The Hammer of the Sun (13 page)

But all the while he was sending the little craft weaving and twisting between the floes, his thoughts were elsewhere. Even as he noted the huge ice-island ahead, weather-sculpted to the shape of some fantastic crooked claw, he was ranging though his wide memories for any scrap of knowledge that might serve them in their desperate need. It was almost summer now, for what that meant in these regions; it would not melt the ice-islands, but at least the drift-ice would stay free, and probably not close in around them. That was some comfort. What had he heard of ice-islands, so long ago In Asenby? That the greater part of them lay hidden beneath the water; but that was an old saw. There was something more; that even the seal-fishers would steer dear of them, though mere collision could not harm their resilient skin-boats… Why? He gritted his teeth and sent the
Seafire
gliding in towards the shining mass.

Roc was dozing where he sat, exhausted, but the changed note of the water awoke him to see the mass of ice seemingly rush towards them. His bloodshot eyes bulged, but after one look at Elof he sat tight and let him steer. Closer Elof took them, and closer still, till the crooked peak of the ice-mass loomed over them like a gigantic image of the Ekwesh prow; he risked a swift glance astern, and gestured to Roc. "Come, take the tiller!"

"Me? Here?"

"Yes! Just hold it as it is, put it down a little when I give you the word! Hurry!"

Roc scrambled aft and seized the tiller, while Elof moved stiffly over to the rail, and drew his sword. He weighed Gorthawer in his hand a moment, and then as they swept under the crooked overhang he seized a stay and swung himself up to balance on the rail, reaching up with one arm. Then he struck with all the strength he could muster, once, twice, again and again, and the ice clanged like metal. "Now!" he yelled, and Roc swung the bows away from the island; he turned back, and gestured defiantly at the Ekwesh. A catapult arrow buzzed past his shoulder and shivered into the ice-wall behind; a flight of darts followed it. Hastily Elof ducked back, sheathing Gorthawer and seizing the helm once more.

"What was all that about?" inquired Roc with sinister calm. "Aside from scaring me awake, that is?"

"A guess…" said Elof absently, looking quickly ahead and astern by turns, as if loth to lose sight of the Ekwesh whatever the hazards ahead. "A throw of the dice… weighting them a little, perhaps… we'll see, any moment…"

The Wolf-ship was nearing the ice-island now, and the sweeps were going out as before to fend it off. Riding higher in the water, it could not pass under the clawed peak as had the cutter, but swung as close as possible; and it was at the claw that the sweeps thrust. Fragments of ice broke away and fell, some into the water, some on the decks, but the black-clad warriors paid them little heed. Then there was a warning shout and scattering from the rail, as the whole tip of the peak cracked and dropped away where Gorthawer had hewn it; but it fell well clear of the black hull.

Roc swore. "It was a worthy try, though, that!"

Elof shook his head sharply. "Wait! Wait and see .. there!" He pointed, not at the ship, but at the island, and Roc gaped in horrified awe. The broken claw was swinging back, away from the war craft, tipping back into the sea. And rising from below ..

For a moment the war craft seemed to float on green glass. Then the great mass burst through the surface into blazing whiteness, straight under the stern of the black ship. Those aboard it had no time to move, scarce enough to scream, ere the whole sleek craft was flung upward, tipped over with a crash and sent sliding down the new summit of the island to nose downward in the foaming waters. It twisted there a moment, its shattered stern upthrust, while dark flecks flailed and struggled in the turmoil around it. Then, as the
Seafire
swept away down the channel, it fell slowly forward, and was gone.

"Glad I'm no enemy of yours!" said Roc darkly. "You planned that!"

"I hoped for it." Elof fought the tiller as the swirling water overtook the cutter and set it bobbing like an angler's float in the narrow way, struggling to keep the bows away from the floes on either hand. "Gambled that their commander had never sailed around such islands. I'd heard fishermen say they kept away from them because they were unstable; they melt, they weather, the balance changes and the least breath turns them turtle. When I saw that odd outcrop, I thought we might speed matters along and as well I did! See what comes!"

But Roc had no need of the warning; he also had seen the black sails of their other pursuers billowing out like some vast bat above the floes, far closer than they had a right to be.

"They've found some other channel!" spat Roc. "Aye, and leading this way. Might even cross this one!"

Elof nodded, but glanced up at the sails. "That's a chance we'll have to take; we could go no faster among the drift, even if we dared."

But it soon became plain that Roc was right; the southerly channel was drawing ever nearer their own, and ere long the first of the reiver ships had caught up enough to see clearly. Once or twice an arrow arced up from the throng along its side, and twice they saw a catapult aimed and fired; but dart and bolt fell far short, into the sea or scuffing harmlessly along the ice. Roc shaded his eyes. "Don't see any shaman in those bows, do you?" They both grinned, as wolves may grin.

"But the two channels must meet right enough, somewhere ahead there," remarked Elof. "Not far. Then shaman or no, we'll have them closer on our tail than the others, and forewarned; this channel's too easy for them."

"So what can we do?"

"Turn away, down the channel if it goes on, or another. One that's harder; one that'll take us closer to the Ice."

"Fine choice!" muttered Roc. "But so be it!"

It was little more than a thousand paces ahead that the two rough channels came together, in mockery of a crossroads; and the new one did indeed weave gradually away to the northeast. Elof glanced at the dark ship, now running almost parallel with them,, and with scarcely a touch on the helm sent the
Seafire
gliding down the new channel, angling towards the high walls of the Ice. To their pursuers it must have looked like the last act of desperation; and Elof kept having to remind himself that it was not. There would, there must, come a point when the unwieldy sailing of the black ships would tell against them, and the cutter could slip away. That was a reasonable enough hope; but it was also the only hope they had.

All the remainder of that day the cutter sped northward, racing and weaving like a seabird over the white-strewn waters; the only seabird, for the skies were bare of life. Not so the sea; once or twice upon flat-topped floes the voyagers saw dark smudges, as of ink on paper, that lifted round alert heads as they drew closer And if they came too near, close enough to see the patterns on the sleek fur, the seals would cry out in gulping alarm and go humping and slithering off to plunge into the dark waters. Once, a bulky, bloated-looking monster half the length of the cutter only raised a majestic snout crowned with a crest that bobbed like an inflated bladder and bellowed a hoarse challenge to the intruders.

"Not today, brother," muttered Roc. "Save it for the Ekwesh…" But upon another floe they passed a heap of sprawling reddish shapes that were each of them larger and bulkier than that huge beast, and when they raised their heads Roc cried out, for some were armed with immense protruding teeth. "Like dagger-teeth!" cried Roc, and snatched up his bow.

"Leave them be!" said Elof quickly. "I've heard of them, called
valros
in the northern speech; they are harmless shell-diggers, save when provoked. Anyway, you might make little impression on such beasts; their hide is thick. It was valued for cables in Nordeney."

Within the shadow of the blue-white cliffs, though, even these signs of life vanished. Cruel and stern they gleamed, mountain-high they reared, or so it seemed, and as majestic in their power. Yet barer than the starkest stone were they, with no substance on them or around them that was not their own, no tree or plant, no soil, not even the rocky debris borne by glaciers of the land, nothing save the snow which was their first and primal stage and by whose accumulation alone they could grow. Here the Ice contemplated only ice, and the water it hoped soon to freeze into itself; all else was intrusion, And by that they seemed somehow diminished in Elof s eyes, and he looked upon them with contempt and defiance in his heart, where there might else have been awe.

Once only, when the cutter came to a clear patch where the sun struck down into the blue waters, they saw huge pale shapes like Ice-ghosts glide beneath them in the depths. Ere long they surfaced, not far off, with snorting spouts that clearly made them some white-skinned breed of porpoise or small whale, and suddenly they seemed heartening company in this cold waste. But they did not play like porpoises, and all at once they dived and were gone; they had seen the black shape that came sweeping up channel, heard perhaps the squeal of the catapult windlasses echoing through the hull. Elof ducked at the snapping ring and hiss of a shot, even though it splashed harmlessly astern, then turned to Roc in real alarm. "How could we hear that at this distance?" He glanced up at the streamers, the vane, and could see them begin to sag and falter.

"The wind's dropping!" howled Roc. "Now of all times, after it's come pouring down on us day in, day…" He looked suddenly at the cliffs, and at Elof, and freckles blazed on his paling cheeks. "You don't reckon
they
..."

"Now, of all times," echoed Elof, "and our pursuers may use sweeps, and we not. Yes they know someone is here, the masters of that wind. But they cannot stop it all in a minute, so let us get the best from what is left!" He swung the tiller over, and the cutter went racing in even closer beneath the lowering cliffs. "Into the very embrace of the Ice…" he said grimly, as they passed within the arms of a wide bay. Roc made no answer; he was staring up at the cliffs. From afar they had seemed a solid wall of whiteness; this close they looked ancient, crumbling, their faces lit a ghastly blue, riven and shadowed with cracks and chasms through which white avalanches came tumbling and smoking to drop into the sea beneath. Such an aspect, noble yet blasted, might a lord of old have worn who had fallen from youth into a cruel and dissolute old age, and bore the marks of all he had wasted and corrupted. Against such a background even the black ships in their wake seemed almost innocent, vessels of a merely human viciousness.

"And they're falling behind at last, by Kerys's Gate!" Roc slapped his fist into his palm.

"Aye, and are they!" said Elof, between his teeth. "With their rig and their weight they need far more wind for steerage way. And within the shelter of the bay there isn't enough! Whereas for us…"

Roc grinned back, tapped his nose in understanding, and glanced up at the wind-vane. Then the grin was struck from his face, and he yelled hoarsely; shadow fell across the cutter like a cloak, and all the sea about. Elof turned swiftly, and for a moment he could only cower, so vast and looming was the threat. It dashed thought from his mind, and for a moment he was an animal, or less. It seemed that the whole immense cliff was moving, tilting above the stern of the cutter, leaning forward to rush down upon these tiny creatures and scour them from sight.

His wits returned to him, and he saw that it was only a part of the cliff, splitting along fissures that were already there, down which those avalanches had fallen. Yet that part was the size of a goodly hill, and though it leaned with the slowness of nightmare it seemed already to fill the sky. Under that lowering shadow he saw only one faint hope of escape. Feeling as if his limbs were weighed with lead, he slammed the tiller hard over and sprang up, as if through thick oil, to seize the cold wind-vane in both hands.

Again he sensed vast weight, and beyond it the presence of another will, opposing hands, but momentarily relaxed, distracted; he thrust with all the force of his fear, and the vane swung round a good two points. Then abruptly it stuck. Elof's hands slithered over the pattern, and for a moment he thought he had fallen overboard. Green light billowed around him, clouded and chill; he could not breathe, he was sinking, twisting among silvery threads of dwindling air-bubbles. And from the forest-green depths below something else was rising to meet him…

Roc shouted and pulled him down, or he might have fallen indeed, as the sails snapped suddenly full and the
Seafire
heeled and bobbed around. Forward it surged on its new heading towards the far arm of the bay, racing the shadow of that toppling death across i he ice-strewn water. Elof, gasping with the reaction, glanced back once at the foremost war craft, saw the sweeps arise along its sides and beat frantically at the water. But whether they sought to pursue or back off, he never saw, for at that moment the cliff face fell.

From the glacier it broke with a crack like thunder and a great cloud of powder snow, one vast single slab. it did not slither like a landslide, but tilted forward like some petrified giant, to crash down face-first and rigid across the black waters of the bay, With a booming explosion the waters leaped skyward amid a spray of shattered ice, then fell back in a great arched wave that welled out with a devouring roar to fill the bay and rise in wrath against the very cliffs themselves, hammering upon the uncaring face of the glacier with the floes it had spawned.

Had the dying wind not shifted, the
Seafire
could not have escaped annihilation beneath that titanic fall. As it was, it had hardly reached the arm of the bay when the mass struck, and barely escaped being tossed into the air on that first gigantic upsurge. But the failing breath of the breeze bore the little craft clear of the wall a moment before the vast wave struck it, and out into the ocean once more. After it the wave came racing, a tide of thundering blackness crested with teeth like white glass, but with its first energy spent, else the cutter might not have survived. As it was, Elof and Roc had time only to fix tiller and hatch and lash themselves in before the breaking waters crashed against their stern. For a time that seemed centuries all was racing, rushing confusion, an endless torrent of ice-laden sea sweeping over them like the flow of every mountain foss in the world together. It was drowning and worse than drowning behind the curtain of rushing waters, for they were battered and bitten by the fragmented ice it bore, and the black chill of it made them gasp in agony for air they could not get. Ice boomed and crashed against the hull. The jagged rim of a floe swept by above their heads and plucked at the starboard mast-stays like a finger at harp strings. Then it was past, and the cutter wallowing and twisting upon the lesser waves that followed, riding outwards like ripples in an infant's pond.