Goddess of the Ice Realm (59 page)

When the
Bird
wallowed to starboard, Ilna could see the patrol vessel thrashing toward them with both layers of oarsmen rowing. She supposed the
Defender'd
reached this stretch of sea not long after Gaur's wizardry had sent the
Bird
into his fire-shot Hell. Lusius would've lain to until his prey returned to the waking world so he and his gang could loot it.

Ilna smiled as she ran her noose between her fingers. The night was too dark for her to be confident that her patterns would be effective, but a silken cord tight around an enemy's neck was
always
effective.

Muttering instructions to one another, Hutena and Ninon gripped the rim of the stoppered ceramic jug nestled in a bed of sand and camphor within the strongbox. The jug had a line of holes at the neck—so that the serpents within could breathe, Ilna realized, but a man with small hands like the late Master Pointin might have stuck his fingers through them when he tried to empty the chest so he could hide. The camphor fumes had kept the snakes relatively sluggish during the voyage, but the jouncing and heat of their translation to the Hellworld must've aroused them enough to respond when the supercargo offered them his fingers.

The sailors lifted the jug out of the box. They kept as clear of the openings as they would've done so many live coals.

The
Bird of the Tide
had steadied after it splashed back into the waking world. Now the vessel began to roll again on the bow wave of the approaching
Defender.
“Back water!” shouted a hoarse voice with an Ornifal accent.

The
Bird
rocked more violently; a pair of grappling irons thumped onto her deck. “Snub them up!” ordered Lusius's voice. “Casadein, get that pitch ready. After we've seen what they were carrying in their hold, we'll burn her to her waterline!”

Chalcus rotated his head to meet the eyes of everyone in the hold with him. He grinned and said, “Now!” emphatically but without shouting.

Tellura and Kulit threw the hatch cover back the rest of the way. Chalcus, Shausga, and Nabarbi leaped up onto the deck; Chalcus had his sword and dagger both ready, while the ordinary seamen leaned back into the hold and grasped the rim of the jug Hutena and Ninon were raising to them.

A Sea Guard with a sword in one hand and a lantern in the other had just jumped from the
Defender's
deck to the
Bird's.
He screamed with angry frustration at the men coming out of the hold. Chalcus thrust through his eye socket and into his brain.

The Sea Guard sprang backward convulsively, toppling over the gunwale as the ships recoiled from their first contact. As he fell, Shausga and Nabarbi hurled the jug onto the patrol vessel with all their strength. It shattered among the oarsmen rising from their benches.

Ilna followed the men, holding her noose slack in both hands. Many of the
Defender's
crew held lanterns as they prepared to board. In the bow stood a pair of Guards with a large wooden bucket and a flaring torch: the pitch Lusius had mentioned, ready to destroy the
Bird of the Tide
as soon as his men had looted her.

A pair of Sea Guards wobbled on the patrol vessel's railing, swords in their hands. Nabarbi snatched the boat pike from its socket on the mast. As the nearer of the Guards jumped, Nabarbi thrust him through the chest, shoving him back into his comrade.

Both Guards fell into the sea. Our Brother rose in a fountain
of spray to meet them. The big seawolf's jaws clopped shut, tossing an arm that still clutched a sword back aboard the
Defender.

At least a dozen Sea Guards screamed simultaneously, sounding like they were being disemboweled. The lower rank of oarsmen wouldn't normally have risen until their fellows in the upper rank had cleared the walkway. Now the deck lifted like the ground during an earthquake as men lunged upward to escape the death slithering down through the ventilators onto them.

Chalcus jumped aboard the
Defender,
his sword and dagger gleaming in the lanternlight. The men with the bucket and torch went down, as suddenly dead as if they'd been lightning struck. The torch fell to the deck; Chalcus kicked the bucket of pitch over beside it, then sprang backward onto the
Bird.
He moved with the formal grace of a peasant dancing with ram's horns bound to his feet at a borough fete. The pitch roared into flame, spreading as it burned.

Hutena hacked at a grappling iron with his axe. The leader was chain, but a clean blow using the
Bird's
gunwale as a chopping block parted it in a shower of sparks. The vessels began to swing apart, though the grapnel farther astern still bound them.

“We're afire!” a Sea Guard screamed. “We're afire! Oh Lady help us!”

Ilna noted that she hadn't heard Rincip's voice. Perhaps Lusius hadn't bothered to pick up his former second-in-command in his haste to run down the
Bird of the Tide.
That might have been the best luck yet in Rincip's whole miserable life. . . .

A group of Sea Guards—more than a handful; in the confusion and scattered light, numbers were even more doubtful than usual—leaped from the patrol vessel to the
Bird.
Chalcus and his crew met them. Ilna stayed back, letting the fight weave into her consciousness. When the pattern required her action, she would act.

Shausga and Ninon were cutting at the remaining grappling iron. Their cutlasses didn't have the authority of the axe and they were getting in each other's way besides. At least one of the would-be boarders missed his footing and
went straight into the sea boiling with the blood-maddened violence of Our Brother.

Nabarbi had dropped the pike and was wrestling with a Sea Guard. Ilna twitched her noose back to throw, but as she did so Nabarbi slammed his dirk to the hilt in the Guard's chest. He flung the dead man from him with one arm, clearing his weapon by tugging on it with the other. The great seawolf leaped so high to meet the victim that Ilna glimpsed his wedge-shaped head over the gunwale.

Chalcus was killing with single thrusts, using his dagger to block his opponents' strokes. His slim, curved blade didn't seem sturdy enough to stop the Sea Guards' stout swords, but Ilna saw Chalcus lock one of them in a shower of sparks. When the Guard fell back, his neck cut through to the spine, the sword flew out of his hand. The dagger had cut a deep notch in the heavier blade.

The
Bird
was free of boarders again, all but the man who sprawled half into the open hatch. Convulsions had thrown him there when Hutena crushed his skull with the axe. Ninon's two-handed blow had finally severed the grapnel's line, and the ships were drifting apart.

The
Defender's
bow was fully ablaze. The roar of the flames was louder even than the screams of men still trapped on the lower deck with the reef snakes.

Lusius climbed out on the bitts holding the steering oar; he'd thrown away his helmet but his silver breastplate gleamed in the light of his burning vessel. He looked down at the sea, then up again at the
Bird
already ten feet distant. He was clinging to the end of the steering oar, leaning forward but unwilling to risk the leap.

“Jump, man!” Chalcus shouted. “I'll spare your life!”

He reached out with his free hand, but not even the outstretched boarding pike would've touched his fingers. “Sister take the fool,” Chalcus said in a voice of calm disgust. He sheathed his sword and dagger with a skill that was far more remarkable than the way he drew them. “We've questions for him, though, so—”

As Chalcus stepped to the
Bird's
gunwale, Ilna cast her noose with a side-arm motion. It dropped neatly over the Commander's head and outstretched arm.

“Jump, you fool!” she shouted in a voice that would've pierced bronze. When Lusius still hesitated, Ilna braced her right foot on the gunwale and jerked back with all her considerable strength. Lusius gave a despairing cry as he flew toward her.

More hands grasped the silken rope—Chalcus took it in front of her and at least two of the sailors grabbed the end trailing behind. The Commander splashed into the sea.

“Pull!” Chalcus bellowed, tugging upward with the whole strength of his back. His tunic ripped as the muscles bunched under it. Ilna sat down on the deck—the deck and Hutena's legs as the bosun fell down behind her.

Lusius grabbed the gunwale with both hands and started to lift himself over. His polished breastplate was flopping loose: he must have tried to take off the heavy armor when he realized he had to abandon the
Defender.

Chalcus dropped the lasso and grabbed the Commander's right wrist. As he did so, Lusius gave a terrible scream and slid backward. Nabarbi stepped to the gunwale, holding the pike overhead in both hands. He stabbed straight down.

Lusius screamed again but Chalcus lifted him over the side and flopped him belly first on the
Bird's
deck. The Commander's right leg had been severed raggedly above the knee; blood spurted from the big artery that had been pulled several inches free of the torn muscles.

The men were shouting. The dead Sea Guard from the first attack had worn a waist sash as well as carrying his sword and dagger on a leather belt. Ilna freed the sash with a quick pull, then looped it over Lusius's right thigh and tightened it for a tourniquet.

“I'll take it, mistress,” Hutena said. He laid his axe helve across the simple hitch, then knotted the free ends of the sash over the wood to give him leverage. He twisted, squeezing off the blood that still dribbled from the open artery.

Ilna rose, swaying slightly. Lusius was a heavy man and for a moment she'd supported his weight by herself. She had the strength to do it, but that didn't mean her body didn't have to pay for her exertions.

She glanced over the side. The two vessels continued to drift apart. The
Defender
was burning from bow to stern.
She saw a man, his hair and clothing ablaze, try to climb over the railing. He fell backward instead.

The flames hammered reflections from the sea. Debris floated between the vessels, mostly bodies and body parts. Our Brother swam in tight circles, his tail lashing from side to side. The pike shaft slanted up from his neck, waving in counterpoint to the movements of the tail.

“And now, Commander Lusius,” Chalcus said in a bantering tone, “we've some questions about your tame wizard and his lair. I hope you'll choose to answer them, because—”

Chalcus laughed. The sound was as ominous as the clop of the reptile's jaws when they took Lusius's leg off.

“—I believe your seawolf friend has already eaten as much as is good for him. I wouldn't want to give him indigestion by sending the rest of you to join your leg!”

Sharina'd been lying with her head over the bow of the Queen Ship, peering into the depths. The water was gray but clear, like the sky before the first color of dawn.

She could see to the bottom, miles below. On it crawled monsters, and through the water swam greater monsters. The teeth of the creature peering out of a deep trench must themselves have been as long as the ship; its ribbon-shaped body pulsed with azure and crimson wizardlight.

“Oh, they're real,” Beard said, answering a question that hadn't gotten beyond the surface of Sharina's mind. “You're not seeing them with your ordinary eyes, of course. Although those eyes
would
show you the ice sheet ahead.”

“Mistress?” said Scoggin. She jerked her head around. Scoggin and Franca wore worried looks, their eyes flicking from her to the horizon.

“What's . . . ?” Scoggin went on, gesturing with the hand he'd stretched out to touch Sharina's shoulder if she hadn't responded. “That we're coming to?”

The men of Alfdan's band, all those who weren't sleeping, stared toward the dark line ahead also. The wizard himself stood in a capsule of his art, speaking words of power through his tight lips.

“Beard says we're coming to the ice sheet,” Sharina said,
turning again and sitting up so that she could look at what she'd just identified to the others. A jagged boundary separated the pale gray sea from the sky washed with wizardlight. It was the charcoal shadow of a vertical edge where the ice met open water.

To the north were humps and hillocks and glitter, white except where ice threw back the sky's reflections in a form harsher than the original. The sullen sea was almost as still as the frozen waste beyond, but bits of debris moved in slow circles at its margin.

“What'll we do now, Mistress Sharina?” Layson asked, speaking with the touch of belligerence that meant he was nervous.

“Do?” repeated Beard with a metallic sneer. “Why don't you do exactly what you're doing now, my man? Nothing! Squatting on your haunches, waiting for the Great Wizard to call a halt. This ship makes no more matter of sailing over ice than it does over water—or over the heads of fools like you, I suppose!”

Layson grimaced but he didn't look too put out by Beard's insult. The men seemed to regard the axe and Sharina herself as their best hope of survival. They might be right . . . which was either frightening or amusing, depending on the mood Sharina was in when the thought recurred to her.

She glanced at Alfdan in the stern. Neal stood nearby, but the wizard didn't need anyone to support him at the moment. He'd been gaining strength as the Queen Ship coursed northward.

Despite the power of Alfdan's art, he provided only temporary respite, not long-term hope, for the men gathered around him. To the wizard they were only tools to help him achieve his ends; and those ends were as ultimately trivial as those of a child picking up shells on the seashore.

The ship had seemed to sail just above the swells of the sluggish sea. Without appearing to rise the bow slid over the sheer edge of the icepack, though it was a yard or more higher than the water at the point the keel crossed. Men murmured to one another, looking out nervously.