The Icerigger Trilogy: Icerigger, Mission to Moulokin, and The Deluge Drivers (44 page)

More troublesome to Ethan were his relationships with Elfa Kurdagh-Vlata, the daughter of the Landgrave who had stowed away aboard the
Slanderscree,
and with the affectionate but sarcastic and domineering Colette du Kane.

None of which prevented the
Slanderscree
from reaching the island of Arsudun, its human outpost and shuttleport of Brass Monkey, where they hoped they would find immediate transportation off the hellishly cold, windswept world of Tran-ky-ky …

E
THAN FROME FORTUNE LEANED
over the wooden railing and screamed. The wind mangled his words.

Below the railing, the tiny two-man ice boat strained to maneuver close to the side of the racing icerigger. One of the men inside leaned out an open window to shout querulously up at Ethan, who then cupped both hands to the diaphragm of his thermal survival suit and tried to make himself understood. “I said, we’re from Sofold. Sofold!”

Spreading both arms, the man in the boat shook his head to show he still couldn’t understand. Then he had to use both hands to clutch at the window edge as the little craft swerved sharply to avoid one of the
Slanderscree
’s huge duralloy runners.

Five curving metal skates supported the great ice ship: two nearly forward, two nearly aft where the arrowhead-shaped vessel’s beam was widest, and a last at the pointed stern. Each towered nearly four meters, large enough to slice the cautious patrol boat in two if its driver wasn’t careful or quick enough to stay out of the path of the two-hundred-meter ice ship.

Ethan slid back the face mask of his survival suit without shifting the glare-reducing goggles he wore beneath and reflected on what he’d just yelled. From Sofold? He? He was a moderately successful salesman for the House of Malaika. Sofold was the home of Hunnar Redbeard and Balavere Longax and other Tran, natives of this frozen, harsh iceworld of Tran-ky-ky. From Sofold? Had he grown that acclimated to the unforgiving planet in the year and a half he and his companions had been marooned there?

Blowing ice scoured his burnished epidermis like a razor, and he turned to shield the exposed skin. A glance at the thermometer set in the back of his left glove indicated the temperature a balmy –18° C. But then they were not too far from Tran-ky-ky’s equator, where such tropical conditions could be expected.

A furry paw rested on his shoulder. Glancing around, Ethan found himself looking into the lionesque face of Sir Hunnar Redbeard. Hunnar had been leader of the first group of natives to encounter Ethan and his fellow shipwreck victims where they’d crashed, several thousand kilometers distant. Ethan studied the lightly clothed knight, envied his adaptation to a climate that could kill most unprotected humans in an hour.

The Tran bundled up in severe weather, but more temperate conditions allowed Sir Hunnar and his companions to shed their heavy hessavar furs for lighter attire, such as the hide vest and kilt the knight currently wore. Although he stood only a few centimeters taller than Ethan, the Tran was nearly twice as broad, yet his semihollow bone structure reduced his weight to little more than that of an average man.

Slitted black pupils glared from yellow feline eyes; shards of jet set in cabochons of bright topaz. They were split by a broad, blunt muzzle which ended above the wide mouth. Pursed lips and twitched-forward triangular ears combined to indicate curiosity. Hunnar’s right
dan,
a tough membrane extending from wrist to hip, was partly open, bulging with the force of the wind, but he balanced easily on his
chiv,
the elongated claws which enabled any Tran to glide across ice more gracefully than the most talented human skater.

While Hunnar’s reddish beard and rust-toned fur caused him to stand out in a crowd of his steel-gray fellows, it was his inquiring personality and natural curiosity that raised him above them in Ethan’s estimation.

“They want to know,” Ethan explained in Tran while gesturing at the small scout boat skittering alongside and below them, “where we’ve come from. I told them, but I don’t think they heard me.”

“Mayhap they heard you well, Sir Ethan, and simply do not know of Sofold.”

“I told you to stop calling me sir, Hunnar.” The titles the Tran of Wannome city had bestowed on the humans after the defeat of Sagyanak’s Horde still made him uncomfortable.

“Remember,” Hunnar continued blithely, “until you and your companions landed near Sofold in your metal flying boat, we had neither seen nor heard of your race. Ignorance is a two-edged sword.” He waved a massive arm at the scout boat. “It would be surprising indeed if your people here in this nearby outpost you call Brass Monkey, the only one of its kind on my world, had heard of so distant a nation as Sofold.”

A cry from above and forward interrupted them. It came from the lookout’s cage set atop the patriarchal tree which served now as the
Slanderscree
’s mainmast. Many months of living among the Tran had given Ethan the ability to rapidly translate the lookout’s words. After half a day’s careful travel down the frozen inlet from the vast ice ocean beyond, they were finally coming into the harbor of Arsudun, the Tran city-state where humanity maintained its shivering outpost on this world.

Ethan and Hunnar stood on the helm deck. Other than the three masts, it was the highest point on the ship. Behind them, Captain Ta-hoding hurled rapid-fire directions at the two Tran wresting the great wheel connected to the duralloy runner which steered the
Slanderscree.
In accordance with the captain’s orders, other Tran were manipulating the two huge airfoils at bow and stern to slow the icerigger still more.

Meanwhile the laborious and dangerous process of reefing in sails was proceeding rapidly. Ethan marveled how the Tran crew had mastered the rigging of the enormous ice ship. Only their claws and thick chiv enabled them to hold their footing on the icy spars above.

Though Hunnar slid easily over the icepath bordering the ship’s railings Ethan struggled to remain upright as they moved forward for a better look. The helm deck reached as far as the broad end of the main arrowhead shape of the
Slanderscree.
Standing just above the muffled screech of the port-aft runner, they could now look straight at the harbor, since from where they stood the icerigger narrowed to a point some hundred and seventy meters ahead.

Arsudun was a bubble-shaped harbor located at the end of the long strait leading from the ice ocean. Like the ocean, the strait, and all other free-standing water on Tran-ky-ky, the harbor was frozen solid. It was a flat sheet of many shades of white, covered with a thin layer of snow and ice crystals. Where the snow had been blown away, grooves marked the routes other ice ships had taken.

Ethan was eighteen standard Commonwealth months late arriving. Brass Monkey was just another stopover on the new territory he’d been assigned to cover. But his involvement in an abortive kidnapping aboard the interstellar liner
Antares
and the subsequent crash-landing near Wannome, Hunnar’s home city, had lengthened his stay considerably.

Arsudun was an island, larger than Sofold, probably smaller than some. As far as Ethan knew, Tran-ky-ky was a world of islands set like metamorphic hermits in a cluster of frozen oceans. Somewhere nearby was the humanx settlement of Brass Monkey, with its shuttleport and promise of passage off this inverted hell of a world. Andrenalin—Arsudun … they went together. What a pleasure it would be to stop playing explorer and return to the simple, gentle business of purveying manufactured goods from warm world to warm world!

He wondered about his companions, fellow survivors. Excusing himself, he left Hunnar and went to find them, searching the deck before entering the two double-tiered cabins set forward of the helm.

The would-be kidnappers who had abducted him were now dead. The individual principally responsible for their death was standing up forward, looking out over the bowsprit. Distance reduced even his impressive frame to a perpendicular spot of brown against the deck and the white ice ahead.

Of all of them, Skua September seemed most fitted for this world. Over two meters tall, massing nearly two hundred kilos, with his biblical-prophet visage and flowing white hair offset by the gold ring in his right ear, he resembled something that had slid off the front of a glacier. There having been no survival suit on the
Antares
’ lifeboat large enough to fit him, he’d resorted to native clothing. In hessavar fur coat and cape and trousers he looked very much like one of the natives, his glare goggles notwithstanding.

In the lee of the fore cabin, Milliken Williams stood chatting with his spiritual and intellectual soul brother, the Tran wizard Malmeevyn Eer-Meesach. The diminutive schoolteacher’s manner was as dark and quiet as his coloring. September might be suited physically to Tran-ky-ky, but Williams melded into it mentally. There was more he could teach here than in any Commonwealth school, and more to learn than from any tape. Williams possessed a silent soul. If the weather was not to his liking, the tranquillity of intellectual adventure surely was.

Somewhere in one of the two cabins slept Hellespont du Kane and his daughter Colette, the objects of the kidnapping. Colette was also the reason for Ethan’s present personal distress. She had proposed marriage to him; recently, bluntly. Despite her gross physical appearance, Ethan was seriously considering the offer. The prospect of marrying one of the wealthiest young women in the Arm was sufficient to overcome such superficialities as a lack of physical beauty. She was supremely competent as an individual, too. Ethan knew she ran the du Kane financial empire during her father’s periodic attacks of senility.

But one had to consider her acid tongue, capable of verbally slicing one into neat little fragments of shrunken ego. And hers was a very high-powered personality, accustomed to manipulating corporation heads and ordering about Commonwealth representatives. Spending one’s life with such an overpowering individual was something to be weighed carefully.

Somewhere below also slept the drugged Elfa Kurdagh-Vlata, daughter of the Landgrave of Sofold, who was Hunnar’s ruler/chief/king. The royal stowaway had snored through much of the dangerous and eventful voyage from Sofold, but when she awoke Ethan would have another problem to deal with.

Despite certain obvious differences in physiology, there were enough similarities between human and Tran for Elfa to have developed a distressing attraction to Ethan, much to his discomfort. It had caused unspoken but obvious pain to Hunnar. Both he and Ethan had managed to lay a veneer of honest friendship over that potentially explosive situation. The problem would crop up again when the royal offspring awoke.

Ethan had made his feelings in the matter known to Elfa. But that hadn’t discouraged her from attempting to change his mind. If she would sleep just a few days longer, he would be off the planet and spared the problem of dealing with her personally. That would be just as well, because despite his declared feelings, there was an unavoidable feline animalness about Elfa that …

Using information relayed from the masthead lookouts and the bowsprit pointer, Ta-hoding skillfully directed the
Slanderscree
toward an open dock protruding from the harbor shoreline. The dock was simply a wooden road built out onto the ice. Its pilings were necessary to raise it to iceship deck level, not to keep it above the frozen water.

Smaller ice boats were beginning to cluster curiously around the
Slanderscree.
They complicated the task of maneuvering the colossal ship up to the dock. But Arsudun owned a wide harbor, much wider than the
Slanderscree
’s home port of Wannome. Ta-hoding did a masterful job of maneuvering around and through the curious locals.

A few awed sightseers were warned off by the icerigger’s crew. Their stupified amazement was justified, Ethan knew. The
Slanderscree
was likely twice the size of any ice ship they had ever seen.

No doubt the crowd gathering on the shore included admiring shipwrights and envious merchants. They would be hard to keep off the ship, once it docked. Their natural curiosity would impel them to inspect the strange rigging arrangement, a modification of ancient Terran water clippers adapted by Williams for Tran-ky-ky’s ice oceans. Surely they would clamber all over the five massive duralloy runners on which the icerigger rode. Metal was a scarce commodity on Tran-ky-ky. The other, smaller ice ships Ethan had seen were outfitted with runners of wood and, more rarely, of bone or stone.

Some of the ship’s sailors cursed when the docking crew was slow to help them. The dockworkers too were dazed by the size of the
Slanderscree.
Mates had to direct their men to jump over the railings and down to the dock to man the cables and braces themselves, but once the process of tying up had begun, the land crew swung into action and began to help.

It was a tricky process. The
Slanderscree
was nearly three times the length of her dock, and no other docks in view were longer. There was no need for them. Ships the size of the
Slanderscree
simply did not exist on all of Tran-ky-ky.

Ta-hoding, however, was prepared to cope. As soon as his vessel’s bow was secured he ordered the stern ice anchors released. They locked in place and would keep the huge vessel from swinging tail-first with the steady aft wind.

Wind, wind and cold. Ethan slid the protective face mask back down over his goggles to shield his delicate human flesh. The lee of an island or indoors were the only places you were out of the wind on Tran-ky-ky. It blew here the way the sun shone on paradisical New Riviera or on one of the thranx worlds such as Amropolous or Hivehom. It blew steadily, varying but never wholly ceasing, across the empty places and frozen seas. It blew steadily down the strait against his back now, sucked inward by the rising, slightly warmer air above the island.

A few clouds scudded in puffy formation across a sky of cobalt blue. Ethan turned his gaze as he moved forward. Grizzled and goggled, a seamed face turned to look back and down at him, to smile with teeth white as chips of the harbor around them.