Beneath the lowering sky, from which a little light snow fluttered, dogs barked, men shouted, and the indefinable smell of shipping mingled with the more easily distinguished smells of oils and skins and whale flesh.
Some distance off along the line a whaler was crewing up. The whaling men generally kept themselves apart from other sailors, disdaining their company, and the crews of the trading vessels were relieved that they did so; for both the North Ice and the South Ice whalers were more than boisterous in their methods of entertaining themselves. They were nearly all large men, swaggering along with their ten-foot harpoons on their shoulders, careless of where they swung them. They wore full, thick beards; their hair was also thick and much longer than the norm. It was often, like their beards, plaited and held in place by whale grease, fashioned into strange barbaric styles. Their furs were rich, of a kind normally worn only by aristocrats, for whale men could afford anything they pleased to purchase if they were successful; but the furs were stained and worn casually. Arflane had been a whaling skipper through much of his career, and felt a comradeship for these coarse-voiced North Ice whaling men as they swung aboard their ship.
Aside from the few whalers, which were mainly three-masted barks or barkentines, there were all kinds of boats and ships on the oil-slippery ice. There were the little yachts and ketches used for work around the dock, and brigs, brigantines, two-mast two-topsail schooners, cutters, and sloops. Most of the trading ships were three-mast square-rigged ships, but there was a fair scattering of two-mast brigs and two-mast schooners. Their colours for the most part were dull weather-beaten browns, blacks, greens.
The hunting ships of the whaling men were invariably black-hulled, stained by the blood of generations of slaughtered land whales.
Arflane could now make out the names of the nearer craft. He recognized most of them without needing to read the characters carved into their sides. A heavy three-master, the Land Whale, was nearest him; it was from the city of Djobhabn, southernmost of the Eight, and had a strong resemblance to the one-time sea mammal which, many centuries earlier, had left the oceans as the ice had gradually covered them, returning once again to the land it had left in favour of the sea. The Land Whale was heavy and powerful, with a broad prow that tapered gradually towards the stern. Her runners were short and she squatted on them, close to the ice.
A two-masted brig, the Heurfrast, named for the Ice Mother’s mythical son, lay nearby, unloading a cargo of sealskins and bear pelts, evidently just back from a successful hunting expedition. Another two-master - a brigantine - was taking on tubs of whale oil, preparatory, Arflane guessed, to making a trading voyage among the other cities; this was the Good Wind, christened in the hope that the name would bring luck to the ship. Arflane knew her for an unreliable vessel, ironically subject to getting herself becalmed at crucial times; she had had many owners. Other two-masted brigs and two- or three-masted schooners, as well as barks, were there, and Arflane knew every ship by its name; he could see the barkentine Katarina Ulsenn and its sister ships, the Nastasya Ulsenn and the Ingrid Ulsenn, all owned by the powerful Ulsenn family of Friesgalt and named after Ulsenn matrons. There was the Brershillian square-rigger, the Leaper, and another three-master from Brershill, the slender hunting bark Bear Scenter. Two trading brigs, small and bulky, were from Chadersgalt, the city closest to Brershill, and others were from Djobhabn, Abersgalt, Fyorsgep, and Keltshill, the rest of the Eight Cities.
The whale-hunting craft lay away from the main gathering of ships. They were battered-looking vessels, with a spirit of pride and defiance about them. Traditionally, whaling ships were called by paradoxical names, and Arflane recognized whalers called Sweet Girl, Truelove, Smiling Lady, Gentle Touch, Soft Heart, Kindness, and similar names, while others were called Good Fortune, Hopeful, Lucky Lance, and the like. From them came the reek of their trade: blood and animal flesh.
Also to one side, but at the other end of the line to the whaling ships, stood the ice clippers, their masts towering well above those of all the surrounding craft, their whole appearance one of cruel arrogance. These were the fast-running, slim-prowed, and stately queens of the plateau that, at their best, could travel at more than twice the speed of any other ship. Their hulls, supported on slender runners, dwarfed everything nearby, and from their decks one could look down on the poop of any other ship.
Tallest and most graceful of all these four-masted clippers was the principal ship of the Friesgaltian fleet, the Ice Spirit, with her sails trimly furled and every inch of her gleaming with polished bone, fibreglass, soft gold, silver, copper, and even iron. An elegant craft, with very clean lines, she would have surprised her ancient designer if he could have seen her now, for she bore embellishments.
Her bow, bowsprit, and forecastle were decorated with the huge elongated skulls of the adapted sperm whale. The beaklike mouths bristled with savage teeth, grinning out disdainfully on the other shipping, witnesses to the skill, bravery, and power of the ship’s owners, the Rorsefne family. Though she was known as a schooner, the Ice Spirit was really a square-rigged bark in the old terminology of the sea. Originally all the big clippers had been fore-and-aft schooner-rigged, but this rig had been proven impracticable soon after ice navigation had become fully understood and square rig had been substituted; but the old name of schooner had stuck. The Rorsefne flag flew from above her royals; all four flags were large. Painted in black, white, gold, and red by some half-barbaric artist, the Rorsefne standard showed the symbolic white hands of the Ice Mother, flanked by a bear and a whale, symbols of courage and vitality, while cupped in the hands was an ice ship. A grandiose flag, thought Arflane, hefting his near-dead burden on his back and skimming closer to the great concourse of craft.
As Arflane approached the ships, the schooner he had noticed preparing to leave let go its moorings and its huge sails bulged as the wind filled them. Only the mainsail and two forestay sails had been unfurled, enough to take the ship out slowly until it was clear of the others.
It turned into the wind and slid gracefully towards him on its great runners. He stopped and saluted cheerfully as the ship sailed by. It was the Snow Girl out of Brershill. The runners squealed on the smooth ice as the helmsman swung his wheel and steered a course between the few irregularities worn by the constant passage of ships. One or two of the sailors recognized him and waved back from where they hung in the rigging, but most were busy with the sails. Through the clear, freezing air, Arflane heard the voice of the skipper shouting his orders into a megaphone. Then the ship had passed him, letting down more sail and gathering speed.
Arflane felt a pang as he turned and watched the ship skim over the ice towards the east. It was a good craft, one he would be pleased to command. The wind caught more sail and the Snow Girl leaped suddenly, like an animal. Startled by the sudden burst of speed, the black and white snow-kites that had been circling above her squawked wildly and flapped upwards before diving back to the main gathering of ships to drift expectantly above them or perch in the top trees in the hope of snatching titbits of whale meat or seal blubber from the carcasses being unloaded.
Arflane dug his lances deep into the ice and pushed his overloaded skis forward, sliding now between the lines and hulls of the ships, avoiding the curious sailors who glanced at him as they worked, and making his way towards the high wall of ice blocks sheltering the city-crevasse of Friesgalt.
At the main gate, which was barely large enough to let through a sledge, a guard stood squarely in the entrance, an arrow nocked to his ivory bow. The guard was a fair-haired youngster with his fur hood flung back from his head and an anxious expression on his face which made Arflane believe that the lad had only recently been appointed to guard the gate.
‘You are not of Friesgalt and you are plainly not a trader from the ships,’ said the youth. ‘What do you want?’
‘I carry your Lord Rorsefne on my back,’ said Arflane. ‘Where shall I take him?’
‘The Lord Rorsefne!’ The g
uard stepped forward, lowering his bow and pulling back the headpiece of the sleeping sack so that he could make out the face of Arflane’s burden. ‘Are there no others? Is he dead?’
‘Almost.’
‘They left months ago - on a secret expedition. Where did you find him?’
‘A day’s journey or so east of here.’ Arflane loosened the straps and began lowering the old man to the ice. ‘I’ll leave him with you.’
The young man looked hesitant and then said: ‘No -stay until my relief arrives. He is due now. You must tell all you know. They might want to send out a rescue party.’
‘I can’t help them,’ Arflane said impatiently.
‘Please stay - just to tell them exactly how you found him. It will be easier for me.’
Arflane shrugged. ‘There is nothing to tell.’ He bent and began dragging the body inside the gate. ‘But I’ll wait, if you like, until they give me back my sleeping sack.’
Beyond the gate was a second wall of ice blocks, at chest height. Peering over it, Arflane saw the steep path that led down to the first level of the city. There were other levels at intervals, going down as far as the eye could see. On the far side of the crevasse Arflane made out some of the doorways and windows of the residential levels. Many of them were embellished with ornate carvings and bas-reliefs chiselled from the living rock. More elaborate than any cave-dwellings of millennia ago, these troglodytic chambers had from the outside much of the appearance of the first permanent shelters mankind’s ancestors had possessed. The reversion to this mode of existence had been made necessary centuries earlier when it had become impossible to build surface houses as the temperature decreased and the level of the ice rose. The first crevasse-dwellers had shown forethought in anticipating the conditions to come and had built their living quarters as far below ground as possible in order to retain as much heat as they could. These same men had built the ice ships, knowing that, with the impossibility of sustaining supplies of fuel, these were the most practical form of transportation.
Arflane could now see the young guard’s relief on the nearside ramp leading to the second level to the top. He was dressed in white bearskins and armed with a bow and a quiver of arrows. He toiled up the slope in the spiked boots that it was best to wear when ascending or descending the levels, for there was only a single leather rope to stop a man from falling off the comparatively narrow ramp into the gorge.
When the relief came the young guard explained what had happened. The relief, an old man with an expressionless face, nodded and went to take up his position on the gate.
Arflane squatted and unlaced his skis while the young guard fetched him a pair of spiked boots. When Arflane had got these on, they lifted the faintly stirring bundle between them and began carefully to descend the ramp.
The light from the surface grew fainter as they descended, passing a number of men and women busy with trade goods being taken to the surface and supplies of food and hides being brought down. Some of the people realized the identity of the Lord Rorsefne. Arflane and the guard refused to answer their incredulous and anxious questions but stumbled on into the ever-increasing darkness.
It took a long time to get the Lord Rorsefne to a level lying midway on the face of the crevasse. The level was lighted dimly by bulbs powered by the same source that heated the residential sections of the cavern city. This source lay at the very bottom of the crevasse and was regarded, even by the myth-mocking Friesgaltian aristocracy, with superstition. To the ice-dwellers, cold was the natural condition of everything and heat was an evil necessity for their survival, but it did not make it any the less unnatural. In the Ice Mother’s land there was no heat and none was needed to sustain the eternal life of all those who joined her when they died and became cold. Heat could destroy the ice, and this was sure proof of its evil. Down at the bottom of the crevasse, the heat, it was rumoured, reached an impossible temperature and it was here that those who had offended the Ice Mother went in spirit after they had died.
The Lord Rorsefne’s family inhabited a whole level of the city on both sides of the crevasse. A bridge spanned the gorge and the two men had to cross it to reach the main chambers of the Rorsefne household. The bridge, made of hide, swayed and sagged as they crossed. Waiting for them on the other side was a square-faced middle-aged man in the yellow indoor livery of the Rorsefnes.
‘What have you got there?’ he asked impatiently, thinking that Arflane and the guard probably were traders trying to sell something.
‘Your master,’ Arflane said with a slight smile. He had the satisfaction of seeing the servant’s face fall as he recognized the half-hidden features of the man in the sleeping sack.
Hurriedly, the servants helped them through a low door which had the Rorsefne arms carved into the rock above it. They went through two more doors before reaching the entrance hall.
The big hall was well lit by light tubes embedded in the wall. It was overheated also, and Arflane began to sweat in mental and physical discomfort. He pushed back his hood and loosened the thongs of his coat. The hall was richly furnished; Arflane had seen nothing like it. Painted hangings of the softest leather covered the rock walls; and even here, in the entrance hall, there were chairs made of wood, some with upholstery of real cloth. Arflane had only seen sailcloth and one wooden artifact in his life. Leather, no matter how finely it could be tanned, was never so delicate as the silk and linen he looked at now. It was hundreds of years old, preserved in the cold of the storechambers, no doubt, and must date back to a time before his ancestors had come to live in the ravines of the south, when there was still vegetation on the land and not just in the warm ponds and the ocean of blasphemous legend. Arflane knew that the world, like the stars and the moon, was comprised almost wholly of ice and that one day at the will of the Ice Mother even the warm ponds and the rock-caverns that sustained animal and human life would be turned into the ice which was the natural state of all matter.
The yellow-clad servant had disappeared but now returned with a man almost as tall as Arflane. He was thin-faced, with pursed lips and pale blue eyes. His skin was white, as if it had never been exposed above ground, and he wore a wine-red jacket and tight black trousers of soft leather. His clothing seemed effete to Arflane.
He stopped near the unconscious body of Rorsefne and looked down at it thoughtfully; and then he raised his head and glanced distastefully at Arflane and the guard.
‘Very well,’ he said. ‘You may go.’
The man could not help his voice - perhaps not his tone either - but both irritated Arflane. He turned to leave. He had expected, without desiring it, at least some formal statement of thanks.
‘Not you, stranger,’ said the tall man. ‘I meant the guard.’
The guard left and Arflane watched the servants carry the old man away. He said: ‘I’d like my sleeping sack back later,’ then looked into the face of the tall man.
‘How is the Lord Rorsefne?’ said the other distantly.
‘Dying, perhaps. Another would be - but he could live. He’ll lose some fingers and toes at the very least.’
Expressionlessly, the other man nodded. ‘I am Janek Ulsenn,’ he said, ‘the Lord Rorsefne’s son-in-law. Naturally we are grateful to you. How did you find the Lord?’
Arflane explained briefly.
Ulsenn frowned. ‘He told you nothing else?’
‘It’s a marvel he had the strength to tell me as much.’ Arflane could have liked the old man, but he knew he could never like Ulsenn.
‘Indeed?’ Ulsenn thought for a moment. ‘Well, I will see you have your reward. A thousand good bearskins should satisfy you, eh?’
It was a fortune.
‘I helped the old man because I admired his courage,’ Arflane said brusquely. ‘I do not want your skins.’
Ulsenn seemed momentarily surprised. ‘What do you want? I see you’re,’ he paused, ‘from another city. You are not a nobleman. What . . . ?’ He was plainly puzzled. ‘It is unheard of that a
man - without a code - would bother to do what you did. Even one of us would hesitate to save a stranger.’ His final sentence held a note of belligerence, as if he resented the idea of a foreigner and commoner making the gesture Arflane had made; as if selfless action were the prerogative of the rich and powerful.
Arflane shrugged. ‘I liked the old man’s courage.’ He made to leave, but as he did so a door opened on his right and a black-haired woman wearing a heavy dress of fawn and blue entered the hall. Her pale face was long and firm-jawed, and she walked with natural grace. Her hair flowed over her shoulders, and she had gold-flecked brown eyes. She glanced at Ulsenn with a slight interrogatory frown.
Arflane inclined his head slightly and reached for the door handle.
The woman’s voice was soft, perhaps a trifle hesitant. ‘Are you the man who saved my father’s life?’
Unwillingly, Arflane turned back and stood facing her with his legs spread apart as if on the deck of a ship. ‘I am, madam - if he survives,’ he said shortly.
‘This is my wife,’ said Ulsenn with equally poor grace.
She smiled pleasantly. ‘He wanted me to thank you and wants to express his gratitude himself when he feels stronger. He would like you to stay here until then - as his guest.’
Arflane had not looked directly at her until now and when he raised his head to stare for a moment into her golden eyes she appeared to give a faint start, but at once was composed again.
‘Thank you,’ he said, looking with some amusement in Ulsenn’s direction, ‘but your husband might not feel so hospitable.’
Ulsenn’s wife gave her husband a glance of vexed surprise. Either she was genuinely upset by Ulsenn’s treatment of Arflane, or she was acting for Arflane’s benefit. If she were acting, Arflane was still at a loss to understand her motives; for all he knew, she was merely using this opportunity to embarrass her husband in front of a stranger of lower rank than himself.