Europa (7 page)

The ghost receded into the crowd of souls in the seireiken and Omar took his hand off the sword. He leaned back again with a frown. “How old was he?”

“Not very. Late thirties, maybe,” Riuza said.

“Well, since he’s eaten the same food as us, and he isn’t very cold… if I had to guess, I’d say his heart just gave out in his sleep. A pity,” Omar said.

“I suppose.” Riuza nodded. “All right then. Help me with him.” She took hold of Garai’s sleeve and waved Omar to stand up.

Omar stood. “Help you with him?”

“Yes,” the captain said with a touch of exasperation. “Help me. With him. Outside. Now.”

“You don’t mean to dump his body out there, do you?”

Riuza let go of the professor’s sleeve and straightened up. “I’m sorry, did you want to keep a corpse in here for the next twelve days? Because he isn’t going to last long in this heat, and I can’t exactly shut off the boiler if you ever want to see home again.”

“But he was your friend, dear lady, your colleague! And you’re just going to dump his body out in the wilderness, alone, unburied, and forgotten?”

“He wasn’t my friend. And yes, I am going to dump his body in the wilderness. I have a schedule to keep, a mission to carry out, and several living people to see safely home. There isn’t time for a burial detail. I suppose we could lash his body to the outside of the gondola where it will freeze and keep well enough until we return to Marrakesh. Would you like to try that?”

Omar sighed. “No.”

“Then help me with him. Now.”

Omar still wanted to argue, but he couldn’t see any way around the facts as she had stated them. “So then you mean to continue the expedition without a naturalist? We’re not going back for a replacement?”

“Well, we won’t be stopping to inspect the local wildlife, but yes, we’re still heading north. We don’t scrap a mission just because something goes wrong. As long as we can fly, we do fly. The professor here knew the risks when he signed on. And we can still map the islands we came to see, including yours. Now, if you please.” She gripped the professor’s sleeve again.

Omar frowned, but there was nothing left to say. He grabbed hold of Garai’s coat and helped the captain wrestle the little man out the hatch and onto the glacier. They laid him out on his back in a restful looking position, and then went back inside.

He made up a quick breakfast of boiled oats and fruit, which they ate quickly and in silence. As soon as everything was stowed and ship-shape, they trundled outside to free the
Frost Finch
’s lines from the icy rocks and jagged spires frozen into the surface of the glacier. Omar gave one last look over the body of Garai Dumaka, already frosted with fresh snow and ice, and then he followed the others inside.

They lifted off the Bayonne Glacier less than an hour after dawn and climbed up into a clear blue sky to sail among islands of huge gray clouds. Below them, the world became a single sheet of ice, veined in blue and white and black.

Kosoko Abassi closed his eyes and looked sick, Morayo Osaze fiddled with her console, and Riuza Ngozi sat tall and stiff at the controls.

Omar grimaced at the sight of the toilet beside him and then he tried to go back to sleep.

For two more days the
Frost Finch
cruised up the western coast of Europa following the ragged line where the glaciers met the sea. They passed over deep ravines and long fjords that reached inland like bony fingers. In those gaps in the earth, Kosoko and Riuza pointed out the tiny fishing villages that they had already discovered and visited. Blaye, Acres, Royan, Fouras, and Charron. The names did not sound very Rus to Omar’s ear, but the captain assured him that the people there did speak a sort of Rus mixed with Espani. Each village was home to fewer than a thousand people, each one clinging to a fragile thread of life between the angry sea and the towering glaciers where they fished the cold waters of the North Atlanteen for seals, crabs, eels, and whales.

On the fifth day of the expedition, after crossing the vast green plateau of the Mayenne Glacier where the late Garai Dumaka had believed a forest was thriving hundreds of feet below the ice, the
Frost Finch
emerged from a cloud bank above a black spit of land thrust out into the white sea like an accusing finger. At the tip of the finger Omar could see the pale gray shapes that he had come to recognize as Europan buildings hidden between the frozen snow on the ground and the frozen snow on their roofs. But this village was larger than the last few and he pointed it out. “Have you been there before?”

“Once,” Morayo said. “It’s called Cherbourg. About seven thousand people.”

“You’ve only been there once?”

The engineer shrugged. “Sure. Kosoko mapped it, Garai picked some pinecones, and we got the name of the place. So why go back? There’s nothing special there. They don’t even have enough spare food to trade with us.”

They sailed on across the white sea to another dark shore that was marked
Alba
on both Kosoko’s new map and Omar’s old one. The Aegyptian slouched against the window, peering down at the world through his blue glasses. “It just goes on and on, doesn’t it? Just snow and ice, rocks and trees.”

The cartographer shrugged. “Well, of course it does. What did you expect?”

“I don’t know,” Omar said. “Something more interesting.”

Kosoko raised an eyebrow as he chewed yet another tiny sliver of his ginger. “The captain said you came along because you want to see if there’s snow on an island at the top of the world. That hardly sounds interesting to me.”

Omar smiled. “No, I don’t suppose it does. Still, I do want to know. Very, very much.”

On the morning of the sixth day, Omar awoke to a soft babble of new sounds and the strange sensation of stillness. Through the window beside his seat he saw that they were on the ground with the hatch open and a small crowd of people stood outside the airship talking to Kosoko while Riuza and Morayo ran their mooring lines around a few large stones sitting in the snow. He stood up, intending to hurry out and help them with the chores of securing the
Finch
, but the motionless deck beneath his feet seemed to tilt and weave and he stumbled into the wall of the cabin. After a moment, the dizziness passed and he stepped outside into the thick snow to help with the lines.

“I almost couldn’t walk,” he said to Morayo as they tied the last rope to a boulder. “I felt seasick, but we were on the ground.”

“You were landsick,” she said. “You got used to the
Finch
shivering around under your feet all day and night, and you forgot what it’s like to walk on solid ground. That’s all. Happens to everyone.”

“Even you?”

“No.” She grinned.

“So what’s this place called? Where are we?”

She pointed across the field to the snaking line where the frothing white sea lapped up on the dark gray stones of a beach, and above that beach stood a town. It was encircled by a ragged stone wall twice as tall as a man so that all Omar could see of the homes within were the peaks of the roofs and the tips of the chimneys, but suddenly his gaze was drawn to a dark shape rising high above the top of the wall. “What is that?”

It was a rude but solid structure of black stones that rose three times the height of the town wall, and Omar counted three small towers at the corners of the keep. Slate tiles covered the roof, though they were grimed with frozen filth, and what few windows he could see were all shuttered and sealed. No light escaped from the building, but smoke poured upward from half a dozen of its chimneys to mingle with the smoke of hundreds of other homes high above the town. The sight of so many columns of smoke reminded him of the tales of dragons sleeping in their lairs, their burning bellies spilling dark fumes from the ancient mountains. “Is that a castle?”

“Yes it is, and home to the king of Edinburgh.”

“A king? Here?”

“I admit, it’s not much of an accomplishment.” Morayo laughed. “If you like, I can tie a string around your head and call it crown, and you can be the king of the back of the cabin.”

Omar smiled. “Very funny. Though I’ve seen men rule over less. I was just surprised to hear someone up here in the middle of nowhere style himself as royalty.”

“Well, he’s the master of twenty thousand souls,” the engineer said. “That’s more than I can say for myself.”

With the ship secure, Omar found Riuza and asked, “Can we go see the town now?”

“No, we stay with the ship at all times.”

His smile vanished. “But why?”

She jerked her chin at the stream of people coming up the icy road from the town. Most of them carried sacks or trays or even pulled small carts behind them. “They come to us. Talk. Buy. Sell. Whatever you like. Just don’t fight with them. These are the friendliest people we’ve found this far north. We need to keep them friendly. But we don’t leave the
Finch
.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t trust them.”

“Because they’re Europan?”

“Because they’re primitive savages.” She gave him a serious look and then walked away.

For the rest of the morning, Omar wandered through the cluster of merchants with their wares spread out on blankets on the snow. He saw crudely carved figures of rock and bone, poorly polished stones of no particular value, bruised fruit, ragged blankets, and rusty tools. The only things that really caught his eye were the fresh fish and the huge cuts of seal steak laid out on the snow. Since Garai’s death, they had only stopped on the ground once more to refill the boiler and have one hot lunch. Every other meal had been cold rations, all salted and dried and tiresome. The allure of a savory seal steak supper quickly had him haggling with the fisherman, and he walked away with several pounds of meat in exchange for all of his spare gloves and hats.

After stowing his precious treasure, Omar found Kosoko engaged in an intense discussion with two elderly locals about the markings on the cartographer’s working map. Through the broken bits of their mismatched Rus dialects, Omar picked out the points of confusion about this island or that mountain and he pulled out his own leather map for comparison. Instantly the two northerners’ faces brightened as they scanned the ancient writings, pointing excitedly at this symbol or that word. As the pair muttered to each other, they confirmed to Omar that his old Rus map was indeed correct, at least for this area.

They were still leaning over the map when a low horn blast echoed across the field from the south where a line of small fir trees obscured the woods beyond. In a heartbeat, every merchant had his wares bundled up and was trudging quickly back to their walled home. The two old men peered at the southern edge of the field with pained looks of worry wrinkling their brows. A moment later the stunted fir trees shivered, shaking loose their coats of frost and shining icicles, and a pack of wolfish hounds darted out into the field. They were shaggy beasts with fur the color of old iron, and they ran with their black tongues lolling from the sides of their mouths. But they slid to a halt in the center of the field and turned to face the bracken behind them. Again the little firs bent apart and now a band of men in brown fur coats came charging out of the wilderness with axes and bows in hand.

Omar took a nervous step back, his gloved hand straying to the hilt of his seireiken.

The men raced across the field and when they passed through the hounds the animals turned to follow their masters. Together the hunters converged on the
Frost Finch
, and Omar could hear them shouting in their strange Rus accents, “One horn! One horn!”

He frowned at Kosoko, who merely shrugged back. But the two old men beside them snatched up their walking sticks and set off for the town.

The hunters running across the field angled away from the airship, heading for the town, and the dogs stayed close to their masters. But they stopped short of the town gate and turned to stand shoulder to shoulder and form a small shield wall on the icy road. The archers nocked fresh arrows and made ready to fire while the others raised their small hatchets to hurl.

A deep-throated bellow erupted from the trees across the field, and Omar’s first thought was that an elephant had followed him all the way from North Ifrica to this frozen hell. But the beast that came crashing through the firs was no elephant. It charged through the underbrush with its head lowered, smashing aside the brittle trees with its massive legs and shoulders. Of its head, Omar could only see that it was long and broad with tiny black eyes and tiny brown ears set on either side. Its thick coat of brown fur shook and shuddered with every thundering step that the beast took, and Omar wondered if this might be a monstrous sort of bear.

But then the creature shook its head and Omar saw it, for brief a moment, in profile.

One horn. They must be shouting its name. They call it a one-horn.

An enormous curving horn rose from the animal’s snout above the nose and below the eyes, but it was unlike any horn Omar had ever seen before. Long ago he had hunted with a bow, stalking the swift oryx and gazelle in Ifrica and taking their long slender horns as drinking cups and walking sticks. And only a few years ago he had hunted with an Italian rifle to bring down a huge red elk with a massive rack of branching antlers. But the beast charging across the field had armed its skull with an enormous scimitar, a weapon long enough to skewer three men back to back, and Omar suspected that was exactly what the creature had in mind now.

Morayo and Riuza were already running for the
Finch
, so Omar grabbed Kosoko and propelled the old cartographer into the cabin, but he paused by the open hatch to watch.

The one-horn stampeded over the snow, its pillar-like legs crashing through the snowdrifts as though they were mere snowflakes. And as the seconds ticked down, Omar realized that the beast wasn’t following the tracks of the men and dogs toward the town. It was charging toward the
Finch
.

“Stay inside!” he shouted as he slammed the hatch shut.