

  She nodded and pulled herself to her feet, following him out of the cabin.

  Manfred managed to smile at them as they came out, but his face was grey and he was hardly able to stand. Ulrica took his arm.

  As they fought their way out to the swaying deck, Urquart joined them; the harpooner shouldered his lance and helped Ulrica with Manfred, who seemed close to fainting.

  Around them in the black night, slabs of ice still rose and fell, crashing on to the deck, but the ship slipped no further into the break.

  Arflane led them to the rail, grasped a dangling line and swung himself and his burden down the side, jumping the last few feet to the firm ice. Dimly seen figures milled around; over his head, the mooring lines running from the rail strummed in the darkness. Urquart and Ulrica Ulsenn were somehow managing between them to lower Rorsefne down. Arflane waited until they were all together and then jerked the trembling form of Janek Ulsenn from his shoulder and let the man fall to the ice. ‘Get up,’ he said curtly. ‘If you want to live you’ll help the men with the lines. Once the ship goes, we’re as good as dead.’

  Janek Ulsenn climbed to his feet; he scowled at Arflane and looked around him angrily until he saw Ulrica and Manfred standing with Urquart. ‘This man,’ he said, pointing at Arflane, ‘this man has once again put our lives in jeopardy by his senseless - ‘

  ‘Do as he says, Janek,’ Ulrica said impatiently. ‘Come. We’ll both help with the lines.’

  She walked off into the darkness. Ulsenn scowled back at Arflane for a second and then followed her. Manfred swayed, looking faintly apologetic. ‘I’m sorry, captain. I seem . . .’

  ‘Stay out of the way until we’ve done what we can,’ Arflane instructed him. ‘Urquart - let’s get on with it.’

  With the harpooner beside him he pushed through the lines of men heaving on the ropes until he found Hinsen in the process of hammering home a mooring spike.

  ‘What are our chances?’ Arflane asked.

  ‘We’ve stopped the slide, sir. There’s firm ice here and we’ve got a few pegs in. We might do it.’ The bearded second officer straightened up. He pointed to the next gang who were struggling to keep their purchase on their line. ‘Excuse me, sir. I must attend to that.’

  Arflane strode along, inspecting the gangs of sailors as they slipped and slithered on the ice, sometimes dragged forward by the weight of the ship; but now her angle of list was less than forty-five degrees and Arflane saw that there was a reasonable chance of saving the Ice Spirit. He stopped to help haul on a line and Urquart moved up to the next team to do the same.

  Slowly the ship wallowed upright. The men cheered; then the sound died as the Ice Spirit, drawn by the mooring lines, continued to slide towards them under the momentum. The ship began to loom down.

  ‘Get back!’ Arflane cried. ‘Run for it!’

  The crew panicked, skidding and sliding on the ice as they ran. Arflane heard a scream as a man slipped and fell beneath the side-turned runners. Others died in the same way before the ship slowed and bumped to a stop.

  Arflane began to walk forward, calling back over his shoulder. ‘Mr Urquart, will you attend to the burial of those men?’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir,’ Urquart replied from the darkness.

  Arflane moved around to the port side of the great ship, inspecting the damage. It did not seem to be very bad. One runner was slightly askew, but that could be rectified by a little routine repair work. The ship could easily continue her journey.

  ‘All right,’ he shouted. ‘Everybody except the burial gang on board. There’s a runner out of kilter and we’ll need a working party on it right away. Mr Hinsen, will you do what’s necessary?’

  Arflane clambered up a loose mooring line and returned to the poop deck. He took a megaphone from its place in the wheelhouse and shouted through it: ‘Mr Petchnyoff. Come up to the bridge, please.’

  Petchnyoff joined him within a few minutes. He looked enquiringly at Arflane. His deceptively foolish expression had increased and, seeing him through the darkness,

  Arflane thought he had the face of an imbecile. He wondered vaguely if, in fact, Petchnyoff were unstable. If that were the case, then it was just possible that the first officer had himself altered the course and for no reason but petty spite and a wish to create trouble for a captain he disliked.

  ‘See that the ship’s firmly moored while the men make the repairs, Mr Petchnyoff.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir.’ Petchnyoff turned away to obey the order.

  ‘And when that’s done, Mr Petchnyoff, I want all officers and passengers to assemble in my cabin.’

  Petchnyoff glanced back at him questioningly.

  ‘See to it, please,’ Arflane said.

  ‘Aye, aye, sir.’ Petchnyoff left the bridge.

  Shortly before dawn the three officers, Petchnyoff, Hinsen, and Urquart, together with the Ulsenns and Manfred Rorsefne, stood in Arflane’s cabin while the captain sat at his table and studied the charts he had brought with him from the wheelhouse.

  Manfred Rorsefne’s injury had not been as bad as it had looked; his head was now bandaged and his colour had returned. Ulrica Ulsenn stood apart from her husband who leaned against the bulkhead beside Petchnyoff. Urquart and Hinsen stood together, their arms folded across their chests, waiting patiently for their captain to speak.

  At length Arflane, who had remained deliberately silent for longer than he needed to, looked up, his expression bleak. ‘You know why I have these charts here, Mr Petchnyoff,’ he said. ‘We’ve already discussed the matter. But most of you others won’t understand.’ He drew a long breath. ‘One of the charts was tampered with in the night. The helmsman was misled by it and altered course by a full three points. As a result we landed in the ice break and we were almost killed. I don’t believe anyone could have known we were heading for the break, so it’s plain that the impulse to spoil the chart came from some irresponsible desire to irritate and inconvenience me - or maybe to delay us for some reason I can’t guess. Manfred Rorsefne was seen in the wheelhouse and . . .’

  ‘Really, captain!’ Manfred’s voice was mockingly offended. ‘I was in the wheelhouse, but I hardly know one point of the compass from another. I certainly could not have been the one.’

  Arflane nodded. ‘I didn’t say I suspected you, but there’s no doubt in my
mind that one of you must have made the alteration. No one else has access to the wheelhouse. For that reason, I’ve asked you all here so that the one who did change the chart can tell me. I’ll take no disciplinary action in this case. I’m asking this so I can punish the helmsman on duty if he was bribed or threatened into letting the chart be changed. In the interests of all our safety, it is up to me to find out who it was.’

  There was a pause. Then one of them spoke. ‘It was I. And I did not bribe the helmsman. I altered the chart days ago while it was still in your cabin.’

  ‘It was a foolish thing to do,’ Arflane said wearily. ‘But I thought it would have been you. Presumably this was when you were trying to get us to turn back.’

  ‘I still think we should turn back,’ Ulsenn said. ‘Just as I altered the chart, I’ll use any means in my power to convince either you or the men of the folly of this venture.’

  Arflane stood up, his expression suddenly murderous. Then he controlled himself and leaned forward over the table, resting his weight on his palms. ‘If there’s any more trouble aboard of that kind, Lord Ulsenn,’ he said icily, ‘I will not hold an enquiry. Neither will I ignore it. I will make no attempt to be just. I will simply put you in irons for the rest of the voyage.’

  Ulsenn shrugged and scratched ostentatiously at the side of his face.

  ‘Very well,’ Arflane told them. ‘You may all leave. I expect the officers to pay attention to any suspicious action Lord Janek Ulsenn might make in future, and I want it reported. I’d also appreciate the co-operation of the other passengers. In the future I will treat Ulsenn as an irresponsible fool - but he can remain free so long as he doesn’t endanger us again.’

  Angered by the slight, Ulsenn stamped from the cabin and slammed the door in the faces of his wife and Manfred Rorsefne as they attempted to follow him.

  Hinsen was smiling as he left, but the faces of Petchnyoff and Urquart were expressionless, doubtless for very different reasons.

  15 Urquart’s Fear