If they missed the gap at this speed, they wouldn’t have to worry about the rifs any longer. The icerigger would smash itself against the ridge. There wouldn’t even be smears left of her crew. Even if they struck the gap but angled too far to one side or the other, jagged ice boulders could tear away stays, bring down the masts on top of them, or even shatter the sides of the hull.
There was black overhead and white rushing toward them; Windborne particles of ice and snow whizzed like projectiles from a million tiny guns across his mask, making vision difficult. By then the roar of the storm seemed to originate somewhere between his ears, numbing his senses, playing tricks with perception. Hadn’t they reached the ridge yet?
A chalcedony tunnel obliterated much of the blackness as the Slanderscree entered the gap. He braced himself for the ultimate impact as did everyone else on board. There was a horrible crunching noise. Whether the ship had struck the jagged walls speeding past on either side or had been struck by lightning, he couldn’t tell. The icerigger rocked crazily for a second.
Then they were through, the white ramparts gone, clear ice vanishing beneath the ship’s runners. Fighting the wind, he looked astern and saw the pressure ridge from its southern side, receding behind them. His gaze went forward, toward what he knew he would see. Somewhere, the fates had determined the Slanderscree should not travel with a bowsprit. Otherwise the icerigger seemed to have handled the impact well. Masts had not fallen, no crevasse had appeared in the deck.
Something irritated his mouth. He parted his lips, sucked in salty fluid. With his face shielded from the wind, he nudged open the mask. Icy-gloved fingers probed at bare skin, felt the flow of blood from his nose. It did not feel broken. It felt worse, and the blood was making a mess inside his suit.
Looking around he saw other members of the crew picking themselves off the deck where they’d fallen or been thrown by the impact of smashing through the remaining ice blocks. How those aloft had kept from being thrown from the rigging was a miracle he chose not to question.
Sails straining to hold to the spars, spars to masts, masts creaking in their deck sockets, deck groaning on its five runners, and crew straining in prayer to whatever personal gods they worshipped that the whole should not return to the parts of its sum, the Slanderscree flew southward at a hundred sixty kilometers per hour.
A Tran knelt in the gap in the pressure ridge. Furry fingers collected several nonwhite, nonice fragments. They were mostly slim and irregular. One pricked his finger and he cursed. He had enough anyway. Raising his arms parallel to the ice, he tacked his way back to the group of Tran waiting impatiently at the far end of the passage.
There he dropped his arms, closed his dan, and slid to a neat stop. It would not do to stumble or fall before so many important ones.
“These were a few of what I found, sirs. There are many other such fragments at the far end of this passageway.”
Tonx Ghin Rakossa, Landgrave of Poyolavomaar, accepted the several bits of shattered wood. He studied them, avoiding the one which had pierced the scout’s finger.
“Many such fragments? Enough to comprise part of a large ship?”
“No, sire. I saw no such large amounts of debris.”
Rakossa threw the splinters angrily to the ice. “They have escaped the rifs, then.” He gently fingered the bandage over his left eye. “Though not undamaged.”
“The five grooves of their runners continue southward outside this passage, sire,” the scout added helpfully, currying favor.
Rakossa ignored him. “Would that we knew the extent of their damage. Yet it took them time to make their way through this ridge.” The masses of ice nearby showed how the icerigger had made that passage, and Rakossa marveled greedily at the power of a ship that could move such weight.
“They are delayed.” He knelt, brushed at the powdery ice lining the runner grooves. “This has not blown away completely, even with the force of the rifs. They are very near, and yet will now widen the distance between us once more.”
“Nevertheless, we will catch them, your highness,” said Calonnin Ro-Vijar.
“Yes. We will catch them, and the mocking strumpet as well.”
Rakossa turned to gaze at the ships waiting behind them. They were a reassuring sight, with sails half-furled and pennants flying. They pursued with a small forest of masts—those that hadn’t been torn away by the storm. And they had caught only the fringe of the rifs.
“But we will catch them with thirty ships instead of thirty-five. Three are so badly damaged their captains inform me they will never sail again. Two are nearly as bad off, but they can limp home with the crews of the abandoned three. Five ships lost already, Ro-Vijar.”
“All the reason more to seek revenge upon those responsible, my friend,” responded the Landgrave of Arsudun, trying to turn calamity to mental advantage. It was Rakossa’s emotional state that was critical, not the condition of his ships.
“Perhaps.” Rakossa spoke thoughtfully. “We waste time here.” One foot descended, three chiv sectioned a fragment of wood the scout had recovered and marked the ice beneath.
Two weeks after leaving the pressure ridge, the Slanderscree came upon the plateau. A hundred meters of sheer cliff, it stretched off to east and west in unbroken basaltic glory. It was a barren-looking place, devoid of rim-clinging trees such as decorated the cliffs of Arsudun.
Teeliam was brought on deck, shown the impenetrable ramparts reaching across the ice ocean. “There lies Moulokin,” she said with evident satisfaction.
“Moulokin? Where?” Hunnar didn’t try to hide his sarcasm. “I see naught but ice, rock and sky. In that order, without exception.”
“Nevertheless, this is the region of Moulokin.”
“And where is the fabled city?”
“Could it be atop the plateau somewhere, Teeliam?” asked Ethan softly.
“No, that is absurd.” The former royal consort of Poyolavomaar took little notice of Ethan’s courtesy, as opposed to Hunnar’s skepticism. “How could a state famed for the ships it builds be located many kijat above the ocean?”
“The thought had occured to me,” said Ethan drily. “I was just pointing out that I see no sign of any city.”
“Moulokin is here somewhere.” Teeliam’s conviction was unfazed. She faced the stone barrier. “Somewhere within this land.”
Ethan and Hunnar exchanged glances. Then Ethan asked, “Which way? We must be off in our calculations.”
Teeliam considered stories and rumors and legends. “’Tis told the sun sets late in Moulokin,” she muttered to herself. Then she pointed westward. “I would suppose that way.”
“As you will.” Hunnar executed a Tran shrug. “’Tis this way or that, as well one as the other.” He relayed instructions to a mate, who conveyed them to another, who shouted them to the helmdeck.
The icerigger turned laboriously to the west, commenced making difficult progress into the wind.
Despite Ta-hoding’s best efforts, their progress was slow. Cliffs grew near, then receded as the Slanderscree tacked away from them, though never so far that land was out of sight. It wouldn’t do to slip past their destination while making distance into the wind.
Occasionally there would be a sharp dip in the crest of the plateau where a hanging valley emerged. When the icerigger was on a starboard tack, the lookout in the mainmast basket could see into such gaps in the rock wall. Some held trees that apparently shunned the top of the plateau itself, but none showed any sign of habitation, not of the fabled ship building city of Moulokin or of a single Tran hermit.