The Voyage of the Unquiet Ice (28 page)

Fearful cries ran about the main deck, but the sound soon fell away, and within an hour the figure in the sky was gone too, lost in the dull glare of red and green. Vincente, if he had observed the figure at all, paid it no mind, for they sailed on as ever. Indeed, there was no need even of the cutters anymore, so well did the glare light their way. And so the crew took courage again, for if their captain dared something, then so must they.

Besides – said the navigators, bent over their maps – their ordeal was surely almost done. The pole might be less than thirty miles off by now. Just another day perhaps, and the great discovery, and all the fame and fortune that would go with it, would be their prize …

But they were not, it seemed, to be granted that last day.

For the gulf – having held wide and clear for so long – now began to close in about them as they pressed northward. Soon it was less than a mile across, and there was concern on the high deck about the ship having sea room enough to safely manoeuvre.

But worse was to follow. For at length they came about a great bend in the channel and found that they could go no further at all. With the abruptness of a slammed door, the two walls of the gulf bent to each other and met to form a frowning dead end.

The officers and crew stared in disbelief. All their suffering in the cold and dark, all their travails – had been for this? To reach this bitter cul de sac, walled irrefutably on all sides by ice three miles high?

Ah … but there, directly ahead …

It could be seen now, as the ship drifted closer, that the two walls of the gulf did not
quite
meet. Instead, between them there remained a hairline fracture that ran from the waterline all the way to the cliff-tops; a chasm of fantastic height and narrowness, barely fifty yards wide at its mouth, and twisting away northwards beyond sight between sheer walls of icy black.

So the way was not
utterly
shut …

They hove to near the entrance of the rift, and Vincente ordered the anchor dropped, then he and his senior officers gathered on the high deck in earnest debate. Dow waited anxiously for their decision. Obviously the
Chloe
could never hope to venture down such a constricted passage – but there was room yet for the cutters to continue. And surely some end – some
answer
– must lie almost within reach now, down that twisting interior. And if it should be so, then the renown that would go to the crews of those boats!

But just when the officers' debate concluded and the order was given to prepare the cutters for launch, there came a sudden rumbling from within the chasm. All eyes turned to it. A sound arose – familiar, and made even ghastlier now by proximity – the rush of wind rising swiftly within the narrow rift, moaning and piping as if from an enormous set of pursed lips.

The waters in the chasm sank away abruptly, only to rise up again as a black wall came roaring out of the interior, a wave fifty feet high, or a hundred, foaming all down its front. It erupted from the rift and collapsed in a white flood that set the
Chloe
bucking at its anchor; then, in a great frothing tide the deluge went rolling away southwards down the channel.

The wind shrieked a last time and died, but for a quarter hour longer the flood continued, a high river flowing through the rift and off down the gulf, before it too dwindled away to an apparent calm.

The launch of the cutters was delayed. The
Chloe
withdrew to a safer distance, and then a watch was set upon the rift, to see if the surge would be repeated.

It was. For some ten hours the ship waited there, observing, and a further three times in those hours the awful whistling arose in the chasm, and first a great wave and then a following flood came rushing out. Between those floods, significantly, the current could be seen to flow
into
the chasm, as if the waters were mounting there, only to be hurled back out again.

That some recurring cataclysm within – or beyond – the rift was the cause, no one doubted, but none could guess what that cataclysm might be. The only clue was that now and then a great rumbling or trembling seemed to shake the ice cliffs that towered all about the ship, making them rain lethal shards of themselves into the sea; and strange shadows pulsated in the dim sky, like immense beasts battling in the clouds.

Finally a fog sank down from above, at which point Captain Vincente had had enough.

There would be no launching of the cutters, he announced. The way forward was too perilous for any craft now, of whatever size. There was no sign anyway that survivors of the missing fleet had come this far – and if they had, and then ventured into the chasm, then they were certainly long since drowned. Nor could the
Chloe
tarry there in the hope of a favourable change in conditions. It was too dangerous, with the cliffs looming so close and liable to drop even larger shards of ice at any time.

No, they would remain only until the fog lifted, and then they would set sail south, and begin the long voyage home to Great Island.

The search for the Lord Designate was over.

Despondency settled upon the crew, a sour mood of hopes cheated. What had happened to their luck, which had brought them so far, and so swiftly? How could the great gulf, in all its wonder and possibility, have led them nowhere, and told them nothing? How could they be denied so cruelly – when they were so close, everyone was certain – to the pole?

But if the disappointment was bitter for all, none felt it as keenly as Dow. After all, the ship's luck was
his
luck, was it not? Hadn't his special fortune blessed the voyage, according to the likes of Alfons? Hadn't the ice albatross summoned him – and so all of them – to the north? But why had it done so, if the voyage was only to end in frustration? And if Dow in fact had no special fortune, then what role could he really claim on the
Chloe?

That was the crux of it. To everyone else their failure simply meant that they must return home in sadness and defeat. But for Dow there was no returning home. For him, the end to the search only raised once more the unresolved question of his future freedom.

Coldly, he forced himself to review his performance
.
What had he achieved, really, on this northern voyage?

Well, he had learned to pilot a cutter during the long-ago drills ordered by Commander Fidel, and had done so competently in the end – but no
more
than competently, in truth. Then he had landed upon Trap Island, where no one had before – but that had been against orders, and anyway, Samson had been in official command that day. And finally Dow had served for many long nights now in the boats out upon the freezing seas, leading the
Chloe
safely through all perils of ice and fog – but once again, only under Samson's command, and anyway, so had nearly thirty other sailors and officers.

So had he done anything of true note, or on his own? From Vincente' s point of view, was there anything that had marked him out as a sailor and seaman that the
Chloe
simply could not afford to lose?

The answer, Dow had to admit, was no.

It was with such uncomfortable conclusions that he went to his cold hammock to sleep, for as long as the fog hung thick and the
Chloe
swung idly at anchor, there was little else to do. But sleep would not come, no matter that Johannes and Nicky were snoring in their own beds, under mounds of blankets. At length Dow rose and donned his anorak, then stole quietly up through the sleeping ship and emerged into the freezing air of the main deck.

As ever, the cold took his breath away – but so did the sight that greeted him. The fog gathered heavy upon the water, but from about the level of the mastheads up it thinned, and rearing above the mist were the ice cliffs, looming as a monstrous amphitheatre all around the ship, roofed by a dome of sky which shimmered green and red, the colours glinting off the ice and making the wraiths of fog glow as they danced overhead. And almost unheard, a subliminal thunder ran on and on … The wild beauty of it twisted Dow's heart. He did not want to give this up; nor any of the amazing things he had seen. But tomorrow they would turn and retreat, and he might never behold such sights again.

His breath crackling in the frigid air, and his feet crunching softly on the frost of the deck, Dow crossed to the railing that faced the dead end of the gulf, and the great rift in the Wall. It was an hour at least since any wave had issued from its mouth, and the chasm was visible through the mists only as a darker line on the cliff face, where no ice glinted.

If only …

If only the voyage could have gone on, if only the gulf had remained open, or if only the captain had dared to launch the cutters into the rift. If only there was still something that Dow could
do,
some decisive action he could take, some claim he could put forth, and so gain control over his own fate.

A shadow moved on the high deck.

Dow turned to see who it might be. There were few enough crewmen about even on the main deck, due to the cold, and Dow had not noticed any officers at all on the high deck. But now a figure was descending the stairs, heavily muffled in arctic gear.

He knew anyway that it was Nell, and in the dreamlike atmosphere of the fog and the darkness he was unsurprised when she came directly to him. Only her eyes were visible within her furred hood – the scars about them faint webs – as she assessed him with a curious intensity.

‘How strange,' she said. ‘I was about to send a midshipman to summon you from below – and yet here you are.'

Dow stared in puzzlement. She wanted to see
him
?

‘Or perhaps it's not so strange. Perhaps it means that I was right to think of you now. And it's better this way, if no one knows …' Better? What was she talking about?

Her abstracted air faded abruptly. She straightened, and then – with a forced effort it seemed – she nodded her head to him in a formal bow. ‘I want to apologise for throwing that glass at you.'

He blinked at her.

‘I mean it, I really do,' she hurried to insist. ‘I was angry that night, that was all. I considered you a lucky fool who'd happened to survive the great whirlpool by accident, and who was being given undeserved acclaim. That was unfair, I know that now. Whatever you are, Dow Amber, you aren't a fool, and you aren't merely lucky.'

He spoke at last, reserved despite her apology, for he did not quite trust it, or her. ‘What am I then?'

She appeared to genuinely consider this, as if the answer mattered. ‘You're someone who
acts,
I think. You have no power or position or knowledge – and yet you
do
things, when others find reasons not to. Like landing on the Trap. I know that was your doing, not Samson's.' She looked away to the Ice Wall and the mystery of the rift. ‘Which only makes it all the more sad that your future will offer you so little chance to ever act again. There'll be no use for you on a floating tomb like the
Twelfth
Kingdom.
But this chasm now – if the captain had only given permission for the boats to enter there, who knows what great discoveries you might have made within.'