With a crackling that sounded like a headstone being uprooted, the block came free of the ridge, following in the wake of the icerigger. It was several minutes before Ta-hoding could order sails furled and spars reset to cut the Slanderscree’s mounting speed.
Humans and Tran skated and chivaned to examine the enormous frozen mass. White and irregular, it rose as high as the underside of the raft.
Williams was gazing at the extensive gap in the pressure ridge. Ethan was reminded of a tooth knocked from its socket.
“Better than we could have hoped for,” the teacher was saying. “In pulling free this block from the bottom we dislodged a not inconsiderable quantity of ice above.”
Indeed, several other massive white monoliths had fallen onto the flat ocean surface. They could be towed aside far more easily than the first block.
The Tran worked cheerfully at looping and securing the cables around the next chunk, now at least half certain that the ridge was not the road traveled by Jhojoog Kahspen, Daemon Lord of the open ocean, as some particularly imaginative members of the crew had first tremblingly suggested.
XI
SEVERAL DAYS LATER A path wide enough for the Slanderscree had been nearly completed through the ridge. A few last blocks of intervening ice were all that kept them from the open ocean beyond.
Ta-hoding worried some about his ship and the strain the constant break and tow was placing on her superstructure, but he’d gained confidence as block after multiton block was torn free and pulled clear without any visible damage to the raft’s stern.
Three or four more tows of comparatively modest-sized chunks and they would be through. Cables were being readied for securing to one of those last blocks when work was interrupted by a frantic cry from the mainmast lookout.
“Rifs! North northwest!”
Working with the cable-setting crew, Ethan heard that threatening word too. Like his nonhuman companions, he stopped working as if stabbed, whirled and glanced in the direction from which the danger approached.
They’d encountered a rifs only once before, one time too often. A rifs was a meteorological anomaly peculiar to Tran-ky-ky, the manifestation of extreme weather forming over an ocean that was cold and solid instead of liquidly warm. September had described it as a linear hurricane, packing winds of over two hundred kph force.
Moving awkwardly on his skates, September followed the rest of the cable crew back down the path through the ridge. By the time he emerged, a black line made innocuous by distance was visible off to the northwest. As he watched, it grew larger, overwhelming the horizon.
That black line was the aerial equivalent of a tidal bore, a sooty sky-swelling wall of wind compressed like an atmospheric sponge. It could scour the ice clear of life save for tightly rooted vegetation such as the pika-pedan or massive life-forms such as the stavanzers.
Neither well-rooted nor massive, the Slanderscree had to do what all other life-forms did before a rifs—run.
“’Twill never be cleared in time,” complained one of the anxious Tran standing by the stern port runner of the ship.
Ethan slipped free of his skates, mounted the nearest boarding ladder. He found Ta-hoding, Elfa and Hunnar in animated discussion on the helmdeck. Williams and September were nowhere around.
“We must loose the cables and run ’til the rifs blows itself out,” Elfa was saying.
“A rifs can blow for many days. We waste time,” Hunnar argued.
She sneered at him. “Better to waste days than the ship.”
“Perhaps,” put in Ta-hoding, desirous of serving as peacemaker while keeping one eye on the rapidly nearing storm, “But I think Sir Hunnar has another suggestion.”
“I do.” The knight gestured back aft. “We must move off, gather our speed, and try to break through.”
“’Twill be the ship that breaks, not the ice.” She noticed Ethan watching nearby, changed her tone completely. “What do you say, Sir Ethan?”
Abruptly he was aware of many eyes on him, sailors and captain, squires and knights. They did not cease their frenzied work, but they listened for his reply nonetheless.
Good. They’d all hear. “I think we should do,” he said loudly enough for everyone to understand clearly, “whatever Sir Hunnar decides. The rifs is a foe to be fought, and in matters of battle his judgment is always best.”
Hunnar stared at him for a long moment, mumbled almost as an afterthought, “We have no choice. We must try to break through.”
“’Tis settled, then!” Ta-hoding looked relieved, set about giving the appropriate orders. The crowd which had edged its way to the helmdeck scattered to stations. Hunnar and Ethan continued to eye each other for several minutes, until Hunnar half-smiled and broke for his own favored position.
Was he grateful—or angry at some suspected condescension? Ethan had no time to reflect on the knight’s state of mind. There were cables to stow, lines to straighten, sailors to reassure.
Commands reverberated around the deck. The icerigger commenced making a wide circle. Their course would take them in a curve eastward, then north, into the front wave of the storm. With its wind at their backs, they would hurtle back toward the nearly completed gap in the ridge and smash through the remaining ice blocks.
There were other scenarios, other possibilities, which Ethan preferred not to consider.
As raftsmanship, the plan made excellent sense. Emotionally, it did not, for the storm seemed to reach out for them as they neared the halfway point of the circle.
So close to the bore front the sky was a vast sheet of black cast iron looming ominously on their left, ready to tumble down and smash soft wood and softer creatures to multicolored smears against the ocean. If they had miscalculated and the rifs struck the ship broadside, it would surely capsize her, splintering masts, cabins, deck and crew.
Like gold thread in a velvet cape, lightning found its way downward through the boiling darkness. Rumbles and crashes, the war cries of inimical weather reached the crew and impelled them to faster work, stronger efforts to bring the ship around.
The first touch of the rifs fumbled for the ship. Not violent yet, but not like the steady, friendly every-day winds of Tran-ky-ky. No longer did they blow steadily to the west. Disturbed zephyrs slid in confusion around Ethan. Idle gusts scudded dismally past him, twisting and darting in and upon themselves like frightened rabbits hunting for a hidey-hole.
“We’re going to cut it mighty close, feller-me-lad,” said September in as grim a voice as Ethan had ever heard him use. The giant had both arms wrapped tightly around a pair of mainstays. Ethan chose the more solid wooden railing, locking a leg around one supportive post, arms around the railing top.
As the Slanderscree came full around onto a southerly heading, the rifs, in a desperate grab for its prey, jumped onto them.
The sky turned from blue to black. Thunder battered ears curved and pointed. Great shafts of electric death hunted for the fleeing raft. They reminded Ethan of nothing so much as the pulpy, luminous cyclops-creature they’d fought below the surface when escaping from the dungeon of Poyolavomaar. Glowing eye, gigantic black mouth filled with jagged teeth. Only now the teeth were kilometers high and yellow-gold instead of transparent.
Ethan’s gaze turned with difficulty from the nearing ice ridge to the helmdeck. Looking more like a chunk of gray granite than their fat captain, Ta-hoding stood braced against the center of the huge wheel, struggling to aid his two helmsmen. They were already racing along at close to a hundred twenty kph, he guessed. Another blast of the full body of the rifs struck the ship, punching the sails still further outward and accelerating the craft’s motion.