The Ice War

by Anders Blixt

  A caravanserai provides many advantages for a person who wants to keep a low profile. All visitors are passers-by, each with his worries. In the common areas you chat about the weather, hear people’s tall tales and listen to the natives’ screechy music, but nobody is nosy. We did not encounter anyone that we could associate with Akhmatov. His plans might have gone awry because of the war or we might have chosen the wrong destination.

  Linda listened for news from the war. Newly-arrived ursines spoke of clashes here and there, but it was hard to get a comprehensive picture – too many rumours, too much speculation. Several Russian outposts appeared to have been attacked, sometimes successfully, sometimes not, but it was impossible to figure how big forces had been involved. However, it was clear that the Russians currently were on the defensive, but that was no surprise. In most of their wars during the last two centuries, they usually had fared badly in the beginning, but when they had assembled a numerical superiority they had taken the war to enemy. In the beginning of the Swedish rebellion, it had looked like the freedom fighters would prevail, but eventually the Russians gained the upper hand.

  Linda was able to make a travel plan with hand-drawn maps from what she found in Gishtir’s small collections of books and from documents shown to her by ursine travellers. These fellows made good impressions, composed and courageous people who knew everything about the ice sheet. Many spoke comprehensible English or German. They were willing provide tips and advice, because they knew it was a matter of life and death.

  On the twelfth day in Gishtir, we compiled a final travel plan: we would head for Zilwerstaad, an outpost controlled by Juliusburg. Our cover story: we were survivors from a civilian juggernaut that had been shot to pieces on the ice sheet by an unidentified military juggernaut.

  In war plans rarely survive the first contact with reality. During the night between the twelfth and the thirteenth day that reality caught up with us.

  Loud knocks of the door tore me out of deep sleep. Several seconds passed before I had gathered my wits and was able to act. Linda looked equally dazed when she sat up in her bed. I grabbed my electric torch from under my pillow.

  Someone started to hammer the door with a fist. “Nister Ghorneraltt, wake ukk! I need to talk to you.” The hoarse bass voice that could not pronounce B, M, and P indicated that the speaker was an ursine male with a poor knowledge of English

  I slid out the warmth of the blankets, put the feet in my boots to shield them from the cold floor, and pulled the door two inches ajar with the safety chain in place. My electric torch revealed a huge dark furry face with hard green eyes and the ursines’ cleft upper lip. Polar goggles rested on his forehead. My nose burned from the acrid stench of the grease that ursines smear into the fur to improve its wind protection factor. Two large-calibre Steyr revolvers and three ursine blades dangled from his belt.

  This bodes ill, I thought. “Sir, who are you?”

  “My name is Vüdras and I carry some important matters to you on my back,” the ursine said.

  He must be using some native idiom, I thought. “I’m listening.”

  “Not here. Let me in so that we can speak packlessly,” he said.

  “No armed strangers in my room,” I said.

  “Kshrêgith!” he rumbled and stomped three feet at the same time. “No time for bickering. Human enemies approaching. We must talk now. Otherwise too late for all.

  I backed into the room. “We’re in a haven.”

  “I think soldiers of the rising sun care little for our customs. I know their ways. They kill when they want,” Vüdras said.

  Japanese in Alba – they fight side by side with Juliusburg – now I understand. I remembered the newspaper reports about the Japanese army’s brutal capture of Manila. Much had been written since the 1920s about Japan’s wars of conquest in Asia, but so far they had stayed out of Alba. I shivered. “Why have you come for me?”

  “Kheterly, man in white clothes, has sent me. You should know who he is,” said Vüdras.

  That must be Peter Lee, I thought and unlatched the security chain. “Please, come in.”

  Vüdras trotted into the room and turned around between our beds to face the door. Linda lit our oil lantern.

  “What do you want?” I asked.

  “Many hundred soldiers coming this way,” he said

  “I know how dangerous that army is. Why do you want to warn us?” I said.

  “Kheterly wants you come with me and my braves to him. He needs your hands,” Vüdras said.

  I do not know the drunkard! I only met him during a journey, I thought. “Why would we help him?”

  “As a favour for saving you from Japanese,” said Vüdras.

  “What kind of help does he need?” I said.

  “He is badly hurt and need help from humans, help we cannot give,” said Vüdras.

  “You’re too vague,” I said.

  “I don’t know everything. Come now with me!” Once again, that triple stomp. “Just one night and day with our ice-buggy.”

  “That’s far away,” I said.

  “Maybe, but safe from Japanese,” he said.

  “Why am I supposed to believe your story?” I said.

  “Do as you wish. If you don’t believe, soon you are dead – or prisoner,” he said.

  For Linda’s sake I must comply. Peter Lee knows that, I thought. “We’ll go with you. Give us a few minutes to pack.”

  While we were completing that task, I asked Linda whether she knew what clan Vüdras belonged to, but she had no idea. “He must be from some pretty faraway place,” she explained.

  Vüdras and his friends had alerted everybody. Visitors and staff were abandoning Gishtir in the dim light from torches and oil lamps. The Japanese would only find an empty shell. Ice-buggies departed in all directions while we were loading our belongings on Vüdras’s vehicle and his friends, a dozen rough-looking black-furred ursines, were keeping a close watch on the surroundings.

  The ensuing journey was as uncomfortable and monotonous as one could expect. The stench of unwashed ursines compounded the misery. I tried to map the course of the four ice-buggies in my head, but soon I concluded that the huge margin of error made the notion pointless.

  We arrived at our destination after sunset: a tall craggy promontory rising from the ice sheet. The ice-buggies drove into a broad cavern. Its interior, lit by electrical lamps, stretched almost three hundred feet into the bedrock with most of the floor covered by ice. Two dozen ice-buggies were parked along the sides. The smoky air smelled of coal and grease. A squad of ursines trotted forward to welcome us. Two escorted Linda and me through winding warm passages to a small window-less room with two bunks and a hot meal on a low table. Their English was limited to phrases like “come along” and “rest here”. We were too exhausted to care; we ate and fell asleep without even talking to one another.

  “Welcome!” Peter Lee reclined on a bed with a mound of pillows behind the back and a brown blanket over the legs. “My apologies for not getting out of bed to greet you, but my leg is ruined.” His face had turned gaunt and tired, his clothes were dirty and unkempt, but his eyes were still sharp. “Breakfast, perhaps?” He gestured toward a stone table with all sorts of ursine delicacies stacked on small plates. “Those sausages are spicy and tasty. There are stools for you behind the table.”

  We were fresh out of bed and Linda had to be as hungry as I was. “Ladies first,” I said and she moved ahead.

  Peter Lee’s room was next to ours. There were no doors in this settlement – it seemed to be a human innovation that did not interest ursines – but a thick curtain covered the entry. We must be in a volcanic area, because the grey-brown rock was warm to the touch. Somebody had painted colourful naïve pictures of the sun and strange animals on the stone surface.

  When Linda had filled her plate, I dealt with the buffet. Peter Lee must have eaten already, because he was merely sipping some hot fennel-smelling beverage from a clay cup. “I’ll dispense
with the introductory small talk, Miss Connor and Mr Bornewald, because we had enough of that on the Lady Margaret. Miss Connor, I think that you are the person you claim to be, but you, Mr Bornewald, are not.”

  I gazed at him while hiding the worries that raced through my mind behind a professional mask.

  Peter Lee continued: “You see, an aristocrat will sooner or later reveal his true class because of his self-assured behaviour. Despite your middle-class disguise in the Lady Margaret, I noticed that you are from a more sophisticated milieu despite your dark skin. I am not such a drunkard that you might have come to believe.” His voice reeked with smugness. “Small slips, like how you handle cutlery at a meal. You are not Dutch. You are an aristocrat from northern Germany or Scandinavia.”

  I did not respond.

  “Who are you, Mr Bornewald? The truth, please,” he said.

  “Why would I answer that question?” I said to buy time. I hated that man for having forced us into his schemes.

  “Lives are at stake now – yours, mine, and hers.” He nodded toward Linda.

  “You’re obviously allied to a major ursine faction,” I said to divert the conversation while I reviewed the new situation. “They picked us up in Gishtir at your orders. You’re no ordinary scholar. Who are you? My question is as justified as yours.”

  “As justified? Well, I saved your lives in Gishtir. You owe me something in return,” he said.

  “You’re surprisingly well-informed about our journey,” I said.

  “Correct, my ursine allies travel to many places. And when they return here, they report what they’ve seen and heard. A few days ago, some young braves came here after spending a night in Gishtir. They told me that they had seen two humans there and when I heard their descriptions I realized that it had to be you. That strengthened my suspicions that you are not what you claim. Mr Bornewald, you’re at a significant disadvantage right now, but if you provide a satisfactory explanation for what you are up to, we might reach a mutually beneficial understanding. Please, no beating around the bush.”

  If he works for a monarch, Linda and I will end up with slit throats in a nearby crevasse. If he works for a republic, collaboration may be possible, I thought. “I don’t serve the emperor, despite my aristocratic heritage,” I said.

  “Nor do I,” said Lee. “We may be fellow travellers after all.”

  “Whose side do you support?” I said. If he works for the rebellion, we have an unsavoury comrade-in-arms.

  “The ursines. The great powers have dealt harshly with the natives in Africa and Asia. I don’t want that to happen in Alba, too,” said Lee.

  For Linda’s safety, I must expose my best card, I thought. “I work for the Nobel Institute.”

  “I’ve heard of that. If you speak the truth, we would become co-belligerents opposing the same enemy. Can you prove it?” he said.

  I went to fetch my backpack from our room and put a few devices on Peter Lee’s brown blanket. He inspected them for a minute or two and handed them back. “I believe you. Only the boffins at Office Z design such stuff.”

  A chilling statement: Office Z was a top secret section that few outsiders had heard of. “Who is your superior?” I asked.

  “I work for the University of Heidelberg and the republican government of Saxony. You’ll have to take my word for it, because I have no proof,” he said.

  I did not care whether this was true or not, because I would not trust him under any circumstance until he had proved otherwise in action. “Why do you need our help?”

  “My leg caught a bullet during my journey across Alba. I can’t walk,” he said.

  “At New Bristol, right?” I said.

  “How do you know?” Lee’s voice turned sharp as a glass shard.

  “I saw it from the observation tower. I had a binocular. There were two snipers, probably the Schnittkes,” I explained.

  Peter Lee sighed. “So, thanks for that piece of information. It won’t help me, but at least I got my suspicions confirmed.” He put his cup to the lips and took a large gulp. “The war has taken an unexpected turn. Japan has entered the fray as an ally to Juliusburg and landed a lot of troops in Alba. Also, in the northern hemisphere, her home fleet has attacked the Russian naval base at Port Arthur and her Korea army marches through Manchuria. Tokyo is fighting on the same side as the European republics.”

  So that’s Terboven’s hidden ace! I thought. The Japanese must have started planning years ago for this operation, because moving troops by air from northeast Asia to Alba require a lot of cloudships. The notion of Juliusburg and Japan fighting on our side revolted me. “If you want to help the ursines, your work is going get a lot harder now,” I said. “The Japanese show no mercy. Remember Manila.”

  Peter Lee nodded. “Yes, we’re in hurry if we want to nip this development in the bud.”

  That’s impossible, I thought. “So what do you want to do?”

  “You two are needed for something that no ursine can do. An expedition to our enemies’ underground secrets,” he said.

  “Do we have the choice to abstain?” Of course not, my question is a mere formality. That man considers us to be his tools, nothing else, I thought.

  “No.” A single word with a dry bureaucratic sound. I expected something more and Lee delivered it after two or three silent seconds, “To late to back down. Now we’ll drive together straight into Tartarus.”

  “Do you trust Lee?” whispered Linda. “I don’t.” She and I sat on my bed with our backs against the warm bedrock. We were waiting for a meeting with some ursine chieftains about Peter Lee’s plans.

  “A third-rate friend – the enemy of our enemies,” I said. “You and I know what that is worth. But we’re riding the tiger.” My voice was low, too. “We’ve got to hang on to survive and jump away when the chance arrives.”

  Linda changed subject: “You – a republican aristocrat? I didn’t know there were such people.”

  “But that’s true. With a pompous surname and everything else. I come from Gothenburg in Sweden, though as a child I lived most of the time in Greifswald in Swedish Pomerania,” I answered.

  “How can a nobleman look the way you do?” she asked.

  “Dark-skinned you mean? Well, my father travelled a lot when he was young, and my mother is from Danish East India.”

  An ursine voice from the corridor interrupted our conversation: “Nister Ghorneraltt, it is tine to sollow with ne.”

  At the rear of the hangar-like cavern in which we had arrived yesterday, the ursines had cut several smaller halls into the bedrock. One, with an ice-covered floor, served as our conference facility. Four European ice vehicles were parked in the middle with ample room around them. It appears that ursines want lots of space when they are indoors, a trait that probably is connected to their inability to stand still for more than a few seconds. During a meeting they walk back and forth and scan the surroundings, but they are still able to register what the speakers say. That habit annoyed me, but I just had to accept it.

  Peter Lee waited for us, huddled under thick blankets in a primitive wheelchair. Its shape and proportions looked odd, so it had probably been built here. Four ursines ambled around him while a few others circled beyond them.

  “My lady, sir, good day,” Lee said in a formal manner with an awkward bow in our direction. Then he switched to an ursine language. He must have been in great pain, because every time he moved his face stiffened.

  After a minute or so, he once again turned his attention to us and said in English: “These ursine gentlemen, Terakh, Trishkin, Khader and Rlishi, are high-ranking leaders among our allies.” I bowed slightly in their direction and they responded by raising their arms. “They are about to hear my proposed action plan and approve it if they are satisfied. Before I start with that, I need to know whether either of you can handle a steam-powered snowcat.”

  “Yes,” said Linda. “Are we talking about that one?” She pointed at a white-painted angular tracked vehicle
with a tall slim smokestack. It was the size of a lorry, though without a flatbed, and its windows were protected by sturdy metal mesh.

  “That’s the one,” said Lee.

  “That’s a Proteo 2G built in Turin, Italy in 1934. The engine provides about fifty horsepower, but you have shovel coal all the time. Is it in a good condition?” Linda directed the question at everyone present with the self-confidence of an expert.

  “Yes, nadan.” An ursine mechanic with oil stains along the arms did his best to speak English. “Đe haz dun a lot to retair it.”

  Linda switched to an ursine language and started a rapid conversation with the mechanic. After a few minutes she addressed Peter Lee in English: “Good that you have converted it to oil instead of coal. That electrical fuel pump will save me a lot of work. And there will be less smoke.” She walked up the vehicle, opened its hood and started checking the machinery.

  Meanwhile Lee addressed me: “Mr Bornewald, are you able to drive it, too?”

  “Probably, but expect the trip to be a bit jerky,” I said. Actually I felt more optimistic than I pretended.

  Lee turned to the ursines. After talking with them for a few minutes, he interrupted Linda’s inspection. “Miss Connor, Mr Bornewald, please come along to the order room.”

  That turned out to be a plain room with a blackboard and a stand for maps. Lee assumed command and switched between English and an ursine tongue during the lecture: “This is Post 14, a Russian outpost, located at a rock island.” Lee’s metal pointer touched a spot on a regional map of the ice sheet. “The ice runs almost all the way to the mountainside, just like here. The Russians have been working inside that peak for more than two hundred days. It took some time for their activities to catch our attention, but when our lads reported a visit by senior dignitaries from the tsar’s colonial administration, we realized that something important is going on. There are caves inside and that is remarkable by itself. This is a bedrock mountain and caves don’t form there through geological processes. Whatever the Russians have found, we’ll deprive them of it. That’s why we need human participants, because ursines are not good at climbing vertical surfaces. My two allies will stand in for me, because my leg is a mess.” Lee made a gesture in our direction.