"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 ups
urge. 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.
Elof and Roc tore free their bonds and scrambled around as one, to see what had happened behind them. The sheer force of it dazed them. The vast slab had split upon impact, and two huge ice-islands slowly bobbed and spun in the bay, with a million lesser shards and fragments of ice around them. But beyond the mouth of the bay a great fan of sea lay black and bare, scoured almost clear of ice by the passing of the wave.
"The Ekwesh…" croaked Roc, as the turmoil subsided.
Elof spat out a mouthful of seawater and coughed violently before he could speak. "Under the slab. Dashed to nothing, as we would have been, but for the vane. Little their masters cared, if only they could strike at us!" He looked around suddenly. "But the other two? Were they…"
"'Fraid not!" said Roc unhappily, and pointed. Beyond the dark gap in the drift-ice dark masts lifted like leafless trees against the greying sky. "And they're not running, neither."
"They'd time to see it coming," said Elof grimly. "Lowered sails and rode it out with sweeps… and now they'll row for us, fast…" He looked despairingly up at the sails, but they hung soaked and limp in the sluggish air, gaff and boom swaying idly. "Not so much as a breath…" He stumbled wearily up, rubbing where the ropes had bruised him, and clambered unsteadily to the stern-post. The vane still hung in its socket, but it too was swaying idly, and swung to the touch of his finger, one side to the other without the least resistance. Calm settled like smoked glass upon the windless sea.
Roc's voice came to him distant, distorted, as if through deep waters. "Can't it do something? See the speed of the bastards! They'll be upon us in minutes now!"
Elof shook his head. "Nothing… nothing… no wind to work upon. The virtue I set on it was to summon, to direct… But it can't summon what's not there anymore!" In dazed despair he hung on the vane, feeling the swirl of the pattern, the sense of drifting down into green depths and the vast black shadow-shape below, nearer, even nearer, the two faint gleams, dim points of light…
He stiffened suddenly, gasping, clutching the vane In shaking hands as if he feared to release it. "Is it a wind?" cried Roc, and then "No, man, What're you about?" Elof heard him, but it was too late; he had wrenched the vane from its socket, held it a moment to his brow, then brandished it high over his head.
"Since the wind fails you," he breathed, "show us what else your craft may command!" And with a great effort he hurled the precious thing from him, straight into the path of the oncoming ships. Far out over the waters it spun; Roc flinched, as if he half expected that calm surface to shatter like some vast dark mirror. But the black waters swallowed it with scarcely a ripple, and he cursed. Elof hardly noticed; his work was fixed still in his mind's eye, falling, sinking, drifting down into the green cold depths, down to a rising shadow…
The ripples faded, the mirror lay calm once more, open to the cutting onslaught of the black bows. For the pace of two slow breaths it seemed that nothing would happen; then, around the spot where the vane had vanished, a little spurt of bubbles pattered up. Elof swallowed, painfully, for his throat and mouth were suddenly very dry. Another breath, and Roc leaned forward suddenly, eyes narrowing in alarm. In the same spot, but with scarcely a ripple, something else broke the surface, something small, rounded and glistening that gleamed dark as the sea around it, and yet was no bubble. Slowly, steadily, it arose and grew to a tapering pointed shape, and Elof was momentarily filled with disappointment; that sleek black head, as large, perhaps, as a horse's, must surely belong to one of the very large seals they had seen, curious at all the disturbance above. Then the head lifted, clouds of steam jetting from narrow nostrils; the eyes blinked open, and with a shudder of fascinated horror Elof saw they were like no ordinary seal's, set small on each side of the head. These were immense, with a green and catlike glint in them, and they were set as forward as his own. This way and that they turned as the huge head swung, water streaming from a crest of coarse fur that ran like the main of a horse down the narrow column of neck beneath. Still it rose out of that eerie calm like some vision of nightmare emerging from a mirror, higher and higher on a neck of impossible length; it seemed it would never stop, as if the legends were true that made it an endless serpent engirdling the earth. Yet it was no serpent; beneath the water a wide whale-like body was becoming visible, and around it in shadowy outline four limbs like the flippers of a seal, and a long and tapering tail. When the rolling curve of the back at last broke surface, that head stood taller than the Sea/ire's mast; higher even than the mastheads of the Ekwesh warships it rose, swan-like and graceful, immensely majestic, infinitely terrible. Their rowing slowed, the long sweeps clashing in disorder as the rowers turned to stare at what they saw mirrored in the calm water; then the sweeps dug hard into the water, their fierce onrush faltered. They glided to a halt and hung there, rocking gently.
"What is it?" gasped Roc. "Not…"
Elof clamped a hand over his mouth. "Not a sound!" he hissed into his ear. "Don't attract his attention! Aye, the Sea Devourer it must be - Amicac himself!"
He sensed Roc stiffen, and felt little better himself, overshadowed by that long head, those enigmatic eyes. It was a sight to make the heart shrink, to bring home to him how different was the order of the ocean, a monster harbouring monsters. A good seventy strides in length were those great war craft, but the creature before them was at least as long and many times outweighed them. It floated now between them and the cutter, motionless save for the briefest flick of limbs beneath the surface, and the watchful swing of the great head. Elof held his breath. He could not guess what it would do next, which way it would turn, but his foes, who had seen this creature summoned, could not know that. Yet they were not craven, the Ekwesh; their codes demanded they avenge defeats and deaths. After that first breathless pause a sudden defiant howl rang out; upon the leading ship a wolf-clad shaman sprang forward to prance and posture at this new apparition, while behind him came the bark of harsh commands, the creak of catapult winches, the rumble of feet upon the decks as the archers ran up to form battle ranks. The drums rolled, the oars swept down in a single surging thrust that sent the black ships lancing forward; the icy air seemed to crack like a whip, and volleys of arrows came sailing up from their decks like leaves in a sudden gust. Against ships or men that hail of shafts might have told terribly, but the Devourer was greater than the greatest whale, and that massive back bore thick hide or even bony armour; what few arrows struck served only to sting and annoy him. His head tossed back, he gave a single barking snarl, and the long neck snaked down so swiftly that the arrows seemed slow in their flight. Against the length of him his head seemed small, but it was three times longer than any great cat's, four times that of a wolf; along the decks it raked with jaws agape, and strewed the helpless archers like chaff. One, too slow or too bold to leap for his life, was seized and borne bodily into the air. Robes streamed and fluttered about those jaws; it was a chieftain or shaman who threshed in their grip. C
atapult bolts sang up from the decks; they were harder to aim, but by skill or chance one struck high on that narrow throat and sank deep into its iron muscles.
The reeking jaws parted, their prey dropped to crash unheeded upon the deck, and a whistling cry of pain split the air. Then it was as if the whole sea around the Devourer boiled up, lashed into foam by limbs and tail as the vast beast gathered itself up and hurled itself forward, to strike like a true serpent at its tormentors. The vast flippers slammed down upon the decking before it, their blunt claws tearing at the planking, and then amid a tumult of howls and screams, like a seal mounting an ice-flow, the Devourer hauled its great bulk bodily out of the sea and onto the deck. The mast was brushed aside like a twig, the timbers creaked and shivered, and beneath that vast weight the whole great ship was flattened down into the water, Elof saw the terrified oarsmen springing from their benches, but the sea was already flooding across the high gunwales, and they were swept away in foaming turmoil, or plucked from handholds by the water that fountained up through the shattered deck as the hull timbers gave. The broken ship lurched, twisted and canted over, and together with its destroyer it sank from sight; the sea swirled in where it had been, setting the drift-ice bobbing and spinning, and only a few scraps of wreckage spun above its grave.
For long moments nothing more happened, and Elof guessed that the Destroyer had dived deep, as might a whale, seeking refuge in the depths from tormenting humans. The last warship, it seemed, had as urgent an aim, its oars beat the water with frenzied strength, and the sleek craft came scything on across its fellow's tomb. Elof and Roc watched helplessly as the Ekwesh bore down on their cutter; bent the man-eaters might be on escape, but they would not miss the chance to sink their prey first. Then a shadow passed once more over Elof's mind; staring down into the black ocean he saw what must happen, and could barely restrain himself from crying a warning to his enemy, so near and certain was their doom. Up from below surged that vast body, and the Ekwesh warship seemed to explode as if a volcano had erupted under its keel. They saw the hull shoot up under the impact and crash down upon its side in a wall of spray, and then all was hidden from them in roaring havoc. This way and that flew sweeps and timbers and the helpless shapes of men amid a seething cauldron of sea, stirred up by limbs and flippers that lashed and pounded the black hull to fragments. Into the black ocean plummeted its crew like ants spilled from a nest, and like ants the shrieking swimmers died beneath the crashing impact of those broad limbs, or were plucked up by the jaws that plunged and darted this way and that; though perhaps the few who were left to kick and struggle a few seconds longer were the worse off, for the cold took them more slowly, and the waters swallowed them living and aware.
The Hammer of the Sun Page 10
