City of Ice (4 page)

“Yes, the freebooters have made it too dangerous lately, but we used to take our families with us on trips and I never bothered to remove their furs from storage. I got some of them out and brought them along just in case you needed them.” He gestured toward the rifleman. “Randian, bring some outfits for these heroes.”

Slinging his rifle over his shoulder, Randian brought an armload of hooded coats, boots, and gloves over to them.

“This is my chakar,” Prince Tarkhun said, introducing him. A chakar was a warrior pledged to serve a lord or lady.

When Leech had removed the rings from his ankle and reduced them to disks that he slipped onto an armband, Prince Tarkhun observed, “I can't wait to hear your tale.”

Randian helped the children into the clothing. Though the coat was a little big for her, Scirye was relieved to feel warm for the first time in days.

Bayang changed into a Sogdian woman in her thirties with dark skin and a nose like the prince's and furs as well.

Koko was having trouble, transforming into something that resembled a pink potato with fur along its sides.

Scirye fought to keep herself from grinning. “Maybe Bayang could give you some transformation lessons.”

“That big lizard bosses me around enough,” Koko said. “The spell worked smooth enough in Hawaii, so don't break my concentration now.” Muttering a charm, he waved his flipperlike limbs. The next moment he took on his human form as a plump, pear-shaped boy with round pink cheeks. He was also wearing a fur coat that imitated Leech's. “There, see? What did I tell you?”

Prince Tarkhun had been watching the transformations and studied Bayang's face. “You could be my kin,” he said.

“Why, thank you, Your Highness,” Bayang said as she began to fold the wing over and over until she had a neat square four inches on each side—just as the Cloud Folk had said she would.

By then, Kles had descended again and slipped inside Scirye's coat, pronouncing it much more comfortable than the coveralls.

Then, together, they headed back toward the wind sled. When Bayang saw a piece of oilcloth, she asked for it politely and the prince readily gave it to her. She wrapped the wing carefully and handed it to Scirye for safekeeping. “You and Kles can keep an eye on it.”

After they had climbed onto the wind sled, Prince Tarkhun opened a pouch that hung around his neck. From it, he counted five small gold coins, all about the same size. Two had the Sogdian emblem, one had a Canadian maple leaf, and the other two had a picture of a king with some Danish lettering. “Here, each of you take one.”

Bayang shook her head. “We can't take payment for saving you. We would have done it anyway.”

“I owe you far more than this pittance, but if you take it, I can speak the truth when I say you're part of my crew. I suppose I should have asked you if you'd be willing to serve on board the wind sled for the short trip to Nova Hafnia.” He held the coins out on his palm.

Koko's eyes glittered even more than the gold. “That's got to be at least sixteen karats.”

“Eighteen if the mint is honest,” Prince Tarkhun said.

Koko gave him a salute. “Then where I do sign on, sir?”

Prince Tarkhun chuckled. “It'll be enough if you just don't get in our way during the rest of the journey.”

The wind sled was more like a ship on a foamy sea than a vehicle lumbering over land, and though Scirye had traveled on boats, they had always been large passenger liners that were more like small cities than craft. So she watched the landscape drift by and listened to the orderly noise of a wind sled under sail: the crisp sounds the runners made as they glided over the snow, the thrumming of taut ropes, and the singing of the wind in the rigging.

Here and there, Scirye saw two-person tankettes and even part of a steel aircraft wing—ice-covered relics of the Arctic War.

The day was a mere sullen smear on the horizon when Randian, who was sitting at the bow of the wind sled, shouted a warning. “Freebooters!” Hurriedly he unslung his rifle.

Several hundred yards away, a dozen or so freebooters were galloping across the snow as if an avalanche were thundering down on them. Even though they must have seen the Sogdian wind sled, they didn't even bother aiming any of their guns—as if escape was more important now than revenge or loot.

“Ha, Mounties!” Randian shouted. Scirye looked behind her at him and then her eyes traced the direction of his pointing finger.

The silhouettes of large owls stood out against the setting Elios. They flew swiftly after the fleeing freebooters, but one of them banked and slipped downward until it was flying alongside the wind sled.

Scirye had never seen an owl so large or so snowy. It was about ten feet long, and in the clear moonlight each feather looked as if it had been chiseled from the finest, whitest marble. The down surrounded its large pupils so that its eyes seemed more like flowers.

Upon its back was a man in a coat and cap of black fur and blue trousers. A yellow stripe ran down the side of each leg into a fur-lined boot.

“Prince Tarkhun, I'm glad you're all right,” the Mountie called. “We saw your signals and came as quickly as we could.”

“Did you catch any of them, Captain Lefevre?” the prince asked.

The Mountie laughed. “Keep going and you'll find about eighty of them still left back there. A lot of them are still knocked out. And the ones who are conscious have lost their reindeer and can't get very far. The ones in that little bunch are the only ones who escaped. We'll have the whole lot rounded up soon.”

“Wonderful news,” the prince said. “But as we were making our escape, we saw two flying freebooters acknowledge a passing airplane. There may be some link.”

“What sort of airplane?” Captain Lefevre asked intently.

“It was a long way off, but I believe it was a Ford Trimotor,” the prince said. “It was heading for Nova Hafnia.”

“I'll send on a messenger and have it held,” the captain said.

The prince raised his hand. “One more thing; I thought I heard the freebooters shouting to one another that this raid would please their employer, Roland.” It was a lie but a useful one.

“Roland?” the captain asked in surprise.

“You're not going to let him go, are you?” the prince asked.

“Not until I interrogate all the freebooters we capture,” the captain said firmly. “And if he's the one behind all this banditry, we'll toss him into a jail cell just like all the others.” His eyes turned to the wind sled's other occupants. “This has certainly been a day for curiosities. We passed by the caravan on our way here and they told me about some strange creatures who came to your aid.”

“Yes, my saviors were very kind,” the prince said.

“You know the Cabot Territory is still technically a combat zone. We can't allow any powerful magical beings in the city without government permits,” Captain Lefevre said.

“I have only crew on my wind sled.” The prince shrugged.

Scirye couldn't help thinking admiringly,
He really figures out all the possibilities and then takes care of them in advance.

Captain Lefevre nodded shrewdly at Scirye. “I'm surprised to see children with you, Your Highness. I thought you were leaving your families behind?”

The prince smiled. “These rascals stowed away.”

“Papa was always talking about his travels,” Leech fibbed with well-practiced ease. “We wanted to see them for ourselves.” He'd learned to be quick with stories while surviving San Francisco's mean streets with Koko.

“Well, we made them earn their passage,” the prince said, equally glib. “But their inexperience showed when we were maneuvering during the battle. They fell overboard, you see, and I went back for them.”

Captain Lefevre touched his cap. “You're crew too, ma'am?” he asked Bayang.

“I took the prince's money,” Bayang said equitably.

The Mountie skillfully swung the owl even closer to them. “It's just that I don't remember you around town. And I make it my business to know everyone. Mind showing me your hands?”

“Really, Captain, we need to be getting on,” the prince objected.

Captain Lefevre's eyes narrowed. “I hate to think that you're refusing to cooperate, Your Highness.”

“Please, Lord, we can't have him think that,” Bayang said. When she pulled off a glove, Scirye saw that her hand was calloused and leathery from years of hard work.

Captain Lefevre still looked suspicious but wasn't sure how to delay them any longer. “Thank you, ma'am.” With a click of his tongue and a tug of the reins, his owl rose swiftly upward.

As they sped away, Prince Tarkhun sighed in relief. “I never saw you work magic before you took off your glove.”

“My hands became like that when I transformed the first time. When I take on a disguise, I like to be thorough,” Bayang said proudly.

So Bayang can plan ahead too,
Scirye thought with equal admiration.

 

It was twilight when they reached the former battlefield. They discovered more Mounties were rounding up the dispirited freebooters and handcuffing them.

Overhead, Mounties riding owls flew back and forth either on patrol or carrying messages—bearing out Prince Tarkhun's wisdom in not trying to use their wing.

Farther on, they reached the prince's main wind sled. By then, its crew had broken spare sails out of the hold and with the swift efficiency of sailors on a racing yacht they had replaced the old tattered sails with fresh new ones. They worked within a defensive circle that the red-coated chakar had formed.

After they climbed the rope ladder onto the deck of the bargelike wind sled, some of the Sogdians jumped down from the barge onto the snow and took apart the little wind sled. As soon as they had stowed it away, Prince Tarkhun ordered the new sails unfurled.

A strong wind was blowing and the canvas instantly bellied outward. The bargelike wind sled lurched forward, gathering speed as it slid over the surface. The long metal runners hissed over the snow, throwing up fine sprays on either side. Behind them, the dark ruts of their track stood out on the velvety whiteness as the wind sled raced home toward Nova Hafnia.

The booms of the mast could rotate a full circle, which allowed Prince Tarkhun to turn the sails in any direction and maneuver the wind sled along. Since he had no rudder to steer, he and his crew had to be skillful at handling the sails. He never needed more than a few words for each of his commands, but his crew almost seemed to read his mind.

Scirye moved toward the bow with the others, standing next to Randian at the swivel cannon.

“I suspect the prince and his crew have been together a long time,” Kles observed approvingly. “And that speaks well of him. Only a good commander earns such loyalty.”

“You couldn't find a fairer and more generous master,” the chakar agreed, keeping his eyes on the landscape. He looked to be in his late twenties, with a closely cropped beard that could not quite hide the battle scars on his right cheek.

Leech came up beside Scirye and leaned against the rail. “What's a Sogdian prince doing here in the Arctic?”

“Sogdiana's in Central Asia north of the Kushan Empire,” Scirye explained.

Kles cleared his throat. “It's made up of a number of city-states each ruled by a different clan, or House. And each tries to best the others in prestige and wealth.”

“But we always unite when any foreigner invades,” the chakar said, his white teeth flashing in the moonlight. “And we soon send the fools packing.”

“The Sogdians are famous as warriors, but even more as merchants,” Kles went on. “The clans have sent out groups around the world to establish a network of trade colonies.”

“But Chach is the oldest, the loveliest, and the richest of all the cities of Sogdiana, and we can thank the House of Urak for that,” the chakar said confidently. “And of the Urak, Prince Tarkhun is the greatest of the lords. So I've followed him into a place colder and harder than a landlord's heart because with him as my leader, I'll return home with money and prestige. Come to Chach after that and ask anyone for Randian and his inn.”

“So you want to buy an inn,” Scirye said.

Randian nodded. “There's a girl waiting for me,” he said, “but in Chach I was only a guttersnipe and her parents wouldn't have me, so I joined the prince to make my fortune.”

Scirye got Randian to teach her the words for different things on the ship. And after listening carefully to Prince Tarkhun, she pretended that she was commanding the wind sled herself.

Eventually the horizon became more irregular. The farther they went, Scirye could see what looked like gray and white lumps, which quickly became a low ridge of mountains with snow that clung to the peaks and shoulders but not to the steep sides. Prince Tarkhun seemed to be aiming for a steep gash in the side of the mountains that Scirye figured must be a pass.

Hills, white and humped and glistening with snow and ice, sat at the feet of the mountains. Prince Tarkhun roared out a command and signal flags ran up a line and another order sent the crew up the rigging to begin furling the sails and the wind sled started to slow down until it was barely moving ahead.

Finally, they saw the masts of the rest of the caravan. When the sails were furled, the masts stood up like a grove stripped of leaves.

The wind sleds had been drawn up into a defensive circle just outside a log fort where the Canadian flag proudly snapped on a flagpole.

Cheers greeted them from the caravan, and in a proud display of wind-sled handling, the prince's barge stopped about twenty feet away. People high-stepped through the snow toward them and the rope ladder had no sooner been dropped over the side than a small fur-clad figure clambered up it and onto the deck.

“Father, you're safe,” a girl cried in Common Sogdian. And she flung herself into the prince's arms.