Ta-hoding was already heading for the helmdeck. Cranes and lift cables were disengaged in a flurry of commands. Slanderscree mates and harbor pilots of Moulokin took up positions in the bow. Sails began to billow, a blossoming of blue-green and gray, flowers of speed.
Word of the Poyolavomaar attack spread rapidly among the icerigger’s crew and those of the towing vessels. The Moulokinese hurried their last-minute preparations. They wanted to return as quickly as possible, to help defend their city.
Settled in arrowhead formation around the Slanderscree’s bow, the seven tow rafts exchanged signals and orders. Sailors stationed astern of each turned single-minded attention to the braces where the thick cables ran out to the icerigger. Pika-pina cables had never been known to snap, but they’d never been employed to pull so massive an object as the Slanderscree. If one did break, given the tension that would exist between dead weight and tug, the flying cable could decapitate an unwary sailor. Those stationed to watch the cable braces were all volunteers.
Ethan worried more about the effect of the plateau winds on the huge icerigger. Even with her sails furled, if the winds obtained a grip on her, she could be smashed against a down canyon wall.
Raft by raft, each of the towing craft let out its own sails, adjusting position to catch the gentle breezes sweeping down Moulokin’s protected canyon. The cables grew taut, hummed. There was the sound of pottery breaking beneath a heavy weight which muffled even as it broke. The icerigger ponderously started forward, sliding out of drydock as neatly as any clean birth.
Ta-hoding was in constant verbal communication with relay mates stationed along the length of the ship. Shouts rang out constantly, darting from towing raft to icerigger to raft as all concerned fought to maintain equal tension on all cables. It seemed an impossible task, but the Moulokinese proved themselves as skilled on the ships they built as they were in the shipyards. The cables thrummed and sang of uneven pressures, but none snapped—not even during the most dangerous maneuver, when the seven towing craft turned up the main canyon and the forceful interior winds struck them and their massive ward.
Tacking as one, they pulled the great raft steadily inland.
Ethan rushed to the portside, found to his relief that the second wall which barred passage downcanyon showed no sign of warlike activity. That meant the Poyos were still being stopped before the first wall. So far, the confidence K’ferr of Moulokin had displayed earlier seemed justified.
Great walls of dark stone drew close beside them, the roofless hallway of some ancient cataclysm. At times Ethan found himself impatient for more speed, for their progress seemed abysmally slow. It was not a journey that could be hurried, however. Not when seven ships had to maneuver as one.
On the fifth day, the ever-present walls began to shrink. Small side canyons, some hanging above ice-level, began to break the cliff edges. Some were smooth as they vanished into the plateau, while others dropped in steps similar to Moulokin’s topography. Their own little canyon-born zephyrs contributed to the difficulty of maneuvering.
Soon they were passing between cliff walls no more than twenty meters high. The lookouts on the Slanderscree’s fore and mainmasts could see over them and study the terrain beyond. They reported seeing only yellowish, wind-swept, inhospitable near-desert.
On the frigid morn of the eleventh day, when the canyon had ceased to be a canyon but was instead a river of ice bordered by gently sloping banks, they entered an area where clouds of steam and mist blotted out vision for all but a few meters in any direction. When they slid close to the banks, those on board the rafts could make out thick, towering trees whose crowns were lost in gray water-down, boles more massive than the largest growing in Moulokin’s side canyon.
Before long a cry came from the lead raft in the triangular formation. They had reached the end of the frozen river. Cables were cast off and neatly coiled aboard the Slanderscree. Finally the last was disengaged and all seven tow rafts had moved carefully downriver from the icerigger.
The wind here was dispersed, indecisive. Quickly, Ta-holding had sail put on as the huge raft slid slowly but aimlessly on the ice. Orders were given, spars adjusted. A sound new to the ears of Tran sailors penetrated the mists: a deep, impressive rumbling. The icerigger was now traveling on land.
It stopped.
Lookouts forward reported that the first two sets of wheels were resting on a gentle beach of gravel and grass-covered rock. Ta-hoding considered. Obviously, they had to put on more sail. But he was still leery of sailing on naked soil. Williams, who was standing nearby on the helmdeck, did his best to reassure him.
The plump captain remained skeptical. “I would rather have good, solid ice beneath my runners than,” he made it sound obscene, “bare ground. Still, we must gain more wind.”
Additional sail was unfurled, positioned. The strongest, steadiest breeze came from the north. Ta-hoding ordered the necessary shift in sail position. Fresh sheets of woven pika-pina billowed out to match the captain’s belly. An incredible creaking and groaning rose from beneath the raft’s hull, startling unprepared sailors who were used to traveling across silent, smooth ice. The crunching of stone under massive wheels was a disturbing new sound to them. It reminded some of a ship’s timbers breaking loose.
However unaesthetically, the third, fourth, fifth and eventually the sixth set of wheels moved inland, followed finally by the single steering wheel. There was a modest cheer of appreciation from the watching Moulokinese on the rafts astern as the Slanderscree rumbled awkwardly but steadily upslope.
Gaining confidence, Ta-hoding ordered a few additional small sails unfurled. The icerigger picked up speed. There was a cry and gesture of fond departing from the bow of the nearest tow ship. Ethan and Hunnar returned minister Mirmib’s arm action.
“I wonder if we shall see them again,” said Hunnar fondly.
“Not if, but when,” Ethan commented with surprising confidence. “Sofold and Moulokin now belong to the same confederation, the union of ice, remember?”
Hunnar looked abashed. “New ideas take root slowly on my world, friend Ethan. It is still difficult for me to comprehend the meaning of so many new and strange things, all of which have taken place since your arrival in Sofold such a short time ago. I suspect that as we have more and more contact with your people, with the peoples of other worlds, events will change still more rapidly for me and for all Tran.”
“I expect they will, Hunnar,” Ethan confessed. The knight’s words raised conflicting emotions within him. Had they chosen the right course in trying to rush these people into a galactic government? In their own way the Tran struck him as being reasonably happy with their place in the universe. Who could predict what influence some of the less lofty elements of humanx civilization would have on this proud, self-sufficient people? Despite all safeguards, such elements would find their way onto Tran-ky-ky as surely as any parasite infects an unwary host.
And what was the justification for their actions thus far? The threat of a little commercial exploitation on one corner of a vast, frozen globe? Such exploitation would, if unchecked, eventually smother the hopes of this world of course, but still…
Then he thought back to the killings, to all the horrors he’d heard about the nomadic hordes of Tran-ky-ky. Of the depredations they made on innocent city-folk, of whole cities wiped out and the intermittent rule of true barbarism on this planet. He considered the individual cruelties practiced by hereditary rulers unfit for their positions of power, Tran leaders the like of Tonx Ghin Rakossa of Poyolavomaar and Calonnin Ro-Vijar of Arsudun.