by Laurence Yep
Bayang bowed politely. “With all due respect, Your Highness, is there any way we could go on ahead?”
The prince rolled his eyes skyward meaningfully as a Mountie passed overhead on an urgent mission to the city. Two more were coming from the city on their own errands. “I know you are in a hurry, but you would be noticed if you flew now.”
Roxanna hooked her arm through Leech’s. “Lord Leech, let me take you in my sled. And on the way, you can tell me all about your adventures.”
Though she wanted to scream with impatience, Scirye said, “Yes, tell us, Lord Leech, about your adventures.” The Sogdian girl’s pushiness was rubbing her the wrong way.
Prince Tarkhun nodded to his guests. “Then I leave you to my daughter’s capable hands. I just hope she doesn’t wear out your ears with all her questions.”
As he walked toward his caravan, several large wind sleds with Mounties on them were setting out, probably to pick up the prisoners. Scirye hoped the freebooters went to prison for a long time.
Roxanna gripped Leech tightly as she led them away. The Sogdian girl did not bother to check to see if the others were following.
“She’s awfully pushy,” Scirye whispered to Kles. “The sooner we get rid of her, the better.”
“I think you just resent having to take orders from someone like yourself,” the griffin commented.
“I am not bossy,” Scirye hissed.
“You could have fooled me,” Kles said with infuriating calm.
“You don’t know a thing.” Fuming, she stamped along through the snow.
“I lead such a humdrum life up here, Lord Leech, that I thirst for excitement. Simply thirst.” Roxanna gave Leech a friendly little shake.
Leech’s cheeks blushed a bright red. “It’s just plain Leech actually,” he said to Roxanna.
Koko shuddered. “Believe me, kiddo, adventures aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.” He ticked off the items on his fingers. “So far, we’ve nearly been turned into hamburger, barbecued, and drowned. I’d rather be bored to death any day.”
Roxanna waved her free hand breezily. “Your deeds have indeed proved you’re a lord.”
Leech told her about the attack at the museum by Badik the dragon and several monsters, the theft of the ring, and the death of his friend Primo. “We were friends as soon as we met,” Leech said. “I felt like I’d known him all my life.”
“How terrible to lose him,” Roxanna sympathized.
“Scirye’s mother got hurt and her sister died too,” Leech said.
Roxanna glanced over her shoulder at the other girl. “I’m sorry.”
“Roland will be sorrier when we catch him,” Leech insisted.
“Roland?” Roxanna was as worried at the mention of the rich man as her father had been. “Roland? What does he have to do with it?”
“Badik works for Roland,” Leech said. “And he’s probably behind the attacks by the freebooters.”
“I’d like to get my hands on him myself,” Roxanna said grimly. “His freebooters have kept everyone bottled up in the city. There are shortages of everything from food to fuel.”
Her mouth dropped open when Leech went on to stowing away on the clipper to Hawaii, meeting Pele, traveling through the volcano, and then confronting Roland only to have him steal Pele’s necklace and trap them. When Leech and his friends had helped her escape, she’d summoned the Cloud Folk to weave the flying wing for them and then Naue the wind to carry it to here.
“And then we saw your father was in trouble, so all of us”—Leech made a point of gesturing to his friends—“came to the rescue.”
“You are too modest, Lord Leech,” Roxanna said.
She stopped by a little wind sled the same size as the one Prince Tarkhun had used to pick them up. But the mast had been taken down and lay horizontally, tied to one side, and the sail rolled into a neat cylinder and stowed away.
A pair of musk oxen were hitched to the bow, with a short drover holding their reins. The shaggy beasts stood stoically, their breath rising in streamers from their nostrils and twining around the tips of their curved horns.
Curious, Koko strolled over toward them. “They look like hairy sofas with legs. And we’ll be staring at their backsides. Not my idea of a scenic view.”
The drover said something and Roxanna translated. “‘Please, Master Koko. Don’t get so close.’”
“Yikes!” With a yelp, Koko hopped backward away from the gnashing teeth of one of the oxen. “I thought he’d be a vegetarian.”
The drover laughed loudly and then spoke some more.
“The drover said that Old Pushtar bites,” Roxanna explained. “And he’s trying to keep his weight down.”
Bayang beckoned impatiently to Koko. “If you’re finished feeding yourself to Old Pushtar, come on.”
As they climbed onto the sled with Roxanna, she pointed to a deep cleft ahead of them in the hills. “Beyond that pass is Nova Hafnia. The sails can’t take the caravan any farther, so Father will hire oxen and haul the sleds the last few miles. And we’ll do the same.”
She said something to the drover, who clicked his tongue to the musk oxen. He had no whip but only a small stick with a tuft of fur on one end. He used it now to tickle their muzzles.
With loud snorts that sent steam spiraling upward like locomotives, the oxen lurched forward. The bells on the great team’s harness chimed all along the red-leather straps and then the sled moved forward.
“He’s a Laplander,” Roxanna whispered. “They’re said to have a magical way with animals. His people come from a long line of herders. The Danes brought them in centuries ago to tend the huge bands of reindeer here.”
They passed by a corral for a small reindeer herd as well as the fenced-in kennels for dogsled teams. Next to the corral was a huge pen with posts as thick as telephone poles. From it, more Laplanders were leading teams of oxen down to the caravan, and their own drover spoke cheerfully to them in their own tongue.
“The pass hasn’t seen so much business in a long time,” Roxanna observed. “Father’s caravan was one of the first to make a round-trip, so the city was getting short on everything. It’s almost like we’ve been under siege.”
At first the slope was so gentle that the musk oxen had no trouble, but as the path steepened they had to dig in their hooves and really pull, snorting and tossing their heads as if they would rather have thrown off the harness and rid themselves of the weight.
As they plodded along, Scirye missed the speed that the sails gave a wind sled. Suddenly, the sled’s runners bit deep through the slush into a layer of ice below and the sled began to slide backward.
The drover was everywhere, tickling, scolding, urging his oxen forward, and Scirye and everyone else got off and pushed from behind until they were on a firm patch again and could climb back on.
Just before the mouth of the pass, Roxanna explained softly, “We have to be quiet from now on because of the danger of avalanches. The city tries to take care of any heavy accumulation of snow, but it’s impossible to handle all of it promptly.”
“Why is everyone looking at me?” Koko whispered in a grieved tone.
“Because the warning applies to you especially,” Bayang snapped in a low voice.
The pass was a narrow valley where dark rock formed the steep sides. Snow pillowed on the ledges and crevices, but mostly it was dark stone walls that seemed to swallow up the moonlight. The wind forced into such a narrow channel whistled past them loudly.
As they entered the pass, Scirye felt as if she were entering a strange, hostile place where the rocks resented all life, where the earth was just as it had been when it and the stones had been the masters of the world. Knolls seemed like the heads of brooding giants, ready to crush them at the first excuse.
Salene the Moon was just rising when they reached the mouth of the pass. Roxanna pointed proudly. “Nova Hafnia. We call it the City of Diamonds.”
Scirye gasped when she saw the city filli
ng the little bowl between the mountains and the sea. City of Diamonds was a good name for Roxanna’s home, for it did indeed glitter like a jeweled necklace laid on white velvet.
Every building was covered with icicles—belts of them fringed the roof edges and windowsills and band after band of icicles wound around the walls in several layers. With each frozen spike Mao’s silvery rays sparkled and danced.
Glowing rectangles winked at them cheerfully from where the light found its way around the edges of the shutters and through the layers of ice to the cold night outside. And the hard angles of walls had been rounded by a coat of frozen water so that the smaller cottages seemed more like the crystal mounds where fairy folk lived. Scirye wasn’t surprised when she heard music floating up faintly.
Bayang squinted as she tried to make out the shape of the buildings better under their coating of ice. “I’d almost swear someone took an old town from Denmark and plopped it down right here.”
“Nova Hafnia was founded by the great explorer Jens Munck, so most of Old Town dates back to his time in the seventeenth century,” Roxanna said proudly, and then proceeded to point out the landmarks in Old Town. The walls and gates curtaining Old Town were of a rich brick red. Nearest the docks rose the tall watchtower, Jenstårn, which thrust into the sky like a spear, and Rosenborg Castle looked more like a fort than the governor’s palace.
Old Town had grown up in the bowl-shaped area formed between the curving mountains and the sea, covering the flatlands. In the last century, New Town had sprung up outside the walls, spreading up over the foothills. The houses and other buildings here were of wood and stone and would not have looked out of place in San Francisco. There were compact houses, larger blocks of tenements, inns, and restaurants. Even some large hotels were going up to cater to the cruise ships that would come through when the Arctic Ocean thawed.
“It’s lovely,” Scirye said to Roxanna.
“Thank you.” Roxanna beamed as happily as if she had built the city herself and pointed toward the broad white plain stretching beyond the city. “In the spring, the sea melts and the ships can come through. And planes land on pontoons. But in the winter, the planes switch to skis. Usually there are lots more aircraft.”
“The freebooters must have been intercepting them,” Bayang said grimly.
Scirye followed Roxanna’s pointing finger and drew in her breath sharply. Out on the frozen ocean were three small planes with long skis instead of landing wheels. She would have liked to have smashed them all. Overhead Mounties were circling about on their owls as they kept watch from the air.
“Which is the Ford Trimotor?” Scirye asked Bayang.
The disguised dragon frowned. “It’s not there. The most any airplane there has is two engines.”
“I think,” Scirye said, turning to her friends in disappointment, “that we better go down to the docks and see if we can find out what happened.”
And the others nodded.
9
Scirye
The last part of the journey was the most difficult because Roxanna’s sled had to be lowered down the seaward slope, which was steeper than the landward side and even more prone to avalanches.
The oxen were unhitched from the wind sled and led back to other side of the hills. Roxanna’s sled was then attached to a capstan by cables thicker than Scirye’s legs. A team of trolls and giants strained against the capstan as they lowered the sled.
There was a separate path for the sled’s passengers with huge flagstones, but since they were icy and it was twilight, the humans had to walk down with care.
“The days are so short and cold in the winter,” Roxanna explained, “that everyone’s glad when spring finally comes. I just wished springtime lasted longer.”
“Doesn’t the opposite get a little hard, though?” Bayang asked. “I mean, the sun’s out for almost twenty-four hours during the summer.”
“It barely sets,” Roxanna agreed. “And that’s hard too. But the farms can grow huge crops with that much sunlight.” She waved a hand behind her. “Part of the plain will be plowed up when enough soil thaws out.”
Prince Tarkhun must have sent word to the city, because wheeled wagons, carts, and even huge drays were lumbering through the snowy streets to pick up the cargo for their impatient owners, but at the moment the result was a monumental traffic jam. And yet even though the vehicles were tangled together, everyone seemed to be in a cheerful mood at the pending arrival of the caravan.
Roxanna frowned. “Excuse me, Lord Leech. I know you’re in a hurry, but if I don’t set things right, everything will back up and then it will be chaos.” Walking over to the nearest wagon, she climbed up the wheel and stood on the seat next to the surprised driver.
Shouting to get the wagoneers’ attention, she began to direct them where to park their wagons and wait.
Roxanna carried herself with an easy authority that Scirye envied, expecting her orders to be carried out quickly and without question—which the tough-looking wagoneers did with respectful nods.
Clearly, she had handled this situation before, re-arranging the cursing drivers and their stubborn teams as calmly as another child might shift blocks around.
There were also several large drays with Sogdians at the reins. They were to take some of the cargo back to the caravanserai to be sold, picked up later, or shipped on by other means. These men she told to store her sled away with the other sleds.
Her task done, Roxanna jumped back down and returned to lead them down the slope through the slush.
“Who lives there?” Koko asked, pointing below them to a tavern doorway that was almost ten feet high. Lanterns had been lit against the growing gloom.
“That place caters to the frost giants,” Roxanna explained. “The Danes brought in different races to work the mines.”
At that moment, a tall creature stepped from the tavern into the street. His blond hair had been plaited in two braids as thick as ropes that hung down his back and his beard had been twined into a dozen little tails and tied with ribbons. He was dressed in regular boots and jacket, but on his head was a horned helmet.
He waved to Roxanna and said in stiffly accented English, “Caravan come?”
Roxanna smiled back. “Come to the caravanserai tomorrow and you’ll have lots to buy.”
He grinned broadly and punched his fists up as if in victory. “Good, good!”
A few buildings down was another tavern. It was the same height as the other, but the doorway was barely four feet high. Several squat gnomes lounged outside. Their noses were bulbous and they hardly had any torso but seemed to be all arms and legs. They seemed just as excited as the giant as they called something to her and Roxanna replied in what Scirye assumed was Gnomish.
As they walked down the broad avenue, people came out of their shops and houses. Apparently, it had been a while since a caravan had made it to the city, so Prince Tarkhun had caused quite a stir. The prospective buyers eagerly asked Roxanna when her father would be ready to sell his wares.
“Tomorrow,” was Roxanna’s stock reply in English and also Danish, French, German, Trollese, and several other tongues—the reply fitting the language in which the question was couched. It seemed as if the whole world wanted to shop at Prince Tarkhun’s the next morning.
But if she looked as thin as the humans, Scirye would have been eager to buy food too. And she could understand the carnival-like mood that seemed to be filling the city.
Roxanna was always friendly and polite, never letting anyone stop them for long, but their progress slowed as they left the straight streets of the newer part of Nova Hafnia and passed through the gates into Old Town. Here the houses were jammed together and their upper stories jutted out over the paths, reducing the sky to a narrow strip between the roofs of the opposite buildings.
The roads, too, did not run straight but zigged and zagged and curled like the path of a wriggling snake. Intersections came up unexpectedly and side roads twisted off in surprisin
g directions. They had barely gone three hundred yards before the companions were hopelessly lost.
“Watch out for falling icicles,” Roxanna warned.
Scirye scanned overhead. The icicles had looked so lovely from a distance, but now that they were this close she could see that they were as large and as sharp as daggers. She would not like having one of those drop on her from thirty feet.
Koko covered his head with a hand. “I wish I’d packed a helmet.”
However, Roxanna, who had grown up in the labyrinth, knew exactly where she was and where she was going. The problem was that the lanes became so narrow that it was difficult to step around inquiring folk.
They emerged from an alley and into a street that ran down to the docks themselves. They could see dozens of snow-covered de-masted ships, hauled up out of the water, resting in the shipyards with icicles hanging from the railings like frozen giant whales.
Before them stretched the glistening sheet of ice that was the bay. Hoping that she had made a mistake before, Scirye scanned the parked airplanes, but there was none with three motors.
However, there were a half-dozen Mounties on foot interrogating anyone on the dock. Two more patrolled up in the air on owls. Scirye assumed that Captain Lefevre’s messenger had arrived with the warning.
Bayang gestured Scirye and the others into a doorway. “We’ll wait here,” Bayang said to Roxanna, “until you find out what happened.”
She nodded at the wisdom of this. “Yes, we don’t want to call any attention to you.”
Leech fretted. “We should have flown after Roland after all.”
“And have every Mountie trying to grab us as soon as they saw us flying?” Bayang squinted at the dockside as Roxanna went over to a gnome. “No, Prince Tarkhun was right. We’ll wait until dark to sneak away. Don’t worry. We’ll pick up Roland’s trail again.”
