Ulsenn sighed. ‘Nonsense. He must stay if your father desires it. The Lord Rorsefne, after all, is head of the house. I’ll have Onvald bring him something.’
‘Perhaps our guest would prefer to eat with us,’ she said sharply. There was definitely animosity between the two.
‘Ah yes,’ muttered Ulsenn bleakly.
Wearying of this, Arflane said with as much politeness as he could muster, ‘With your permission I’ll eat at a traders’ lodging and rest there, too. I have heard you have a good travellers’ hostel on the sixteenth level.’ The guard had told him that as they had passed the place earlier.
She said quietly, ‘Please stay with us. After what - ‘
Arflane bowed and again looked directly at her, trying to judge her sincerity. This woman was not of the same stuff as her husband, he decided. She resembled her father in features to some extent and he thought he saw the qualities in her that he had admired in the old man; but he would not stay now.
She avoided his glance. ‘Very well. What name shall be asked at the traveller’s lodging?’
‘Captain Konrad Arflane,’ he said gruffly, as if reluctantly confiding a secret, ‘of Brershill. Ice Mother protect you.’
Then, with a curt nod to them both, he left the hall, passing through the triple doors and slamming the last heavily and fiercely behind him.
3 The Ice Spirit
Against his normal instincts, Konrad Arflane decided to wait in Friesgalt until the old man could talk to him. He was not sure why he waited; if asked, he would have said it was because he did not want to lose a good sleeping sack and besides, he had nothing better to do. He would not have admitted that it was Ulrica Ulsenn who kept him in the city.
He spent most of his time wandering around on the surface among the big ships. He deliberately did not call at the Rorsefne household, being too stubborn. He waited for them to contact him.
In spite of his strong dislike of the man, Arflane thought he understood Janek Ulsenn better than other Friesgaltians he had encountered. Ulsenn was not typical of the modern aristocracy of Freisgalt, who belittled the rigid and haughty code of their ancestors. In the other poorer cities the old traditions were still respected, though the merchant princes there had never had the power of families like the Rorsefnes and Ulsenns. Arflane could admire Ulsenn at least for refusing to soften his attitudes. In that respect he and Ulsenn had something in common. Arflane hated the signs of gradual change in his environment that he had half-consciously noted. Thinking was looser; the softening of the harsh but sensible laws of survival in the icelands was even illustrated by his own recent action in helping the old man. Only disaster could come of this trend towards decadence, and more like Ulsenn were needed in positions of influence where they could stop the gradual rejection of traditional social behaviour, traditional religion, and traditional thinking.
There was no other way to ensure their ability to stay alive in an environment where animal life was not meant to exist. Let the rot set in, Arflane thought, and the Ice Mother would lose no time in sweeping away the last surviving members of the race.
It was a sign of the times that Arflane had become something of a hero in the city. A century earlier they would have sneered at his weakness. Now they congratulated him and he in turn despised them, understanding that they patronized him as they might have honoured a brave animal, that they had contempt for his values and, indeed, his very poverty. He wandered alone, his face stern, his manner surly, avoiding everyone and knowing without caring that he was reinforcing their opinion that all not of Friesgalt were uncouth and barbaric.
On the third day of his stay he went to look, with grudging admiration, at the Ice Spirit.
As he came up to the ship, ducking under her taut mooring lines, someone shouted down at him.
‘Captain Arflane!’
He looked up reluctantly. A fair, bearded face peered over the rail. ‘Would you like to come aboard and look around the ship, sire?’
Arflane shook his head; but a leather ladder was already bouncing down the side, its bottom striking the ice near his feet. He frowned, desiring no unnecessary involvement with the Friesgaltians, but deeply curious to set foot on the deck of a vessel that was almost a myth in the icelands.
He made up his mind quickly, grasped the ladder, and began to climb towards the ivory-inlaid rail far above.
Swinging his leg over the rail, he was greeted with a smile by the bearded man, dressed in a rich jerkin of white bear cub’s fur and tight, grey sealskin trousers, almost a uniform among Friesgaltian ships’ officers.
‘I thought you might like to inspect the ship, captain, as
a fellow sailor.’ The man’s smile was frank and his tone did not have the hint of condescension Arflane half expected. ‘My name’s Petchnyoff, second officer of the Ice Spirit.’ He was a comparatively young man for a second officer. His beard and hair were soft and blond, tending to give him a foolish look, but his voice was strong and steady. ‘Can I show you around?’
‘Thanks,’ said Arflane. ‘Shouldn’t you ask your captain first?’ He, when commanding his own ship, was firm about such courtesies.
Petchnyoff smiled. ‘The Ice Spirit has no captain, as such. She’s captained by the Lord Rorsefne under normal conditions, or by someone he has appointed when he’s unable to be aboard. In your case, I’m sure he’d want me to show you over the ship.’
Arflane disapproved of this system, which he had heard about; in his opinion a ship should have a permanent captain, a man who spent most of his life aboard her. It was the only way to get the full feel of a ship and learn what she could do and what she could not.
The ship had three decks, main, middle, and poop, each of diminishing area, with the two upper decks aft of them as they stood there. The decks were of pitted fibreglass, like the hull, and spread with ground-up bone to give the feet better purchase. Most of the ship’s superstructure was of the same fibreglass, worn, scratched, and battered from countless voyages over countless years. Some doors and hatch covers had been replaced by facsimiles fashioned of large pieces of ivory glued together and carved elaborately in contrast to the unadorned fibreglass. The ivory was yellowed and old in many places and looked almost as ancient as the originals. Lines - a mixture of nylon, gut, and leather - stretched from the rails into the top trees.
Arflane looked up, getting the best impression of the ship’s size he had had yet. The masts were so high they seemed almost to disappear from sight. The ship was well kept, he noted, with every yard and inch of rigging so straight and true that he would not have been surprised to have seen men crawling about in the top trees, measuring the angle of the gaffs. The sails were furled tight, with every fold of identical depth; and Arflane saw that the ivory booms, too, were carved with intricate pictorial designs. This was a show ship and he was filled with resentment that she was so rarely sailed on a working trip.
Petchnyoff stood patiently at his side, looking up also. The light had turned grey and cold, giving an unreal quality to the day.
‘It’ll snow soon,’ said the second officer.
Arflane nodded. He liked nothing better than a snowstorm. ‘She’s very tidily kept,’ he said.
Petchnyoff noted his tone and grinned. ‘Too tidy, you think. You could be right. We have to keep the crew occupied. We get precious little chance of sailing her, particularly since the Lord Rorsefne’s been away.’ He led Arflane towards an ivory door let into the side of the middle deck. ‘I’ll show you below first.’
The cabin they entered held two bunks and was more luxuriously furnished than any cabin Arflane had seen. There were heavy chests, furs, a table of whale bone, and chairs of skins slung on bone frames. A door led off this into a narrow companionway.
‘These are the cabins of the captain and any guests he happens to have with him,’ Petchnyoff explained, pointing out doors as they passed them. ‘The cabin we came through was mine. I share it with the third officer, Kristoff Hinsen. He’s on duty, but he wa
nts to meet you.’
Petchnyoff showed Arflane the vast holds of the ship. They seemed to go on forever. Arflane began to think that he was lost in a maze the size of a city, the ship was so big. The crew’s quarters were clean and spacious. They were underoccupied since only a skeleton crew was aboard, primarily to keep the ship looking at her best and ready to sail at the whim of her owner-captain. Most of the ship’s ports were of the original thick, unbreakable glass. As he went by one, Arflane noticed that it was darker outside and that snow was falling in great sheets on to the ice, limiting visibility to a few yards.
Arflane could not help being impressed by the capacity of the ship and envied Petchnyoff his command. If Brershill had one vessel like this, he thought, the city would work her to good advantage and soon regain her status. Perhaps he should be thankful that the Friesgaltians did not make better use of her, otherwise they might have captured an even bigger portion of the trade.
They climbed up eventually to the poop deck. It was occupied by an old man who appeared not to notice them. He was staring intently at the dimly seen wheel positioned below on the middle deck. It had been lashed fast so that the runners which it steered would not shift and strain the ship’s moorings. Though the old man’s eyes were focused on the wheel he seemed to be contemplating some inner thought. He turned as they joined him at the rail. His beard was white and he wore his coarse fur hood up, shadowing his eyes. He had his jerkin tightly laced and there were mittens on his hands. Snow had settled on his shoulders; the snow was still heavy, darkening the air and drifting through the rigging to heap itself on the decks. Arflane heard it pattering on the canvas high above.
‘This is our third officer, Kristoff Hinsen,’ Petchnyoff said, slapping the old man’s arm. ‘Meet the Lord Rorsefne’s saviour, Kristoff.’
Kristoff regarded Arflane thoughtfully. He had a face like an old snow-kite, with knowing beady black eyes and a hooked nose.
‘You’re Captain Arflane. You commanded the North Wind, eh?’
‘I’m surprised you should know about that,’ Arflane replied. ‘I left her five years ago.’
‘Aye. Remember a ship you nosed into an ice break south of here? The Tanya Ulsenn?’
Arflane laughed. ‘I do. We were racing for a whale herd that had been sighted. The others dropped out until there was only us and the Tanya. It was a profitable trip once we’d put the Tanya into the ice break. Were you aboard her?’
‘I was the captain. I lost my commission through your trick.’
Arflane had acted according to the accepted code of the ice sailors, but he studied Kristoff’s face for signs of resentment. There seemed to be none.
‘They were better times for me,’ said Arflane.
‘And for me,’ Kristoff said. He chuckled. ‘So our victories and defeats come to the same thing in the end. You’ve no ship to captain now - and I’m third officer aboard a fancy hussy who lies in bed all day.’
‘She should sail,’ Arflane said, looking around him. ‘She’s worth ten of any other ship.’
‘The day this old whore sails on a working trip - that’s the day the world will end!’ Kristoff kicked at the deck in disgust. ‘I tried your tactic once, you know, Captain Arflane, when I was second officer aboard the Heurfrast. The captain was hurt - tangled up in a harpoon line of all things - and I was in command. You know that old hunter, the Heurfrast?’
Arflane nodded.
‘Well, she’s hard to handle until you get the feel of her and then she’s easy. It was a year or so later when we were racing two brigs from Abersgalt. One overturned in our path and we had to go round her, which gave the other a good start on us. We managed to get up behind her and then we saw this ice break ahead. I decided to try nosing her in.’
‘What happened?’ Arflane asked, smiling.
‘We both went in - I didn’t have your sense of timing.
For that, they pensioned me off on this petrified cow-whale. I realize now that your trick was harder than I thought.’
‘I was lucky,’ Arflane said.
‘But you’d used that tactic before - and since. You were a good captain. We Friesgaltians don’t usually admit there are any better sailors than our own.’
‘Thanks,’ said Arflane, unable to resist the old man’s flattery and beginning to feel more comfortable now that he was in the company of men of his own trade. ‘You nearly pulled yourself out of my trap, I remember.’
‘Nearly,’ Hinsen sighed. ‘The sailing isn’t what it was, Captain Arflane.’
Arflane grunted agreement.
Petchnyoff smiled and pulled up his hood against the weather. The snow fell so thickly that it was impossible to make out more than the faint outlines of the nearer ships.
Standing there in relaxed silence, Arflane fancied that they could be the only three men in all the world; for everything was still beneath the falling snow that muffled any sound.
‘We’ll see less of this weather as time as goes on,’ said Petchnyoff thankfully. ‘Snow comes only once in ten or fifteen days now. My father remembers it falling so often it seemed to last the whole summer. And the winds were harsher in the winter too.’
Hinsen dusted snow off his jerkin. ‘You’re right, lad. The world has changed since I was young - she’s warming up. In a few generations we’ll be skipping about on the surface naked.’ He laughed at his own joke.
Arflane felt uneasy. He did not want to spoil the pleasant mood, but he had to speak. ‘Not talk the Ice Mother should hear, friends,’ he said awkwardly. ‘Besides, what you say is untrue. The climate alters a little one way or another from year to year, but over a lifetime it grows steadily colder. That must be so. The world is dying.’
‘So our ancestors thought, and symbolized their ideas in the creed of the Ice Mother,’ Petchnyoff said, smiling. ‘But what if there were no Ice Mother? Suppose the sun were getting hotter and the world changing back to what it was before the ice came? What if the idea were true that this is only one of several ages when the ice has covered the world? Certain old books say as much, captain.’
‘I would call that blasphemous nonsense,’ Arflane said sharply. ‘You know yourself that those books contain many strange notions which we know to be false. The only book I believe is the Book of the Ice Mother. She came from the centre of the universe, bringing cleansing ice; one day her purpose will be fulfilled and all will be ice, all will be purified. Read what you will into that, say that the Ice Mother does not exist - that her story only represents the truth - but you must admit that even some of the old books said the same, that all heat must disappear.’
Hinsen glanced at him sardonically. ‘There are signs that the old ideas are false,’ he murmured. ‘Followers of the Ice Mother say, “All must grow cold”; but you know that we have scholars in Friesgalt who make it their business to measure the weather. We got our power through their knowledge. The scholars say the level of the ice has dropped a few degrees in the last two or three years, and one day the sun will burn yellow-hot again and it will melt the ice away. They say that the sun is hotter already and the beasts move south, anticipating the change. They smell a new sort of life, Arflane. Life like the weed plants we find in the warm ponds, but growing on land out of stuff that is like little bits of crumbled rock - out of earth. They believe that these must already exist somewhere - that they have always existed, perhaps on islands in the sea . . .’
‘There is no sea!’
‘The scholars think we could not have survived if there were not a sea somewhere, and these plants growing on islands.’
‘No!’ Arflane turned his back on Hinsen.
‘You say not? But reason says it is the truth.’
‘Reason?’ Arflane sneered. ‘Or some twist of mind that passes for reason? There’s no true logic in what you say. You only prattle a warped idea you would rather believe. Your kind of thinking will bring disaster to us all!’
Hinsen shook his head. ‘I see this as a fact, Captain Arflane - the ice is sof
tening as we grow soft. Just as the beasts scent the new life, so do we - that is why our ideas are changing. I desire no change. I am only sorry, for I could love no other world than the one I know. I’ll die in my own world, but what will our descendants miss? The wind, the snow, and the swift ice - the sight of a herd of whales speeding in flight before your fleet, the harpoon’s leap, the fight under a red, round sun hanging frozen in the blue sky; the spout of black whale blood, brave as the men who let it ... Where will all that be when the icelands become dirty, unfirm earth and brittle green? What will men become? All we love and admire will be belittled and then forgotten in that clogged, hot, unhealthy place. What a tangled, untidy world it will be. But it will be!’
Arflane slapped the rail, scattering the snow. ‘You are insane! How can all this change?’
‘You could be right,’ Hinsen replied softly. ‘But what I see, sane or not, is what I see, straight and definite -inevitable.’
‘You’d deny every rule of nature?’ Arflane asked mockingly. ‘Even a fool must admit that nothing becomes hot of its own accord after it has become cold. See what is about you, not what you think is here! I understand your reasoning. But it is soft reasoning, wishful reasoning. Death, Kristoff Hinsen, death is all that is inevitable! Once there was this dirt, this green, this life - I accept that. But it died. Does a man die, become cold, and then suddenly grow warm again, springing up saying, “I died, but now I live!”? Can’t you see how your logic deceives you? Whether the Ice Mother is real or only a symbol of what is real, she must be honoured. Lose sight of that, as you in Friesgalt have done, and our people will die sooner than they need. You think me a superstitious barbarian, I know, for holding the views I hold - but there is good sense in what I say.’
‘I envy you for being able to stay so certain,’ Kristoff Hinsen said calmly.
‘And I pity you for your unnecessary sorrow!’
Embarrassed, Petchnyoff took Arflane’s arm. ‘Can I show you the rest of the ship, captain?’