"The Walls of Winter!" said Elof darkly. "Cliffs and fortresses of the Ice! But at least it grows thick enough in those waters; there we may manage to evade our hunters."
"Or cheat them of their prey!" grunted Roc, hopping from one foot to another and flexing numbered fingers to keep the blood flowing. "Can't eat meat that's fifty fathoms down and frozen solid, can they?"
Elof laughed. "That's true enough!" He glanced back once with weary eyes at the sails that flocked like stormclouds behind them, then rubbed his hands and took firm grip on the tiller. "Well, to your place and stand ready; the most perilous course we can steer, that's where our hopes lie now!" And with iron care he edged the tiller around, swinging closer and closer to the northward, trying to watch both the streamers and the vane and the channels that opened between the wallowing ice-pack; one whit too close and…
It happened. Elof saw the dark speck from the corner of his eye just as Roc shouted in sudden alarm; he could not help being distracted, looking round. Kermorvan might have carried it off, but Elof was not half the seaman he was; his hand jerked on the tiller, and edged the
Seafire
too far into the wind. In the smaller boats he was used to sailing it might have mattered less, but the cutter was four times their size, and undermanned; he lost control. Roc yelled and ducked as the sails emptied overhead and the boom flailed loose across the deck, the gaff threshing this way and that against sheet and stay, raining flakes of ice down upon the deck. The tiller kicked, Elof lost his hold and fell sprawling. Their speed slackened, faltered, and the
Seafire
wallowed uncontrolled, left for vital moments to the mercy of the waves, and the keen-edged floes around.
Dodging the wild swing of the tiller, Elof scrambled up. He knew only too well that the two of them could not regain control quickly enough to swing her away from the wind again; if they lost so much of their start it would only be a matter of time before they were overhauled, or driven against the Ice and sunk. Without the wind… It was almost before thought that he had sprung to the stern-post, seized the rimed metal that hung there, gripped it, pushed it…
It quivered, but it did not move. Like holding a door against a gale, Kermorvan had described it; but he had striven only with a brisk breeze in a sheltered harbour. Now it felt as if Elof strove with the naked force of the gale itself, all flowing through the very metal, or sought to dam a torrent with his fingers. And worse; he seemed to sense some other guiding force behind it, as if other hands pressed or pulled at the vane's far side, constantly opposing his own. He was losing his grip; his chest ached, his breath whistled between his clenched teeth. His fingers slipped over the incised pattern, the spray-encrusted salt crackling beneath them in its serpentine; but he felt something else there also. Darkness swirled before his mind's eye, depths green and gloomy through which he sank, drifting down, down… and something was rising to meet him. A sudden smothering fear gripped him, and it unleashed new strength; crying out aloud, he thrust violently against the vane, and felt it give a little, swing, then stick, immovable.
It was enough. Hanging there exhausted, he saw the streamers leap up straight and shivering, heard the stays thrum and quiver. The lashing boom suddenly jerked out straight as the sail filled with a crack like a whip of the Powers, and the cutter surged forward once again, heeling wildly. Elof grabbed the tiller; Roc, crawling to a winch, gave a whoop of delight and pointed astern. The same slight shift in the wind that had filled their sails had spilled it from the black squaresails astern, leaving them wallowing as helpless as the cutter had been.
"And see how soon you get out of that, my fine man-eaters!" yelled Roc, shaking his fist at them. But Elof caught him by the shoulder and gestured. The wind had shifted a little to the east, and they were sailing on a close reach northeastward now; and ahead of them was the black speck that had startled them, clearly now another Ekwesh sail. It had been tacking well wide of the ice, but already they could see the sail begin to shift, the momentary collapse and sudden billowing tautness that meant it was sweeping down the wind to intercept them.
"How many of the bastards are there?" howled Roc, brushing his red fringe out of his eyes. "Is it a whole fleet they've got on our tail?"
"They must have been searching," reasoned Elof absently, measuring his distances from the newcomer. "Or on guard. Quartering the seas, beating about, each ship to a sector, or they would have come on us together. Now they flock… And perhaps this one was astern of the rest, and they signalled it to sail north to cut us off; their shamans have such arts." He bit his lip, and felt it numb as wood, "He is nearest now, that one, and fast upon us. It will be a close run, Roc, within bowshot even; you might want to don your armour…"
"No thanks! Sooner not face a swim in that, if it's all the same to you. And metal's bloody cold. But bowshot, now, that can work both ways can't it?" He turned and ducked quickly through the companionway, and reappeared with two bundles of arrows and two large bows; the arrows he thrust into racks by the tiller, and set about stringing the bows. "Not the best shots, you and I, are we? Wish we'd Kermorvan here, or old Gise even -what's he about now, d'you think? But we'll maybe pink their arses for them, if only these thrice-damned strings - ah, there! Now yours - how long have we, think you?"
Elof had been asking himself the same question. "Less than an hour; the horizon's a bare league distant, and they're coming in fast Shoot if you wish, but stand ready on the winches; we cannot fight a whole war craft. What hope we have lies in flight."
It was not long indeed before they saw the Ekwesh ship more clearly. Long and narrow in the hull, but high of side and decked, it was much the same as that one Elof had helped to capture, one wild foggy night many years since. Now, though, the long sweeps were stowed away, and the bare sides bristled with men. "They have not even hung out their shields," said Elof tautly. "They think us such easy meat. Well, so much the better; they have been mistaken ere…" He heard something then, and Roc also; a distant drumming boom, borne to them down the wind. And as they drew closer still they could make out the platform upon the wide bows of the warship, and the strange figure stepping up onto it, clad In spreading robes that swept this way and that, and some form of masked head-dress. They looked at each other.
"What in Hel's black breasts is that?" growled Roc.
"A shaman," said Elof. "To dance up their battle craft, and counter ours. Maybe they do fear us, after all."
Roc made no reply; they sat in breathless silence as the Ekwesh craft knifed through the swell towards them, white foam spurting and spraying past the black prow, disdaining the ice-floes with ruthless grace. The drum rolled and thudded down the bitter airs, but the sinister shape in the bows stood motionless, the mask drooping as if the head beneath was sunk in thought. Suddenly it lifted, and the drumbeat changed, stuttered like an excited heartbeat; from side to side the mask swayed, and the robes spread and billowed beneath. Faster and faster the shaman danced, leaping from one leg to another so the robes wove and wagged behind him like
a tail, throwing back the long mask till the jaws
dangled, shaking them in a sidelong snarl. They could see now that the robes were streaked in grey and white, the mask crested with low grey curls and ending in a large black muzzle rimmed with gaping fangs and black gums.
"Wolf!" muttered Elof. "
Ouashkas
, the Wolf clan! I know the mask from Mylio's records; but we have faced few of that line in the Westlands."
"Then make ready for a new treat!" growled Roc. "
Here they come
!"
Caught in the inexorable play of waters and winds, the two craft charged down upon each other like great deer sparring in the forests of the Northlands. Elof gripped the tiller tight in his fist, counting the time against a quickening heartbeat, fighting off the urge to flinch, to swerve away; that would not save them now. The black bows lifted over them like axe over twig, ready to ram; Roc shouted and ducked down, the
Sea-fire
bounced and heeled violently on the war craft's bow wave, and Elof thrust hard on the tiller. A handspan only he moved it, sharp as a measure, but the cutter answered instantly as any living mount; its bows swung, the sails pressed closer to the wind and the little craft heeled sharply. Roc whooped in triumph as the black prow slid harmlessly alongside and passed them, the painted beast-face leering in baffled fury. From the awesome figure of the shaman came an ululating howl of rage, and longbows lifted over the rail above. But Roc, still on his knees, had already drawn bow, and the range was a few strides only; he loosed, there was a yell and a black-garbed figure toppled between the two hulls, so close he almost struck the
Sea/ire's
deck. That held back the storm a heartbeat, when every instant was a gain; time enough for the hulls to draw a small way apart, and Elof to shift the rudder a fraction further. The little craft heeled further away from the Ekwesh ship, even as the first ragged volley of arrows was launched. Meant to sweep its deck, they thudded instead into its upraised flank, or spat through the sails with little harm. Before the last had passed Roc bobbed up from behind the rail and fired again; he hit nothing, but Elof fired across the stern transom and struck one of the yelling faces above the steering oar. More arrows hissed and rattled into the
Seafire's
timber, then they were past and away.
"Kerys, you timed that close!" gasped Roc. "But what now? They'll be about in a moment and snapping at our heels…"
"Will they indeed?" asked Elof quietly. But even as he spoke the black ship was sweeping around in a wide circle, its hands frantically paying out the sheets till the great yard swung almost parallel to the hull and the black sail ballooned outward from it like a child's kite. With majestic ease the war craft leaned over and came gliding after the skipping cutter.
"At least we're almost past bowshot -" began Roc, then ducked hastily as a flock of arrows sang close over the deck. "That's not natural!" he protested. "Shooting against the wind, at that!" His eyes lit on the shaman, still hopping and leaping at his post. "It's that bastard!" he cried. "Guiding the arrows by his craft -" Something heavier crashed into the planking; wide fletches of black and white stood quivering in the stern transom. "And they've brought a catapult to bear!"
He was about to spring up recklessly and shoot, but Elof pulled him down. "Wait!" he commanded, flinching slightly as another catapult arrow riffled his hair with a ghostly breath. "Ready to trim sail! Now we may test them, in their turn -"
With calculated suddenness he bore down hard upon the tiller, and the cutter swung still closer to the wind, heeling so sharply now that, arrows or not, they both sprang out to the rail and leaned back to balance it. Behind them the war craft seemed to hesitate a moment, then slowly and ponderously eased itself onto the new heading.
What happened then was startling in its suddenness. The taut black sail appeared to tremble, then all in a moment it spilled, collapsed and snapped taut again; the huge craft listed alarmingly, then with an explosive crack that carried even upwind the strained sheets parted and the
sail
whipped free, streaming
out like a
bedsheet on a line. The black hull plunged and bucked, and the shaman, springing for the safety of the foredeck, was hurled out and away like a stone from a sling. His robes billowed out as he struck the water; they saw him struggle a moment, win free of the wolfmask but become tangled in his soaked furs and borne down. Even amid the chaos of the warship's deck a line was thrown to him, but in that chill water it was already too late; he vanished in a swirl and rose no more. Only the gaping mask bobbed empty among the drift-ice.
Elof's laugh was a snarl. "You see, Roc? You see? Just as when I lost the wind, but worse with that clumsy rig; they can't shave the wind so close, and never dreamed we could - so they were all aback in an instant, their sail loose and flailing this way and that…"
Roc nodded grimly. "And one shaman the less; they'll waste their arrows now. But they'll follow all the harder for that, and there's the others in their wake, still -"
Elof pressed his lips tight. He eased the rudder now, and the
Seafire
settled a little further from the wind, on the reaching course that was its fastest point of sailing. "Then we'll see how they fare among the ice!
The race begins
!"
So began the maddest of mad dashes, a fearful plunge between floe and floating island, fleeing the servants of the Ice upon the very winds it spawned. It took the ship of the Wolf-clan no more than ten minutes to rein in its sail and start after the
Seafire
once more, and that was all the lead they had; nor were the other ships so very far behind. For narrow channels and passages between and around the thronging slabs of ice Elof drove, ever seeking a place where the cutter could pass unscathed and a larger craft might not; but he soon found this was less easy than it seemed. For the Wolf-ship was like all Ekwesh ships of war, narrow and lean for its length, and its bows were well reinforced for ramming other ships; also, it had many hands to fend off dangerous ice with the long sweeps. More than once Elof and Roc saw these bend and splinter against some immovable floe, or snag in a crevice and topple their wielder into that murderous ocean which sucked out a man's life in seconds; but they were not discouraged, so hot now burned their thirst for vengeance. Through the fringes of the pack-ice raced the
Seafire
, the cold sea hissing and slapping at its flanks, but the Wolf-ship still closed till once again they hung only just beyond bowshot, and the wildest chances Elof took could not dismay them.