The Hammer of the Sun (53 page)

"As he would have sooner, had the sail been espied last night!" said Elof absently, peering into the growing light. Again that ominous shadow crossed the cloud. "Keep on your course, do nothing else! He hasn't seen us, not yet - and if he does…"

If only this wind doesn't drop -

Somebody shouted. Out of the clouds, far nearer to them, far larger, the winged shape dropped like a spent arrow. Frightened gasps arose, and men looked to the side as if weighing the chill of the deeps against the venomous flame. But the dragon only hung there for a moment below the cloud canopy, vast wings sweeping between sea and sky, then abruptly it turned and sped away eastward. Elof let go his breath, and swayed a little. "He fears to go further, lest he grows weary, or is wounded! Dragons hate the sea, that waits to swallow them and their fires together, quenching them without effort. Not even at Louhi's behest will he go further! And if he cannot catch us, their ships will also find it hard! So -" He sighed, and turned to gaze out past the great bow platform, across a vast expanse of sea and sky to the farthest horizon, where air and water met and shadows of the night still lingered.

Roc swallowed. "Then - that's it? No more than that?" A look of mild astonishment spread over his face, and he shook his head slightly, as if to clear an ear. "We've escaped. We're away -" He sat down upon the helmsman's bench, very hard.

Elof nodded slightly. "West by west-north-west .. there lies your course, shipmaster!"

Trygkar looked dubiously from the clear grey waters southward to the flow-strewn north, and back again, and scratched his head dubiously. "As you command, Mastersmith. But it's a chill road, bitter chill!"

"No more chill than the heart of Louhi! No more bitter than the lot of men!
Sail on
!"

They gave that black ship no name, though it proved steadfast and strong, sliding through stormwaves as lean and supple as an eel; for it was none of theirs, and they found it better not to think what might have passed upon those greasy planks. The altar-pyramid of cemented stones on the sterncastle was bare of all dark ashes, but Elof cast it into the sea, and after it all the banners and shaman's gear he found, all bearing emblems of the Otter clan. The design on them was not unpleasing, showing well the sleek and sinuous movement of the beast he knew; he had watched them sport and dive in the seas of his childhood, menacing none save the shellfish they broke between flat stones. Once the ancestors of the Ekwesh, simple hunters themselves, had sought to identify with such creatures, seeing mirrored in them the qualities they valued, and their own place in nature? how had such a folk been twisted into predators, builders of a cruel empire, eaters of their own kind's flesh, feared servants of all nature's deadliest foe?

All too easily, he reflected; for on that long voyage he had ample time for such lonely musings. He had only to consider how the onslaught of the Ice had begun to twist the folk of Kerys, once noble and high of spirit, into the sorry images of the folk they fought. Between Nithaid and the best of the Ekwesh chieftains, such as those of the Raven clan, there was little enough to choose. And yet however malformed, there still must be a great grain of humanity in the Ekwesh somewhere; in their spirit of battle-fellowship that gave them some discipline, perhaps, their courage, or their sense of order and hierarchy. Yet it was with qualities such as those, lacking the mindsword of his own evil making, that Louhi bound the Ekwesh to her service - those, and the lure of simple riches, and where all else failed, sheer terror. An unwholesome fellowship links those who have committed acts atrocious beyond the common course of men; those who in great peril have saved themselves at the cost of others, those who, starving at sea or in the wilds, have been driven to eat the flesh of their fellows, who have joined in some dark crime, or witnessed horrors beyond the bounds of nature. All these things the Ice demanded of Ekwesh warriors, through the medium of the shamans and the secret society of the Hidden Clan, with its masked ritual and mastery of magecraft; and it reinforced them with terrifying penalties. The best it left them was the sombre pride and warrior's honour he had met in the Raven clan. But still, somewhere, there lurked the spirit of the men who had watched the otters in the bright waters, and delighted in them. If he could somehow reach that…

Such musings were a useful distraction from the monotonies and hardships of the voyage, and those were many; but there was nothing idle about them, and they were only one strand among his tangled thoughts. Their passage was swifter than it had been outward, for they met no greater perils than wind and rough weather and made no detours, but sliced a smooth arc over the curve of the world, tacking across the chilly airs that flowed off the Ice. With a crew able to stand two watches the sailing was far easier, and though many of the young men had never before seen the ocean, they were Northerners bred to it over thousands of years, and took to it at once. The black ship, though crude and simple in its building, proved steadfast and strong, sliding through stormwaves like a serpent, shipping surprisingly little water over its low gunwales and between its planking. Their living space was uncomfortable, for the Ekwesh made a fetish of hardihood, and scorned the least of civilised comforts. To the surprise of many it was also scrupulously clean, for they had learned the need of this in conditions so cramped that disease could race like a forest fire. If there were pursuing ships, they never saw them, nor did they encounter any patrols; it seemed that Louhi had withdrawn them, perhaps to provide more manpower for her campaigns, perhaps also because of the ice-islands that were gathering in such numbers now.

"They'll freeze together come winter," remarked Roc.

Elof nodded, and leant a little on the steering oar, swinging the black ship that much wider of the clustered floes. "And maybe next spring, or ten springs hence, they won't thaw apart again, and though they're blocked on the land the glaciers will creep a bit further down across the sea."

Roc eyed him dryly. "By any chance would that be this plan of Louhi's you suspect?"

Elof frowned. "A part, probably," he admitted unwillingly. "But still not the core of it. I - I
think
I see it; but not clearly enough. Not yet." He tipped the helm back as the floes slipped by, watching a shadow creep back along a curiously carven disk of wood and bronze till it fell straight along the course he had marked. Roc looked at him a moment, then shrugged.

As the weeks wore on the ocean grew colder about them, so that even in high summer rime formed upon rigging and spar by night, and by day was slow to disperse. In the northern skies the Iceglow burned baleful above the horizon like an unending banner of spiderweb, dimming the stars as they arose, a silent presence that preyed upon men's minds. Many of the crew grew anxious at their northward drift, and began to eye their fast dwindling supplies with great concern. They could not understand, though Elof sought often to explain to them, the necessities of navigating across the curve of the world; their minds, bounded all their lives by the walls of Kerys Vale, could scarcely comprehend distances so vast, and in confusion they grew distrustful. Even Tryg-kar, who had looked upon the ocean as a child, remembered only that there was some special art, and not what it involved; no man of his time had known it. He trusted Elof, however, and that kept his crew in check.

At last, one chill morning, Elof took careful sight on the sun as it shone red through the swirls of freezing mist, and shouted to Trygkar to bring the ship about onto a new heading, west by west-south-west. "For this is the mid-point of our voyage; we need go north no longer! Now for the South, and home!"

From that day on the climes grew warmer again, and though there was still rough weather enough to occupy them, their main concern was whether the food would last. "We always knew it would be hard!" Elof told the crew, when they must needs reduce their daily portions still further. "We could not have carried more and still seized the ship so swiftly! But be steadfast, and I will make you all amends yet!"

Trygkar chuckled. "We'll hold you to that, Mastersmith! We've water still, though it's piss-poor drinking, and water's the main thing; for the rest, a feast was never made the worse by a few day's fasting first!"

But the water was down to the scummy dregs of the casks, and the fast had endured many days, before the sunset came that brought their lookout's hail. The sinking sun flooded the skies with still flame, reddening the grey clouds till they turned to glowing embers crusted with black; fire ran among the steely waves till the black ship seemed to ride a path of metal half-molten. But at the apex of that path, hard to look at as the sun descended upon it, a dark streak showed at the waves' ending that seemed more solid than any cloud. The sun was almost down before those on deck glimpsed it, and then only for a moment ere the dark came. They were not sure; hope stuck painfully in a parched throat. But the lookout was sure, as he came sliding merrily down the mast, and bade them hold their course and await the dawn. That night no man slept.

So it was that when the first feeble light dimmed the sinking stars the whole crew crowded the deck. They had seen little by night, moonless and cloudy, and now they quivered like hounds at the slip, thirsting and hungering for more than mere sustenance. When the clearing greyness showed them that shadow grown more solid still, the whole ship went wild; they laughed, they danced, they pounded Elof and Roc upon the back with bruising force. Both men scarcely noticed, for a deeper hunger yet burned within them; for hours it held them at the gunwale, their eyes fixed on the changing silhouette ahead. They were approaching the coast at a shallow angle, passing further southward the closer they drew, and they were torn between the urge to turn straight towards land, and the more sensible course of waiting till they were nearer. "We've got to be close to home!" asserted Roc for the twentieth time, twisting his fists about the gunwale till the layers of encrusted salt crackled and crumbled. "We can't be far north or we'd still have seen the Iceglow -"

Elof writhed uneasily on the crutches he had whittled from ship's timber. "It was hard to set our southward course exactly. Too far south, and we come upon empty country - wild land, forest. Desert even, or the salt flats of Daveth Holan…"

Roc squinted up into the afternoon sky, shading his eyes against the declining light. "You couldn't be that far out in your reckoning! Mad you may be, but not daft…" He tensed at a sudden hail from the masthead.

"What d'you see?" shouted Elof. "Whither away, man?"

"Dead ahead - beyond the bows! Look…oh look/"

On a ship of their own land they would have been able to scramble up the stern-post, but the reiver ship lacked one. They could only wait long minutes, while the ship sailed on and the world seemed to hold its breath - all save the lookout, for he had become totally incoherent with excitement. But as what he had seen appeared above the horizon, a great shout went up of wonder and joy, from all save Elof and Roc; for astonishment held them mute.

This was not the land they had left, not far short of nine years past. And yet beyond doubt it was the city once named Morvannec, renamed Morvanhal; but now it seemed in truth that the ancestral seed of Morvan, a thousand years crushed beneath the Ice, had risen and flowered into triumphant strength once again.

Roc gulped. "Is it real?"

"Could all this have been shaped in a mere nine years?" breathed Elof in wonder. "Or have we been wanderers in time, as we have upon the oceans?"

"Lesser than Kerys!" growled Trygkar softly. "That you told me - but not that it was like this! And you have brought us straight here!"

So entangled in wonders were they that this further one seemed scarcely to matter, then; it was only later that it came home to them all. For dead ahead
of
them lay the promontory of Morvanhal, and across all the trackless wastes of the seas Elof had set their bows straight towards it.

But as they drew ever closer they had few thoughts save for the majesty of the sight; they forgot empty bellies and parched throats, for their minds and their hearts were filled. All that Elof and Roc had looked to see was there, the smooth solidity of the outer walls with their rotund towers, cone-capped in grey, the streets and terraces rising up the flanks of the ness, and at its crown the lordly tower of the palace. They were still too distant to make out much detail, even in this clear afternoon light; but memories touched in what their eyes did not see. Yet those memories they began to doubt, for so much was overlaid upon them; they saw familiar pictures in new and splendid settings, but so contrived that their splendour only enhanced and dignified the older work. From behind the old walls new walls arose, their stone vividly red-gold in the clear light, and they spread out to embrace the land around and beyond the promontory, and the hills that overlooked it. On the slopes behind the ness, where tangled forest had encroached upon overgrown field, new streets wound their way up from the old; but they were tall, spacious and widely separated. Between them both forest and field were maintained, each within their proper limits, save where they gave way to the familiar patterns of vineyard and orchard. It was an image of harmony, a contained balance of man and nature such as Elof had never looked to see within a city wall. And as the palace crowned the promontory, so on each hill a tall tower rose out of the trees; yet though they far overtopped it, they did not overwhelm it, but were set about it like standing sentinels to an enthroned lord, like flourishing youth about venerable age. Of ivory stone were their walls, their roofs of bronze capped with gold, and many a brave banner flew above them against the white clouds.