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The silence on the ice was total. He couldn't hear the soft whispering of his
companions up on deck. As he scanned the surface he saw that the ice sheet was
broken and cracked where it had been thawed by the shan-kossief and then had
refrozen in the creature's absence. Assuming it was absent, he reminded
himself.
Trying to float above the ice, Ethan made his way toward the bow. Nothing
moved under the ice sheet. The few puddles he encountered were freezing
underfoot. His light penetrated the ice more than a meter in places and
revealed nothing.
The starboard bow runner was intact. As near as he could tell so was its
portside counterpart, though it was buried two-thirds of the way into the
refrozen ice.
Shouldn't take a crew of energetic, muscular Tran equipped with spears and ice
picks long to chip it free, he mused. Then they would have to hack a sloping
channel so it could slip free without damage when Ta-hoding gave the order to
put on sail.
He leaned back, saw anxious faces and visors staring down at him. "It's all
right.
We can get out of here without any trouble. The runners and braces are intact.
Just going to take a little hard digging. I'm coming up." He turned and
started briskly back toward the boarding ladder. He was halfway there when the
ice gave way beneath him.
The rope harness brought him up short. Somehow he hung on to the light. Now it
danced crazily off smooth ice walls as he spun like a top at the end of the
cable.
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Nothing had reached up to grab him and pull him down, he saw as he fought to
still the pounding in his chest. He'd fallen through a thin layer of ice into
a si/able cavern. It dawned on him that he was dangling in the middle of the
cavity the shan-
kossief had occupied. He felt like bait on a line.
Bringing the light under control as his spinning slowed, he was immensely
relieved to see that the cavity was empty. Peculiar undulations marred the
otherwise smooth walls, reminding him of watery ripples on a smooth sandy
beach. His beam revealed a huge tunnel stretching off into the distance.
Residual heat trapped beneath the surface continued to melt water in a few
spots. The steady, metallic drip was the only sound in the cavern besides his
own breathing.
He was still slowly spinning when he picked out a large mound of white powder
off to one side. At first he thought it was pulverized ice. It was a different
shade of white, however, and the riblike projections which emerged from the
pile were not ice crystals. He wondered if any of the crushed skeletons were
Tran, but not hard enough to insist on a closer look. The cavern was too much
like a catacomb.
His light lingered on the mountain of dissolved calcium as he was pulled up
through the hole.
"I'm okay!" he shouted as he reemerged. A swing on the rope brought him into
contact with the ship's side and he was able to secure the grip on the
boarding ladder he'd been walking toward. Still shaking, he forced himself to
climb the rest of the way to the deck.
September's anxious face was the first one he saw. "You disappeared on us,
feller-
me-lad. I thought you were a goner."
"I fell through a thin spot into a big cavity. The shan-kossief's lair, I
think." He sucked fresh air. "We'd better make sure we angle to starboard when
the time comes to move. That's a big hole down there. If you could tame one of
those things, it'd be a heckuva help in building underground communities on
this world."
September glanced over the side, saw the dark pit into which Ethan had
stumbled.
"You might be able to train it, but I don't think you could find anybody who'd
volunteer to feed it."
Ready hands helped Ethan slip free of the harness. "There's a big tunnel
stretching from the lair northward. That's where it took off. You can bet if
the stove doesn't kill it, we'll see it again."
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"We will not," Ta-hoding assured him, "because we will no longer be here." His
breath formed a small cloud in front of him as he turned and began shouting
orders. There was a noticeable reluctance on the part of the crew to comply
with the captain's directives. No one rushed to scramble over the side and
test the accuracy of the human's assessment.
Eventually, two soldiers braver than their comrades cautiously made their way
down. Using picks they started hacking at the ice which imprisoned the
Slanderscree
's port bow runner. When nothing materialized to grab them, they were joined
by two dozen of their fellows. Picks rose and fell with increasing confidence.
Meanwhile Suaxus-dal-Jagger and a trio of Hunnar's bravest soldiers lowered
themselves into the shan-kossief's lair to stand guard before the tunnel. At
least those working on the exposed surface would have time to flee if the
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monster returned.
The pit was not reoccupied. "Busy trying to salve the worst case of heartburn
it's ever had" was how Blanchard described the shan-kossief's situation. If it
could survive the heat, the creature would pass the stove much as it had
passed the bones of its prey. Then hunger would drive it again.
That was the hypothesis put forth by Moware. No one planned on staying in the
area to check its validity. As soon as the runners had been freed and paths
for them sliced through the ice, they brought the excavators aboard and the
ice anchors in.
Wind filled the icerigger's sails. Wood groaned. The great ship began to move
forward. Shuddering and scraping the ice, the
Slander scree emerged from its temporary imprisonment. Moments later it was
standing even with the surface of the frozen ocean.
Soldiers and sailors cheered, then returned to their tasks. Despite the fact
that many of them had been chipping ice all night, no one rested until they
had traveled a reassuring distance from the shan-kossief's cavern. A safe
number of satch away, someone remembered the unfortunate night watch and the
ship paused long enough to hold a brief, somber double ceremony. The wind
would have to be satisfied with words alone since there were no bodies to
return to the ice.
There had been some tension between the more experi-enced sailors from Sofold
and the newcomers who'd joined the expedition at Poyolavomaar. The
confrontation with the shan-kossief had taken care of that. Of the two night-
watchers who'd been lost, one had been a citizen of Wan-nome, the other of
Poyo.
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Tragedy was a powerful unifier.
A few guttorbyn, aerial carnivores resembling furry flying dragons, swooped
down on the ship in hopes of picking off an isolated meal. Each time, they
were met by alerted, armed Tran who would drive them off, shrieking their
disappointment.
After the shan-kossief, the guttorbyn seemed almost comical, with their long,
narrow mouths and outraged cries. By the time they reached the equatorial ice
pressure ridge which the Tran called the Bent Ocean, the crew had become blase
about danger.
The ridge was a much more serious if less life-threatening obstacle to their
progress than any carnivore, however. Forty thousand years ago that line was
where the previous warm cycle had ended. Pack ice from the north had run into
pack ice advancing from the south. The two ice sheets had crunched together
and pushed up and out, forming a solid wall of blocks and slabs that girdled
Tran-ky-ky at its equator.
Ta-hoding barked at his helmsman and the icerigger slowly swung eastward. They
sailed parallel to the ridge with the wind behind them, searching for a break
the crew could enlarge to create a passage.
During their previous journey to Moulokin, far to the west, they had found
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