‘You’ll kill him?’ she asked quietly.
‘There’ll be two of them. It’s fair.’
He stepped towards her and she drew away. He put out a hand and gripped the back of her neck, drawing her to him. She came reluctantly, then slid her arms around his waist as he stroked her hair. He heard her give a deep, racking sigh.
‘I really didn’t expect him to go this far,’ Arflane said after a moment. ‘I thought he had some sense of honour.’
She looked up at him, tears in her eyes. ‘You’ve taken it all away from him,’ she said. ‘You have humiliated him too much . . .’
‘From no malice,’ he said. ‘Self-protection.’
‘So you say, Konrad.’
He shrugged. ‘Maybe. But if he’d challenged me openly I would have refused. I can easily kill him. I would have refused the chance. But now . . .’
She moaned and flung herself away from him on to the bunk, covering her face. ‘Either way it would be murder, Konrad. You’ve driven him to this!’
‘He’s driven himself to it. Stay here.’
He left the cabin and stepped lightly on deck; his manner was apparently casual as he glanced around him. He turned and ascended the companionway to the bridge. Manfred Rorsefne was there. He nodded agreeably to Arflane. ‘I sent Hinsen below an hour ago. He seemed tired.’
‘It was good of you,’ Arflane said. ‘Do you know if the hunting party’s returned yet?’
‘They’re not back.’
Arflane muttered abstractedly, looking up into the rigging.
‘I’ll get to my own bunk now, I think,’ Rorsefne said. ‘Good night, captain.’
‘Good night.’ Arflane watched Rorsefne descend to the middle deck and disappear below.
The night was very still. The wind was light and made little sound. Arflane heard the man on watch on the upper foredeck stamp his feet to get the stiffness from them.
It would be an hour before he took his second tour. He guessed that it would be then that Ulsenn and Petchnyoff would attempt to stage their attack. He went into the wheelhouse. As they were at anchor, there was no helmsman on duty; doubtless this was why the two men had chosen this night to try to kill him; there would be no witness.
Arflane climbed down to the middle deck, looking aft at the distant but still visible glow from the fire mountains. It reminded him of Urquart; he looked up to see the harpooner still hanging high above in the rigging of the foremast. He could expect no help from Urquart that night.
There was a commotion in the distance; he ran to the rail to peer into the night, seeing a few figures running desperately towards the ship. As they came closer he recognized some of the men from the hunting party. They were shouting incoherently. He dashed to the nearest tackle locker and wrenched it open, pulling out a rope ladder. He rushed back to the rail and lowered the ladder down the side; he cupped his hands and yelled over the ice.
‘This way aboard!’
The first of the sailors ran up and grabbed the ladder, beginning to climb. Arflane heard him panting heavily. He reached down and helped the man aboard; he was exhausted, his furs torn and his right hand bleeding from a deep cut.
‘What happened?’ Arflane asked urgently.
‘Barbarians, sir. I’ve never seen anything like them. They’re not like true men at all. They’ve got a camp near the warm ponds. They saw us before we saw them . . . They use - fire, sir.’
Arflane tightened his lips and slapped the man on the back. ‘Get below and alert all hands.’
As he spoke, a streak of flame flew out of the night and took the man on lower-foredeck watch in the throat. Arflane saw it was a burning arrow. The man shrieked and beat at the flames with his gloved hands, then toppled backwards and fell dead on the deck.
All at once the night was alive with blazing arrows. The sailors on deck flung themselves flat in sheer terror, reacting with a fear born of centuries of conditioning. The arrows landing on the deck burned out harmlessly, but some struck the canvas and here and there a furled sail was beginning to flare. Sailors screamed as arrows struck them and their furs caught light. A man went thrashing past Arflane, his whole body a mass of flame. There were small fires all over the ship.
Arflane rushed for the bridge and began to ring the alarm bell furiously, yelling through the megaphone: ‘All hands on deck! Break out the weapons! Stand by to defend ship!’
From the bridge he could see the leading barbarians. In shape they were human, but were completely covered in silvery white hair; otherwise they seemed to be naked. Some carried flaming brands; all had quivers of arrows slung over their shoulders and powerful-looking bone bows in their hands.
As armed sailors began to hurry on deck, holding bows of their own and harpoons and cutlasses, Arflane called to the archers to aim for the barbarians with the brands. Further down the deck, Petchnyoff commanded a gang forming a bucket chain to douse the burning sails.
Arflane leaned over the bridge rail, shouting to Fydur as he ran past with an armful of bows and half a dozen quivers of arrows. ‘Let’s have one of those up here, bosun!’
The bosun paused to select a weapon and a quiver and throw it up to Arflane, who caught it deftly, slung the quiver over his shoulder, nocked an arrow to the string, and drew it back. He let fly at one of the brand-holding barbarians and saw the man fall to the ice with the arrow protruding from his mouth.
A fire arrow flashed towards him. He felt a slight shock as the thing buried itself in his left shoulder, but if there was pain he did not notice it in his panic. The flames unnerved him. With a shaking hand he dragged out the shaft and flung it from him, slapping at his blazing coat until the flames were gone. Then he was forced to grip the rail with his right hand and steady himself; he felt sick.
After a moment he picked up the bow and fitted another arrow to the string. There were only two or three brands to be seen on the ice now and the barbarians seemed to be backing off. Arflane took aim at one of the brands and missed, but another arrow from somewhere killed the man. Arrows were still coming out of the night; most of them were not on fire. The silvery coats of the barbarians made them excellent targets and they were beginning to fall in great numbers before the retaliating shafts of Arflane’s archers.
The attack had come on the port side; now some premonition made Arflane turn and look to starboard.
Unnoticed, nearly a dozen white-furred barbarians had managed to climb to the deck. They rushed across the deck, their red eyes blazing and their mouths snarling. Arflane shot one and stooped to grasp the megaphone to bellow a warning. He dropped the bow, drew his cutlass, and vaulted over the bridge rail to the deck.
One of the barbarians shot at him and missed. Arflane slammed the hilt of his sword into the man’s face and swung at another, feeling the sharp blade bite into his neck. Other sailors had joined him and were attacking the barbarians, whose bows were useless at such close quarters. Arflane saw Manfred Rorsefne beside him; the man grinned at him.
‘This is more like it, eh, captain?’
Arflane threw himself at the barbarians, stabbing one clumsily in the chest and hacking him down. Elsewhere the sailors were butchering the remaining barbarians, who were hopelessly outnumbered.
The noise of the battle died away and there were no more barbarians to kill. On Arflane’s right a man was screaming.
It was Petchnyoff. There were two fire arrows in him, one in his groin and other near his heart. A few little flames burned on his clothes and his face was blackened by fire. By the time Arflane reached him, he was dead.
Arflane went back to the bridge. ‘Set all sail! Let’s move away from here.’
Men began to scramble eagerly up the masts to let out the sails that were undamaged. Others let go the anchor lines and the ship began to move. A few last arrows rattled on the deck. They glimpsed the white forms of the barbarians disappearing behind them as the huge ship gathered speed.
Arflane looked back, breathing heavily and clutching his wounded
shoulder. Still there was little pain. Nonetheless, it would be reasonable to attend to it. Hinsen came along the deck. ‘Take charge, Mr Hinsen,’ he said. ‘I’m going below.’
At his cabin door Arflane hesitated, then changed his mind and moved along to pass through the main door into the gangway where the passengers had their cabins. The gangway joined the one which led to his cabin, but he did not want to see Ulrica for the moment. He walked along the dark passage until he reached Ulsenn’s door.
He tried the handle. It was locked. He leaned backward and smashed his foot into it; the exertion made his wounded shoulder begin to throb painfully. He realized that the wound was worse than he had thought.
Ulsenn wheeled as Arflane entered. The man had been standing looking out the port.
‘What do you mean by . . . ?’
‘I’m arresting you,’ Arflane said, his voice slurred by the pain.
‘For what?’ Ulsenn drew himself up. ‘I . . .’
‘For plotting to murder me.’
‘You’re lying.’
Arflane had no intention of mentioning Ulrica’s name. Instead he said. ‘Petchnyoff told me.’
‘Petchnyoff is dead.’
‘He told me as he died.’
Ulsenn tried to shrug but the gesture was pathetic. ‘Then Petchnyoff was lying. You’ve no evidence.’
‘I need none. I’m captain.’
Ulsenn’s face crumpled as if he were about to weep. He looked utterly defeated. This time his shrug was one of despair. ‘What more do you want from me, Arflane?’ he said wearily.
For a moment Arflane regarded Ulsenn and pitied him, the pity tinged with his own guilt. The man looked up at him almost pleadingly. ‘Where’s my wife?’ he said.
‘She’s safe.’
‘I want to see her.’
‘No.’
Ulsenn sat down on the edge of his bunk and put his face in his hands.
Arflane left the cabin and closed the door. He went to the door that led out to the deck and called two sailors over. ‘Lord Ulsenn’s cabin is the third on the right. He’s under arrest. I want you to put a bar across the door and guard it until you’re relieved. I’ll wait while you get the materials you need.’
When Arflane had supervised the work and the bar was in place with the door chained to it to his satisfaction, he walked down the gangway to his own cabin.
Ulrica had fallen asleep in his bunk. He left her where she lay and went to her cabin, packing her things into her chest and dragging it up the gangway under the curious eyes of the sailors on guard outside Ulsenn’s door. He got the chest into his cabin and heaved it into place beside his; then he took off his clothes and inspected the shoulder. It had bled quite badly but had now stopped. It would be all right until morning. He lay down beside Ulrica.
17 The Pain
In the morning the pain in his shoulder had increased; he winced and opened his eyes.
Ulrica was already up, turning the spigot of the big water barrel, soaking a piece of cloth. She came back to the bunk, face pale and set, and began to bathe the inflamed shoulder. It only seemed to make the pain worse.
‘You’d better find Hinsen,’ he told her. ‘He’ll know how to treat the wound.’
She nodded silently and began to rise. He grasped her arm with his right hand.
‘Ulrica. Do you know what happened last night?’
‘A barbarian raid, wasn’t it?’ she said tonelessly. ‘I saw fire.’
‘I meant your husband - what I did.’
‘You killed him.’ Again the statement was flat.
‘No. He didn’t attack me as he’d planned. The raid came too soon. He’s in his cabin - confined there until the voyage is over.’
She smiled a little ironically then. ‘You’re merciful,’ she said finally, then turned and left the cabin.
A little while later she came back with Hinsen and the second officer did what was necessary. She helped him bind Arflane’s shoulder. Infection was rare on the iceplains, but the wound would take some time to heal.
‘Thirty men died last night, sir,’ Hinsen told him, ‘and we’ve six wounded. The going will be harder with us so undermanned.’
Arflane grunted agreement. ‘I’ll talk to you later, Mr Hinsen. We’ll need Fydur’s advice.’
‘He’s one of the dead, sir, along with Mr Petchnyoff.’
‘I see. Then you’re now first officer and Urquart second. You’d better find a good man to promote to bosun.’
‘I’ve got one in mind, sir - Rorchenof. He was bosun on the Ildiko Ulsenn.’
‘Fine. Where’s Mr Urquart?’
‘In the fore rigging, sir. He was there during the fight and he’s been there ever since. He wouldn’t answer when I called to him, sir. If I hadn’t noticed his breathing I’d have thought he was frozen.’
‘See if you can get him down. If not, I’ll attend to it later.’
‘Aye, aye, sir.’ Hinsen went out.
Ulrica was standing near her trunk, looking down at it thoughtfully.
‘Why are you so depressed?’ he said, turning his head on the pillow and looking directly at her.
She shrugged, sighed, and sat down on the trunk, folding her arms under her breasts. ‘I wonder how much of this we have engineered between us,’ she said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Janek - the way he has behaved. Couldn’t we have forced him to do what he did, so that we could then feel we’d acted righteously? Couldn’t this whole situation have been brought about by us?’
‘I didn’t want him aboard in the first place. You know that.’
‘But he had no choice. He was forced to join us by the manner of our actions.’
‘I didn’t ask him to plan to kill me.’
‘Possibly you forced him to that point.’ She clasped her hands together tightly. ‘I don’t know.’
‘What do you want me to do, Ulrica?’
‘I expect you to do no more.’
‘We are together.’
‘Yes.’
Arflane sat up in his bunk. ‘This is what has happened,’ he said, almost defensively. ‘How can we change it now?’
Outside, the wind howled and snow was flung against the porthole. The ship rocked slightly to the motion of the runners over the rough ice; Arflane’s shoulder throbbed in pain. Later she came and lay beside him and together they listened as the storm grew worse outside.
Feeling the force of the driving snow against his face and body, Arflane felt better as he left the cabin in the late afternoon and, with some difficulty, climbed the slippery companionway to the bridge where Manfred Rorsefne stood.
‘How are you, captain?’ Rorsefne asked. His voice was at once distant and agreeable.
‘I’m fine. Where are the officers?’
‘Mr Hinsen’s aloft and Mr Urquart went below. I’m keeping an eye on the bridge. I’m feeling quite professional.’
‘How’s she handling?’
‘Well, under the circumstances.’ Rorsefne pointed upward through the rigging, partially obscured by the wall of falling snow. Dark shapes, bundled in furs, moved among the crosstrees. Sails were being reefed. ‘You picked a good crew, Captain Arflane. How is my cousin?’ The question was thrown in casually, but Arflane did not miss the implication.
The ship began to slow. Arflane cast a glance towards the wheelhouse before he answered Rorsefne. ‘She’s all right. You know what’s happened?’
‘I anticipated it.’ Rorsefne smiled quietly and raised his head to stare directly aloft.
‘You . . .’ Arflane was unable to frame the question. ‘How . . . ?’
‘It’s not my concern, captain,’ Rorsefne interrupted.
‘After all, you’ve full command over all who sail in this schooner.’ The irony was plain. Rorsefne nodded to Arflane and left the bridge, climbing carefully down the companionway.
Arflane shrugged, watching Rorsefne walk through the snow that was settling on the middle deck. The weather was
getting worse and would not improve; winter was coming and they were heading north. With a third of their complement short they were going to be in serious trouble unless they could make the best possible speed to New York. He shrugged again; he felt mentally and physically exhausted and was past the point where he could feel even simple anxiety.
As the last light faded Urquart emerged from below the bridge and looked up at him. The harpooner seemed to have recovered himself; he hefted his lance in the crook of his arm and swung up the companionway to stand by the rail next to Arflane. He seemed to be taking an almost sensual pleasure in the bite of the wind and snow against his face and body. ‘You are with that woman now, captain?’ he said remotely.
‘Yes.’
‘She will destroy you.’ Urquart spat into the wind and turned away. ‘I will see to clearing the hatch covers.’
Watching Urquart as he supervised the work on the deck, Arflane wondered suddenly if the harpooner’s warnings were inspired by simple jealousy of Arflane’s relationship with the woman who was, after all, Urquart’s half-sister. That would also explain the man’s strong dislike of Ulsenn.
Arflane remained needlessly on deck for another hour before eventually going below.
18 The Fog
Autumn rapidly became winter as the ship moved northward. The following weeks saw a worsening of the weather, the overworked crew of the ice schooner finding it harder and harder to manage the vessel efficiently. Only Urquart seemed grimly determined to ensure that she stayed on course and made the best speed she could. Because of the almost constant snowstorms, the ship travelled slowly; New York was still several hundred miles distant.
Most of the time it was impossible to see ahead; when the snow was not falling, fogs and mists would engulf the great ship, often so thick that visibility extended for less than two yards. In Arflane’s cabin the lovers huddled together, united as much by their misery as their passion. Manfred Rorsefne had been the only one who bothered to visit Janek Ulsenn; he reported to Arflane that the man seemed to be bearing his imprisonment with fortitude if not with good humour. Arflane received the news without comment. His native taciturnity had increased to the point where on certain days he would not speak at all and would lie motionless in his bunk from morning to night. In such a mood he would not eat and Ulrica would lie with him, her head on his shoulder, listening to the slow bump of the runners on the ice and the creak of the yards, the sound of the snow falling on the deck above their heads. When these sounds were muffled by the fog it seemed that the cabin floated apart from the rest of the ship. In these moments Arflane and Ulrica would feel their passion return and would make violent love as if there were no time left to them. Afterwards Arflane would go out to the fog-shrouded bridge to stand there and learn from Hinsen, Urquart, or Manfred Rorsefne the distance they had travelled. He had become a sinister figure to the men, and even the officers, with the exception of Urquart, seemed uneasy in his presence. They noticed how Arflane had appeared to age; his face was lined and his shoulders stooped. He rarely looked at them directly but stared abstractedly out into the falling snow or fog. Every so often, apparently without realizing it, Arflane would give a long sigh and he would make some nervous movement, brushing rime from his beard or tapping at the rail. While Hinsen and Rorsefne felt concerned for their skipper, Urquart appeared disdainful and tended to ignore him. For his part, Arflane did not care whether he saw Hinsen and Rorsefne or not, but made evident efforts to avoid Urquart whenever he could. On several occasions when he was standing on the bridge and saw Urquart advancing, he hastily descended the companion-way before the second officer could reach him. Generally Urquart did not appear to notice this retreat, but once he was seen to smile a trifle grimly when the door of Arflane’s cabin closed with a bang as the harpooner climbed to the bridge.
The Complete Ice Schooner Page 16