The Icerigger Trilogy: Icerigger, Mission to Moulokin, and The Deluge Drivers (82 page)

An anxious voice sounded behind him. “What means this, friend Ethan?”

He did not try to evade minister Mirmib’s question. “It means that our enemies now control weapons more powerful than our own. They’ve killed the humans who brought those weapons. I had doubts the man Trell would use such power against you and your people. I have no such doubts about Rakossa and Ro-Vijar.”

“We cannot surrender.” Mirmib looked adamant and worried simultaneously. “We cannot let them into the city.”

“I know.” Ethan considered. “Maybe if we three gave ourselves up …”

“Easy, feller-me-lad. Ro-Vijar might be sittin’ behind the convincer, but it’s that fella Rakossa who’s in control out there.”

“Teeliam would give herself up to save the city. She’s already tried to, once.”

“Use your head, lad. We didn’t let her do it before for the same reasons we won’t now. Rakossa’s got control of something that can level this whole town. He’s tryin’ to control a bunch of angry, embarrassed and bloodied troops. Do you think he’s going to let Ro-Vijar leave anyone alive here, maybe to tell the next Commissioner what really happened? Not a chance. We’ve got to fight.”

“Use your own head, Skua.” Frustration made Ethan sound angrier than he was. “We can’t fight a beam cannon.”

“Let’s fake a retreat. Pull back, maybe even let ’em into the city proper. We can split up, some of us head up the main canyon and hide in the mists, then come down and try and take the cannon on the chance they’ll relax. A few thousand would die, but better that than the whole population.”

“I have a better idea, gentlemen.”

Ethan and September turned to see a puffing Williams mount the last of the ramp leading to the wall top.

“Where the hell have you been, Milliken?” September growled.

“We thought it best to keep one beamer in reserve,” replied Milliken, ignoring the big man’s tone.

“I’ve been working on an idea with Eer-Meesach and some of the local craftsfolk,” the teacher continued, “ever since the Poyolavomaar fleet began their blockade.” Williams’s shyness passed for self-control at a time when everyone around him exuded an air of imminent defeat.

“I ain’t too proud o’ mine,” said September. “Let’s hear yours.”

“Have you forgotten the battle of Sofold? Have you forgotten, Sir Hunnar?”

“Nice thought, Milliken, but that won’t work this time.” September jerked a thumb back in the direction of the waiting fleet of rafts. “There was no beam cannon at Sofold, and Sagyanak traveled by raft, not on a skimmer above the ice.”

“I am aware of that,” Williams replied, with just a twinge of reproval. “I did not think we could repeat the battle of Sofold here.”

“Then why ask us to remember it?” wondered Ethan confusedly.

Williams proceeded to explain.

“We have waited long enough.” Rakossa stood in the bow of his craft and yelled to Ro-Vijar on the skimmer. “Let them die if they wish and die if they do not. Our soldiers would let out their heat. We have promised them Moulokin and they shall have it. If at this moment you have become fainthearted and uncertain like the offworlders …”

“Calonnin Ro-Vijar hears his friend Rakossa. Time enough has passed. It shall be as you wish.”

Turning, the Landgrave of Arsudun squirmed down into the too-small seat and repeated the sequence he’d memorized while watching the human female earlier. There was a crackling and a narrow shaft of glowing azure jumped from the end of the weapon. It struck the left side of the massive wooden gate at the place where it was hinged to a stone tower. A gaping hole appeared in the base of the tower. Slowly, accompanied by a tired groaning noise, the tower collapsed, bringing half the gate down with it.

An expectant, humorless cheer rose from the assembled soldiers on the rafts as they saw the heretofore impregnable gate go down so easily. In tumbling, the fallen tower had also pulled down the pika-pina cables behind it, opening the way to the inner canyon.

Ro-Vijar had to try several times, but finally succeeded in adjusting the attitude of the weapon so that it was pointed at the other half of the gate and its still-standing supportive tower.

“I can reduce the whole wall, if you wish to watch,” he called back to Rakossa.

“No. The stones left behind would cause my ships more trouble than the wall itself. We waste time. Make but a proper entry for us and we will do the rest.”

Gaining confidence in operating the weapon with each burst, Ro-Vijar fired again. Splinters of unmelted stone flew in all directions as the other tower was undercut and collapsed. Several additional bursts cleared the ice completely. Then he issued careful instructions to the young squire who was at the skimmer’s controls.

A little more smoothly, the strange offworld sky raft moved forward. Unfurling sails, the Poyolavomaar fleet commenced to follow.

Ro-Vijar raised the barrel of the gun, fired again at the top of the wall and blew another impressive circular gap in the crest. Following that, the shields and weapons lining the rampart began to disappear.

“They abandon the wall!” shouted one of the officers on Rakossa’s raft excitedly. “This will be a day long sung of in the city’s taverns and halls.”

Rakossa did not comment. As he’d told the human Trell, he cared nothing for histories.

Soon they would be within the city. He prayed devoutly that Teeliam would not kill herself. She should have enough sense to do that, or have another do it for her, but in the past she had clung tenaciously to life. Perhaps she would remain alive in hopes of killing him, as she had so often promised to. Little fool, little fool. She played so poorly at the game.

The faster they moved, the less time she would have to think. The less time she had to think, the better were his chances of finding her alive. He had no wish to toy with a corpse.

His lead raft sailed cleanly through the gap in the wall. Other rafts crowded close behind, soldiers lofting arrows at the retreating Moulokinese.

The last of them had vanished behind the false protection of the second wall as the Poyo rafts rounded the tight bend in the canyon. The fleet slowed, waiting while Ro-Vijar prepared to reduce this second obstacle to ash and slag.

He took his time. Powerful winds rocked the skimmer, despite its compensating stabilizers, and Ro-Vijar did not know how to adjust for the gale. No matter. His first bolt passed high over the wall. Snarling to himself, the Landgrave of Arsudun lowered the angle of the barrel. Crossbow bolts and tiny flares of blue light from the human’s hand beamers reached for the skimmer, falling laughably short.

There was a dull rumble above. A storm would dampen but not slow their entrance to the city. He looked skyward curiously—saw a few clouds, harbingers of the nearing storm no doubt. The rumble sounded again, then a third time. It was peculiar thunder, deeper yet not as reverberant.

Then the sky narrowed at the edges and he began screaming at a panicky squire, “Back sail,
back sail
!” He did not remember in that last brief moment that the offworld ship had no sails.

Jammed together as the rafts were, it was impossible to turn them quickly. The rumblings continued to echo through the canyon, some louder, some softer, coming in rapid succession now. Ro-Vijar leaped over the side of the skimmer, landing on the ice with an impact hard enough to crack one chiv. The wind at his back, he raced for the first wall fast as the downcanyon breeze would carry him.

Hundreds of meters above, Malmeevyn Eer-Meesach, wizard and advisor to the Landgrave of Wannome and Sofold, supervised the execution of Milliken Williams’ plan. The last of the powerful gunpowder charges were set off in the holes so laboriously drilled into the cliff tops. Then he and his assistants retreated as the upper portions of both sides of the canyon caved in.

Blocks of basalt and granite weighing a hundred tons or more tumbled majestically into the gulf. They struck hard enough to splinter the ice, though not crack it all the way through to the bottom of the solidly frozen inlet.

One gigantic irregular stone, a black iceberg that must have massed a hundred fifty tons, landed with a thunderous
broom
on the ice. It bounced once, rolled over and made the rear half of a Poyolavomaar raft into matchwood. Screaming sailors abandoned their craft in mindless panic instead of trying to navigate an escape.

Only a few rafts located at the rear of the fleet managed to back sail fast enough and with sufficient discipline to retreat. Then two rafts became jammed in the ruined first wall entrance, sealing the single path of escape.

A different roar sounded as the massed militia and sailors from the
Slanderscree
came chivaning through the gate in the second wall to engage the remaining demoralized and scattered Poyo troops who hadn’t been killed outright by the awesome power of the collapsing cliffs. Their only thoughts were of flight. They scrambled over rocks, ruined rafts and ruined comrades in their haste to flee. Moulokinese and Sofoldians pursued with bloodthirsty delight. Arrows, crossbows, and spears rapidly gave way to swords, axes, and other more intimate methods of destruction.

Ethan recognized one figure in the forefront of the carnage: Teeliam Hoh, wreaking murder with more enthusiasm than any warrior. He knew September would be out there also, slipping and sliding on his skates as he butchered alongside Sir Hunnar and the rest of the Tran.

He didn’t share their appetite for slaughter. Thanking the Tran who’d given him a tow, he skated over to where a gleam of light on metal showed beneath a boulder. From the looks of it, the huge stone had hit the ice, bounced once, and struck the skimmer broadside. Not having been designed to handle that kind of impact, the flotation craft’s compensators had blown and it had fallen to the ice.

Circuitry protruded from numerous gashes in the skimmer’s flanks, and molecular storage modules lay like dead bugs on the ice. Several smaller rocks had made scrap of the beam cannon. For an overview, he clambered up the chill sides of the stone.

Standing atop the boulder, he was able to see down the canyon—no longer a smooth white river, but a landscape of isolated dark shapes resting on a plain dusted with smaller rock fragments. His gaze went higher. Smaller bits of stone continued to loosen and fall from the cliff tops, which were no longer smooth and regular but deeply notched for a thousand meters on each side. Explosives were among man and thranxkind’s oldest weapons. They still had occasional uses.

Williams had reached the cliff top opposite Eer-Meesach. Below, ants slaughtered one another among pebbles.

One of the Moulokinese chemists who’d helped him stood nearby. “ ’Tis a marvelous thing you have conjured for us, Wizard Williams.”

“I’m not a wizard, and I certainly didn’t invent or conjure the powder. We didn’t get as much out of the charges as I’d hoped to. If we can find purer nitrates I’m sure we can manufacture a better grade.” He was performing calculations as he spoke.

Watching him, the Moulokinese was at once awed and afraid. The distance between scientists and the sometimes destructive results of their science is often more terrifying to the average being than the inventions themselves.

Williams noticed the Tran’s expression. To his great horror, he discovered it made him feel good.

It was late afternoon and the temperature was falling with the sun when the Moulokinese fighters chivaned wearily back to the canyon. Blood had frozen in copious quantities between the two walls, giving the inlet the look of quartz littered with crystals of vanadinite.

“ ’Twill require much time and effort to clear our canyon so that ships may travel it again.” Landgrave Lady K’ferr looked quite magnificent in battle dress, Ethan thought.

“We shall rebuild the damaged outer wall,” said one of her officers from nearby, “higher and stronger than before, with the same stones that have crushed our enemies.”

“ ’Tis truth. We will have the help of our friends of Sofold.” K’ferr gazed fondly at several weapon-laden sailors from the
Slanderscree
as they returned with prizes from the massacre. “I wish only,” she continued, looking saddened, “that I could congratulate your Sir Hunnar Redbeard, friend Ethan. Of all who fought, he was bravest.”

Ethan stared down the canyon at the stragglers returning to the canyon. “He could still be out there, cutting down one last Poyo.”

“I’m afraid not, feller-me-lad.” September had skated over to join them. “I was out on the ocean with him. Saw him go down myself. He didn’t get up again.”

There was a wail from behind them. Ethan wished the Tran were capable of fainting. Then he wouldn’t have had to see the look of anguish September’s words had produced in Elfa Kurdagh-Vlata’s eyes.

September laid down his heavy, stained axe, pulled his beamer from his waistband and tossed it to Ethan. After inspecting the reading on a certain small gauge, Ethan nodded, handed it back to the giant.

“Mine’s dead too, Skua. I don’t know about Milliken’s, but I think he used it up drilling holes for the charges.”

“Well, let’s hope we won’t need ’em on the way back to Brass Monkey, feller-me-lad. We’ll take Trell’s body and the two peaceforcers back with us. Been thinkin’ on what we ought to tell the port authorities. No need to get complicated about it. Unfriendly native attack, wandering bandit types.” Ethan nodded slowly, eying the three gashes on the left side of the giant’s neck. Someone had patched the survival suit with local materials. Since September chose not to mention the wound, Ethan ignored it.

“They’ll accept that story because they won’t have a choice, lad. Just as they’ll accept the artifacts and new interpretation of this world we’ll bring ’em. The next Commissioner sent here won’t have any ideas about illegal profit skimming, not with a civilization to help organize. But we’ll play it safe and tell the padre first anyway.”

“Once the Church stirs a theological finger in here, the bureaucracy will monitor its people more tightly,” concurred Ethan. “Poor Trell. He created the conditions for his own murder.”

“Sorry, feller-me-lad. I got no sympathy for him. I’ve seen this sort of thing happen on too many primitive worlds. And he made the old mistake of forgetting that primitive folks can be just as crafty-treacherous as the most jaded technological sophisticate.”