“Moulokin is real.” Teeliam refused to be dissuaded.
“You have been there?” asked Hunnar.
“No,” she said, suddenly subdued.
“Do you know anyone who has been there?”
“Not of myself. I do know of some who say they have traded with some who have been there.” Hunnar made a disgusted sound. “Its direction is known,” she said defiantly. “Moulokin must be more powerful even than Poyolavomaar, for it is said never to have been sacked by a horde.”
“Absurdities, friend Ethan,” Hunnar added gently. “The richer a city, the more attention it would draw from the ice nomads. They would band together temporarily until no city could stand against them. Not Poyolavomaar, not Arsudun before your people granted it protection, not Wannome my own. They could not withstand greater and greater attacks forever. The more attacks a state withstands, the wealthier it grows, and the wealthier it becomes, the larger and more frequent the attacks it invites.
“’Tis kind of you to try and help us, Teeliam, but Moulokin can not lend us the help it does not have.”
“What do you propose we do instead?” Elfa asked, challenging him.
Hunnar seemed a bit taken aback by the vehemence of her query. “There should be other states we can try, elsewhere.”
“In lieu of the most powerful?” She turned that uncomfortable feline stare on Ethan. He turned to Teeliam.
“How sure are you of this Moulokin?”
“Myths do not have directions.” She raised a furry arm, pointed just south of the bow. “There lies Moulokin, if it lies anywhere. Does it not behoove us to try for it?”
September watched a distant gutorrbyn glide by, eying them hungrily. “We can do both. If Moulokin exists, we’ll find her. If she doesn’t, we might as well search south for our next potential ally as any other direction.”
“I agree,” said Ethan. He looked back at Teeliam. “One more question, though. Two hundred satch is a long way from Poyolavomaar. Long, but not impossible. If Moulokin is so worth visiting, why hasn’t anyone from your city gone there?”
“It is a dangerous journey.” She paused, then added more quietly. “I would not hide that from you.”
“All journeys across the ice are dangerous,” Hunnar cut in emphatically. “How so is it known dangerous to Moulokin?”
“It is told that devils work between Poyolavomaar and Moulokin.”
“You’ve seen devils before.” Ethan patted the beamer clipped to his waist. “You’ve seen what our beamers can do. We can kill any devils.”
“Perhaps, but you cannot kill the sea.”
“What?” He frowned.
“These are sujoc devils who are invisible. They too live mostly in Hell. But between here and Moulokin they cavort close to the surface. Where they do, they bend the ocean.” She looked frightened now, for all her hard-shelled bravado.
“That’s not possible,” said Hunnar.
“That is what is rumored.”
Elfa looked accusingly at Hunnar. “If Moulokin be real and not a myth, why should not a bent ocean be equally real?”
Deductive logic was not Sir Hunnar’s strong point. “I do not know,” he replied angrily, “but the ocean cannot bend.”
“We’ll find out, because I guess that’s the way we’ll keep going,” said Ethan.
“As always, Sir Ethan, you choose boldness over caution.” She all but purred at him. Hunnar growled noticeably and stalked away sternward.
The good knight took it personally every time Elfa supported one of Ethan’s decisions over one of his own. But perhaps this time the redbearded warrior was right.
Ethan found himself puzzling over Teeliam’s words as he relayed the course to Ta-hoding, found himself repeating her comments over and over again in his mind as he hunted for a flaw in his translation.
Of course there was no such thing as a bent ocean, anymore than there were devils who caused it. But he had seen a “devil” and fought it.
Suppose this other myth also had basis in fact?
Hunnar lay in the sun out on the new bowsprit, tracing lines in the wood with one claw while contemplating the ice shushing past below. Days had passed since they’d swung around to follow the girl Teeliam’s imaginary course toward its imaginary destination. The sun was not yet much above the horizon. Early morning cold chilled even a Tran.
Light turned gray, solemn ice to a more cheerful white as the sun rose. His attention lay on the sun’s ascension only vaguely. Nor was he thinking of the strange mission to which his off-world friends had converted him.
Instead, his thoughts were for the daughter of the Right Torsk Kurdagh-Vlata, Landgrave and True Protector of Wannome and Sofold. On the way the wind rippled her fur, so thick and smooth. On the noble gray down of her brow, which crested above eyes capable of more expression and emotion than most women’s lips.
Inside himself he knew well that the friend Ethan meant no harm toward his desires and surely harbored no intention toward the lady. Certainly Ethan had voiced such of himself, many times. Yet it seemed that the two of them were thrown into argument often and that the tiny but incredibly heavy (solid bones, the wizard Eer-Meesach had said, not hollow like the Tran) human won all of them when Hunnar wished most to impress his lady. And Elfa would end up congratulating and cooing approval of the hairless dwarf instead of himself.
More than all the glory of battle, riches of trade, or the accolades of the Tran he led, he craved a few words of praise from her.
The grooves in the wood grew deeper with his thoughts. What was she trying to do by favoring the alien over him? Perhaps Ethan’s disclaimers were spoken honestly, but could Elfa have some unnatural attraction to a male of another race? To a being who expressed his hatred of fighting whenever given the chance, who without his artificial chiv-skates would fall flat on the ice like a newborn cub?
He growled under his breath. No matter how he approached the situation, no matter the angle or forethought, he could not see the childishly simple explanation.
Double eyelids flicking, he found himself staring curiously at the horizon. An unusual ridging serrated the far-distant surface. They must be nearing another island. He performed some slow calculation in his head. It could not be Moulokin, if Teeliam’s estimate of two hundred satch were correct. They were still too far away by a third. Yet whatever was there grew larger as he stared. Another island, and the morning light glowed most oddly bright on its slopes.
Elfa faded from his mind, far enough anyway for him to concentrate ahead. It was as if the rocks and soil of the growing isle were polished like a mirror. Sunlight shattered crazily from it as from jewels in the Landgrave’s formal scepter. In this equatorial region snow was usually absent from surface lands. It had been so in Poyolavomaar, but did not seem to be that way here.
There was no sign of an end to the island as the icerigger raced nearer. Indeed, the ocean appeared to blend without a break into the island itself. A few minutes later his eyes widened in sudden realization of what was about to happen. With no land expected, the lookouts had grown lax. But now the one in the foremast basket saw the approaching mass and roared a warning to the ship.
“Come down speed… collision course!”
Hunnar was already chivaning back the portside icepath toward the helmdeck, yelling instructions as he went. The rigging began to quiver like a spider’s web as sailors swarmed aloft.
One sailor lay asleep across the path. Hunnar bent, kicked, and soared over the prone figure to land on the icepath beyond.